The Ashen Wrath (Watty's SHORTLIST recipient 2018) CHAPTERED VERSION

*68

My exoskeleton ran out of power inches from the gate. My body ejected from the rear of the machine in mid-stride, dumping me to the ground without warning. The stilstry collapsed and fell apart in a cloud of dust.

I groaned and crawled to the smoking heap, prying a metal bar from one of the machine's crumpled joints to use as a crutch. I rose up and began limping toward The Walled City. My adrenaline spiked. Death could come calling at any moment.

There were no guards, no carts, no vehicles, no sound except for the howling wind. I moved through the towering doors and realized everyone in the city was dead. The bodies of Privus lay strewn across the ground, their ivory skin now gray and brittle—stripped of life. No one had been spared. Every man and woman was reduced to dried husks in splayed robes.

The carnage had happened fast. Corpses were curled against walls. Dunked in fountains. Dangling halfway out of lofty windows. Transports were compacted together in smoking heaps. Puddles of green bile oozed from the maw of every corpse. The smell was horrendous.

My god, I thought. I had never seen anything so awful. I wrapped myself in a clean, stray robe and covered my mouth to keep from gagging. The bodies grew denser the further I walked. Daun, I have to find Daun.

Then, a sign of life—the sound of scurrying feet in the dust. A pair of young teenagers stared at me with eyes peeled wide as they cowered behind a wall. A boy and a girl, both Thrall. I picked up my pace and they dove out of sight.

"Wait!" I yelled. "Don't go! I'm Thrall too!" I peeled back my hood and coughed.

The pair came back, taking tentative steps toward me.

I saw my pale reflection in a window and recoiled. No wonder the survivors were afraid of me. I opened my robe and could see my ribs shoving against thin, lesioned skin. "Please," I begged, "have either of you seen a young woman? Blonde and blue eyed, but not Privus...Thrall."

The teenagers looked at each other, then back at me. "Who are you?" asked the young man.

"My name is Danth. Please, have you seen her?" I pointed to the tower where I suspected Daun may be, based on my fading memories of the stilt strider's map.

The young woman shrugged. "There's something you should see." She hurried beside me and her friend joined her. They grabbed me under the arms and led me through the streets at a pace that nearly blinded me with pain.

I recognized where they were taking me. My eyes were assaulted by a flood of royal blue as soon as we walked inside. I was back in the central tower, the home of the High Lord.

"Don't worry," said the young man, feeling me struggle against his insistent help. "Come, this way."

We rode a large elevator to the top of the tower. The doors opened into the throne room and I shuddered at what I saw.

"Sheln!"