The lance thrower, p.43
The Nine Births of Carnage (Cross Academy Book 3), page 43
Contents
Prologue
PART I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
PART II
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
PART III
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
PART IV
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Continue the series…
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Rebel Christian Publishing
The Rebel Christian Publishing
Copyright © 2022 Valicity Elaine
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
ISBN: 9781957290300 (eBook)
Print: 9781957290317
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination. Inclusion of or reference to any Christian elements or themes are used in a fictitious manner and are not meant to be perceived or interpreted as an act of disrespect against such a wonderful and beautiful belief system.
Cover designed by Valicity Elaine
The Rebel Christian Publishing LLC
350 Northern Blvd STE 324 - 1390
Albany, NY 12204-1000
Visit us: http://www.therebelchristian.com/
Email us: rebel@therebelchristian.com
Series Order:
Cross Academy
The Howler’s Cry
The Nine Births of Carnage
The Testament Relics
Cross Academy: Book Five
Cross Academy: Book Six
The Nine Births of Carnage
Book III in the Cross Academy saga
By Valicity Elaine
A Rebel Christian Publishing Book
Prologue
The floor of the Great Throne Room glimmered as the sun poured in through the high windows, sliding down the glistening crystal blue walls and spilling onto the frozen tile. The temperature couldn’t have been higher than 100 degrees below freezing, and that was exactly the way the King of the Ice Fortress liked it.
He sat high on his throne, listening to the walls melt around him. On sunny days like this, the palace would weep as the ice warmed and trickled coldly down the castle walls. When your entire home was made of solid ice, the sun was your enemy—even the smallest ray of light. But the famed Ice Fortress was a thousand years old, even older than the Great Demon War. It wasn’t going to melt down today.
There were legends as to how it was built—constructed by God Himself as He slid to the edge of His mighty throne and leaned down from heaven to breathe onto the earth, calling forth the ice the same way He’d called their very world into existence.
Others said the first Northerners built the Fortress themselves, the Snowmen is what the Farron elders called them. Brave warriors who had survived the cold and thrived even when everything was against them. They had defeated the sharp winds of the tundra, had slain the roaring sabre, tamed the woolly mammoth, and chased away the ice demons. The Fortress was their home, proof that Snowmen could not be conquered.
Some said the mighty Snowmen weren’t as noble as all that. That they were in the North because they’d been banished from their homes in the other Regions. The Fortress wasn’t their cozy castle, it was their prison. And the Farrons and the Ools were descendants of the guardians of that prison, now turned into the castle of the king.
Then there were the stories of the others. The tales that described the creatures who scared even the demons. Children of the Nephilim, grotesque babes born of human and fallen angel. They were the Abominable Snowmen.
Freaks.
Monsters of the night.
The Abominable Snowmen carved the Ice Fortress out of a solid block. It was constructed for the Night God, Sorcer. A dark entity who’d once been worshipped by witches and darklings alike. When the Farrons arrived in the North, they purged the land of pagan worship, chased the Abominable Snowmen from their mighty home, and claimed it for themselves.
The King of the North had no idea which of the stories were true. He supposed it didn’t matter. As he gazed up at the walls of ice, he saw his own history encompassed all around him. The kings of the past were frozen solid instead of buried and entombed in the very walls of the throne room. Their bodies stood sentinel, as if guarding the king in the absence of his finest soldiers.
On their shoulders sat the cloaks they fashioned and wore during their reign, the late King Jeho had the pelt of a sabre-toothed cat over his shoulders, King Alarion III before him wore a cloak of albino ice wolf fur, and the king before him—the mighty warrior, Sand the Red, stood with the heavy pelt of a polar bear draped over his body. He kept the head intact and wore it like a hat, so he appeared as the bear itself walking on its hind legs.
In the hands of the dead kings were the weapons they forged during their reign. A spear made entirely of ice for Sand the Red, a great trident for King Alarion III—which had been used to battle the legendary Leviathan. And the late King Jeho held a bow that was said to never miss its target, his frozen imbued arrows rested in the ice quiver on his shoulder.
King Valarion could not remember who implemented the silly tradition of freezing the bodies of the previous kings. It’d been going on for centuries under the belief that the frozen never truly died. Their souls were preserved right with their bodies, so they could one day be brought back to life should the North ever need them again.
That’s certainly a legend, King Valarion decided. But myth or not, the frozen burial was a tradition now, one that Valarion himself would take part in when he died. Later, rather than sooner.
At least that’s what he had hoped.
But as he would have it, his health was failing and his late wife had given him no children, leaving the North in a state of anxiety.
Who would take the throne when the good King Valarion passed on?
In the midst of the Great Demon War, the question was daunting. The North could not be left without a king. Especially not now.
Gazing at the walls around him, King Valarion couldn’t count the great kings of the past. There were so many leaders over the North, their bodies couldn’t fit in the throne room, great as it was. The very first kings were buried beneath the surrounding sea in a tomb accessible by only the most skilled seadancers.
King Valarion sighed. His reign had not been so long, but it had been peaceful. Despite the demon war raging around them, the North had been kept safe and secure. Nothing could penetrate their ice walls. Nothing could penetrate the North.
The Farrons had been ruling the North since the Region came into existence, but even though they ruled it, the land was still free. She was a wild beast. Angry and bitter that mere humans would even dare to tame her, let alone succeed. Her winds were sharp, biting to the bone, her storms were vicious, her snows were gruesome.
She hated all who dwelled within her and made it her goal to kill those who refused to leave.
The Farrons stood strong. Choosing not to fight the bitter North but instead to embrace her. Her winds felt like a caress against their frozen skin, the storms were a raucous night of joy where they danced in the thunder and screamed at the lightning like the wild Abominables their ancestors had conquered. And the snow… the snow and the ice and the sleet only made the North all the more loveable.
When the creatures and beasts tucked away during the flurries, the Farrons and the Ools dug out their snowshoes and disappeared into the white blanket around them. Survival was a game to them, a sport they had mastered. The North was their arena, and each year the challenge grew harder. The death toll went up one more body. But the Snowmen remained.
For how much longer? King Valarion wondered.
He wasn’t getting any healthier, and he certainly wasn’t getting any younger.
One of the best perks of being a seadancer was their resistance to the chilly weather. They couldn’t be drowned, they couldn’t get cold—yet King Valarion felt chills all over. That’s how he knew he was dying. When he felt the icy breeze on his skin … and shivered.
He’d tried to hide his failing health as long as he could. Staying in his private chambers, wearing bundles of fur whenever he did leave. But when the chill became too much, he made the mistake of asking one of the servants to light a fire in the great hearth of the throne room.
There were fireplaces all over the Ice Fortress, to keep guests a littl
The servant had looked at King Valarion with such terror on her face that he knew his secret was out before she had even said the words, “Are you feeling alright, my king?”
He had laughed like she was silly. Though, nothing was funny.
It wasn’t long before word got out: The King is cold.
Valarion could hear the whispers climbing in through the palace windows. Could see the worry on the faces all around him. He had done his best to ignore them, but when even the fires brought him no respite, he knew what he had to do.
A letter flew by hawk to the Region of the Lion, in the great city of Babel where Cross Academy rested. With no children and no wife to even try to give him any, King Valarion’s younger sister was the next in line to the throne. The letter went straight to her, summoning the Princess Vylari to the North immediately.
She responded with a letter of her own.
My dearest brother,
Babel is my home now. The Cross needs me and the Farrons here in the city now more than ever. But I have not forgotten the North. I never will. Please accept my daughter Vyanna in my stead. She is talented beyond her years and now of marrying age.
I officially forfeit my claim to the throne.
Your loving sister,
Lady Vylari
He knew from her use of the title ‘Lady’ instead of ‘Princess’ that she was serious and her mind could not be changed. Vylari hadn’t been home since she’d left as a teenager. She didn’t even come visit with Vyanna when she was a child, instead choosing to send the girl up North alone to spend summers with her uncle.
The king could not be deterred. He sent another letter summoning Princess Vyanna, to which his happy niece responded cheerfully. She gave him details of a mission she would be going on which would bring her home soon. He’d heard all about the mission through messenger hawks he’d been sending back and forth with Lieutenant Diaz. He couldn’t wait to welcome his niece and her comrades and even the boy, though his peculiar condition troubled him.
All will be well, he promised himself. God would work it out. Even if the chills didn’t let up. Even if King Valarion’s health continued to fail. He chose to believe that God was guiding the brave people mentioned in his niece’s letters. He chose to believe Lieutenant Diaz would have the strength and courage to brave the North and bring the boy too.
And then the letters stopped.
No more updates flew in by hawk. No more sightings reported through the king’s Northern spies. The last report came in from Avanté Village. And then silence.
He’d lost his little sister through a newfound loyalty to Babel. He’d lost his niece to God knew what…
King Valarion had no other choice.
A great sigh blew from his lips as he lifted his tired, wrinkled hand and reached for the pen and parchment before him. He had one last letter to send. One last person who could possibly take the throne in his absence.
King Valarion had always promised himself he would never name his adoptive son as heir to the throne. Not unless the world imploded, and the North was about to melt into oblivion. None of that was about to happen just yet, but he was getting colder by the day and no word had come from his biological family.
The young lad was his only choice now. As daunting as that seemed…
The king cleared his throat once his letter was finished, gaining the attention of the servant waiting at the bottom of the steps that led up to the throne of ice.
The man turned and blinked up at the king. “Your Majesty, shall I add logs to the fire?”
The king shook his head, his white beard moved back and forth against his robes. “No, no. Here, I have something for you to send.”
The servant ascended the steps and grasped the letter, sucking in a little gasp as he read the first line. “My king…”
“Don’t ask questions. Just send the letter. Bring him home.”
The servant nodded solemnly.
King Valarion exhaled, nostrils flaring. “Don’t use the hawks. Use the Wind.”
The servant gaped at him. “You want to summon the Wind?”
“I do.”
A moment of hesitancy ticked by, as if the servant wished to ask more, but he quickly remembered his place and gave the king a firm nod. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
PART I
1
KI
The smell of smoke burned as he breathed it in. He was surrounded by it, so thick and black the only reason he knew his eyes were opened instead of closed was because they burned so badly. But he had to keep moving.
His mother had told him to keep an eye on the oven. To make sure he watched the coals when he used the brush to rearrange them. But he’d been tired, and he wasn’t quite tall enough to even see into the oven, standing on the balls of his five-year-old feet as the heat singed his chubby cheeks.
“Always double check, Zuri,” his mother had said kindly. “Always make sure you don’t drop the coals, otherwise you’ll set the whole house ablaze.”
He’d dropped the coals.
But that wasn’t what started the fire—no, this smoke had drifted into his home from the outside. And with the screams raging all around him as he ran through the village, Zuri didn’t have to wonder what’d started the fire.
Darklings.
He could hear them growling in the black smog, could feel the brush of air as they ran by, chasing some other unfortunate soul. Zuri had been running barefoot in search of help for ten minutes now, it was only a matter of time before the demons got him. Just like they’d gotten everyone else.
When he’d heard the shrieks for help, he’d dropped the oven brush—coals toppling to the floor—and ran outside to see what the commotion was. He found his father and brother both fighting a monster at the end of the walkway, and his mother’s body lying by the door. A bloody streak of red had trailed behind her, like she’d tried to crawl away.
And then there was all the smoke, the fires in the distance, the other cries for help.
The monster roared and struck Zuri’s father down. His brother turned and called to him, “Run, Zuri! Get away!”
There was no time to be brave. The only thought in Zuri’s head was escape. It was primal, instinctive. An uncontrollable urge to live filled his feet with fire that burned hotter than the flames around him, and he’d run away. The sound of his brother’s screams eventually became background noise.
But now he was lost. Surrounded by smoke and demons and dead bodies. His village was under attack, his parents were dead, and there was nothing he could do except scream and cry. He wiped snot from his nose as he turned in circles, trying to pick a random direction to go in.
Which way to the village gates? How could he get to the woods beyond the walls?
Zuri took a gulping breath of smokey air and started running again. After a few steps, he heard the telltale sound of pursuing feet, and he picked up his pace. The footfalls were heavy, like he was being chased by a horse… with six legs.
The snarl that filled the air behind him sent a bolt of panic through the boy. He could feel the breath of the creature brushing against the back of his neck as it exhaled hard, grunting with the exertion of their chase.
“Help!” Zuri screamed.
The creature roared.
“Someone, help!”
He burst through the cloud of smoke into a clearing. As if the smog had been told it could go no further, the area before Zuri was perfectly calm and quiet. The heat of the fire didn’t seem to reach the small grassy patch, nor did any of the creatures. Zuri was suddenly standing in the forest just outside his little village, the chaos behind him. Perfect peace before him.
And … through the clearing, he could see a man.
A beautiful, elegant man stepped forward from the brush. He was tall, with thick ribbons of red hair flowing past his shoulders. His face was that of an angel—a rescuer come in the perfect time of need. As he walked toward the young boy, a smile began to take over his perfect features.
Everything around him stilled, as if the forestry had held its breath in anticipation of his words. Even the dust motes drifting in the sunlight seemed to suspend in the air as he moved, floating to the side so as not to sully his attire. And he was dressed beautifully in a red robe that brushed the ground behind him yet managed to remain perfectly clean.
