A pair of frayed cloth slippers shuffled onto the slate roof of the northern gatehouse.
Kaelen Vance yawned, tying the faded hemp sash of his blue bathrobe around his waist. In his right hand, he loosely held a fifteen-inch bamboo back-scratcher with a curved wooden claw.
Below him, the gatehouse archway groaned like a dying beast.
Sera Thorne’s boots had sunk four inches into the fracturing granite. Blood dripped steadily from her palms down the blackened shaft of Storm-Pike, but her teeth were locked in stubborn defiance.
Beside her, Elder Sterling’s broadsword bent into an agonizing crescent.
The silver starlight around his shoulders was nearly extinguished, smothered beneath millions of pounds of boiling crimson basalt.
“Master Ash,” Sera choked, her eyes rolling toward him. “We held it. Ten minutes.”
“A back-scratcher?” Sera wheezed, her spear-shaft groaning under the immense weight. “You brought a wooden back-scratcher to an imperial siege?”
