Read Online City of Torment by Bruce R. Cordell - Free Book Online

the hints of its foundations. The city itself was no more. Starmantle was gone, replaced with a madman’s fancy. The emerald outcrops, akin to the one he’d emerged from, were thicker than ever as he approached the ruins. Perhaps the blasted city was their locus and origin? No longer brittle like the one that had trapped him, these were gemstone hard. Worse, this close to the city, each hummed a single, flutelike note. In sum, thousands of spires produced atonal melodies that clawed at Raidon’s ears. Between the spires gaped fissures that harbored a flickering blue glow, the same blue he recalled from the original firestorm. Raidon backpedaled a dozen yards. Obsidian masses slowly drifted on the open ground between spires and ravines. In shape they were like irregular chunks of black stone. A palpable animosity emanated from them. Whether merely animate or actually alive, Raidon couldn’t tell with the distance. Not that he particularly wanted to know. His eyes ached as they scanned the insane vista. He blinked and turned away. He would find no answers here. But Starmantle’s skyline tugged at his thoughts, unearthing a memory of his daughter, Ailyn. “Oh,” he gasped. The shock of his awakening had robbed him of why he’d set forth from Starmantle… how long ago? A mortal fear for Ailyn’s safety squeezed all the breath out of his chest. “I must go to Nathlekh,” he whispered. A screech snatched his attention back to the demolished city. A humanoid figure bounded up from the nearest blue-burning fissure. Three more gibbering figures appeared over the ravine’s lip as the first saw Raidon. It gabbled something that almost sounded like, “I told you I smelled supper,” and charged. It was naked. Its flesh was drawn tightly over its bones. A carnivore’s sharp teeth clacked in its mouth, and eyes like hot coals fixed on Raidon, communicating a ravenous appetite so pure it was nearly mystical. A ghoul? A seam on the charging creature’s stomach opened, revealing a gaping, toothed cavity. A tentacle-like tongue emerged from the abdominal mouth, flicking like a purple flame. It was not a ghoul, or at least not completely. It was something aberrant. As Raidon fell into the left guarding stance, unexpected coolness tickled his chest. A quick glance down revealed the symbol upon his chest flickering with empyreal flame. Surprise ambushed him, nearly distracting him from heeding his attacker. The creature was upon him. Melting from guarding stance to offensive stance, Raidon caught a clawing strike with his left hand, pulled the arm diagonally forward and down, and delivered a hammer blow to the back of the creature’s elbow with his right fist. The ghoul-like monster screamed with both mouths. Its right arm now flexed loosely from the elbow, the joint shattered. The monster’s two compatriots rapidly approached. Their abdominal maws drooled and gibbered like the first’s. Raidon retained his hold on his foe’s broken arm. He twisted his body around, tripping the creature with a foot, and hurled its body into the oncoming attackers. One of the two newcomers was slow to dodge Raidon’s contrived missile. It stumbled and went down in a tangle of limbs. They began to writhe and thrash, clawing and biting each other. The final creature paused. Its eyes gleamed as it studied the monk. Blood, not its own, darkened its cheeks and chin. Its lower, abdominal mouth chomped and writhed, and grinding noises issued from it. Raidon glimpsed something white and red inside being chewed. “Hunger does not rule me as it does my brothers,” the creature crooned in an awful, piping tenor. “I just ate.” It could speak! Could it explain what had occurred? His normal rule of avoiding all interaction with abominations was suborned by his need to learn. Raidon clenched his fists and demanded, “What happened here?” The creature cocked its head and blinked. It was obviously taken aback by its prey’s lack of fear. It responded,