Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
One of the ogres is not only right by me, but getting ahead of the stallion.
“I thought you said they were slow!” I holler to Merc.
“Keep going!”
“Like I’m going to stop—”
Flames.
All at once the cliffs are gone as we thunder out of a turn and break into a red landscape that’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. Bursts of blood-colored flame flare up out of fissures in the red dirt, the fires like burps from deep under Anathos’s surface. Red, leafless trees with tangled branches and twisted trunks dot the flat plain, and immediately, Lavante surges around one. Dodges a second. Leaps to the side to avoid getting burned as a blast of fire explodes.
I do what I can to stay in the saddle—
It happens so fast, I couldn’t have done anything, even if I’d known what was coming: An ogre lands in a crouch right in our path.
Lavante lets out a scream through his nostrils, his hindquarters digging in and kicking up the loose red dirt so that it splashes all around us. His lunge to the left is so violent, I feel myself go airborne, and as I tumble into a hard landing, I try to keep an eye on the ogre.
Its bark-like skin turns the exact red of the ground, only its beady red eyes showing.
And all those black teeth.
My breath gets sucked out of me, and I swallow dust that tastes like sulfur as I roll. During one of the rotations, I catch a brief glimpse of Merc and his horse blasting out of the cliffs at a dead run, a rippling overhead as more ogres leap free of their rocky roads and sustain flight with their wings of flesh.
And then I hear the grunting call.
Scrambling onto all fours, I square off against the ogre that is lowering into a crouch in front of me. Its tail rises like a scorpion’s over its back, and the way the beast quivers just before it jumps tells me that I’m going to lose this ground fight.
Crescent moon, there isn’t even going to be a fight.
As the sound of pounding hooves is still too far away for Merc to help me, I brace myself for the attack while the ogre leaps into the air, front claws ready to finish what the skystalker’s talons started. The image of it silhouetted against the sky is right out of nightmares, and I bring my arms up to cover my—
Flames. Everywhere.
Sure as if I conducted them to do so, two columns of fire explode up from the ground, and the pair of them cross, just as my arms did, at the exact moment the ogre’s trajectory carries it forward.
The creature lets out a shriek, and I smell burning meat. The next thing I know, the thing lands on top of me, one of its feet digging into my hip, another crashing into my shoulder. I hold on to my head and curl into a tight ball, expecting to be bitten.
But the beast has other problems.
Half of it is on fire, the red flames spitting and hissing as it paddles with its squat legs and changes colors randomly, black, brown, red, yellow—abruptly, it stumbles off me. Drops to its side. Shrieks again. As the stench of burning flesh mixes with that sulfuric odor, I, too, have other things to worry about.
Merc is weaving around the base of the mountain, and he has a stream of the ogres behind him, all of them transitioning from black and brown to the red—
Another shriek.
I wrench around on the ground. There’s a second ogre flying at me, those wings that aren’t wings out to guide its trajectory, the angle perfect to land on me, the black teeth bared, the black tongue lolling out as if it can already taste me.
But I put out my hands, palms forward.
And I call to the flames, an intentional command borne out of what unintentionally happened first with the lantern and then with the hearth at Lena’s.
There are three nearby holes in the ground, like sockets, and as if the fire is something I can pull like a rope, I yank at the air—
Flames explode to life, sure as if I conjured them, and I throw my hands forward, pushing the blast of heat at the ogre in the air. It’s the lantern’s attraction to me amplified a thousand times, not the little glow of a wick seeking me, but so much, so very much, more.
I don’t understand what I’m doing, or how, and in this it’s just as I battle death.
But I do it.
The shriek stings my ears as I fall back and brace myself for another fiery trampling. The thing stomps over me, roaring in pain, that cooked-meat stench all that’s left behind as it tears off for a length and then drops to the red dirt. I don’t waste time tracking its death writhing.