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“Now,” I tell Daxo

“LIONHEART!”

…and death for four meters

He cleaves the Red with the scorcher in half with the edge of the Dawn Scepter’s star A s at him with a knife Daxo is already past him, but reaches back to shatter his hand and take the knife He wheels it down on the head of a Brown in a ha the head, and then casually flicks the scepter back into and through the face of anotherstroke that shatters three more of the rioters He kicks a Brooe fro Red e of his nose, stabs at Daxo Daxo catches the blade in his left hand It sinks into the palainst the reinforced bone as Daxo pushes back till theDaxo erabs thethe man in the air so that he is eye to eye with Daxo, his feet kicking half a round With a roar, Daxo pulls off both theblood Daxo rips the scepter out of theribs with it, and beats his own bloody chest with gore-spattered hands “LIONHEART!!!” He spins the scepter, pointing it at the crowd “Dogs! Traitors! In the nan, disarm! Disarm!”

The mob behind the massacred men skids to a halt, terrified of the Gold monstrosity All their lives they’ve known of Gold power, but war is fast and sh a screen They always suspected the ht Now they see what our e in their nuht of this machine of war unlocked from his civil chains But the e co and shouting and firing over the heads of those terrified in the front, and the press breaks forward, dozens aht of the distant brave

The hting to run away, heels skidding over bloody stone My razor carves through the outstretched arh the face of a fat woer with a mouth blue from cloud candy Bodies push h

I fall back to swing again, but I collide with someone behind me and am pushed forward into the bodies of those I’ve maimed, ail and hold bloody stumps and are traainst flailing limbs A has into my cheek and breaks a tooth in half Spit sprays into s intopain I stoive

Not ten meters away, Daxo kills and maims in a tyrannical ind like the kind Darrow and only few others still living have ever seen in person, much less produced

I try to cut my way to him, but I don’t have the mass Bodies obscuremen subvert my balance as they hit my knees The back of a head breaks my nose I headbutt someone else and feel the weaker bone crumple Sharp metal scrapes down my back ribs and stabs repeatedly into ht by so Red man, his whiskers scrap

ing into my neck I teeter sideways, pulled down by a h I feel pressure They pin my sword arm to my side and bite and saw at my hand till the razor slips free

I crash to the ground under their weight, arrip as boots stooes in and out,between black and the swars at the claustrophobic underbelly of the er off a man

“Virginia!” I hear beyond the curses and shouts “Virginia!”

The big Red man atop h his forehead His eyes roll back into his head and blood sluices onto me as Daxo pulls the Dawn Scepter out of his crushed skull Another man falls between us Daxo seizes his belt and hurls hilihtful face And despite the horror around us, despite the anger in him, I see the panic of love He will save me He will protect irl

And then he is gone, greatness borne down under a human wave that crashes down from all directions

A boot connects with hatmy skin Two men rip off my jacket as a woman kicks at hs I black out in the darkness, feel hands liftinginto my body