Nethergeist by Nick Stevenso EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Nick Stevenso
- Language: English
- Genre: Science Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 5.19 MB
- Price: Free
Descent!
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“Witch!”
The rock just missed her head. It would have struck her if
there hadn’t been a piercing flash from the gathering squall. The light
caught the blur just in time. Even so, Ayilia barely spotted the intruder’s
shadow as he rushed at her through the gravestones. She reached for her
broadsword instinctively, but it wasn’t there. Hardly surprising. It was, after
all, her father’s funeral.
“You work for the Imperium!”
The man lunged at her. Ayilia dodged behind an ornate family tomb. The
blade he’d pulled out clanged into the stone’s edge with a slew of rock
powder. The decrepit granite crumbled easily. Her hand grappled at the
loosened chunks of rubble and old sand.
“You’re the Goat’s concubine!” His teeth were pearls in the light. “I won’t
let you sell us to the Lifeless!”
He circled the headstone, panting hard. She watched his eyes, not once
taking her gaze away from their maniacal glint. He lunged again, but she
ducked and smacked the stone shard she’d fumbled from the tomb into his
scalp. He stared mutely at her, a spurt of blood checkering his puckered
cheeks. As he slumped to his knees, Ayilia slammed her boot into his chest,
and he fell backwards.
Two guards clanked into view, though not with the urgency her father
would have expected had he still been in charge. She inhaled deeply,
steadying herself. The rock lay near her feet, the man’s blood still shining
dully on the sharpest edge. One of the guards kneeled on the stricken figure
and tied his hands with leather straps.
The other regarded Ayilia. “Ma’am … you alright?”
She nodded.
“Don’t know how he got through …” The guard helped hoist the man
upright. “We’ll make sure it won’t happen again.”
Ayilia gave a curt nod, and they turned away.
“Like you care,” she hissed, almost inaudibly.
Both intruder and guards disappeared. The cemetery was hers again. She
mulled over whether to call in more soldiers, but decided the security of the
cremation was best placed in her hands. For the hundredth time, tears began
to well, but she was determined not to let the acidic stares of the waiting
dignitaries outside have the satisfaction of seeing her grieve. She swallowed
them back.
Ayilia could see her father’s coffin. The arcane rituals demanded that she
be alone for the part when he was set to burn, and she was almost grateful.
The way things were going, being alone was safer.
In the ebbing light, the white-blue spires of Agathon city gleamed far
below like freshly-scrubbed bone, the sea a silver slab against the brooding
dun of the approaching superstorm.
Sirus, the red giant, was fading into scarlet obsolescence on the horizon
beyond the graveyard’s broken skyline. The star’s tiny siblings, the twins,
Myra and Demos, would soon follow. People watched in suspicion from the
streets, piazzas, and shores, far beneath the plateau that housed the
whitened tomb yard.
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