Page 134 of Hellbound

Not all bondsmiths had the skill or constitution to survive it.

Ksenia pulled the bars of white-hot common iron from the forge while Danika drew out the Grastelian ones.

They stacked them in a chessboard pattern atop each other on the anvil, the metals bubbling and hissing.

“Ready?” Danika bit her lip, hammer poised. “If we need to bail, we bail. It’s just steel. It’s not worth life and limb, all right?”

Ksenia nodded her assent, lips pressed thin.

The metals rejected their forced marriage—a burst of red sparks.

Then, the resonances hit her like a cold wind funneled through a snow-swept valley.

Her eyes clenched shut as pressure crept from the base of her skull, spreading forward.

Sharp, angry, discordant resonances darted through her mind, streaking through, there and gone—predators moving between the trees of a leafless, winter forest, calling to one another in the dark.

Reverberating, circling them.

And beneath it all, a deep and mournful sound that bounced off the frozen ground and trees like a hunting horn.

Ksenia imagined Danika behind her in a clearing, steadily swinging, her breath white puffs in the cold.

The resonances warbled, then became clear in her mind.

They took form and moved at the forest line, just visible, maybe a half-dozen, moving like predators assessing whether they were a worthy meal.

She imagined their humble home and quickly built it, stone by stone. She could feel the moss growing on the mortar.

Not quickly enough—the first one broke from the trees, clearing the stone wall before it closed with the thatch roof.

A buzzing heat started to build behind her eyes.

Maybe she did need to kill them.

It was a roiling mass of dark smoke on four legs, prowling. Blue fire roared where its eyes should’ve been, and what resembled jaws snapped at her.

She grabbed a half-finished sword off their worktable. Tempered, but unsharpened.

The tip clanged and bounced against the ground.

Heavier than she expected.

It lunged and she hefted it, barely catching its shoulder mid-leap, the blade passing through the smoke but grazing something solid beneath.

A scatter of sparks accompanied its discordant shriek, like steel on steel.

It skidded, slamming against the wall—a deep grind echoed as the stones shifted, sending mortar dust flying.

Pain snapped through their minds.

“Bail?” Danika panted.

The compromised wall forced the roof to sag inward, and snow drifted in from the cracks.

Its jaws opened wide, saliva dripping from tooth to tooth as it turned in Danika’s direction.

“No,” Ksenia grunted. She rushed and drove her blade into its side, crashing into their mother’s old wooden spindle. “Keep—going.”