Blade of the Avatar/Blade of Midras/Chapter 26

=The Open Door=

Excerpt
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Syenna whispered into the air between them.

“No,” Aren answered in hushed tones into that same air. “But who is sure of anything anymore.”

Syenna sat upright, her back stiff as the horse beneath her walked down the tunnel between the two sets of gates. She felt vulnerable without her armor. She especially felt the absence of her sword and scabbard. It had hung so long at her side that it had almost become a part of her. Now it lay abandoned among the pile of weapons left in the center of the city’s marketplace along with every other weapon in the town.

She turned slight in her saddle to look at Aren. She wondered for a moment why it was that his strange weapon would be the only one carried out of this place by anyone whom she was willing to call a friend. Everything had been arranged according to Aren’s will, but now, faced with the helpless reality before her, powerless before their enemies on open ground, she wondered if Aren had some private game that he was playing with all of their lives.

Aren rode on the back of his own horse beside her. He wore what remained of his Obsidian armor; the breast and back plates and one of the spike-adorned shoulder guards. He even looks like one of them, Syenna thought.

Behind them were arrayed all of the citizens of Opalis, prepared to follow them through the gates and, they hoped, to longer life.

“You’re sure about the Titans?” Syenna asked and not for the first time.

“Grannus has remained to maintain the shield,” Aren answered. “You can see that for yourself.”

“But the others…”

“Each of them has sent word,” Aren reassured her once more. “Everything is as ready as it can be made.”

“Is that ready enough?” she asked.

“Well, we are about to find out,” Aren said as their horses walked through the outer gate of the city…

Trivia

 * In the original, prior to the additional chapters added for The Sword of Midras, this was Chapter 22.