Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Nicki Pau Preto
- Language: English
- Genre: Dark Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
“Ready your blade.”
As one, the novitiates knelt in the snow, their weapons held high on
upturned palms. For valkyrs like Wren, it was a blade fashioned from dead bone.
For reapyrs, a scythe of gleaming steel.
The sun had set, the sky inky black and riddled with stars—the Gravedigger’s
hour was upon them. Any moment now, the sickle moon would crest the
would-be trees.
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Any moment now, the trial would begin.
Wren’s heart thundered in anticipation.
The branches of the forest stood pale and stark before them, sharp with
reaching hands and gaping mouths. With splintered spines and cracked ribs.
This was no ordinary forest, after all. This was the Bonewood.
Arms and legs soared up from the ground, twisted and warped. Bent and
broken.
Dead, soulless bones.
Undead, haunted bones.
Human bones, yes, but other creatures too. Reindeer with spiky antlers and
great woolly mammoths with arching tusks. Ancient bones from unknowable
beasts. Bones from the dawn of time.
The Bonewood was at once a graveyard and a training ground. It was here
that bonesmiths tested their skills, extended their magic… and showed their
mastery over the undead.
Now, after years of training and a lifetime of living in its shadow, Wren would
traverse the Bonewood and compete in the Bonewood Trial.
She lifted her head slightly, considering the novitiates kneeling on either side
of her. There were ten of them total, each dressed in Bone House black and with
black grease lining their eyes, making their sockets look sunken like skulls.
Ghostlight was bright enough on its own but turned blinding when it ashed
against the snow, so they used the wax-and-charcoal mixture to reduce glare. It
also made the mark of their magic—their pale, bone-white irises—stand out all
the more.
Sometimes Wren extended the eye black into her hairline or painted her lips
for a more dramatic eect, though her teachers usually told her to wipe it o.
Sometimes she spread it on her teeth and smiled wide, just to give them a
fright. There wasn’t much to entertain in the House of Bone, frigid and isolated
on the northernmost tip of the Dominions, so Wren had to make do.
Not tonight, though. Tonight Wren would play by the rules… for once.
If she passed the trial, she would serve for life as a valkyr of the House of
Bone. In the Dominions, where magic welled up from deep in the earth, the
dead lingered—violent and unpredictable—unless a bonesmith severed the
ghost from its earthly remains.
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