The Great Betrayal

Read The Great Betrayal for Free Online Page B

Book: Read The Great Betrayal for Free Online
Authors: Nick Kyme
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Epic
lessened, the fires in the elf’s mind faded to embers.
    As he opened his eyes, Malekith saw a rune hammer lodged in Htarken’s chest. The daemon clutched at it feebly, arrested in its sermonising.
    A gruff voice called from below.
    ‘You’ll find it hard to speak with dwarf iron in your gut.’
    Relief washing over him like a balm with the dissipation of Htarken’s sorcery, Malekith nodded to his friend.
    Snorri was not done. He outstretched his hand and the hammer’s haft began to quiver. As if snared by an invisible anchor the daemon came with it, drawn down by the runecraft of the weapon, unable to remove it from where it had impaled its ribs and chest.
    ‘ I am master of fate… ’ Htarken was weakening, his many voices becoming less multitudinous with every foot he descended. ‘ I see all ends… I see… ’
    ‘Bet you didn’t see this, hell-spawn,’ Snorri snarled through gritted teeth. The daemon was almost in front of him. He readied his axe in one hand, drew in the hammer with the other.
    Htarken was weeping… no, laughing . Its spluttering mirth paused for agonised breaths and to spit ichor from its mouth. The hood fell back in its pain-wrecked convulsions, a savage parody of what it had done to the mages, revealing a grotesque bird-headed fiend. Narrow eyes filled with pit-black sclera glared over a hooked beak.
    ‘ I am oracle, architect and thread keeper… ’ it gasped, every second bringing it closer to the bite of the dwarf’s axe. Htarken coughed, its laughter grew deeper and its struggles ceased. ‘ Your doom is certain, you and your pathetic races. Chaos has come and already a change is upon you. Feel it warp your bones, the very course of your bloodlines. It will shape the future and I will be there to witness it. Htarken the Everchanging shall stand upon the ashen corpses of you all and exult. Doomed… ’ it cawed, eyes widening in a sudden fervour. ‘ Doomed, doomed, doomed, doom– ’
    ‘Elfling!’ Snorri cleaved the raving daemon with his axe as Malekith plunged Avanuir into its heart.
    Htarken screamed a thousand times all at once as it was cast back into the abyss. An inner fire consumed it, possessed of chilling heat that made the elf and dwarf recoil.
    In a flare of light, the last gasp of a candle flame before its air has run out, Htarken was gone and left only colourful ash motes in its wake.
    Malekith felt his heart beating hard in his chest like a drum. His arm was shaking where he held Avanuir and he had to lower it to keep from dropping his sword.
    ‘Isha…’ he breathed and turned to the dwarf.
    Snorri was on one knee, holding himself up with his axe as his chest and back heaved up and down.
    A shaft of sunlight blazed down from the sky, lancing through the bloody cloud that was slowly turning back to white. Snorri looked up into it and let the warmth bathe his face.
    Malekith took off his helm to wipe the sweat from his brow. He smiled.
    Snorri was nodding.
    ‘Good,’ he said, licking the dryness from his lips.
    With their leaders banished or fled, the hell-hosts were dying. The lesser daemons were gone, the beasts and thralls were slowly being destroyed by the triumphant armies of the elves and dwarfs.
    Snorri sighed as if a heavy burden had been removed from his shoulders and tramped wearily up the stone steps of his throne where he sat down heavily.
    ‘Thus ends the threat of Chaos to the Old World,’ he said. ‘We have followed in the footsteps of our ancestors, of Grimnir and Grungni and Valaya.’
    ‘Of my father Aenarion and Caledor Dragontamer,’ said Malekith as his dragon bowed low to let him leap from the saddle and be at the dwarf’s side.
    They stood shoulder to shoulder, the lords who had challenged darkness and cast it back to hell.
    ‘You look tired,’ said the elf.
    Snorri slumped against the throne.
    ‘I am.’
    Still clutched in one hand, his rune hammer drooled black smoke from a cleft in its head. Malekith knew the weapon’s name

Similar Books

Stolen-Kindle1

Merrill Gemus

Crais

Jaymin Eve

Point of Betrayal

Ann Roberts

Dame of Owls

A.M. Belrose