Chapter - 17 Ordinary People

The first thing that Flare noticed, sprinting back toward the training grounds, was what the tornadoes were lacking this time.

There were no shapes twisting within the funnels this time, no limbs caught in the maelstrom, no flash of bone glinting in the dark. Just wind, sheer force, lifting roofs from houses, trees from the earth with strength. Ordinary. Natural. Somehow that made it worse, a storm this size would not need any miasma at all to kill everyone in its path.

She reached Orin's door already open, empty chair abandoned by the window. She found him in the courtyard beyond, moving faster than she'd thought his heart would allow, his granddaughter's small hand gripped tight in his.

“What in every god's name are those,” he said, staring past her shoulder at the dark, climbing shapes.

Flare had no answer that would have helped either of them. “Get to the northern towers. Now. I'll clear the rest of the street.”

He did not argue. She was grateful for that more than she could express.

She went door to door after that, pounding on frames, calling names she did not know into houses she had never been in, rounding up entire families until they stood in the street, herded toward the northern watchtowers by a voice that left no room for hesitation. An old woman refused to leave without her cat. A father carried two children at once, one under each arm, following Flare's shouted directions without ever slowing to question whether she knew what she was talking about.

She did not. She only knew which direction was away from the wind.

By the time the street was clear behind her, the funnels had closed enough distance that she could hear them now, a great, grinding sound rolling across the rooftops like some great beast clearing its throat. She turned and ran toward it rather than away.

Soldiers had already taken position along the southern approach by the time she arrived, ranks of them bracing behind hastily raised barricades while mages worked in tight clusters, throwing wind-wards and stone shields skyward in a desperate patchwork meant to slow what was coming. It wouldn't hold. Flare could see that from fifty yards out. Too few casters, too little time, the storm too large.

She found Tomas near the reconnaissance line, bow slung, watching the horizon with the flat, assessing calm she remembered from the mountain range.

“How many,” she asked, breathless.

“We've counted eleven from this side alone. More from the east, if the runners are right.” He didn't look away from the sky. “No bodies in them this time. Just wind.”

“I noticed.”

“That don’t make it better, Champion.”

“I know.”

She left him there, because there was nothing useful left to say or ask...no that was a lie. She wanted to ask a hell lot of questions. Why was this happening? What does that woman even want? Why involve ordinary people into such unreasonable bloodshed. But she knew, deep in her marrow, no one could give an answer. So she pushed further south along the line, past more soldiers, more mages, more grim, waiting faces angled up at a sky that hadn't yet decided which street to destroy first. She prayed to the heavens for their safety.

The lightning came without warning—a single, unnaturally loud crack that split the air, too loud, too close, striking somewhere behind her toward the heart of the city. Flare spun toward the sound on instinct, heart lurching.

That hit the capital. That hit the center of the capital!

She scanned the line around her and understood, all at once, what the emptiness of the streets beyond the barricade meant. Every soldier, every mage, every able body left in this part of the city had already been sent to the storm front. No one remained to check what sort of damage that strike had actually done.

She did not think on it, only turned and ran back towards the capital's heart, the storm at her back forgotten for a moment, driven by only one thought faster than her feet could carry her.

If people are hurt there, I need to be there instead.

Half-formed questions chased her the whole way. Was this her—was the woman behind the lightning, behind the tornadoes, some new escalation nobody had prepared for?

She didn't have an answer by the time she reached the crowd fleeing north.

She saw them from a full block away: a river of people moving fast toward the northern gate, exactly the direction she'd sent Orin, exactly the direction every evacuation order in the city would have pointed toward. She allowed herself, for one brief, foolish second, to relief. They made it out. They're safe.

Then she got close enough to see what the crowd had actually run into.

The street beyond them wasn't a street anymore. It was a slaughter.

Bodies littered the cobbles in vast, undulating swathes, too great a number for her mind to readily comprehend all at once; men, women, children, the elderly, all lying slain in no particular pattern to who had been spared and who hadn't, as no one had been in the end. Blood ran thickly between the gaps, catching the last golden rays of the fading sun in ways that made Flare's stomach churn with revulsion before her mind had even grasped the sheer scale of it.

Standing amidst the dead, unhurried, their weapons still slick with blood, were a handful of figures draped in black from head to toe, men and women both, she could tell even at a distance judging by the style of their garments, moving with the relaxed ease of people who had performed this task more times than they could rightly count. Their blades were nothing like those borne by Luthain's own soldiers, either, curved in odd ways and bearing serrated edges in places that served no function but to inflict greater wounds than a clean cut ever would, weapons created by someone who valued viscera over utility.

One of them turned at the sound of her boots skidding to a halt at the very edge of the street, taking in her appearance with no hint of alarm in his expression at all, if anything smiling almost fondly at the sight before him.

Flare's hand was already flying to the hilt of her sword before her mind caught up to her body, the sound of distant thunder clashing with the blood rushing loudly in her ears.

This hadn't been the tornadoes. This hadn't been the woman, or her dead.

This was people. Ordinary, living people, doing this to other ordinary, living people, with weapons made for exactly this purpose and nothing else.