The Horns of Ruin by Tim Akers

structure that had supported me all the way up here now folded away like a
magician's trick knot. My platform tipped and I was falling, dropping a few
feet before I slapped against another platform which in turn clattered free.
Soon I would be swallowed by an avalanche of loose boards and spinning pipes. I
looked across the alley and saw that the other structure was still standing,
its platforms and struts loose but in much better shape than my own tower. A
long way, but no other choice. I screamed and jumped and fell and closed my
eyes as the air whipped past my head and I was falling, falling, crunch.
    My teeth sang with the impact of the tower. I crashed
through a thin wooden railing and onto a platform several levels below where
Cassandra had been sitting. Blood filled my mouth and the air left my lungs,
but I pushed myself up to a kneeling position. Across the alley my former tower
collapsed like a castle of dust, the roar of metal and wood deafening in the
tight canyon between the two buildings. A cloud of debris swirled up from the
ground, choking me and stinging my eyes. I covered my face and spat. The
platform under my feet swayed but did not give way. I looked up for the girl.
    The structure was starting to lose hold of itself. Bits of
it clattered down into my face. Wooden planks folded and spun as the bolts that
held them shriveled away. Through the rapidly growing openings above me, I
could see a door into the building that had been left open. There was light. A
pale hand slipped out and pulled the door closed, rusty hinges flaking as it
squealed shut. The structure around me groaned and leaned into the open
alleyway.
    I scrambled higher, reaching the door in half the time I
thought possible. There was a narrow iron balcony around the door. I stepped
onto it, my fingers grasping the door's round handle. My boot wasn't off the
ramshackle ladder for more than two panicked breaths when the structure
shuddered and shuffled off into the darkness, collapsing in on itself in a
horrible cacophony that roared in my head long after it had joined its fellow
tower in the alley below.
    I turned to the rusty door, laying my hand against the
rust-spotted paint, listening. There were voices, many of them, yelling and
arguing and making demands. Asking questions. I heard fear in those voices. I
heard terror.
    My hunter's heart roared to life, and I began to invoke the
Rites of the Blade.
    I am outside of myself in moments like this. The deeper I
dig into the heart of Morgan, the more of his life and his story I let flow
through my blood, the less Eva I feel. The less ... civilized. There is a raw
fire in it, the invokations wrapping around my bones and burning through my
flesh as the heart of my god flares into me. It's like dying of joy.
    I wreathed myself in Everice, the Hundred Wounds, the Rites
of the Winter War. Smoke and sparks of red and hate roiled off me. I chanted
the warrior's dedication, and the steel framework of the balcony sang as the
air collapsed around me, hardening in coils of power. Hunter's Heart grabbed
me, and I howled in perfect happiness. The sword was in my hands, the enemy was
before me. But first, the door.
    Steel splintered and brick tore under my boot. The
passageway beyond was narrow and dark. The force of my passage dug runnels in
the walls, and waves of angry light whipped in my wake. The voices had become
... urgent. I pushed through the hall and into the cheap wood-frame door at the
end. It burst like a dry leaf. They were beyond it. Screaming.
    Amonites, all of them. They had ditched the robes and
chains, but I could tell. I could smell them. Could smell the grease under
their fingernails, the oily smoke of burnsaws in their hair and clothes. The
fear. Mostly, I could smell the fear.
    The room was a tight labyrinth of head-high walls that
ended long before they reached the ceiling. They looked cobbled together, made
from bits of junk that only coupled under an Amonite's careful hand. The