Free Worldbinder by David Farland

dead. He’d always thought of her as a sister, a fierce little sister, and he tried to imagine how he would break the news to Myrrima, their foster mother. Their foster father, Borenson, was a warrior, and he would take it stoutly, though it would break his heart. But Myrrima … she was too tender to bear such news.
    As he got close, he rejoiced to see that she was breathing, her chest rising and falling.
    “She’s out cold,” Jaz was telling the others.
    Jaz looked up, moved back for Fallion to get a better view, and Fallion gasped.
    Their Talon had changed. At first, he thought that it was only a matter of growth. Talon had always been a diminutive girl, combining her mother’s lithe body and her father’s strength. But she was diminutive no more.
    “What do you think?” Jaz asked. “Seven feet tall? Maybe more?”
    That looks about right, Fallion thought. And three across the shoulder. She looked as if she weighed a good three hundred pounds, all of it muscle.
    Her face remained much the same, or, at least Fallion could still see Talon’s resemblance in it. But it stretched in an odd way. There were two strange humps above her brow, like those on a calf that is about to sprout horns, and her forehead seemed thickened, as if a bony plate had grown there. Her cheekbones were similarly armored. She groaned, opening her mouth as if to curseat some bad dream, revealing canines that had become over-large.
    “What happened?” Jaz asked.
    Fallion suspected that he knew. Some other creature must have been standing where Talon was, on that shadow world, and the two of them had become one.

    7    
     
THE HUNTER AWAKES
    There was a time when the Knights Eternal were Lady Despair’s most fearsome weapon. But as her powers grew, so did the powers of her minions, and the walking shadows, the Death Lords, began to haunt our dreams. With the merging of the two worlds, though, we should have guessed that it was only a matter of time before the Knights Eternal reestablished their dominion.
    —
the Wizard Sisel
    Gongs were tolling in Rugassa, their deep tones reverberating among the rocks in the fortress, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, thundering up from the center of the earth.
    Upon the toll, Vulgnash awoke in the tower crypt, and with a powerful kick threw off the lid of his coffin.
    Gripping its sides, he inspected his rotting flesh. His skin had dried, becoming gray and leathery, and his flesh had cracked and wrinkled. Maggots had burrowed trails through his arms.
    How long, he wondered, since last I walked the earth? He had hoped to remain dead for eternity this time.
    But Lady Despair summoned him, and he rose at herbidding. He had promised his service to the Great Wyrm, whether it be in life, or in death, and now he had to answer the call.
    Besides, he would rather be summoned into the presence of Lady Despair than into that of the Emperor.
    From the condition of his hands, he imagined that it had not been long. Three years since last he woke, perhaps five, no more.
    Yet Vulgnash felt as if he had been pummeled. Every muscle in his body ached; he had seldom felt so weak.
    He climbed from the coffin, and stood for a moment, stretching his red wings wide to get the blood flowing and staring down through a tower window. People rushed everywhere a thousand feet below him, like beetles in a dung hill.
    The fortress was in ruins. Walls of black basalt looked as if they had split during an earthquake.
    He peered out beyond the city gate, to see if the fortress was under attack, and stared in awe. There was a strange and wondrous change in the land: a forest stood out on the plains before the castle. The plains should have been barren. Last he knew, they were burned twice yearly so that no army could draw near without being seen.
    But here was a forest of hoary pine trees that looked to be a thousand years old. And strange birds flew up out of it, like none that he had ever seen before.
    How long? he