4
XYLON
The blow lands. Her head snaps back. A small, broken sound escapes her lips. She falls.
The sound is a key. The sight is a fire.
They unlock something inside me. They burn away the fog.
For seasons, I have been drowning in a sea of red. The beast has been the waves, the rage, the storm. The man I was, Xylon, has been a flicker of light deep in the abyss, a memory of a sun I could no longer feel. I have fought to keep that flicker alive, but the tide of the curse is relentless. It pulls me under, again and again, into the simple, honest violence of the Urog.
But her pain… it is a brand. A hot iron against my soul that burns brighter than the curse. It is a pain sharper than the memory of my own capture, my own twisting transformation.
The beast screams for the blood of the one who hurt her. The pretty, pale Dark Elf with the poison-sweet scent.Kill. Tear. Break.
But for the first time, the man does not fight the beast. Heagrees.
And he takes control.
The red haze in my vision does not vanish. It sharpens. It clarifies. All the chaotic, mindless fury of the Urog form, a power I have only ever fought against, now bends to a single, focused point of will. The roaring in my skull quiets, replaced by two words, a mantra, a vow.
Save. Her.
My world narrows to the chains that hold me. The enchanted iron, glowing with its sickly purple light, is no longer just a source of pain. It is an obstacle. And obstacles are meant to be broken.
I plant my feet, my claws digging into the stone floor for purchase. The muscles in my legs and back, muscles forged in agony and rage, bunch and coil. A memory flashes, sharp and clear. My father, his hand on my shoulder, voice a low rumble.“All things have a breaking point, my son. Even a mountain. The trick is not just strength, but will. You must pour all of what you are into a single strike.”
I am no longer a beast. I am a warrior of the Fire Sun Clan. I am Xylon, son of Borin. And I pour all of what I am into this moment.
I pull.
The chains groan, a low, tortured sound. The enchanted shackles around my wrists and throat flare with violet light, and a pain beyond imagining rips through me. It is the feeling of my soul being torn, of magic ripping at the very fiber of my being. The beast roars at the pain, fighting to retreat back into the darkness.
No. I will not let it. I hold on to the image of her face, the flicker of surprise in her eyes when I hesitated over the bread. I hold on to her scent of courage and rain. It is my anchor in this storm of agony.
I pull harder.
A sound like a thunderclap cracks through the kennel. A spiderweb of incandescent light fractures across the manacle on my left wrist. The pain intensifies, a white-hot nova, but there is something else beneath it. A giving way. A weakness.
The breaking point.
I roar, a sound that is not just the beast’s fury but my own will made manifest. I throw every ounce of my monstrous strength, every shred of my Orcish soul, into a final, explosive heave.
The world becomes light and sound and pain.
The magical scars on my flesh tear open as the enchantments shatter. The shackle on my throat explodes outward, embedding shards of hot, violet-glowing iron in the stone walls. The manacles on my wrists and ankles detonate a second later. Freedom is a fresh agony, the raw, bleeding wounds a stark price for this release.
I am free.
I do not feel the pain. It is a distant thing, a whisper beneath the roaring fire of my purpose. I rise to my full, terrifying height, a ten-foot engine of destruction unleashed. My claws clench and unclench at my sides, the instinct of a warrior reaching for a hilt that is no longer there.
My head snaps toward the corridor. Lord Jildred is gone. The guards are gone.Sheis gone.
Panic, cold and sharp, tries to claw its way through my rage. No. I will not allow it. I am not a beast, lost to instinct. I am a hunter.
I take a breath, my heightened senses flooding my mind not with chaos, but with information. The air is a map. I can taste the lingering, cloying perfume of the Dark Elf master, a trail of arrogant filth. I can smell the sour tang of the guards’ sweat. And beneath it all, faded but clear, is her scent. Warm bread and courage, now laced with the sharp, metallic spike of fear and blood.
It is a trail of breadcrumbs leading me through the labyrinth.
