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Chapter 34

Down into the darkness, Ashok went. Bounding from rock to rock, falling through the torrents of water.

Around him demons climbed. The mere act of brushing past them in his blood-drenched armor was enough to doom them. The climbers slipped and fell as their skin began to peel off.

Initially, Ashok tried to control his descent, but that wasn’t fast enough. Too many demons might reach the safety of the underworld. So he let go.

Ashok broke his collar bone smashing his body against a jagged boulder, and then he was in free fall, spinning into the depths. He dropped past hundreds of demons clinging to the walls, condemning them all.

The impact against the surface nearly snuffed out his consciousness. The cold waters of the Martaban washed away the blood, but even diluted the curse continued to spread. It was relentless in its pursuit of demon flesh, because the gods had been waiting a very long time for this.

All around him swam sleek black shapes. Rather than attack, they recoiled in fear. They thrashed and floundered, trying in vain to evade death. Raised as a whole man, Ashok did not know how to swim, but he didn’t need to swim to reach the bottom. The weight of his armor would do that for him.

The water was a powerful whirlpool, draining into the underworld. Nearly blind, Ashok was hurled about the depths, colliding with rocks and demons.

With their king dead, the demons had lost their direction, but some of their warriors must have realized Ashok was trying to reach the ancients’ tunnels, and in doing so would slay every last one of their kind still beneath the world. They tried in vain to stop him, but despite the many impacts, loyal Angruvadal had never left his hand. Each desperate demon that tried to intercept him, Ashok turned and stabbed by instinct. Evil water slowed the speed of his arm, but every thrust still split hide. Any demon that managed to hook its claws into him, did so for only a moment before the spreading pink cloud caused it to flinch away, hands rapidly dissolving.

Blood. Blood in the water.

Ashok held his breath, not for any hope of returning to the surface alive, but to ensure he was conscious enough to reach the bottom. To the Vadal he was Ashok Sword Breaker, to the demons he would be Ashok Plague Bringer.

His journey was not straight down, but in a violent spiral, carried by a powerful current that smashed him against rock and demon. Eventually the chaos subsided.

When he hit the bottom, it was so dark even his eyes could not see, but the shard told him this rubble-strewn hole was the breach. On the other side was the underworld.

The Heart had already sealed the burned flesh of his left hand, so he used Angruvadal to slice it open once again. That black-steel cut hurt worse than the demon fire, but all that mattered was that it spilled casteless blood over the entrance to the underworld. The current would carry the vengeance of the gods into the world below, and in those narrow, flooded corridors, there would be nowhere for the demons to hide.

Now there would be no escape for any of the soldiers of hell.

Such was the price of trespass.

As water began to fill his lungs, Ashok understood that this graveyard of demons was where his journey would end.

The first time he had drowned had been the closest he’d ever come to understanding fear. Now, there was nothing but weary acknowledgment, for being the final instrument in destroying hell itself was a far more honorable death than he had deserved.

Out of air, out of blood, nearly out of consciousness…at last he could rest.

Except if he stopped now, Angruvadal would be lost forever beneath the river. That violated his oath as a bearer.

And though he had just finished what Thera had started, her killer would go unpunished. That would violate his oath as a husband.

The first time he had drowned, it had been Thera who had breathed the life back into him. She would not want him to die here.

Ashok began cutting off his armor.


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