The light also shone on the blood blooming through the bandages on Brindani’s leg, a hindering wound at best. Turning back to the clearing, she stared into the glinting pairs of eyes appearing at the edge of the vine-trees, pressed low to the ground and creeping forward. Ghaelya crouched, caught between storm and shaedling and wounded companions. She clutched at the growing warmth in her mind, let it expand and spread across her body.
“Tess,” she muttered, using the name to focus her spirit and the burning beneath her skin. The tides within her slowly pulled away to expose a smoldering shore of warm flame.
“Ghaelya?” Brindani said in disbelief, though his voice barely registered. A glistening river of molten energy flared with her pulse, feeding her bloodlust, reviving it, changing her flesh into the pyre she felt inside. Her seafoam green skin warmed and reddened to a pale crimson as a scent of smoke filled her nose and mouth. Flickering flames writhed within the energy lines across her body and flowed across her scalp in a long mane of fire.
She gazed over the wall with eyes like glowing coals and waited for the inevitable attack.
When it finally came, no word from Brindani was needed. A shadowy spear cracked against Brindani’s bow, throwing his shot off-aim. Beating wings swooped close, and her reflexes took over in an explosive burst of speed. The shaedling’s sparkling eyes, blank and full of hate, guided her sudden charge. Snarling savagely, Ghaelya placed one hand and one boot upon the wall and hurled herself into the air like a tongue of curling flame.
Her blade flashed as she twisted backward, dragging the edge hard and deep across the dark fey’s abdomen. Shadows poured from the screeching beast, a fountain of darkness that gushed over her as she completed the turn and landed in a crouch. The shaedling fell out of the air as Vaasurri’s lantern flew over the wall, lighting the immediate area in a vibrant green glow. Ghaelya rushed to match the creature’s descent, slicing its throat before it touched the ground. As a thin smoky mist pooled around her legs, she searched for another opponent.
She sidestepped movement from her right, narrowly dodging a hurled spear of shadow as she charged its owner. Arrows whizzed by her shoulder as Brindani spotted more of the fey rising in the grass. The creature met her charge, a dark sword appearing in its hand, a leering skull-like grin on its dark, armored mask of bone. She rolled into the duel, her sword clashing dully against the thing’s shadowy blade.
Spinning around its position, she forced it to keep moving, to keep readjusting its stance as she slashed and turned. Her sword edge caught on the dark fey’s wrist, and the wavering blade dissipated as it was dropped. She drove the point through the beast’s chest and pinned it to the ground, somersaulting over its body as she withdrew the blade and spun to meet the next attack, forcing another of the shaedlings into the edge of the vine-trees. The whiplike branches reacted instantly at the contact, striking like snakes and leaving the fey writhing on the ground, its wings broken beneath it.
Vaasurri crawled carefully between the trees, crouching low. He struck precisely against any shaedling that came within reach over the twisting grove. Ghaelya smiled and fought closer to the clearing’s edge, giving the killoren more targets and making the dark fey nutter dangerously near the defensive trees.
As she closed with yet another of the shaedlings, she underestimated the reach of its shadowy spear and received a long painful gash down her arm. Slapping the fey’s weapon aside she jumped and wrapped her arms around its waist, dragging it to the ground as a searing heat built up in the wound it had given her. Slamming into the grass, flames erupted between their bodies, bursting from her broken skin. The beast’s cries of agony ended with her sword through its throat, and she stood back to face its companions, the smoky smell of burnt flesh surrounding her.
Lightning flashed deep crimson in the quiet space behind his eyelids, burning little spots of light that faded slowly as he stirred. Uthalion tried to get up and rolled over onto his side, the motion turning his stomach and making him choke on bitter bile. With some effort he opened his eyes, blinking at a blurry dark world lit by flickering lights and thunderous crashes. Rain splashed onto his face, and he coughed painfully; his throat burned and his swollen tongue ached. Spasms of pain pulsed through his chest as he tried to find purchase on the ground, to dig his hands into wet grass and soft mud, a surface that seemed determined to evade his efforts.
He was not asleep, though somewhere in the haze of his thoughts he was aware of a thin veil where wakefulness hid among blurry shadows. Between reality and dream he fought to rise, clinging to the ground, barely, as though it would escape him, leave him hanging as it spun away.
He pushed himself up, staggered by something, some injury he could not recall that caused his body to ache and creak. The crimson flashes came again, indistinct and familiar, arcing down from and through a cloudy sky. Voices cried out accompanied by horrid screams and shrieks.
“No,” he muttered in horror, squinting through bleary eyes at the storm overhead, searching for the beasts that had swam so gracefully and horribly through the skies over Caidris. “Not again,” he added breathlessly.
Alarmed, he rolled to one knee, slowly drawing his suddenly heavy sword, its tip falling to the ground. His men needed him. He would not let them face the terrible task alone, the work that needed to be done. He caught a glimpse of Brindani in the red lightning, and he followed as the half-elf disappeared beyond a low wall.
“Secure the left flank,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse and raspy. “Don’t let them get… Don’t let them get to… the farmhouse.”
Dark shapes flitted left and right, bright blades reflecting the red lightning and chasing shadows. He stumbled to the battle, a determined anger pushing each step. He tasted blood in the back of his throat and breathed its coppery scent through his nose. A shadow approached, crawling in the grass, hiding from the light. He reeled backward as it came closer, blinking and resisting what he saw, the veil separating him from reality lifting for a heartbeat before folding around him again.
Something was wrong.
“You’re already dead,” he said to the thing, his voice rising in defiance of the image before him. “Y-you can’t be real… You’re already dead!”
It rose into a crouch, the blank face wavering into the image of a small boy, twin mouths gaping with teeth from either side of its face. Various eyes blinked, but the one that struck the most was the remaining normal eye, peering at him beneath a crumpled brow in pain and confusion. A long black tentacle lashed at him, and he deflected it clumsily at first, but as it came again he swung back with more force.
“You’re already dead!” he screamed and bashed at its mass.
It shrieked and came again.
They traded blows, and with each one Uthalion tried to reconcile reality. But the line blurred, and he grew frustrated, though the fear for his men remained strong. He heard Brindani’s voice nearby, but the words were lost, a jumble of confusing sound that only served to strengthen his sword-arm. He landed a blow against the shadowy child’s chest and struck again as the twisted thing staggered.
“You’re already dead…” he muttered, wondering at the truth of the words as they echoed over and over again around him. The thing fell, trying to get up from the grass. He noted the tall grass curiously. The streets of Caidris had been hard dirt, trampled by crowds of people who had been broken by foul magic. They had come in hordes, shambling from the south, from Tohrepur. The thing leaped wildly from the ground, and he hacked through its gut, kicking it back to the dirt as a fountain of black erupted from the wound.