Free Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) by Gregory J. Downs

laugh before.
     
    ~
     
       When he looked up again, Gramling found himself kneeling amid the broken desert stones of Blast once more. Gathering his slightly battered but still serviceable cloak around him, the Pit Strider rose and began the ritual of calling. There was no time to waste, especially now that he was impossibly still in the favor of his master. The center of the stone circle was hollow and sandy… the perfect place.
     
       Gramling stood stock still, letting the shadows of the desert fall across him, empowering him. A minute passed, then five. Then half an hour.
     
       Gramling flung his arms out and his head back, howling at the sky. He screamed the words of the pit beasts of the world, words that no one knew but he and his master and those his master chose to train in the Pit Striding. There was no translation for such speech, but the meaning was clear to any who were unlucky enough to hear it. It spoke of horror and suffering, agony and despair, malice and hatred and the vengeance of things that have been chained under the earth’s crust for so long they have forgotten how to do anything but kill, and hate those they wish to kill but cannot.
     
       Gramling went on with the ritual for an hour, then stopped, his throat raw and constricted. No time to slow, no time to stop. The calling was finished. Now for the Beacon. Gramling leaned back, bending his body until his spine formed a step arch and his elbows almost brushed the ground.
     
       Fire , he thought, forcing his will into being, Flames and smoke, sparks and ash, fury and power and FIRE!
     
       With a great spring, he whipped himself upright and leaped into the air, pumping his fists and kicking off his legs. Red flames sprung up from every crack in every rock in the circle, spiraling upwards around him and forming a pillar of fire that shot up into the sky with a terrific WHOOSH!
     
       Seconds later it was gone, and he landed back on the ground in a blanket of hazy black smoke. His pit-striding had sent up a flare into the sky, a bolt of scarlet flame that would be visible in both the physical world… and the other, darker places where the minions of his master lurked. All he had to do now was wait.
     
       When it was over, he wheezed and slipped to the ground, then forced himself to stand again. He would need that strength. The ones who would answer his call… they could not be allowed to see weakness, or they would rip him apart like chaff. He must be strong… strong.
     
       He gripped the edge of the rock with his hands and pulled himself up in one motion. Yes, yes, pain… it was the first step towards strength. A strange kind of adrenaline coursed through his veins when he was attempting something too hard for him to do… and that usually meant he was about to succeed.
     
       Yes, he did. He was up now, up on the top of the jagged stones, perched like some legendary monster of the night, poised to leap down on an unsuspecting world with fire in his claws: a shadow with wings of smoke that devoured everything. The Golden One had promised him that such would be his power, if he succeeded. And he knew he would succeed.
     
       There! Off in the distance, a muted howling and screeching faintly reached his ears, punctuated with growls and bellows of a particularly disgusting nature.
     
       They were coming. When next he met with the Sand Strider from Ymeer, there would be no escape for the urchin. The draiks were coming. They were answering his call. The Golden One’s commands echoed in his mind, reverberating off the inside of his skull like the thunderous voices of a thousand giants.
     
    ~
     
       The first creature to answer the summons and reach him turned out not to be a draik at all. Instead, it was something far better.
     
       As Gramling crouched on the edge of the rock, the night sky came alive above him, swooping down on wings darker than shadow and passing not a foot from his head. Like a dark