Free Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell

who was currently little more than a puffy ball of disheveled black feathers huddled beneath the Horseman’s chest, replied with an ugly look and single resigned squawk.
    “A little cold won’t hurt you.” And then, “Fascinating. I didn’t know a beak could scowl like that.”
    It was a slow and frustrating, if not particularly difficult, journey. The snow was thick enough, and Death silent enough, that none of the constructs below came close to spotting him. The treacherous terrain impeded his progress only slightly, and this far down the slopes, the rocky protrusions were usually near enough for the Horseman to leap successfully from mountainside to mountainside.
    No, the difficulty arose when moving among those mountains that
didn’t
stand near enough to one another to allow for an easy crossing. Death did, despite his supernatural strength and agility, have limits to how far he could jump. In these instances, when the only option was climbing to ground level and crossing through the small valleys, the Horseman was forced to scuttle around to the far side of the slopes and work his way behind the laboring constructs.
    Not even a sizable group of the things would pose him much of a danger, but battling a few meant risking the attention of all. And that would prove, at the very least, inconvenient.
    Until, after arduous hours of painstaking progress trailing the encumbered drones back to their central repository, stealth finally ceased to be an option.
    Tucked into a smaller valley that formed a tributary off the main chasm, a perfect circle—roughly thrice Death’s height in diameter—had been melted into the permafrost. Whatever had occurred here had happened some time ago, and much of the hollow had already filled in with fresh ice and snow, but the outline remained clearly visible. Death would have guessed, even without his extraordinary senses, that he was looking at the remains of a gate between realms. The fact that he could
feel
the weakness in the walls of reality, a fresh scab over a wound in the world, merely confirmed that assessment.
    Beside the remnants of the gate, a hill of snow bulged like a blister from the ice. It, too, was clearly fresh. Death watched one of the stone constructs approach with a lump of
something—
he could not, from here, make out what it might be—and place it on the hillside, where it was swiftly covered up.
    As he’d suspected, then. This was where the diggers were storing whatever it was they chipped from the permafrost.
    The stockpile was only lightly guarded—suspiciously so, in fact. While new drones appeared every few minutes, in order to deliver their payloads, they departed just as swiftly. Only a contingent of five remained nearby at all times, winding in a complex patrol around and around the “hill.”
    Death considered the situation for some time, again allowing the snow to blanket him. Were the enemy—whoever they might be—truly so overconfident, so
foolish
, as to assume the operation here would never be troubled? Had they overextended themselves, stretching their resources too thin?
    Or …
    Given the depth to which they’d already delved into the ice, the relatively small prizes they delivered to the stockpile, the length of time between discoveries, perhaps the operation was almost
complete
. He’d known they must have been here for some while before the invasion of Eden—otherwise, they’d not have had time to unearth Affliction, not when the Nephilim themselves had been unable to locate the sword—but he hadn’t realized
how
long.
    The stockpile wasn’t guarded well because the enemy had already retrieved whatever prizes they expected to find, and moved the bulk of their efforts elsewhere. The remainder was just meticulousness, in case they’d missed something.
    So he was far too late to stop them from accomplishing their goals, at least here on the fields of Kothysos. But Death would be damned to the depths of the Abyss if he’d leave