Fall From Grace, Chapter Thirty Eight
His tattoos were already gone. They had begun to fade inside the imitation city, as slow as wax dripping down a candle—a vine sagging here, a thorn sharpening there. By the time he made camp inside the brain, the garden on his skin was little more...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Twenty
The city breathed. Everything was swallowed by plague. There were mounds of tissue, carriage-sized organs, hundreds of teeth where once had been bricks. Tumors grew from the walls, distended and rotten, while webs of arteries strangled a molten river...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Twenty Four
Sadik woke slowly, like a man of content. When he opened his eyes, a green expanse stretched before him. His cheek rested on a sea of scales, so small and thin that they seemed as fine as gossamer. A leathery throat bulged to the side, and, above his...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Eighteen
Sadik emerged from the earth, bloodied and hollow. The throne room was silent. Two squads of Sons stood guard at the entrance, while half a dozen more had taken strategic positions around the chamber—bracing against columns, squatting behind statues,...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Thirty Seven
“Come now,” Amira said, standing by the fire. “Gather ‘round.” Behind her, a cluster of nerves pulsed against a craggy wall of metal, bathing the cavern in a soft, cerulean light. Each of the fibers were wreathed in a glossy fat, their hairs flexing...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Twenty One
As Acheron burned, and the blood of gods ran through the street, Sadik was marched from his home. The gap in the walls was little more than a crevice—winding, slanted, and narrow. Clearly, it only existed because the arcane energy that powered the...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Thirty One
“Do you want to know the truth?” Rushan stood next to the open hole in the floor. It was the only source of light in the feasting hall, bleeding a scant illumination from the afternoon sky. At eye level, Sadik saw a pleated skirt and black, muscular...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Thirteen
A mob was converging on the Neheamatt. When Sadik emerged from the mouth of an alley, he saw dozens of people moving through the streets. Immediately, he knew that something had changed. The crowd before him was not a miserable procession of families,...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Thirty Three
“Sadik," Kavaia said. He trudged into the sewers, carving a path through the drains and shadows. Every step earned a weeping of scarlet red. On the walls, stone ran thick with coagulation. Iron strangled the air. “Sadik." Xaeyr's moon and Kavaia's...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Twenty Seven
The caracal stood alone, hooked blades glinting in the sun. She wore a combination of armor and cloth—pauldrons, vambraces, bronze-plated faulds, a tight brigandine shirt wrapped in sashes of dark red linen. Grenades studded her belt. Throwing knives...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Twenty Five
“Oh, Aldunya," Kavaia said, bowing her head in prayer. “Grant us the safety of your branches." Sadik stood beside her. Around him, the Neheamatt's roots swallowed the horizon, snaking across the land with the same majesty as hills and rivers. Valleys...
Fall From Grace, Chapter Twenty Six
Sadik climbed with insect limbs, glided with feathery wings, and landed upon the marble steps of the pantheon, sword at the ready. In better times, the propylaeon would provide a grand entryway for any god returning from the city below—dressed stone...