The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) Read Free

releasing the cloak, spreading her arms in a flourish and bowing low. The demon half-skull she wore as a crown jostled and she reached untarnished fingers towards it, keeping it in place. She walked towards Darkthorne’s twitching body, rubbing her narrow chin, her long blackberry colored hair fluttering over her backside.
    “What happened?” she asked, carelessly stepping into his pooling blood, her white hands planted on her bare hips.
    Another portal opened beside Asebor. Through the portal was his icy throne, smoking upon the landing that seemed to hover in the air, connected only by intersecting stairways. Amber orbs around the landing cast their dim glow alongside half of his body.
    “He failed me,” Asebor drawled, glowing eyes meeting hers, forming into slits.
    “I see,” she said quietly, jabbing at his corpse with her golden sandals, making the strings of emeralds that hung from waist tinkle.
    “I could resurrect him, assimilate him with the southern army,” Alena drawled. She stepped out of the pool of sticking blood and rested her hands on the silvery length of chain that secured her cloak to her shoulders.
    Asebor slowly nodded. “The Tower will not easily fall. Make use of his body as you’d like.”
    “Another soldier is always welcome,” she said with a smirk.
    Alena snapped her fingers and a shambling corpse lumbered through her circular doorway. Shredded bits of trousers, moldy and threadbare fell to the ground behind its path as it trudged towards Darkthorne. The corpse’s eyes and mouth gaped open, glowing with the same brilliant green as Alena’s eyes. A few pieces of flesh remained attached to its ribs where worms threaded through the tissue like jewelry. It bent over, hefting the bloody sack that was once the mighty Darkthorne. Mothers in The Great Retreat would use his name in campfire stories to scare the kids. Alena didn’t think those stories would live on for much longer.
    The corpse walked back towards the portal with its burden, scraping its fleshless feet on the stone as it walked.
    “My lord, preparing for the assault on the Silver Tower and managing the raising of the army… will be difficult.” Alena stared at the bits of plate strewn about the red puddle of gore and swallowed hard.
    “I’m sure you will find a way to manage,” he said, his dark lips spreading in a menacing grin. Asebor started pacing about the room, cloak trailing behind on the dusty floor. “Dresna guards my lair and prepares to march upon The Nether. Hilanda is indisposed within the Silver Tower… and Marcine prepares the armies beneath the Woodland Plunge to lay waste to the Great Retreat, to slay the Shaman scum.”
    He paused, releasing a sigh that sounded more like a growl. “I had been unable to contact Terar or sense his essence for weeks now. Yesterday, I searched his dungeons in the Tigerian Bluffs to find what I presumed to be his body. He’d been quartered, gutted, sliced into hundreds of tiny pieces. The only way I was able to identify him was by that odd mask he loved to wear. Do you know what that means, Alena?”
    Her eyes darted from his, watching as the bony skeleton stepped through her portal. “The Bearer of Blackout is free?” she asked. Her portal winked out with a sizzling spark.
    “Correct, I believe Terar lost control of his pet and it likely led to his butchering.”
    “He was to lead the army to the other realms,” Alena breathed, rubbing her fingers along the thick fur lining her cloak.
    “Yes. Adaptability Alena. That is how we survive. Darkthorne was unable to adapt, Are you?”
    “Yes,” she said quickly, prostrating herself.
    “Terar, Malek and Darkthorne have all failed me. Will you join their ranks?”
    “No,” she blurted out.
    “Do you see what happens when you fail?”
    “Yes my lord, yes!” The memory of their last meeting was something she would not forget. It took weeks for her bleeding, lightning-scorched skin to fully heal. The recovery was