Godfang Chapter 5: The Colossus, Part One — God-Machine

The story thus far:

Kaelvor was betrayed, mutilated, and murdered by his own tribe, the Blackfang. The God Beneath brought him back from death as its champion, gifting him a black-scaled demon arm, a burning green eye, molten blood, and a greatsword forged from one of its own fangs (which Kaelvor aptly named Godfang). In exchange, he owes the god a debt to be claimed later. Reborn, he cut his way through a horde of scavenger demons, defeated the Iron Witch, and passed through a settlement of massacred dead before sheltering in a watchtower, where dreams forced him to relive his past and his betrayal. He woke to find riders pursuing a lone figure, bearing the same crimson fist banner he had seen at the massacre.

In Chapter 4, Kaelvor rescued Saelira, War Queen of the Osskari, a fierce nocturnal race of the wastelands whose entire tribe had been enslaved by a warlord of terrible power traveling in a giant moving fortress called the Colossus. The two struck a pact: together they would infiltrate the Colossus, kill the Warlord, and free the Osskari; in return, Saelira and her people would march with him into the highlands to take his vengeance on the Blackfang tribe. On the road north they made a grim discovery: the Warlord had been twisting captured Osskari into mindless berserkers, turning Saelira's own people into twisted monsters.

Welcome to Chapter 5: The Colossus, Part One: God-Machine.

The colossus moved across the horizon, a vast black shape blotting out the sky. Amber pinpricks pulsed within its silhouette where exhaust vents bled heat into the night. The rumble traveled through the stone beneath them, low and constant.

Kaelvor and Saelira had tracked it since dusk.

A sound came from their right—the slow scrape of claws over stone. They raised their blades.

Four red eyes appeared in the dark, unblinking. Only when the thing stepped forward did its shape resolve. The two-headed jackal slunk from the shadows and sat before them, teeth catching what little light remained in the sky.

Kaelvor raised his hand in a reassuring gesture. “It’s okay. I’ve met this beast before. It won’t harm us.” The last bit was a warning as much as a declaration.

“What in the hells is it?” Saelira asked, blade still raised.

“The yapping mouthpiece of a forgotten god.” He glared at the jackal. “A god who thinks I owe it something.”

A short laugh rattled inside both their heads.

Hello, champion. You’ve made it this far. Well done. The red eyes shifted toward Saelira. And you’ve brought company. The War Queen of the Osskari. How... unexpected.

“Say what you came to say, dog, and be quick about it. We’re here to kill a tyrant, not wag tongues.”

The warped laughter came again.

So eager. Very well. There is something you need to know about the one at the heart of that machine.

“We know enough,” Saelira said.

How quaint. You know nothing that truly matters, Osskari.

Kaelvor tilted his head slightly. “Watch your tongues, dog.”

The jackal’s eyes moved back to him. If you hope to survive, be silent and hear me. This is an enemy unlike any you have faced. He is not merely powerful. He is Void-blooded.

“The Void,” Saelira said quietly. She glanced at Kaelvor and found no recognition in his expression. “It’s the birthplace of demons. A realm of hunger that gnaws at the boundaries of our world, always searching for a way through.”

She looked back at the jackal. “But ‘Void-blooded’ is an interesting phrase—one I’ve not heard before.”

The beast’s lips peeled back into unsettling grins. The Void has a ruler. A matriarch who dwells at its heart. She sends forth her children as weapons—some are parasites that consume powerful beings and bind their strength back to the Void. Others are living engines of slaughter, birthed for war and carnage.

“I’ve heard no such tales,” Saelira said.

Few have. It is old knowledge, kept by elder powers. Those who learn it rarely survive to share.

“And the Warlord—he is one of their children?”

He was born of the Void. But he is different. The jackal’s heads turned in opposite directions, then snapped back in unison. Long ago, the Void Mother lay with a mortal warrior, an emperor of an age so old his name has turned to dust. What she bore was neither Void-beast nor man, but something in between—a hybrid, a blasphemy born of her hunger and his ambition.

The revelation hung between them. An enemy neither wholly mortal nor wholly demon.

The Warlord’s name is Ozravel. He was sent into this world as the Void’s greatest engine of slaughter. He exists only to conquer.

Kaelvor looked to the colossus. “He cannot conquer if he’s dead.”

The jackal laughed again, louder this time, the sound scraping along the insides of their skulls. It will not be so easy. The Void-blood in him rejects this world’s laws. Blade. Fire. Sorcery. No weapon born of this realm can harm him.

Saelira’s eyes widened. “Then how can he be defeated? How do we kill what cannot be killed?”

The red eyes slid toward Kaelvor. Oh, my champion is a clever boy. I’m sure he can work it out.

The jackal rose and shook ash from its coat before retreating into the darkness until only the four red eyes remained.

Beware, Kaelvor. Ozravel is a master of the sword. Better than you. He can, however, be defeated. Fight smart. Don’t die stupid. Kill well, champion.

Then it was gone. The two stared at the place where it had vanished.

Kaelvor sat in silence for several heartbeats, then his eyes dropped to the ivory blade in his hand. Memories surfaced—clawing his way from the corpse pit, the voice that had spoken his name in the abyss after death, the weight of the weapon when he first took it up.

“Godfang,” he whispered, raising the sword before him.

Saelira’s eyes moved to the blade.

“It said no weapon born of this world can kill the Warlord.” He glanced at the ivory length of the sword. “Well, my sword is not from this world. That’s what the bastard meant. Godfang can kill him.”

She studied the weapon for a moment, her expression shifting. “Not from this world?”

“A gift,” Kaelvor said. “From the god. The one whose dog won’t shut up.”

Her eyes moved from the blade to his face. “You’re certain it can harm him?”

“No.” A smile almost escaped his mouth. “But I mean to find out.”

Kaelvor looked back to the colossus. The titanic iron wheels turned slow and merciless in the dark. “We infiltrate a moving fortress, then slay the son of the mother of demons. Simple enough. How do we get in?”

“Through the underside. There are openings beneath, shafts that vent the engine’s heat. Wide enough to pass through. That’s how I escaped with my companions. The machine had stopped. We climbed through the shafts, crossed the framework beneath, reached the wheels, and descended.”

She looked back toward the moving fortress. “But it will be harder for us. The machine isn’t stopping.”

Kaelvor watched the turning wheels. “So we do it in reverse. Ride the inner wheels up, climb to a shaft, then in.”

“I see no other way.”

“That sounds like a good way to die.” Kaelvor started forward. “So be it.”

***

Under the cover of night, they moved beneath the monstrosity. From afar, the Colossus had been a distant groan. Up close, the roar was punishing, and the air smelled of hot iron. The wheels were monstrous, biting into the earth and churning it to loose rubble.

Saelira went first, catching an iron bar in the wheel’s framework as it rose. She rode the turning structure upward, adjusting her footing to stay upright.

Kaelvor grabbed a bar and was torn off his feet. The ground dropped away. Hot air that reeked of carrion whipped across his face as the underside of the Colossus drew closer.

The wheel carried him up. Fifty feet. Then sixty. Still rising. He tightened his grip.

The underside loomed above him, a maze of beams and jutting supports. The machine’s vibrations ran through his body. One slip and there was nothing beneath him but open air.

At the wheel’s zenith, he leapt upward and caught the framework of the iron belly.

Saelira had already climbed to the nearest shaft.

Kaelvor swung across the exposed drop from one handhold to the next, legs dangling beneath him. Gusts whipped at him, and the machine’s constant vibration made every grip treacherously uncertain. He glanced down once. Far below, the earth crawled past. The sight made his head swim, so he kept his eyes up.

Finally, he reached Saelira at the shaft. She hung from one hand, legs draped over a bar for support. The shaft was a dark circle cut into the iron frame, covered by a corroded grate. Heat poured from it in waves.

Kaelvor gripped the grate with his scaled hand and tore it free, letting it fall into the dark below. He held his mortal hand over the opening, then pulled it back.

“Hot.”

“It’ll get worse deeper in,” Saelira said, raising her voice over the machine’s rumble.

“I’ll manage.”

She studied him. “We don’t know how much worse.”

He looked into the shaft. The heat against his face was already reddening his skin.

“No other choice. We move fast.”

She held his gaze a moment, nodded, then went in. Kaelvor went after her.

The shaft narrowed immediately. His shoulders scraped both sides, the metal slick with rust-colored condensation that hissed in the rising heat. A dim amber glow came from somewhere above. He pulled himself upward, fingertips catching shallow grooves, boots holding only by friction. Beneath him lay open air and the dark earth far below.

Overhead, Saelira ascended easily, her lean frame better suited to the confined space.

He had climbed only a short way when something struck from an open pipe on his left. A tentacle snapped around his forearm. He cried out and nearly fell, tried to wrench free but it coiled tighter. His head twisted toward the pipe. Something wet and black shifted within the darkness beyond.

The appendage climbed upward, wrapped around his neck, and dragged him toward the pipe opening. His face slammed against the metal, his neck creaking under the strain. Godfang hung useless on his back, the shaft too narrow to draw it, so he sank his teeth into his own forearm. Skin split. Molten blood surged from the wound and sprayed across the tentacle.

The creature writhed violently. Smoke curled where the blood touched its flesh, and an earsplitting hiss echoed through the shaft. The pressure increased, desperate, then released. The appendage withdrew, steaming as it flopped against the iron and vanished back into the dark.

“Kaelvor,” Saelira called from above. “Stop wasting time.”

He stared upward, exhaled once, then resumed climbing.

The glow overhead flared violently, and a wave of white-hot air crashed down—heat surging from painful to deadly in an instant.

Kaelvor’s forearms began to bubble. Skin peeled and curled from his exposed limbs, revealing glistening muscle beneath. The hot air felt like liquid fire poured across his nerves. He could feel the bones in his arms heating from within.

His teeth ground together and a low growl built in his throat. He forced himself to keep going.

Flesh regrew almost instantly, but the regeneration brought no relief. Fresh skin and new pain receptors formed only to burn away again. He climbed. The growl became a roar torn from his chest and blistered windpipe as he forced himself upward through the searing air.

Burn. Regenerate. Burn again.

He dragged himself upward through the miasma of scorching pain. Below him yawned a vertical drop through the shaft to the earth beneath the Colossus; there was no way back, only up. The thought of being trapped there forever, locked in that endless cycle, sent black panic clawing through his mind.

The heat worsened as he climbed.

His face went next. Lips blistered and eyelids curled away. Skin peeled back from cheekbone and jaw, sloughing off only to reform and burn away again. He screamed—the sound tore from a face that was a charred skull one moment, raw wet muscle the next, then bone again. Vision flickered in and out as his eyes dried, shriveled, and regrew. Molten air poured into his lungs, and he gasped as his airways burned and reformed.

Worst of all was the smell—his own body roasting in the heat.

“Kaelvor!” Saelira’s voice drifted down from somewhere above, muffled through the haze. “Keep moving! Don’t stop!”

He didn’t stop. He could not.

His mortal hand burned to bone. He climbed with smoking finger bones and black demonic claws, hauling himself up the narrow shaft. Bone heated, glowed faint red, took muscle again, then stripped bare once more.

The shaft stretched endlessly onward.

“Kaelvor! Left! Go left! Here!”

He found the junction by feel. Turned. Dragged himself through the opening, moving sideways now instead of up.

The heat eased as he moved. He crawled until he could go no farther and collapsed.

His skin reformed slowly. He felt it knitting across his arms, face, and hands, the raw sting of new flesh meeting air. For a moment, white skull showed through the char at his temple before fresh skin sealed over it.

He rolled onto his back and glanced around. This shaft was larger than the one they had climbed through, spacious enough to stand in.

His breath came in ragged gasps. Panic still clawed at the edges of his thoughts—the certainty he would be trapped there forever, burning, locked in that endless cycle. He forced himself to breathe. In. Out. The heat and pain were gone. He was whole.

Saelira crouched beside him, giving him a moment.

Kaelvor looked her over. She was untouched. “You’re not burned. What sorcery do you possess?”

“It is a gift of my people. We cannot be harmed by heat or flame.”

He let out a long, calming breath. “Useful gift. Pray you never experience your own eyes baking from your skull, only to grow back and do it all over again.”

She studied him. “You should not have survived that.” Her expression hardened. “It is time you told me what you are. The truth, all of it, this time.”

He shook his head slowly. “Saelira...”

“No! You will tell me everything. I saw your blood burn that creature. I just watched your flesh burn away and return. I am speaking to a man who should not be alive. You will tell me what you are.”

Kaelvor held her gaze, then nodded. “Very well. I was killed by my own tribe. Buried and left in a pit. The God Beneath brought me back to life. Gave me my sword. Gave me this.” He raised the scaled arm. “And whatever is in my blood. I don’t know what I am. I only know what was done to me.”

“A tale I would not believe had I not witnessed what I just saw.” She was quiet a moment. “Do you trust this god?”

“No.”

“Good.” She rose. “Now can you move?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s move.”

He got to his feet and looked down at himself. “Gods damn it. Not again.”

The heat had claimed most of his clothes. Smoldering scraps hung from his shoulders and waist. He peeled them away until only his boots, leather bracers, and the remnants of his breeches remained.

Her eyes moved over his muscular build. “I don’t mind it so much.”

She continued down the shaft.

He moved after her, grateful the heat still lingered in his face.

***

A faint orange glow grew ahead, and with it a steady rumble. The heat returned as they moved toward it—not the catastrophic burning, but a steady warmth.

The shaft ended, and Saelira slipped out first, caught a bar, and swung silently to the catwalk below. Kaelvor followed beside her.

A vast foundry unfolded before them.

The ceiling vanished into shadow, hung with great iron hooks suspended from swaying chains. Catwalks crossed overhead, narrow iron paths threading the foundry at different heights. Below, crucibles of molten slag glowed dull orange through the smoke, the heat carrying the smell of scorched metal. Steam rose in slow columns, turning the far reaches of the chamber into a dim red haze.

On one wall, the shape of a great horned skull had been wrought in black iron. Its eyes were dark hollows the heat-glow did not penetrate.

The whole space rumbled with the workings of the machine, the walkway humming beneath their feet.

Ahead, the catwalk gave way to a stretch of rust-eaten grating. Below it lay a pool of black, stagnant water, deep and oily, its surface shivering faintly with the machine’s pulse. As they moved over it, the ripples changed. Shapes stirred just beneath the surface.

Saelira slowed. “There’s something in there.”

More churning, then the water exploded.

Centipedes, each the length of a forearm, burst through the surface and poured through gaps in the rusted grate. Their bodies were segmented and plated, heads ending in serrated black pincers that glistened in the forge light.

One skittered forward and launched for Kaelvor’s chest. It struck and drove its pincers through his sternum, forcing its way inside. Legs scrabbled at his ribs for purchase. He roared and seized the exposed half. The creature thrashed violently in his grip. Inside his chest, molten blood surged around the burrowing head. The centipede convulsed, then went limp. He ripped the remaining segment free and hurled it away as the wound sealed.

Saelira’s blade flashed, and a leaping centipede split in two. Another climbed through the grate and onto the railing behind her, rearing back like a cobra, pincers spread wide. Kaelvor lunged, caught it mid-strike, and crushed it in his scaled fist.

The remaining centipedes retreated the way they had come, slipping through the corroded gaps and into the black water.

Kaelvor frowned and glanced at Saelira. “They’re running. Why would they—”

Something emerged from the steam.

The thing was built like a man shaped by a lifetime at a blacksmith’s forge. No neck. Its head set low between slabs of muscle. A heavy leather apron draped its frame, stained dark with old blood and soot. The face was a smooth plate of seamless, hammered metal; the curved surface bent the glow of the surrounding crucibles.

Its arms were thick with unnatural muscle, far too long for any human, a sledgehammer in each fist. It came toward them, both hammers swinging.

Kaelvor met the blow aimed at him with Godfang. The strike hit like a battering ram, the impact ringing up the blade and into his shoulders.

Saelira did not try to block; her star-metal blades would shatter against a weapon like that. She sidestepped as the hammer crashed through the grating where she had stood, tearing the catwalk open. Her blade flicked out, almost too fast to see, and the little finger of the creature’s right hand struck the grating.

The thing did not slow. It attacked again, both hammers driving. Saelira slipped aside, her blade flashing once more. The creature’s ring finger sheared off at the second knuckle.

Kaelvor caught the next blow and turned it wide, then slashed across its chest. The leather apron split in a long, bloody gash. The creature slammed the top of the hammerhead into his face, sending him staggering. The world spun. Blood filled his mouth as he bit through his lip. He spat, the molten liquid hissing on the grating. With a growl, he spun Godfang once and stepped back in.

Saelira’s blade flashed a third time as she ducked a swing. The creature’s middle finger spun away into the steam. Its right hand was down to a finger and a thumb, the blood-slick hammer wobbling in its grip.

She struck again. The thumb came off cleanly, and the hammer dropped from the ruined hand, clanging against the grating.

The creature paused, lifting its hand to stare at its one remaining finger. Kaelvor brought Godfang down across the raised elbow. The arm sheared free. The remaining hammer came around in a wild backhand arc, but he ducked under it, seized the apron with both hands, and drove the thing backward.

It was heavy, and monstrously strong, but so was he. He forced it back step by step until the railing hit hard against its spine, then shoved with everything he had. It toppled over the edge and dropped feet-first into the molten pool below. Slag erupted in a blazing orange spray. It did not scream. It did not thrash. It sank rigidly, lifting its masked face toward them as the metal caught the glow. Then the slag swallowed it whole, and a final flare marked the place it disappeared.

Kaelvor turned to Saelira. Blood streaked her arms. She was breathing hard but steady.

“You okay?”

She nodded, her gaze drifting past him. “Better than okay. I think I see our way up.” Her hand lifted, pointing to a ladder rising into the darkness.

They moved toward it, boots ringing on iron. Kaelvor went up first. The rungs burned beneath his palms. At the top waited a hatch. He opened it slowly. Cool air spilled down, dry and clean.

He hauled himself through and held the hatch open. Saelira climbed out behind him, and he lowered it softly, the metal settling into place with a muted click.

The ceiling vanished into darkness far above, impossibly high for a fortress of this size.

Saelira stared upward. “This is… wrong.”

“Aye,” Kaelvor replied. “Bigger inside than out. Sorcerous madness.”

The corridor stretched in both directions. Massive iron plates formed the walls, and buttresses rose at intervals to curve overhead into vaulted arches. Crimson witch-fire burned in iron sconces, and rune-carved conduits glowed along the walls, carrying heat and pressure from the engine depths below.

They had entered the Colossus proper.

***

They moved in silence, keeping close to the walls and shadows. At each crossing they paused to listen. Nothing. No footfalls. No voices. Only the pulse of the Colossus working far below, carried through the structure itself.

Eventually, a sound grew ahead of them—raw, sustained screaming, human in origin but edged with animal pain and terror.

They followed it to a grate set into the wall. Beyond it, a chamber came into view. Spiked iron chandeliers dangled from long chains, each crowned with black candles burning a steady red flame, wax dripping like dark blood. The chains swayed faintly with the pulse running through the structure. Along the walls, instruments hung from iron hooks in careful rows.

A massive glass sphere hung in the vaulted dark, containing a pale, segmented creature adrift in fluid, its body pulsing with faint bioluminescent light.

Kaelvor’s attention settled on three iron chairs below the sphere. Men were bound within them, every limb fixed by black leather restraints. Their jaws were forced open by curved metal devices held behind the teeth. Metal bands wrapped around their brows, immobilizing their heads.

A robed figure moved to the first man. Its black hood concealed its face in shadow. Its purplish-blue hands, wrinkled and claw-tipped, held an instrument drawn from a brazier, its tip glowing white.

The man’s body strained against the leather. His eyes rolled in panic. The figure worked the instrument into his mouth. Thin columns of pale smoke rose from his throat. A muffled wail tore from him. A moment later, the smell reached them—cooking meat with a tinge of copper.

The torturer twisted the instrument, then withdrew. Lengths of charred tissue came with it. The man’s tongue was gone. Blood and saliva spilled from his open mouth in rope-like strands, and he gave a broken, mutilated howl.

The figure moved to the next prisoner, repeating the process.

Kaelvor’s black-scaled hand tightened around Godfang’s hilt. His claws bit into the grip.

Another of the robed figures stepped forward, carrying small metal tubes. It set one against the man’s temple and raised a hammer. One sharp blow drove the tube into his skull. The man convulsed. His eyes rolled back in his head, only whites showing.

The figure placed a second tube against the opposite temple, hammered it in, then connected both to the tubes descending from the glass sphere above. It pulled a handle, and fluid began to drain down.

The man’s body jerked, his mouth opening in a soundless scream. His limbs thrashed against the restraints, then locked rigid. His expression emptied, the man behind them gone. Two lesser demons emerged from the shadows to release his restraints and drag him to a corner, where they fitted him with armor.

Kaelvor’s eyes narrowed. The armor was unmistakable—the same design worn by the insect riders they had battled in the wastelands.

Past the chairs, four upright wooden wheels turned. Osskari victims were restrained to each, their bodies spinning without end. Three had stopped fighting, their heads hung loose, mouths open and drooling. Soft moans came from them.

The fourth prisoner still retained some of her mind. She fought the restraints, head jerking, eyes searching for some point that would hold still and finding nothing. Her face was slick with tears, saliva, and vomit. One of the robed figures stood before the wheels, turning a crank. The woman’s moaning climbed into a thin, ragged wail as the wheels spun faster.

Eventually, the three broken ones were removed from the wheels. Hooded figures unstrapped them and dragged them across the chamber to metal X-frames bolted to the floor. They were restrained again by the wrists, ankles, and chest. Leather straps held their heads in place, forcing them to face forward. Then the robed figures produced small threaded hooks and inserted them into the victims’ eyelids, top and bottom, pulling the lids back and fixing them open so they could not look away.

In an iron cage before them, naked bodies churned together in the dim red light. They had once been human, but no longer. Blood and filth pooled beneath them as they fought and fed and fucked all at once. Mouths tore at flesh, hands dug into wounds. No distinction between hunger, lust, and violence. One fellated a dying man while another fed on his ripped-out throat. Another mounted a still-twitching corpse.

The three restrained victims on the X-frames watched—the eye-hooks and head straps did not let them look away.

One of the prisoners began to change. His breathing quickened. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and a low snarl built in his throat, rising with each act of savagery in the cage. The horror left his face. What replaced it was hunger, naked and animal. He thrashed against the restraints. He wanted in—to tear, to feed, to fuck.

The robed figures removed him from the frame and fitted a crude helmet over his head, the same design Kaelvor had seen on the mindless horde he’d destroyed. The man snarled and snapped at them, but catch poles held him at a distance as they forced the helmet down and locked it into place. Then they dragged him away.

Kaelvor became aware that both hands were fists. His joints creaked under the strain.

Beside him, Saelira had not moved. Her face was stone, but there were tears in her eyes. He could sense the rage emanating from her.

“Let’s go. We find the Warlord,” he said quietly. “Then we end this madness.”

For a long moment there was no response. Then she nodded once.

They withdrew from the grate and moved in silence down the corridor. The screaming faded behind them until only the pulse of the Colossus remained.

***

After a stretch of silence, Saelira stopped and pressed her back against the wall. Her jaw was tight, but her hand trembled where it gripped her blade.

“How could I let this happen?” she whispered. “My people… they’re enslaved in here. Trapped in this nightmare. I should have protected them. I should have done something—anything. I failed them. Failed as their War Queen.”

Kaelvor stepped closer. “You haven’t failed, Saelira. You escaped, found help. And now you’ve come back to them.” He held her gaze. “Together, we will free the Osskari.”

His voice steadied her. His words were not simply empty comfort—they were bold certainty. They were the promise of a man who would walk into fire and darkness beside her with no hesitation.

She leaned into him, her forehead coming to rest against his chest. His arms wrapped around her, and they stayed there until her trembling passed.

Her eyes met his. She ran her fingertips across his cheek, then kissed him. It wasn’t gentle. It was grief and hunger and the desperate need to feel something kind and alive in a place built for cruelty and death. Her fingers slid into his hair; his hands found her waist and drew her closer.

When they broke apart, both were breathing hard.

Her hand rested against his chest, feeling the rapid beat within. She touched his lips with a finger, traced them softly. “Don’t die, Kaelvor. Again.”

A faint smile touched his mouth. “I don’t intend to.”

“See that you don’t.”

***

The corridor ended in a vast domed chamber. A wide bridge of black iron stretched before them, suspended over a great shaft that dropped into lightless depths. Red witch-fire torches burned along the railings, and cables thick as trees climbed from its sides into the darkness above.

The walls around the shaft were lined with carved alcoves, each holding horned statues a head taller than a man, their eyes burning with red light, weapons raised as though awaiting a command that had never come. At the far end of the bridge, a staircase rose to massive double doors.

“There. That looks fancy enough for a demon prince,” Kaelvor said.

Saelira scanned the chamber. “No guards. That’s strange. A trap?”

“Maybe. Or pure arrogance.” Kaelvor drew Godfang. “Stay sharp. Kill anything that moves.”

They stepped onto the bridge. They were halfway across when the voice came, through the air, through the iron itself, from everywhere at once.

Bring me the huntress. Kill the other one.

Tongueless soldiers emerged from both ends of the bridge, stepping out of pockets of darkness.

“Shadow-sorcery,” Saelira hissed.

The trap closed, two silent walls of soldiers rushing in like jaws snapping shut.

They stood back-to-back, Kaelvor facing the way they had come and Saelira the span leading to the staircase and doors.

The first soldier reached Kaelvor at a dead run. He took his head off with a single cut and kicked the body into the men behind it, knocking two from their feet.

Three warriors closed on Saelira from the opposite side. She hurled her crescent blade. It spun through the air and buried itself between the center man’s eyes. She sprinted forward, jumped, ripped the blade free in one motion, and kicked out in a full split. Her right foot caught one soldier in the chest, her left smashed into the other man’s face—both men struck the railing and went over the edge.

Kaelvor swung Godfang in wide arcs, ripping through chests and splitting skulls. One slash opened a soldier from stomach to spine, spilling his insides in a steaming cascade across the grating.

A massive soldier with a warhammer swung for his head. Kaelvor caught the blow on Godfang, the impact rattling through his arms and into his spine. He hooked the hammer’s haft with his sword’s crossguard and twisted. The weapon tore free from the soldier’s grip and spun over the railing into the darkness.

The soldier locked both hands around Godfang’s hilt, trying to wrench the sword free. His face was inches away, lips peeled back, teeth bared.

Kaelvor smashed his forehead into the bridge of the soldier’s nose. Bone crunched, and the man staggered back. Kaelvor punched his black-scaled fist beneath the soldier’s ribs. His clawed fingers ripped through the chest cavity before closing around something spongy and slick. He tore it free. The soldier’s spleen came out trailing blood.

The man did not scream. His eyes fixed on Kaelvor’s throat. He lunged forward, jaws snapping.

Kaelvor shoved the organ into the soldier’s open mouth. The man’s eyes widened and one hand flew up to pull it free. Kaelvor was faster. His hand shot forward, fingers rigid and spear-straight, driving the organ deep into the man’s throat where it lodged, too large to swallow and too deep to cough free.

The soldier staggered back, clawing at his neck. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly while blood and saliva streamed from his lips. He fell to his knees, toppled forward, and lay still.

Saelira fought with ruthless efficiency. A soldier attacked and her star-metal blade cut through his wrist. The severed hand struck the grating, still clutching the sword. She swept his legs with a kick, and he crashed into the path of the next attacker, who stumbled over him.

On Kaelvor’s side, the press began to thin beneath his relentless assault. Broken bodies piled against the railings, and blood slicked the grating.

Then came a terrible grinding. Along the shaft walls, stone scraped against stone as the statues stepped from their alcoves. Their red eyes flared brighter as their horned heads turned and their weapons lifted.

Kaelvor stared at these new enemies. “Of course. Why wouldn’t the statues be alive?”

One stepped on to the bridge. Each footfall shook the structure. It stood a head taller than Kaelvor, face featureless save for the burning red slits of its eyes.

It reached him and brought its axe down. Kaelvor caught the blow on Godfang, and the impact drove him backward, pain shooting through his arms. The statue drew back and struck again. He spun clear as the blade came down, then charged and slammed Godfang into its leg. The blade bit deep. Cracks spread through the stone. He struck again, harder, and the limb shattered. The creature toppled forward, then began dragging itself toward him with both hands, stone fingers scraping against iron.

More statues stepped onto the bridge.

On her end, Saelira cut down another soldier and noticed shadows shifting above her. She looked up right as the net fell.

She tried to roll clear but the mesh enveloped her, tangling her limbs. Soldiers swarmed over her, pinning her arms, trapping her in the netting.

“Kaelvor!”

He spun at her cry. Saw her thrashing in the net, soldiers dragging her toward the staircase and the Warlord’s doors. Their eyes met across the carnage.

He started toward her when something seized his ankle and yanked him off his feet. He slammed face-first into the bridge. The impact of the iron against his skull sent a jolt through his teeth, and for a heartbeat he had no sense of up or down. Confused, he twisted and looked back to find the crawling statue holding his leg. He brought Godfang down on the stone arm. It cracked but held. He struck again, and again. The arm shattered, and he lurched to his feet.

“No!” Too late. His stomach dropped as Saelira, still wrapped in the net, was hauled up the stairs and swallowed by the open doors.

Then, from behind him, came a new sound. Kaelvor turned and saw soldiers rolling a massive cauldron onto the bridge from the entry side, straining against its weight. They thrust thick iron poles beneath the cauldron’s rim and tipped it forward.

Giant centipedes spilled across the grating—the same kind they had fought in the foundry, but now in the hundreds. They poured out in a writhing mass, their bodies glistening. Then came a smell, sharp and pungent.

Oil!

The centipedes were coated in it. A soldier stepped out of the shadows, torch in hand.

Kaelvor’s breath caught. “Oh gods.”

The torch fell. Flame touched oil and raced across the swarm. The centipedes ignited at once, shrieking in a high, chittering wail as the burning mass surged forward in a frenzy of pain.

They tore through the remaining tongueless soldiers first, pincers snapping through limbs and opening bellies as men collapsed beneath them, burning alive.

The crawling statue still came, dragging itself forward on its remaining arm. More statues marched in its wake.

Then the flaming wave of centipedes slammed into him. Dozens latched on at once, pincers boring through flesh while fire seared wherever they clung. Kaelvor roared, crushed one in his fist, and tore another from his chest in a spray of burning ichor. One worked its way into his neck. He felt the flaming pincers slip beneath the skin of his face as it burrowed upward. He yanked it free, ripping skin away with it. Blood ran hot down his jaw.

The crawling statue reached him and slammed its stone fist into his leg. He staggered but kept his feet as more blood spilled across the grating, hissing against the iron. The metal glowed and sagged where it touched while the other statues closed in, their footfalls shaking the bridge.

Kaelvor kicked the crawling statue’s reaching hand aside and brought Godfang down on its skull. Stone cracked and the red light in its eyes flickered.

Another statue closed and kicked him into the railing hard enough to make the iron groan. Blood streamed from a dozen wounds and hissed across the grating. Burning centipedes dropped from him in twitching clumps as he forced himself upright, legs shaking.

The next statue reached him and raised its axe. Kaelvor swung Godfang into its chest. The stone torso exploded under the blow.

More blood rained down, and the iron beneath their feet groaned and buckled. Then the bridge gave way beneath them with a shriek of tearing metal.

Kaelvor, statues, centipedes, and the dead plunged into the abyss below. Debris rained past him as he fell. Above, the witch-fire torches of the chamber shrank to crimson stars.

Falling. Falling.

Saelira.

Then there was only dark.

***

Soldiers dragged Saelira up the stairs, still tangled in the net, and hauled her through the doorway. They ripped the net away and yanked her to her feet.

The chamber was vast, lit by witch-fire in iron braziers. The iron floor was dark and wet, reflecting the red light in distorted streaks.

She looked up.

Heavy chains descended from the vaulted dark above. From them hung the sorceresses of her tribe, the Nightweavers, wrists manacled and bound overhead, their nude bodies slack in suspension.

At the room’s center, a man turned to face her.

Tall. Long dark hair falling loose past his shoulders. His armor was black and close-fitted, its surface worked in interlocking scales that shifted with him. He held a sword at his side, its blade rippling with a deep red glow.

His face was achingly beautiful. She felt the pull of it before she could stop herself, a venomous sweetness coiling through her. Her body desired him even as her mind screamed in revulsion.

His eyes were a color that had no name. He regarded her with satisfaction, then smiled.

“War Queen,” he said. “Welcome back. Your people have been useful to me. You will be more useful still.”

The soldiers seized her wrists and fixed iron manacles around them. A chain slithered down from the ceiling and fastened to her restraints. Knives and gauntleted hands moved roughly and without care as they sliced and tore away her garments.

She screamed as they hauled her upward, the joints of her shoulders straining under her own weight.

The chamber doors slammed shut.

Kaelvor has fallen. Saelira is taken. What dark horrors lie ahead in Ozravel's fortress?

Chapter 6: The Colossus, Part Two — Engine of Slaughter. Coming soon.