Path of the Voidstrider

By Matthew Lane

This tale follows the exploits of Cinderstrider: a fell entity capable of weaving flame and to his will binding it. During a fateful encounter, Cinderstrider loses the only thing in all the world he dared cherish, yet in the ashes of ruin finds something new: a spark of hope. For his eldritch powers can bestow life as well, can awaken those whose hearts have fallen silent, reignite eyes once cold bleak and dun. Yes, from ruin is something new wrought, yet whether its voice will for triumph or ruin knell, only the fates know.
Perhaps that, is why they laugh.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Lane
• Release date: Jun 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463624586

Book preview

Path of the Voidstrider

Matthew Lane

Copyright 2019 Matthew Lane

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Interlude

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

The world weeps.

Steelshod rain falls heavy on the lands of men,

Pounding, scouring, rending the flesh of cowering hills,

Slicing at the bowed backs of timber homes,

Gnawing at blood’s blighted stain.

And leaving only ruin behind.

Though its song was raw,

Sung in the scream of wind,

The crack of rending stone,

Its single damning lyric rang in the hearts of all mankind:

The Age of the Striders is no more.

Cinderstrider fell before his lord, borne low by a gaze heavy as steel, as stone, as the world itself. Through his clawed fingers he stared at the flagstones, eyes like timid embers shining in the gloom, cooling, fading, already pale and dun where once they were veritable stars pounded into his skull.

"Why?!" His voice was ragged, jagged, torn at hem and plane as if by the teeth of a ravenous flame. Every wisp of it caught on his raw throat, leaving behind splintered breath and falling from his lips limp and haggard, all but stillborn.

"You ask the wrong question, child of Midnight." Something roared before him, a terrible thunder like mountains crumbling in terror, like the world screaming one last time as it slid slowly in two. The monster had stood, had risen from its throne of iron thorns and umber bone. It loomed before him now, a fiend with flesh of seething vipers, with eyes whose amber glow fell down upon him like the cruel glare of a harvest moon as it scowled down upon the fetid world. "As ever you have. As ever you shall."

Its hand lashed out, fingers sharp as steel grinding deep into his jaw, lifting his face until those terrible eyes bored into his.

"Regardless," Its voice filled him, swallowed him, drowned him; its every syllable a peal of knelling thunder, its every sundering-stone word slamming against him hard as a falling tidal wave. "You do not deserve the answer."

Chapter 1

Several days Prior

Smoke rose silken from a world wreathed in ash. Where once there stood a city vast as the sea there lay now only shattered husks, ruin touched neither with light of lamp nor hearth but something fouler by far: the raw edged tongues of fire set free. How lively those flames danced, how joyously they paraded across that sea of crushed stone, those hills of crumbled timber, those mounds of crumpled bodies laying still and silent in the cold, cast-glass night.

Upon it all gazed the glutted moon, its silver stare shining pale and fragile on a land mantled in fire. Stoic, it watched as its children screamed and fell, as the filthy firelight slowly laid its claim across the realms of men. It could not weep, could not cry out, could not let free the pain of its ancient heart and those looked on helpless, as those fragile souls who had stood so long beneath its soft light, who had grown from bumbling, shrunken things to creatures proud, tall and wise, fell now like puppets with severed strings.

The world was dying, its final gasp rasping in the soft, ember-stained wind. But all was not still. No, certainly not! For among those dire flames, upon the cinders that fell like snow, beneath the skies clouded and dun, within the storm of light and gloom moved titans of shadow made solid, yet somehow, not made whole.

Shattered beasts that loomed high on their beaten-steel legs, they caught on pewter scales the timid moonlight, and cast it back with scornful ferocity. Clad in tendrils of smoke and cinder they loomed bleak as vengeful phantoms, their eyes of sanguine starlight carving jagged constellations into the ebon flesh of night, painting a vile crimson the length of their lupine muzzles, setting alight with bloody fire the ropy strands of saliva sloshing from their marbled lips.

As vile as they were elegant, as loathsome as they were cruel, these devils of broken glass slipped easily through the rancid eve, gliding with preternatural grace even when the tattered earth tried its best to foul them. No blade could strike them, no cry could halt them. Monsters of the truest form, they ploughed through the realm of men.

Helpless in the face of such eldritch wrath, their prey did the only thing it could: screamed, writhed, wriggled away on sundered limb and splintered bone, but none could escape.

Their fate was decided the very moment those liquid-iron eyes alit upon this place.

But as ever it is, when dusk came upon the lives of the innocent, there came on its burning hem a champion eager to save them. Thunder roared in the crackling night, shattering the pane of silence that had hardened upon the dying world, cracked and chipped by the gossip of fire, pocked by short, blood-strangled screams, yet until that moment suffocatingly vast, immutably whole.

Smoke and cinder clamored away, churning vigorously around a barren pocket aching in their midst; the source of that stormless thunder, of that lightless flare: a slim, fragile looking thing crouching low as if having just fallen from great height. He stood in that vacuous tumor, a wraith with flesh of pounded gloom, his body sleek as a shadow, its hem flashing with ugly, tangled light. Where the fires that devoured this place glowed a cruel crimson, his own luminous mantle assumed a far viler hue: stark, sickly green like the blood of every tree humankind had ever slain all roiling and writhing around his armored body.

When he rose it was with a dancer’s sinuous grace, his lithe frame all but lost among a dervish of feculent light; his eyes two ashen stars shining cold in the hollows of his ironclad skull.

Begone! His voice came roaring forth; a storm orphaned of its rain, a stonerending peal so vast even the deaf would be borne their knees beneath its terrible weight. One hand lashed to the side, a smouldering tendril coiling lovingly around his forearm, flowing like spilled blood into his waiting palm, where it drew in upon itself; a bulb of cinder and jade glowing malevolent in the timorous light.

As one those bloody eyes slashed toward him, rending the flesh of night in long, jagged streaks; luminous scars which quickly burned themselves back into the oblivion from when they came. Not a word did they utter, not a sound escaped their frozen-tar lips, only a wisp of soundless steam in which only the splinters of stillborn voices danced. Wrapped in that suffocating silence they regarded him; blood drenched hands clasping and slackening as if yearning to crush the bothersome newcomer’s throat that he could never again make that ear sundering sound.

Their wrath washed over this steel sheathed dancer, slamming against him hard and relentless as a tide of half molten iron, yet it had no more power over him than a weary summer breeze.

When he rose at last, when he stood beneath that invisible storm it was without shiver, shudder or trace of fear. Only pure, soulrazing wrath; hot as the burning Sun, hard as forged iron. He did not speak, for all his words bashed themselves apart within his throat, falling from his lips limp and stillborn on tendrils of pallid steam. He did not move, for rage had nailed him to the earth. He did not breathe, for his lungs were full of fire, and had no longer room nor patience nor desire for breath.

They lived in peace, as was their birthright. His thoughts were a tumultuous storm, clashing in bursts of coherence that quickly unraveled. Never once thinking of fiends like you or I. Never believing for an instant that their lives were fragile.

His hand closed slowly around that bulb of flame, crushing it, yet not stealing its light. Instead, liquid light seeped between his fingers, slithering earthward in long, gnarled tendrils. An illusion it was as ever, as always and forevermore peace shall be.

From those vipers of clotting light, noxious steam rose long and webbed; tracing out slow, plaintive motions as it clawed at the cold dusk air.

But they deserved the happiness that illusion granted. They deserved the chance at normalcy I will never have. Now, they too will never again possess it. You’ve shown them just how cruel life can be, how dangerous the shadows are, and no matter how many years wax and wane, they will never again in peace look on the night.

His grip tightened, his lips worked silently beneath a veil of rancid mist, shaping words heavy as stone, clangorous as the damning bells which welcomed the apocalypse: Rentis H’teal rentai!

The ancient word for sword bracketed between words meaning both the act of creation, and of being created. Three mangled, shattered, sharp edged things which fell like bloody stones from his steam shrouded maw.

No sooner had the last slipped free, than his flame as winding, writhing, squirming as if in mortal agony; its flaccid tendrils stiffening as if engorged, rising up to engulf his hand and forearm, to swallow whole his flesh until only the dull glimmer of an ironclad elbow remained. Then those corded limbs splashed against one another, hardening into a long saber mirror-bright and razor keen; a cast metal abutment jutting some ten handspans into the void beyond.

Within it still that emerald fire squirmed; flowing like cruel venom through opaque arteries, sloshing vigorously within an oval pocket amid whose yawning abyss his clenched fist gleamed. Three fingerless arms that conical blade was; silver tongues sleek as quicksilver serpents, pale as a midsummer moon, hard and ruthless as the dour winter stones.

What you’ve stolen this night nothing in all the world can ever return. The cruelty you’ve unleashed can never be erased. For that, you shall suffer.

He wasted not a moment more in contemplation, merely stole another breath of soot stained air, and lunged! In a single split-breath instant he crossed the flame wreathed ruins, blade a pale streak grinding through the foul wind, body an ashen blur behind.

Standing atop the jagged scree of sundered wall and shattered mortar, his first foe hadn’t time to fix eyes of burning blood upon him, had not time to raise steel hand in warding nor twist scaled form aside, only gape mindlessly as the bothersome gnat before it simply vanished; gone as if never it had been.

No sooner had its marbled lips parted, than that tiny speck was upon it, manifesting like a phantom in the gloom; a shadow made solid with its falling star fist leading. Thunder orphaned of its storm roared again in the bloody night; a single deafening note dizzyingly vast, immutably strong; the sound of a fist wrought of metal slamming against a jaw equally ironclad. The cry of a war between two unbreakable things it was; an ugly, grinding, mangled song whose every note was sharp as shattered glass, heavy as a crumbling mountainside.

Beneath such terrible force even the strongest of men would have been driven to its knees, torn apart until naught but mist remained and yet, and yet that titan did not shift a single pace, did not stagger, stumble, or bow. The name of Monster is one appended to all things which defy our understanding, which confuse and terrify so blatantly do they ignore the rules that govern the world. On few did that moniker so comfortably rest than these creatures of living steel and liquid fire.

Never in all its vast life had this beast known pain. Anger, wrath, hunger, but never true pain. So when that fist of starlight slammed against its jaw, the monster merely smiled, its cut-glass scales shimmering like vile quicksilver. Not for a moment did it wonder why that creature would encase one arm in an eldritch sword only to favor a bare fist, until that is when the tiny gnat before it rasped something all but unintelligible, and those armored fingers became hot and bright as five scythes not yet cool from their forging.

Five strands of holy light blazed through its face, grinding, churning, lashing, squirming deep into stony flesh, crushing in a thousand tiny hands the bones of steel set broad and proud beneath. Its jaw dropped open, disbelief more than agony dulling the light of its blood-moon stare. Slow as a humpbacked tidal wave it fell, shock frozen upon its cruel features as one last steamshod breath slipped between its lips.

That fragile thing knelt close, starlight gaze stabbing into its own, paling pools. And from its lips came a storm without light, a pealing thunder roar with no place in the throat of man or monster:

"Corsel radeth ordai!"

Flame thick as honey, green as fresh spilled vomit, burst from the monster’s flesh, wriggling between dun scale and slick fang, pouring, gushing, spewing, erupting from every pore, orifice and plane. Ash it became before its corpse had struck the earth, and thus it was that this behemoth of metal and death fell not with a thunderous knell, but a soft, snowfall patter naught but the keenest ear could detect.

Slowly, the wraith stood, emerald flame roiling hungrily around its bare hand, sloshing vigorously in the translucent cage of its aberrant blade. In the name of peace, in the search of vengeance, for the chance of a day when no one will ever again live in fear, I will strike you down!

That thought pulled itself from the clamor raging within his skull, fading quick as ragged lightning, leaving only the faintest afterimage behind; an echo that rang again and again as he fell heavily to the earth, knees bending beneath the impact, palm pressing briefly against the stones and in its wake leaving a white hot scar.

Standing proud on the slopes of shattered homes, looming malevolent beneath mantles of ash, the cruel titans turned their firelight eyes upon him in earnest now. It was not fear that shone in those sanguine depths, but something brighter, softer, warmer by far: curiosity. The wonder of a child seeing death for the first time, the confusion which came before understanding, the surprise which came before fear.

They knew nothing of the doom kneeling before them, had not the faintest portrait in their ancient minds of precisely what fate would soon befall them. Instead, they dropped their respective prizes, letting fall slack and wet to the stones their half devoured prey; torsos orphaned of their legs, trailing crimson viscera like merrily waving banners; skulls crushed and gnawed rolling feebly as they glanced off the broken stones; limbs torn free and stripped of their flesh, clattered like fallen spoons as they struck the earth.

Then they stumbled toward him. Slow, halting, maladroit they came, not quite shambling, for their scaled legs worked with preternatural grace, not quite shambling, for their soles landed perfectly, balanced impeccably on the uneven terrain. Neither was it caution which with cumbersome chains bound their legs, for there was none of that shining in their blood-moon eyes.

No, what slowed them was mere interest, simply fancy. It was not the slowness of a knight inching toward a towering Dragon, nor a hunter creeping toward a fallen bear, but of a child sneakily advancing upon a flitting butterfly, trying with all its might not to startle that curious thing.

So it was that they came upon him; titans of gloom that hid the timid stars behind their broad backs, that crushed beneath thunderbolt steps even the sharpest of stones, that stared without flinching upon the creature which had just slayed one of their own. With not a glimmer of fear to be seen.

The wraith rose with a slowness of his own; moving as if through honey, with one hand held wide, the other buried in a tapered sword and raised defensively before him. Already exhaustion fell upon him, a mantle of lead crushingly cumbersome, intolerably hot. Perspiration shone like glass on his brow, crept like sullen tears along his narrow jaw, sizzled like dull witted insects diving into a roaring campfire as it trickled along his armored limbs and crept blithely into the orb of fire clasped against his palm.

In the name of all that is holy. He slammed an ironclad sole against the earth, forcing himself upright amid the scream of sundered stone, the hiss of scorching grass.

In the name of all that is right and good. He swept back his flame-wreathed hand, dripping globs of liquid lamplight across the tattered soil.

In the name of all who once called this place home. Light flared in his midnight eyes; a dire flame bright as the rising sun, keen as shattered glass, deadly as sharpened steel. The black fire of wrath it was, devouring heart, mind and soul with boundless avarice.

I will strike you down!

"Forsec tempa forsesis!" Three words spilled from his lips: sharp edged things whose malevolent knell seized hold of reality itself, and shook all sense from it.

He lunged, and the stunned world froze around him. Six they were; titanic specters looming around him with eyes of flame and frames of cast midnight; beasts no mortal man could wound much less slay. Luckily, he had not been mortal for some time.

His blade lanced up, a starlight blur rending the flesh of night, swatting aside a reaching hand paralyzed with fingers crooked and hunched, trapped in time as a wasp is snared in clotting amber. Beneath that massive arm he twisted, moving past even as it was wrenched wide, reaching high as he went; palm wreathed in light, arm gnawed and devoured by shadow. Featherlight, his hand brushed against its marbled flesh, and in that instant Death came rushing down from on high, called forth by the furious words that came tearing forth from the stranger’s lips: "Corsel radeth ordai!"

Forged in the fires of the world’s dawn, those words had seldom known the touch of breath, had rarely slipped from mortal mouths, had seldom scarred the plane of withered paper. But that only made them all the stronger. Steeped in a wrath old as the very stone on which he stood, those words came rolling forth as a tidal wave cold, deadly and vast.

At once his hand became a luminous flare, and beneath its cruel touch, his prey’s flesh glowed like a shielded lantern, filled with foul flame that seethed, squirmed and in boundless gluttony feasted.

In shock, awe and terror the world still held its breath, time’s hardened coils holding aloft that slain and flame-scoured beast even as the wraith turned, honeyed fire flickering along his hand, flailing wild as crashing surf as it raced across his forearm. The next had not registered his initial motion, had not yet realized its comrade’s fate, and would likely not in the slightest care regardless. All the same, this was its undoing, for as liquid steel eyes opened wide, as time slowly remembered its purpose, as feet of wrought metal shifted, turning the monstrous figure above, its fate was already sealed.

The flameclad phantom slid beyond his first foe, fire sloshing from his trailing arm, casting lustrous globs into the once pure blackness of a starless night. One foot came crashing down, the soot stained soil a roiling tide rolling over his armored boot like an army of roused and ravenous scarabs. No sooner had he come to a halt than he was again moving, a stormwind roar cleaving the gloom; a thread of woven firelight blazing hot and fierce as it sliced on. He ducked beneath its warding arm, slammed an iron fist against its ribs, and again bellowed that damning phrase, this time pausing not a moment in appreciation; barely watching as light stole the shadow from its flesh, as coarse, gloom speckled firelight flowed along the seams between glassen scales.

No, he saw none of this,