Edge of Destiny

SIEGE AND STORM

Though a besieging army of charr camped on the plains to the north of Ebonhawke, the fortress itself was decked for celebration. The royal banners of Kryta hung beside the emblems of Ebonhawke, and trumpeters lined the curtain walls. In the courtyard below, the Ebon Vanguard stood at attention in their dress uniforms, every inch of black armor polished. Their dark figures were outshone by the 144 white-garbed Seraph who stood at attention around their queen.

Queen Jennah had traveled to Ebonhawke not via the treacherous Shiverpeaks but via the restored asura gate. For years, the gate between Ebonhawke and Kryta had been unreliable, not maintained by the xenophobic human outpost or the last human monarch that could aid it. Years of neglect, though, had been undone by recent treaties. With the defeat of the Destroyer of Life, the asura had sent their best minds to repair and improve the ancient asura gate between Ebonhawke and Divinity's Reach.

Today, Queen Jennah was officially declaring the renewed asura gate open. She stood before the assembled might of Ebonhawke and gestured to the glimmering gate behind them.

Her majestic figure was projected by a mesmeric aura above the crowd, and she spoke to them all. "With this gate, you are no longer alone in the wilderness. With this gate, Ebonhawke is connected to the heart of Divinity's Reach. The asura will maintain it, and it will not fall into disrepair again. Through this gate, supplies will come to you-food and weapons and armor and medicines. Through this gate, reinforcements will come-new recruits and seasoned veterans and even, in time of great need, these white-garbed warriors."

That brought applause from some, but murmurs of uncertainty from others: "We don't need Seraph."

"They're better for parades than battlements."

"She sends them, she'll send orders."

The queen went on, "Through this gate, you will go on leave, out of a land of constant war and into a city of eternal peace, out of the rigors of battle and into the splendors of the greatest city on Tyria. Through this gate, your wounded will go to Vanguard Hospital in the heart of Divinity's Reach, to be cared for as all heroes should."

The warriors cheered that thought, but their celebration was interrupted by the distant rumble of thunder. A few of the trumpeters on the wall turned to gaze north, where a black cloud was boiling up.

"From this day forward, except at time of imminent danger, this gate will remain open-a road between humanity's bravest outpost and its brightest city."

The Seraph applauded these closing words, and the Vanguard joined in. But another peal of thunder-louder and nearer-interrupted the ovation. The trumpeters turned again to see a black cloud eating up the sky.

The queen signaled for the Krytan Fanfare.

Only a few horns began it, but others joined in, swelling the refrain.

A voice spoke in Queen Jennah's ear: "We must get you to safety." It was Countess Anise, a Shining Blade exemplar who was always beside the queen. Anise grasped the queen's arm and impelled her down from the platform.

Dylan Thackeray met the queen on the steps. "My queen, a storm threatens."

Jennah glanced between her bodyguards. "Since when have I feared rain?"

"It's more than rain." Dylan fell in step beside the queen and Anise. "Something stirs the sky, my queen."

The Krytan Fanfare faltered.

Dylan halted, drawing his sword and looking to the wall.

Trumpeters quit midsong and turned toward the stairs. They rushed down while warriors rushed up.

The black cloud was spreading with preternatural speed. In heartbeats, it engulfed the sky. Waves of dark magic riled through the belly of the cloud, and red lightning flickered horribly. In the far west, a strange golden beam tore down from the cloud to rake the horizon.

"I'm going up to see," Dylan told the queen. "Countess Anise, get the queen to the keep, to an inner chamber, and let no one and nothing through to her."

The countess scowled. "Do not tell me my duty, Captain Thackeray. She will be safe."

Anise and two other guardians led Queen Jennah toward the keep of Ebonhawke.

Dylan watched them go. Those Shining Blade always surrounded Queen Jennah, pretending to be greater protectors than he. Let them prove it now. The best way for Dylan to guard the queen was to learn what this storm was.

He rushed up the stairs along the curtain wall. The walkway at the top had long since been vacated by trumpeters, but the Ebon Vanguard remained, staring out.

The sky was black, and the storm overhead convulsed like a living thing. All around the ravenous cloud, dust devils ripped up the ground. Sandstorms boiled, and siroccos screamed.

"The charr'll have a hard time of it," Dylan muttered with satisfaction.

He looked down on the brutes' encampment on the northern plain. Their tents were ranked in even rows surrounded by great iron siege engines. The charr had closed off the eastern and western roads, and their sappers had dug zigzag trenches approaching the walls. Though the charr had besieged Ebonhawke for years, they seemed serious about bringing down the fortress this time-serious about shutting down the asura gate. By the look of the earthworks and war wagons, they were only a month from bringing their siege to storm.

But another storm was overtaking them.

Charr stood in the lanes between their tents, horned heads cast back, eyes fixed on the boiling skies. The storm would be hard on them, indeed.

Movement drew Dylan's gaze. He looked beyond the charr encampment to the dry fields in the far north. Something was advancing there. It looked like a sandstorm-a long line bounding forward across the wastes. But the storm clung to the ground, and it seemed too solid to be sand.

"What is that?" asked a young watchman nearby. He peered intently at the line, his head forward, his hands braced on the battlements.

He looked so like Logan that Dylan had to glance back at the young man to make sure it was not he. But no. Why would Logan ever enlist to fight for humanity?

"That's another army," the young watchman said, straightening up.

"Impossible," Dylan replied. "It's moving too fast."

The watchman shook his head. "An army of giants."

Next moment, Dylan himself could see them-huge ogres running across the plains with jagged hyenas in their midst. Dylan had never seen such massive ogres, and light glinted from them as if their skins were crystal.

"To arms!" shouted a nearby lieutenant. The call was echoed along the wall and throughout the bailey below. Watchers loaded crossbows and lifted longbows, ballista crews readied great bolts, catapulters rolled huge stones into their mechanisms.

A crack of lightning split the sky.

The thunder shook the heavens and didn't stop.

Dylan gaped in awe at the voracious bolt.

It struck a charr siege tower, setting the wood ablaze, then jagged like a knife through their camp. It didn't cease, its crackling column ripping open the ground, setting the camp on fire, frying every charr in a hundred feet. The rolling thunder of the bolt solidified the air. Lightning lashed with a will through the charr camp before vaulting to the wall of the fortress itself.

"Look out!" Dylan shouted, but his voice was lost to the thunder.

The lightning smashed the wall, incinerating a catapult crew. It blasted stones apart and hurled ten-ton rocks into the courtyard. One great boulder rolled to crash into the asura gate, toppling it.

The lightning leaped onward to Ebonhawke Keep itself. It exploded the guard station atop it and tumbled the burning warriors to the courtyard below.

The strike then vaulted to the back wall of Ebonhawke and ripped it open as well.

Capering and cackling, it tore on southward, across the Crystal Desert.

Only as the blinding glare eased and the thunder retreated was there room to think.

Stunned, Dylan stared at the lightning's path-the fires that burned the charr camp, the great breach in the northern wall, the toppled ruins of the asura gate, the shattered height of the keep, the blasted rift in the southern gate…

It was as if the god Balthazar had run his finger through camp and fort-a boy mixing black ants with red-so that human and charr would annihilate each other.

But it wasn't just humans and charr.

There were ogres, too.

Already, the ogres were charging into the northern part of the charr camp. Rifle blasts ripped out from the charr, but not a single ogre fell. They roared in, their clubs bashing charr, their hyenas tearing through tents. More gunfire. More clubbing. The ogres bounded through the charr as if they were not there. In moments, they would break through the encampment and surge across no-man's-land.

"Prepare to fire!" shouted an Ebon Vanguard lieutenant.

All along the wall, bows drew taut and ballistae creaked and catapults strained.

"Fire!"

A hail of bolts and shafts and boulders vaulted down onto the ogres and hyenas. The arrows only glanced off them. One ballista impaled an ogre, bringing him down, and two of the catapult stones smashed others, but the rest came on.

Armed for hand-to-hand combat, Dylan would be no help on the wall. He turned and descended the stairs into a courtyard in turmoil. Warriors rushed to their posts or struggled to close the breaches in the walls. Dylan strode among them, heading toward the keep.

He would defend it with his life. With his life, he would defend his queen.

Queen Jennah and her three Shining Blade bodyguards had just entered the armory on the fifth floor of the keep when lightning struck. Boom! It was like being inside a drum. The walls shuddered, the floor shook, and stones and bodies plunged past the windows.

Hands gripped the queen, steadying her. It was Countess Anise-pale, thin, beautiful, and angry.

"What was that?" the queen wondered aloud. "There was mind in that stroke."

Countess Anise said, "Yes. I felt it, too."

The queen stepped up to the window, drawing Anise with her. She stared out into the tormented sky and said, "We are mesmers. We know minds-how to touch them, how to turn them. Let us meditate on the mind in this storm."

Anise channeled thoughts into her.

Queen Jennah of Kryta, staring from a window high in Ebonhawke Keep, peered into the mind of darkness.

It was unlike any she had wrestled before.

A sandstorm. A chaos. Bottomless hunger. Endless outrage.

She glimpsed it for just a moment, but that was enough. In that moment, it had glimpsed her.

Crying out, Queen Jennah reeled back from the window. Countess Anise caught her, staring in dread at her queen.

"That's what they look like," Jennah said, panting. Her eyes were like mirrors. "That's what it's like to look into the mind of a dragon."

This was Dylan's finest moment. In Divinity's Reach, he had stood vigil beside Jennah through a hundred silken parties and a thousand confetti parades. Now, in the fortress of Ebonhawke, he had his one chance to truly defend her.

Dylan stepped out before the keep, his sword bared. "What comes?"

Something was fighting through the breach in the curtain wall-something huge. Dylan saw golden eyes and snapping jaws and spiked hackles. Vanguard troops clustered before the breach, shoving polearms into it, but the creature still came. Suddenly, a crystalline hyena burst through the rift, breaking it wider. The beast landed on a line of warriors, stone paws crushing them and stone teeth ripping them apart. Behind it, a dozen more of the monsters came.

"Giant hyenas!" shouted one of the guards.

More warriors rushed in to bring down the gibbering creatures, but their blades bashed uselessly off the rocky hides. The hyenas bounded atop the defenders and ate through them. Dozens fell, and the creatures loped forward into the courtyard.

One hyena stalked straight toward the keep.

Dylan lifted his sword, staring at the spiky creature. "What are you?"

It came on snarling, its legs gathering speed. It leaped.

Dylan stepped aside, letting it crash into the side of the keep, then rammed his sword into its neck. The hyena wailed, scabrous claws skittering on broken flagstones. Dylan drove his blade deeper, and the hyena shuddered to stillness.

"That is for the queen!" Dylan cried, dragging his sword from the wound. He grinned as another of the beasts stalked toward him.

Its eyes were wide, circling in mad hunger, and its nostrils flared with the scent of fresh blood.

Dylan waved his sword. "Is this what you want?"

The hyena bounded toward the blade.

Dylan drove the sword into its mouth. Steel cracked through the creature's palate and rammed into its brain. Wheezing and gushing, it fell atop the other hyena.

Another beast gibbered as it bounded toward him.

Dylan spun, his sword barely lifted before the hyena pounded into him. It hurled him back, smashing him against the keep. He rattled down the wall. The hyena lunged a second time. Stunned and breathless, Dylan wedged his sword between himself and the creature. The blade clacked through the thing's teeth.

The hyena reared back, yanking the sword out of Dylan's hand and flinging it away. The creature yipped and turned its bloody grin on its prey.

Dylan drove himself back against the banded iron door and scrambled to his feet. Weaponless, he lifted his fists. "Come on now."

The giant hyena cocked its head, blinked glassy eyes, and lunged in to bite. Despite the punches to its muzzle, the hyena's fangs bit through the man's right thigh and spilled him to the ground.

Groaning and mantled in blood, Dylan pulled himself back up the door. "Get back!"

It grinned at him and darted its head in again.

It tore him apart.