Darksiders: The Abomination Vault Read Online Free PDF

having lain here dead for some time—simply overmatched us. But I do not suppose we can know for certain; perhaps we were, indeed, unwary. Careless.
    They burst from the trees, making for the gateway to Eden, and we almost failed even to spot them! They had come to this world some distance away, taken their time, crept slowly and silently through the underbrush until they’d drawn near enough to make their charge. They were, too, astonishingly small. Six-limbed, with an almost canine body and a humanoid trunk, but even had they stood upon their hind legs, they’d scarcely have reached my shoulders. Headless. Featureless, save for a smattering of unfamiliar runes scarred into their substance.
    Stone, these creatures, not flesh. Constructs, clearly intended either to labor or to do battle as the occasion might warrant. Their fingers were long, far too long in proportion. They twisted and writhed, flexing in ways no natural stone should flex, sometimes blending fluidly together before solidifying once more. They could, it appeared, form only the simplest of tools or the simplest of weapons, but their edges were sharp and their blows heavy.
    You know, better than most, how effectively the simplest weapons can kill.
    We needed no orders from Malahidael. The Faneguard trained and drilled extensively for any contingency—including a sudden influx of earthbound adversaries from the depths of the trees. We each had our assigned positions, and we took them without hesitation.
    I heard the cannons engage from behind, saw bursts of raw force and blessed flechettes erupt across the forest. Miniature volcanoes, they were, or the Creator’s lightning! Whole swaths of forest were blasted apart, everything within shredded or incinerated. No simple stone, even mystically vivified as these constructs were, could stand against such a bombardment. The creatures died by the scores!
    Yet they appeared by the
hundreds
. Someone prepared heavily for this attempted incursion; by the time I and my brethren had closed to do battle, necessitating the silencing of the cannons, there must have been well over a thousand of them scuttling toward the gate.
    I dropped through the trees, wings spread only enough to slow my descent. A blizzard of leaves and broken branches swirled out around me, torn from the boughs at the touch of my armor. Barely a moment’s thought was sufficient to call the power inherent in my weapon; lightning and fire flickered across the blade in intertwined arcs.
    The earth shook beneath the impact of an entire phalanx of the White City’s soldiers. The first of the constructs was directly below, and I cleaved it with the glaive even as I landed. It burst apart, unable to stand against the sacred steel, let alone the powerful energies that danced over it. Several bits of stone shrapnel ricocheted from my armor, and I recall a brief flash of pain as one drew blood across my scalp, but it was a trifling wound, easily ignored.
    And just as well, as I had no attention to spare.
    A dozen and more of the constructs came at me from allsides, their hands oozing into blades of rock. At first, they could not so much as touch me. I swept between them in a dance of feet and wings, sometimes stepping, sometimes turning, sometimes rising high above. Every swing or lunge they made cut only empty air, or gouged the tree trunks, while almost every sweep of my glaive obliterated another foe. I could not take the time to look about me, and even if I could, the forest blocked my view—yet it seemed, from the splintering sounds and battle cries, that my brethren were doing as well as I.
    But there were so many, so many … And they were more cunning than we credited.
    Our flight ceased to be an advantage as they started coming at us from the treetops! Apparently their legs were just as malleable as their hands, making climbing as simple for them as walking. They brought several of us down in those first moments, diving upon us from above, crushing