Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) Read Free

leapt off long before the flyer impacted on the cobblestones below.
    I nodded as the small figure managed to assume the same posture with his tightly-gripped spear as he had used to impale the flyer, but this time he stuck the tip of his spear into the cobblestones, apparently breaking his fall enough that he merely rolled away from the spear instead of breaking every bone in his lower body.
    “Have to give the little man some credit, though,” I chided before I looked up at where the High Sheriff was stationed on the main castle wall behind us. “He knows his limits; there’s no way he survives that fall without making the most out of Sky Splitter’s powers.”
    Aemir nodded reluctantly. “It is not his skills I dislike,” he said as he tested his sword arm, “but the pageantry; battle is not a show.”
    My eyes broke from Dancer’s form as he gathered his spear and made for a nearby stairwell and I looked to the top of the Inner Wall. Stationed next to the High Sheriff was the unmistakable figure of Baeld, wearing spiked metal armor which appeared to almost glow in the silvery moonlight. He was over seven feet tall, and had to weigh at least four hundred pounds even without the armor. His massive greatsword, which would have been essentially impossible for any normal man to wield with even both hands, he held loosely in one. His impossibly black skin, which resembled the color of dry charcoal, reflected none of the moonlight which illuminated the rest of the battlefield.
    A flyer had gone over our position and made its way directly for the High Sheriff, but Baeld would have none of it. He stepped between his charge and the flyer, lashing out with his massive sword and severing one of the monster’s arms before the flyer’s bulk crashed into him. What ensued was a mighty struggle, and the soldiers atop the inner wall backed far away from the deadlocked titans.
    I had heard that Baeld had about as much finesse as a landslide, and that observation was proven more than accurate after a brief struggle. The flyer’s scorpion-like tail lashed about in search of a target before the midnight-skinned giant grabbed the flyer in a bear hug which trapped one of its wings in Baeld’s long, herculean arms. Without warning, Baeld pushed off over the battlements, plummeting toward the cobblestone surface some eighty feet below with the monster firmly in his grip.
    The flyer thrashed violently as they fell, stabbing with its talons and tail, but Baeld’s armor protected him from the worst of it. Still, I doubted that his armor would protect him from the fall.
    They crashed into the stones, their combined bulk weighing in at an easy half ton, but Baeld was able to keep the monster between himself and the stone surface. The result was a sickening crack of bone being crushed against stone and both figures lay motionless for several seconds.
    Impossibly—at least for a normal human, which Baeld could never be confused for—Baeld stirred and slowly stood before turning back to the gatehouse, obviously intent on making his way back up to the High Sheriff’s side. Almost as quickly as he stood away from it, the body of the monster he had driven into the cobblestones transformed into that same thick ooze which seemed to compose everything else we were fighting.
    “It would appear that Dancer is not the only one with a flair for the dramatic,” Aemir quipped. “Are all people in these lands so flamboyant?”
    With eerie timing, the small, hairy form of Dancer appeared, complete with the short spear which was easily a foot longer than he was tall. “Dancer not dramatic,” he snapped at Aemir, “Dancer Master of Giants and Slayer of Dragons!”
    “That was not a dragon you killed in the forest,” Aemir corrected him dryly with a wag of his finger, “it was a snake…with wings.”
    “Gentlemen,” I snapped, which thankfully got their attention. “I believe we have bigger things to worry about,” I said with a wave of my