Thornton
Thornton could barely think, let alone move. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to use Breaking in Khel-hârad—not that he knew how to consciously summon it anyway.
He cursed himself for not listening to Yasha when he had the chance.
“Ah,” D’kane said as he looked his way, voice quaking with power. “The boy from Highglade. How thoughtful of you to deliver to me the Hammer.” He reached out toward the Traveler, who was still holding it. “Traveler,” he said without taking his eyes off Thornton, “my prize.”
The god known as the Traveler held the ancient Hammer of the Worldforge in his trembling hands, bowing his head in reverence to the recently ascended Breaker of the Dawn.
“Of course, my master,” he said, and he bent down on one knee.
And then, his rumbling voice an octave lower, he added, “Come and get it.”
The wild red eyes of the Traveler snapped open, and he lunged at D’kane with blazing speed.
D’kane, the Breaker, could only stare as the Hammer of the Worldforge came at him like the unstoppable force that it was. The Traveler was impossibly quick—so quick that Thornton had barely realized that he’d moved at all.
But D’kane was quicker. He sidestepped the blow and raised his hands, clenching his fists as if drawing in power. Unimaginable power.
“Stop this foolishness, Traveler,” D’kane snarled. His eyes burned with unending hatred and scorn. “You were banished once—don’t think I won’t do it a second time.”
And, all around him, Thornton could feel a massive surge, like the sudden influx of winter that makes the world slow to a frozen crawl. He braced himself for the terrible and vengeful explosion of strength that D’kane was about to release upon the two of them.
So when the Traveler merely stood there, smiling, Thornton thought that the wandering god had lost his mind.
“You forget yourself, Breaker,” the Traveler said as he edged closer to D’kane. “And you forget the limits of your power.”
The Traveler made a fist, and Thornton heard a distant thundering crack, like the top of a mountain had just been cleaved off. And then a true winter’s chill draped its arms around them all—and squeezed.
D’kane dropped to his knees and cried out in agony as the sudden and terrible cold enveloped them, its howling winds accompanied by the biting and stinging of a ferocious, unbearable frost.
“Or maybe,” the Traveler said as he approached, looking coolly at his tightly balled fist, “you never knew them at all.”
He flexed his fist again and the Breaker howled.
“We had a deal!” D’kane screamed, fighting to get out the words amid the whipping and whirling winds.
“And I broke it,” the Traveler said with a hint of amusement. “Ironic, isn’t it—Breaker?” He flexed again and the Breaker cried out.
“You will never awaken the Ghost without my help,” D’kane said through clenched teeth.
“Ah,” the Traveler said, raising the Hammer, “we will see about that.”
Forged by the Shaper Herself before the dawn of creation, the Hammer of the Worldforge had been the only thing that could free the Breaker from His chains—and it was also the only thing able to defeat the ancient god. And, just as D’kane had done to the previous Breaker of the Dawn, the Traveler held out the Hammer now, menacingly, while Khel-hârad was blanketed by his cold and icy power.
But, much to Thornton’s surprise, the Traveler did not move to strike the Breaker.
Instead, he turned to him.
“And now comes your part,” he said. “You must do this thing, Thornton, for I cannot.”
The wretched winds of winter swirled around them as Thornton blinked at the Traveler in disbelief. Frost bit his cheeks and stung his eyes.
He couldn’t bring himself to move; all he could do was stare. “Thornton!” the Traveler snapped, and the god had his attention. “Come! Take the Hammer. It is the only way.”
Thornton didn’t understand, but that had never stopped him before.
“What do I need to do?” he asked as he approached the Hammer—and the Breaker.
“You want to free your friend, don’t you?” the Traveler asked.
Thornton nodded.
“And you are prepared to give anything to do it?”
For that last part, Thornton had not been prepared. He balked at the word anything.
But, after the briefest of thoughts, he nodded again.
“Then take the Hammer,” the Traveler said, “and strike him down.” He was pointing a wind-whipped finger at D’kane, still writhing on the ground in agony.
“No!” cried the Breaker. He thrashed in the grip of the Traveler’s summoned frost.
But Thornton, as he had done for more than half his life, wrapped his hands around the worn wood of the Hammer—his hammer, his strength—and succumbed.
It was familiar, warm. He let the power course through him.
“Yes,” Thornton said.
D’kane held himself steady and looked him in the eye.
“Your father couldn’t stop me,” D’kane wheezed. “And neither will you.”
Father.
In that moment, the memory and the sadness of his own father’s death washed over him anew. It crashed down on him with a fierceness strong enough to peel the cold from his soul and replace it with a fire: a furious, burning rage, unending in intensity, undying, untamed.
He didn’t need it to come—but he let it.
He knew what he had to do.
Jaw clenched in rage, he held the Hammer up toward the Breaker, just as he’d seen D’kane do before he drained the ancient god of all of His power. He summoned all of his strength. He focused.
And the Hammer glowed blue.
D’kane’s eyes snapped open.
“No!” the god hissed. “You cannot—you must not! Draining me will not bring your father back, and it will not destroy me either!”
Thornton felt the power starting to move.
“Don’t listen to him,” the Traveler warned.
Thornton felt a sudden jolt surge through him like lightning, and he knew that nothing D’kane could say would change his mind, and he doubted that he could have stopped it if it had. The Hammer’s glow was a burning sun, and even the frost around them began to recede; there was no going back.
“But you must listen,” D’kane said weakly. “For there must always be a Breaker.”
The power was screaming into Thornton now. It felt like standing in front of a burning forge, with all the intensity of a thunderstorm. Thornton’s anger mixed with his hatred for D’kane; he drew on the sorrow of his father’s death and the anger he’d felt when he learned that the world was cold. Uncaring. Empty.
Through the aching and the burning power that he siphoned, Thornton clenched his teeth and gathered enough focus to speak.
“Just like you destroyed the Breaker,” Thornton growled, “this will destroy you.”
But, through the reckoning and the blue, D’kane looked up at him—and smiled.
“I didn’t destroy Him, boy,” he said with a smile that almost made Thornton drop the Hammer. “He cannot be destroyed. He is the universe, He is creation.”
There was another crack that filled the air, and the two of them were hurled violently apart. Thornton, flying backward, was blasted backward so hard that if he had needed breath in this place, it would have all but left him.
As he landed, he felt the last of D’kane’s strength flowing into the Hammer, and onward to him.
D’kane, the Breaker, shuddered, lying limply on the ground. Beaten, but not destroyed.
He struggled to sit up, and looked at Thornton. “I could never destroy the Breaker, boy,” D’kane said weakly. “I merely replaced Him.”
And, with a look that chilled Thornton to the bone, he pointed a charred, wilted finger, and whispered, “And now you will, too.”
The words hung in the air like a lover’s kiss: unforgettable and world-stopping. It was only then that Thornton realized that D’kane, Master Khyth of Khala Val’ur, was right. As his desiccated form sank below the frozen ground of Khel-hârad, Thornton suddenly felt a jarring and uneasy presence beginning to fill his mind. It was like watching the sun being swallowed by the moon, casting the world into that looming and heavy darkness that comes with the unstoppable and the unexplained.
It was a power he had felt when he had first called upon Breaking, a strength that filled him almost to the point of bursting.
It was a cloak, a candle, an old friend.
It was the power of his hammer, but somehow much, much more.
And, from the recesses of his mind, that power spoke.
We are one now . . . , it said, the words echoing deeply and hauntingly in his mind.
. . . Breaker.