Runebinder

The first kraven broke through the field with a banshee’s scream, and all thoughts vanished in the heat of survival.

Like all the variations of Howls, the kraven had been human once, though the resemblance was minimal—two legs, two arms, a torso and head. The conversion process twisted the host into something beyond a nightmare. Bones jutted like talons from rotting gray flesh, its spine curved and twisted. Its eyes were bloodshot, red as meat, and its jaw had snapped and reformed like the maw of a piranha in a bulbous human head. The very sight should have been enough to send a sane man running. If not, the dozen others that appeared close behind it would have.

Before the first kraven even reached the road, Katherine ran forward, her blades a whirl of silver. Metal met flesh, and all the fear and anticipation from before washed away.

When he was younger, Tenn had immersed himself in books and movies of heroic battles. The tales were always gorgeous in a way—heart-pumping and engaging, filled with quick moves and dancing blows. Heroes dashed between villains with ease, always golden, always immortal. Always confident and brave and beautiful.

The Resurrection taught him that all those stories were full of shit.

Real battle wasn’t pretty. You trained to block and parry and dodge, yes, but you didn’t think about it, didn’t focus on long dancing combinations. You swung. You screamed a lot. You killed as fast as you could and didn’t think about anything but the feel of flesh giving way under your hands. And if you were even a hairbreadth too slow, if today just wasn’t your day, you were never, ever heard from again.

He gritted his teeth and prayed today wasn’t that day.

Tenn lunged forward, meeting a kraven midleap and slicing its body right through the gut. Cold, black blood sprayed out, but Tenn was already slashing another monster before the first corpse fell. Michael was just out of sight beside him, grunting and yelling, the skull-shattering cracks of his mace echoing across the fields like thunder.

But more monsters were coming. The field was thick with beasts, the air alive and hellish with their screams. A shadow darted behind him. He turned just in time to parry the slash of a cleaver. He barely registered his opponent—male, shirtless, whiter than snow and drenched in blood—before counterattacking. The man’s head fell to the ground with a wet smack.

“Bloodlings!” Tenn yelled, but even though he screamed it at the top of his lungs, he knew his companions hadn’t heard. The world was a living, grinding thing of scarred flesh and teeth and talons, and everywhere he turned he was slashing, dodging, trying to stay alive as the gray tide overtook him. His breath was fire as he fought, as he hacked and screamed his way through the melee. Seconds felt like an eternity, and the damage done to him and his foes was immense. A thousand cuts burned across his skin. A thousand moments he was too slow. A thousand instances he could have died, and a thousand reasons he still might.

A yell broke through the din—masculine, enraged and in pain. Then Michael’s voice cut short in a gurgle. Tenn spared a glance over but he couldn’t see anything through the kravens scrambling over corpses. Katherine screamed as well, but whether from rage or pain, he wasn’t certain.

That’s when he realized, in the far-off corner of his mind, that he was going to die. They all were.

His arm went numb from a kraven’s bite. His hands were drenched red. And still, the monsters came.

Derrick’s voice drifted through his mind as he fell to his knees. Don’t use magic, not under any circumstances. Don’t give yourselves away.

Water and blood seeped through Tenn’s jeans, his numb arm limp. He could only stare at the blood and wonder at how quickly this had come, his end. At how easy it was to die. Pain seared across his back as a Howl ripped through his flesh. Blood was everywhere—black blood, red blood, red rain. The Sphere of Water screamed inside of him as his own life spilled forth. Memories rode the current—flashes of his mother and father, the few friends he’d made and lost, his mother’s voice and a lullaby he couldn’t place. His eyes fluttered. His working hand dropped his staff.

This is how it feels to die, and I will be eaten before they find my corpse.

As another kraven lunged for the kill, mouth wide and broken teeth bared, the Sphere of Water opened unbidden in Tenn’s stomach.

Power flooded him, rushing through in a whirlpool of memory and pain, a roar that filled him with a thousand freezing agonies, dragging him down, down, down into the pits of his every despair. Down into the deepest depth of power.

The Sphere connected him to the rain hammering from the sky and the blood pooling on the ground and the pulse in every vein of every creature within a mile. He could feel it. All of it. He felt Katherine a few yards away, her heart throbbing so fast it hurt his own. He felt the Howls, their pulses thick and jagged and starved.

Most of all, he felt power. More than he had ever tapped before. The rage, the fear, the anger, the thirst. It made his limbs vibrate, made his breath catch, made the rain around him seethe and hum. And in that split second after Water’s opening, he wrapped his fingers deep into the torrent and screamed.

The rain shivered. Changed. He twisted the power and twisted the elements and raindrops became ice, became shards sharper than glass, became hammers that lashed from the sky with sickening velocity. His Sphere raged in joy and agony as its power unleashed, as the bloodlust filled his darkening vision and screams filled the air. His screams. Their screams. Blades of ice met flesh, sliced through skin and bone. Ice spilled forth blood, and Water rejoiced as the world drenched itself in crimson.

Power ran through his veins, and this power craved revenge.

It was over in seconds.

He felt the Howls die. Felt their blood leave their bodies and pool against the sodden earth. Felt their pain. Felt their final heartbeats. And when every heart had stilled, the power in his chest winked out. He collapsed.

“You’re going to do great things,” his mom says. She hugs him. Wipes tears from her eyes. “You’ve already done great things. The moment you came into my life. That was the greatest thing.” And he tells himself not to cry. Not here, in front of the dorm. He tells himself he will see her again. “I will always...”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Kevin asks.

“A linguist,” Tenn replies. “Or a writer.”

“You like words?”

“Yes. Words have power.”

“Your words do.” They go silent, and the stars slide past as they watch from the library. They go silent, and the stars speak for them.

He sees her. He sees her hand. He sees her hand from where he stands in the doorway. It droops from the shed, a finger cocked. Her fingernails red. Fingers red. Red, red—

Tenn curled against himself. Curled against the memories.

Nothing else moved in the world.

Just the rain.

Just his breath.

Just his blood mixing with the dead.

CHAPTER TWO (#u9c0d9841-d0fc-5d15-94ca-18ac5e4077a0)

HE DIDN’T KNOW how long he lay there. The wind and rain were a constant roar, but their sound was distant compared to the throb of blood in his ears, the roar of memories in his head.

His house is empty. Too empty. He walks. The gun is gone. His hand is covered in blood. Blood, like the blood streaking the walls. Where is the gun? Where are his parents? He shakes. He walks. Water roars within him, a tide that drowns the screams outside. His house is too empty. His house is too silent. He shakes as he walks and the blood-streaked halls tilt. He shakes, and the back door swings. He walks, and his silent house bleeds.

Something brushed his cheek. Frayed nerves snapped to life, and his eyes fluttered open.

Katherine knelt beside him. Blood stained her skin, and long gashes webbed across her in leaking lines.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was angelic, if only because he had been certain he’d killed her.

Tenn could only nod. There were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t force them away. He was hollowed out. Raw. Earlier, he’d wanted to break the world, but the world had broken him.

Even as the memories ebbed, the pain and the sadness lingered in his lungs. Tears leaked from his eyes unchecked.

“You’re bleeding,” she continued. “Badly.”

He tried to sit. His muscles wouldn’t cooperate. He felt it then...or rather, he felt the lack of feeling. The numbness leaking through his limbs as blood leaked to the soil. His wounds would kill him. Just as her wounds would kill her.

“So are you,” he managed. He bit back a sob. The world was spinning. Fading. Fast.

“You’ve already broken orders,” she said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm. “We might as well live to face Derrick’s wrath.”

Tenn closed his eyes and reached deep into the pit of his pelvis, to the place where the Sphere of Earth rested. It was the second and last Sphere he’d been attuned to. He coaxed it awake and sank his focus into the rich soil of it, to the heavy power that rooted him to the earth. Energy filled him with green light, with the warm, calming sap of gravity and flesh.

He didn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t. Just as he couldn’t move his arm to meet hers, to start healing. His fingers twitched, and she placed her bloodied hand in his. Energy connected, a snap of power, and slowly, painfully, he began his work.