Bastion of Sun

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Broken Blade

Silence held them all until they reached giant steel doors or whatever was left of them. The metal doors dangled on twisted hinges, exposing hints of a horrible sight within. Ayva slowed cautiously. The Lightguards and Nolan showed no such restraint, bursting into the chamber.

Torch stands before the door burned brightly, in contrast to the scrap metal doors behind them. Ayva brushed aside the oddity and moved to enter.

Gray glanced inside, then pulled his cloak over his nose as if to stop from being sick. "Don't, Ayva," he said, trying to hold her back, but she pushed him aside and entered.

Inside, the room was a circular chamber of stone. In the center of the room, Nolan was on his knees, cradling the broken fragments of what had obviously been the Macambriel. Nolan was weeping openly. The sight of so noble and proud a man crying openly tore at Ayva. But she felt numb. Distantly, she felt Lightguards brush past her, the golden warriors fanning out in all directions, searching for the culprit. But Ayva's eyes were locked on the horror before her.

Bodies were piled on the far wall. Their blood had been used to create a horror of art—words scrawled above them.

STRENGTH IS LIFE. WEAKNESS DEATH.

Ayva felt lightheaded, sick. She ignored the words and rushed across the room. They can't all be dead, she told herself. She touched a woman's ashen, lifeless skin. Her hand snapped back. The dead woman's skin was icy. Almost painfully so.

"They're all dead, girl. Don't bother yourself," Reaver Logan said. His eyes had a look of a perpetual glare and unsettling pale.

She knew he was right, but she ignored him. She had to be sure.

She turned over a body and found herself staring into the face of a young man. His eyes were peeled wide, his mouth slack. He'd seen his last moments, and whatever he'd seen was awful. Worse still, he was young; she realized he was not much older than her. A warm hand touched her shoulder. Gray was looking at her, his eyes full of compassion. "There's nothing you can do."

Before she could reply—

"—They fought well," said Azgal, Ungar's brother, stepping forward. He loomed over her, a tower of muscle. His big arms, the size of most men's thighs, were crossed, bulging. His face might have been handsome if not for a crooked nose. "See those two?" he pointed to two men with splotchy beards. They looked to be dressed in merchant's clothes, but it was obviously a guise. Their skin wasn't ashen or lifeless, though they were clearly dead. One had a huge axe-wound in his chest. "Those aren't Vasterians—that's for sure. The boy and the other guardians of the Macambriel must have felled them. And whatever took them out, if it did that to the doors, was surely no meek foe. So worry not, Lightbringer, their souls will find their way to the Shining Halls."

Ayva felt oddly heartened by Azgal's words. But not satisfied. Not until she found whoever did this. This looked like a scene of someone with power destroying at will those much weaker. Perhaps they'd been surprised. Perhaps not. In the end, despite what Azgal said, the scene looked like a massacre. No one here put up much of a fight—not one that had made a difference.

Ayva still knelt at the side of the corpse of the young man. His mouth was gaping, but no blood leaked from it, or his nose or anywhere else. In fact, only one person looked to have been cut and drained of their blood, and almost with a surgical precision—a woman with slit wrists and a long clean cut across her neck that had bled her dry. What are you thinking, Ayva? she asked herself and she answered, jaw grinding painfully. That whoever did this was evil and deserves a slow, painful death. But she pushed her anger down with a breath, forcing herself to think rationally as she examined the skin of the young man more closely. Ashen, almost a dark grey... Not a pale white like the death-like faces she'd seen from most other corpses. Except one time, she remembered faintly.