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helm came off with ease. Fortin let it fall and planted his massive hands, so small next to the titan’s giant skull, on the beast’s temples. He squeezed them together, and the titan’s screams ceased in seconds, before Cyrus could do much more than start to open an artery.
    The titan died, and Fortin moved swiftly to kill the other, hefting the helm that he’d tossed aside and bringing it down on his prone enemy over and over, using a hard corner as a cudgel and finishing the titan in seconds. Cyrus snaked out from behind one of the fallen and called to the rock giant. “Fortin!”
    When the rock giant turned, there was no mistaking the killing instinct present in his hard features. His face, usually inscrutable, was jagged lines of pure rage, covered with scarlet blood along every crag and crevice of his skin. He breathed into the hot night and Cyrus could nearly imagine the steam pouring out of his nostrils. His fury did not soften even as the trace of recognition flickered across his stony face. “Lord Davidon,” he said, rough and gravelly.
    “How many are there, Fortin?” Cyrus asked, approaching the rock giant slowly. While he did not doubt Fortin’s ability to tell friend from foe, he had been in the rage of battle like this before. Anger overwhelms him; best not get in his way.
    “Too many,” Fortin said, and his voice cracked. “Half a hundred, I think. Spell casters in with them. They have them now—”
    “We know,” Cyrus said. He could feel the heat of the flames. “Did anyone make it out of town?”
    “Administrator Tiernan led the retreat toward the woods,” Fortin gestured toward a copse of trees in the distance. “But … not enough.” His head swung around as a shout echoed in the night from behind him. “We have to stop them, have to kill them—”
    “Yes,” Cyrus said, “we’ll—” But he was cut off by a new entrant on the far side of the square.
    The loud footsteps should have given the approach away, but at that very moment one of the burning buildings collapsed just off the square, and a cloud of dust whipped over Cyrus. When it cleared, he looked up toward the shadow he’d seen coming a moment earlier. J’anda’s pet? he wondered. No, it was over—
    Cyrus saw Fortin again as the dust cleared, his frightening features still clouded by the haze of ash and smoke. But he only saw them for a moment before a massive hand descended and drove the rock giant into the earth. The sound of rock cracking was as loud as any building collapse. Fortin did not even have a chance to cry out before his body bent unnaturally, and Cyrus knew that he was dead.
    The attacker swept out of the cloud of dust, black sleeves catching white ash in their fine thread. He was a titan, and wore shining silver armor that gleamed with crimson, dozens of spots of blood smeared across it like a butcher’s apron. His helm matched the look of his breastplate but carried rather more dust, and hid a face even rougher than the other titans; more scarred, somehow, and with a furious twinkle in his eyes he stared down at Cyrus.
    “Lord Cyrus Davidon,” Talikartin the Guardian said in a deep voice as rough as his complexion. “At last, we meet again.”

7.
    Cyrus was well past the point where fear could hold him in sway, even at the sight of so frightening a visage as Talikartin the Guardian’s. “At last indeed,” Cyrus said, low and rough, his voice almost unrecognizable to his ears. “How long has it been?”
    “Some five years gone now,” Talikartin said, tilting his massive head to regard Cyrus, the light of the fires flickering across his rough cheeks. “I have waited for you to return as you promised, but I grew tired after a time and have come north to find you.”
    “I’m surprised you know my name,” Cyrus said, holding Praelior tight in hand. “It was so very long ago, after all.”
    “Your legend reaches even our ears in the southern lands.” Talikartin brandished a mailed fist, and