Read Online Children of Fire by Drew Karpyshyn - Free Book Online

the sensation was now as sharp and keen as the blast of war trumpets in the bleak dawn before a battle.
    He cast out with his own mind, seeking to make contact. Across the Sea of Fire, he chased the undeniable call to its source.
    Ezra sensed it right away: a presence in his thoughts. He felt it probing, pressing, looking to uncover the secrets he had carefully hidden away. The Pontiff had found him. Nazir was looking to strip everything from him: what he knew, what he planned, who his allies were. A relentless assault on the fortress of his mind.
    There was nothing he could do but press on and try to get far enough away that Nazir could not tear down the mental walls he had built up. But even as he fled, Ezra knew it was too late. The invasion had begun, and he lacked the strength to drive it back.
    Then Ezra felt something else; something unexpected: the pulsing fury of untamed Chaos. Even muted by the Legacy, the Sea of Fire was still awesome in its angry power. He felt it rumbling far below the firmament of the earth; he sensed it churning above the arch of the sky itself. He could feel it coming for him, as surely as he could feel Nazir’s presence in his mind.
    Thick, black clouds appeared above him where an instant before there had only been clear blue sky. Ominous peals of thunder began to roll across the dunes—an event strange enough to momentarily divert the old monk’s attention from his desperate inner struggle. Storms never formed in the Southern Desert. Never.
    And then he felt another presence: an alien consciousness so vile and twisted that Ezra’s mind recoiled from its mere touch. The old monk let forth a cry of pain and horror, and collapsed face-first onto the sand. Screaming against the twin rape of his mind, his body curled in upon itself as the first drops of hard rain began to pelt down from above.
    Nazir felt the alien presence, too, and recognized it immediately: the immortal enemy of the True Gods. He felt the power of Chaos breaching the Legacy—a dark storm exploding into the mortal world. The coming of the one called the Slayer.
    The Pontiff broke off his mental assault on the old monk, his consciousness fleeing back into his own body lying huddled on the floor of the Monastery cellar. He tore the Crown from his head and tossed it across the room, snuffing out his spell.
    Daemron shrieked in agony as the link with the mortal world was severed. He flailed about with his mind, scrambling to reestablish the connection. But it was gone. Howling in frustration and beating his wings in furious rage, he was forced to pull back, before his own identity was drowned in the eternal flames of the Chaos Sea.
    For a brief moment he had touched the mortal world, but now it had vanished once more. Weakened by the ritual of the fountain, he had been caught unawares. Yet even so he knew how close he had come to breaking free of his prison.
    The Old Gods were dead, and his children had been born into the mortal world. Chaos had been unleashed; the Legacy had been momentarily breached. It was only a matter of time until it was breached again. And next time such an opportunity presented itself, he would be ready.
    Nazir and the other had vanished, leaving Ezra alone. He lay where he had fallen to the ground, as the dark clouds of the unnatural storm broiled and churned above him. The breach in the Legacy had snapped shut, but the fires of Chaos had spilled through to wreak havoc on the mortal realm.
    Torrents of cold rain lashed at his face, drenching his clothes and turning the ground to mud. Somehow Ezra summoned the will to gain his feet. But the ground had become a deadly quagmire, and the monk sunk in up to his knees when he tried to stand.
    Fierce winds swirled around him, carrying small particles of sharp sand to tear at his exposed skin. Lightning forked the sky, shattering the blackness, and he felt the eruption of thunder in the back of his teeth. And then, above the fury of the storm,