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He’d acquired a stabbing spear somewhere, and now he spun into another knot of krul None had ti weapon or claw at hibird, and eight beasts died He wasn’t fighting, or killing, or butchering It was a dance He didn’t decapitate a krul unless he needed to change the direction of its falling body; it was faster to clip a single artery Faster to cut a ha Faster to cut across a face to take both eyes He stopped killing the black krul half the ti on the white, the bears, the aurochs, and the Harani bulls--anything that was in his path to the Titan
He blinded a Harani bull in one eye,at him with its tusks, then speared its other eye Blinded and h line upon line of krul, tra
When the Titan was less than thirty paces away, for the first time, Kylar had a cut parried This krul was different from any he’d yet seen Where er-is-better, bigger-is-best, this creature was man-shaped and as lean as Kylar Instead of skin, it had a blood-red chitin exoskeleton Its face was a featureless chitin oval It held tords of the same material and stood in a perfect ready stance It countered Three Daisies with Garon’s Stand Kiriae’s Crouch with Boulders Falling But when it tried to stop the Knot Loosed with Sydie’s Wrath, Curoch punched through its chitinous chest Kylar decapitated it to be sure and saw that the exoskeletoned red warriors were the only krul around the Titan As the Titan swung its club, they easily rolled out of the path of every swipe There were thirteen thirteens of the like fire ants
Between the fire ants and the Titan, the Cenarian center was close to collapsing The Lae’knaught, the Cenarians, the Ceuran reserves, and the Alitaeran reserves had all come here, but the center could not hold The Titan was as tall as seven or eight men, and neither stupid nor slow Where the cavalry bunched, it killed half a dozen horses and le swipe Where they spread out, the fire ants darted into the gaps and killed men at every turn
The Titan lifted a foot to sto hiap The Titan’s foot caround Kylar jurabbed its calf The Titan wore scale arine what they had coether were thick leather and enormous hemp ropes With Curoch sheathed, Kylar clambered up to the Titan’s belt
The Titan noticed hi out horizontal Kylar saw chitin warriors crushed by the unexpected move The Titan swatted at his
Cocooned in soft, stinking leather, Kylar slipped toward the ground He grabbed a wing bone as thick around as his thigh He climbed as quickly as he could and Curoch ca on Kylar slashed once, twice, three times, and the soft, hand-thick membrane parted He slapped Curoch onto his back and slipped through the hole as the Titan unfurled its enor, Kylar was almost knocked unconscious by the whiplash The Titan furled its wings to try to shake hiht hi froain, but didn’t see him, and then was distracted by some attack Kylar couldn’t see Kylar’s feet found purchase on a lower spine, and ti the movements of the Titan’s body, Kylar clambered from spine to spine
There was nowhere to brace himself for a blow to cut into the Titan’s spine, so Kylar kept cliet that protected the Titan’s neck A fringe of rabbed a handful, bracing hiic arced through the ing on by one hand
He lost his grip and caught the gorget itself, his hand between thearound and hacked blindly into the Titan’s neck Magic burst from the Titan in a shockwave The world went black and Kylar felt hirab, no possible way to stop his fall--and fro would surely be lethal It was like a dream: the rush of air, the sick emptiness in his stomach, the twist as he braced for the inevitable i, and heard as ht arht side and his pelvis crunched and crackled
When he blinked his eyes clear, he was flat on his back, a fire ant crushed beneath him Kylar tried to h him, so intense that black spots swaain, he’d black out He was dead Just like that, Kylar’s battle was finished
The Titan had staggered back several huge steps Its neck was fountaining blood froht its carotid artery It screaht of Kylar If Kylar could read emotion in those silver and black cat’s eyes, he would have thought he read satisfaction The Titan stepped forward It was dying, and it knew it, and it was going to fall on top of Kylar to crush hier to the Titan and lay back and looked at the sky A speck floated in front of his eyes and he blinked, but it didn’t go away In the sky, diving froreat speed Even in a dive, it was clear it ht at Kylar
Great, crushed by a Titan or by so SoKylar looked back at the Titan The blood-fountain fro forward, its perfect white teeth bared at Kylar
The bird snapped its wings open at the last second and swooped into the Titan’s face with bone-shattering force The Titan’s head whipped back with a crack and it dropped like a stone--backward, onto the lines of krul
Kylar lay back He’d hoped to do ht have even been tempted to think his destiny would have been to do more, but he knew better Anyway, at least he’d killed the Titan That was surely worth so cry froed forward Kylar sawover hi into him With a sure and brutal hand, his bones renched into place and reconstructed in rapid order When the ic receded, Kylar lurched over and threw up He hadn’t even known he could be Healed so quickly Who else would have tried?
"One of these ti to have to save ht I told you to hold onto this"
Kylar gaped up at Durzo His e pack on his back that extended several feet above his shoulders--except it wasn’t a pack "Oh, hell no," Kylar said "You cannot fly Tell es to the heart and eyes if you want to see while you dive, careful re-apportionons"