Shield and Crocus Read Online Free

several more blows, the tongue seeping bright red blood. After the last slash, the tongue twitched, dropping to the floor.
    First Sentinel sighed.
    Now to put this thing out for good and get back to the children. instead, the tongue twisted end-over-end and lashed out at First Sentinel as he stepped forward. Reacting with decades of experience, First Sentinel leapt into a forward flip, digging the knives into the tip of the tongue, riding the cut down the other side. He removed one knife and stabbed again, fresh blood seeping down his arms as the tongue slammed into the ceiling.
    The impact squeezed the air out of his lungs like a bellows. First Sentinel rolled to the floor, gasping. Blurred Fists appeared in above him, hammering away at their foe. After a few moments, the tongue twitched again, started to raise toward the ceiling, and then dropped to the floor, lifeless.
    First Sentinel wheezed for a few seconds as Blurred Fists pummeled the tongue a few more times for good measure.
    Sitting up, First Sentinel caught his breath, looking to the children. Several had massive bruises where the pressure of the teeth had started to crush their arms, legs and sides, and a few more had cuts from the edges of the teeth. Please be all right. City Mother protect them, keep them safe.
    Pulling out a hammer and chisel, First Sentinel took his time, searching for a place to start.
    “You’re going to be fine,” he said to the children. “I’m First Sentinel, and this is Blurred Fists. We’re going to get you out now, but I need you to be brave.”
    The Ikanollo boy whose cries sounded like Selweh’s nodded. The child sighed, relaxing his trapped arm. The others winced and made small whimpers, but they did their best.
    “Good. Just relax, and think of home. We’ll have you back there soon.” whatever home was left to them after the storm.
    He worked with care as Blurred Fists tended to their wounds. With luck, the only scars the children would have from the day would be psychological, for all the comfort that was worth.
    Small blessings, Wonlar thought.

CHAPTER TWO
Sapphire
    Where is that screaming coming from? Sapphire asked herself, locking on to one sound amidst the din. A little girl’s voice rang through the street. She sounded no more than eight years old, and terrified.
    The street was a broken maelstrom. Phantom sounds assaulted Sapphire’s ears, pulling her attention from the real shouts for help or the footfalls of citizens driven mad by the Spark. Is that even a real voice? Sapphire wondered.
    Scanning the street, Sapphire towered over everyone in sight. She was the only Freithin there, and even among her people, she was one of the largest, more than eight feet tall and still growing. It gave her as clear a view of the street as could be had amidst the chaos.
    Sapphire hauled a quivering piece of animate slate off of a Millrej woman and hurled it to an empty expanse of volcanic street. The stone floundered like a fish on the shore.
    The street pummeled her senses with impossibility. On her left: buildings that started two stories up without any foundation, stretches of street that ramped up into the sky to become a pile of stinking fish. To her right: new Spark-touched reeling in horror at their transformation. At any moment, she could become one of them, but after more than a dozen Spark-storms, she’d never been affected. First Sentinel was immune due to previous exposure, but Sapphire and the other Shields took their lives into their hands every time they charged into a Spark-storm instead of fleeing from it.
    First Sentinel maintained that the greater a person’s emotional and physical fortitude, the less likely they were to be affected by the Spark-storm, but even he admitted it was just a theory.
    It’s not something you can fight , Sapphire admitted, worry crackling down her spine. The Spark-storms came without warning, struck without logic.
    The first few times, she’d been terrified. Each time it got a