The Black Tower Read Free

say never.  A Kruje and a human have joined forces.  Nothing is impossible.
    The rock weighed heavy in his hand as he came to a wide road wreathed with smoke.  Images from tales of the Voss forebearers came to mind, stories of massive and ungainly brutes with no brains, wandering around in their loincloths with a penchant for smashing each other to death with tree trunks and stones not unlike the one Kruje wielded now.  He couldn’t help but laugh, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
     
    He moved as quickly and as quietly as he could along the cracked streets.  Dust pushed up through the broken cobblestones like a dry sea.  A tingling sensation ran up his spine, and he felt eyes watching him from the shadows.
    The sky was still, and as he drew closer to the heart of the city the air grew alarmingly quiet.  He clutched the rock in his hand and winced as each of his steps crushed pebbles and debris.  He approached a large building, some sort of Galladorian courthouse.  The broken facades littered the ground in an almost concentric half-moon formation, and the inside of the once formidable structure was plainly visible even with drifts of silver mist and burning fog sweeping across his path. 
    The Razorcat came out of nowhere, vomited forth by the shadows.  Dark teeth glittered like black knives.  Its oversized head was a blur and black smoke billowed from its unstable body, a shifting colossus of dark vapor.  Kruje acted without thinking, brought the rock forward and smashed it against the side of the feline’s head with a sickening crack just moments before its shark-like teeth would have torn out his throat.  The creature fell to the ground in a heap.  The giant stood stunned, his chest heaving with fright.
    His reverie lasted only a moment.  Blinding white fire blazed from around the edge of the building.  He heard a terrifying howl, and the nauseating stench of burning animal clogged in the back of his throat.  He heard humans shouting, so he lifted the blood-soaked rock and moved closer to the building.  The ground was hot, but Kruje bit his tongue and kept moving until he was just inside the open face of the building and out of sight.  He gripped the rock tight and tried to still his breathing as he gazed through gaps in the wall to what he thought was the origin of the fire.
    A pair of humans in dark cloaks stood on a low mound of fallen stones and loose earth.  They fought what appeared to be a losing battle.  A Razorcat corpse lay smoldering on the ground before them, its dark innards roasting in the sickening heat, but three more of the creatures bore down on them from the opposite end of the ruined courtyard.  Shadow-clad bodies faded in and out of the unnatural silver-grey smoke.  Red eyes glared at the human meat from out of the darkness, and their collective growl sent a razor chill down Kruje’s spine and turned his blood to ice. 
    The humans – one male, one female, both with unruly blonde hair – were armed with staves, the woman’s long like a quarterstaff and the man’s dual sticks shorter and capped with iron. 
    Now who in the J’ann’s name are these idiots? Kruje wondered.  They weren’t any of Chairos’ thugs, which meant they belonged to one of the other forces he’d seen battling in the city. 
    One of the Razorcats blurred forward, and its claw ripped the woman’s cloak from behind.  She screamed as she fell but aimed her stave at its face, and before it could lift and pounce a burst of blue lightning shot forth from the tip and smashed into the creature’s maw, throwing it back with a stink of ozone and burning fur.  Even injured it had her cloak snagged on its talons, and as it tried to retreat into the shadows she was dragged along behind it. 
    The male Bloodspeaker tried his best to reach her.  He held his staves to his sides and blasted into the approaching Razorcats with streams of white and blue fire which scorched the shadow-furred beasts and