Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
THEA
This is unlike anything I could have imagined.
This battle is intense and chaotic and awful, but a part of me that I never truly knew existed until recently rises up, a sense of purpose that I’ve always longed for burning brightly through my veins and making my blood sing.
I may be scared shitless and worried beyond measure for my family and all of our men, but I am also exactly where I’m meant to be.
I’m meant to do this. I’m meant to fight and protect, just like Killian.
I know that this isn’t even a large battle—a “wee skirmish” Tristan had called it, actually—not compared to what we might face soon enough, so I try to let this serve as a lesson and prepare myself for what’s to come.
It was an onslaught at first, sending my senses into overdrive.
The screams and the clashing metal, the smell of blood as the white quickly—too quickly—became stained with scarlet.
As horrible as I felt about it, I’d taken Dessa’s advice.
I had stopped thinking of the army across from me as people.
If I hadn’t, I never would have been able to do what had to be done.
I sent those daggers of ice soaring through the air, saw the blood spurt as they found their targets, saw the bodies fall.
This is war, I keep telling myself. It’s war and it's messy and everything is gray. But I will do whatever it takes to keep the people I care about safe, to stop the horrors that Barony is raining down on his people, the horrors he hopes to spread through the whole of the empire.
I’m doing my best to keep the snow at bay and protect our people, but I know I can’t help everyone at once.
-You are doing well, daska. Keep going,- Soren says encouragingly, though the big cat is on edge, has been since this morning.
When I asked him if it was just the coming battle, he said that there were rumblings among the animals, rumblings that made him uneasy.
Not uneasy enough to share with me, though. Stubborn damned feline.
-Stay beside me.-
-Always,- he promises.
Killian being unable to block the power of the abominations is.
..troubling to say the least, but we’ll deal with that later.
For now, we need to make it out of this alive.
What was supposed to be a small skirmish is becoming a losing battle.
The roots are ripping through the army, tossing men about as if they’re dolls, and one of the abominations, though I can’t tell which, has some sort of shielding ability.
“Stay here!” Killian roars and leaps from the small rise.
I don’t try to stop him, knowing this is what he needs to do.
He’ll do anything for his people, and right now, anything means somehow getting those guards out of the way and that shield gone.
So, I call to him to be safe and keep my eyes on every fucking step he takes.
Anyone who nears him is met with a dagger of ice before Killian can even swing his great sword.
He casts a glance over his shoulder and winks, smiling in the middle of the bloodbath.
More roots burst through the ground as he turns to keep making his way through the melee, desperate to get to that shield. I gasp when I see them reach for the soldiers now, impaling and grabbing, like gnarled fingers.
“Great fucking Makers,” Odessa grates from beside me, letting arrow after arrow fly. Her aim is impeccable and I watch enemy after enemy fall. Enemies only. Not people. I keep having to remind myself over and over as the bodies litter the field.
I watch, eyes narrowed. One abomination has the power to control the trees, or the very least the roots beneath the field, and the other has this shielding. I spare a quick glance back to the group being guarded. There’s one more.
“So what the hells can the other do?”
“I don’t think we want to—” Dessa cuts off as a great wind sweeps through the field, sending soldiers sprawling, others managing to hold their positions by digging swords or fingers into the bloody ground.
It isn’t precise or targeted, the Alliance’s own men being thrown along with ours, but the power is undeniable.
“Wind,” she finishes as I see one of the male abominations sag, apparently worn out quickly from the use of power. “Fucking wind.”
I send another assault of icy blades sailing across the field, hammering against the shield and...
“Did you see that?” I yell.
“See what?!” Dessa shouts back.
“Watch the shield!”
I send another volley, putting more power behind them, leaning into Soren and pulling from his strength. Come on...I know I saw it...yes!
“There!!” When the blades strike this time, I see the shield ripple and then splinter, like the surface of a frozen pond. Just tiny cracks, but cracks all the same. “It can be destroyed physically!”
I shift my gaze back to Killian, wondering if he saw, and watch in awe as he cuts a bloody swath through the field.
He’s magnificent, spinning and slicing through the men as if they were parchment.
He twists and parries and bends in the most beautiful, lethal ballet.
How a man that big can move his body like that is beyond me.
“Incredibly sexy, isn’t it?” Dessa says from beside me.
I fling another volley of ice into the shield and the splinters grow.
The abomination shakes violently, holding out her hands trying to keep the shield in place.
I wonder if these abominations can reach the Brink as we can?
Can they feel it coming, or will they simply.
..expire when it becomes too much with no warning?
I force those thoughts away and focus on what Dessa just said, turning to look at her incredulously.
“Not him in particular,” she amends, rolling her eyes, “but the skill itself is incredibly sexy. That kind of deadly grace is…mmmm. Just watch Jonathan, great Makers that man can wield that sword…”
“Are you…are you really talking about how arousing these men are fighting right now? In the middle of a battle?” It’s taking everything I have not to have a complete breakdown here on this field, the screams and the blood and the death all lashing at me like a whip.
“Why not?” she shrugs. “It helps me stay calm.”
I blink at that, supposing that it makes a sort of sense.
Keeping things light in the face of death could be a good way to keep yourself from spiraling into panic.
As if hearing our conversation, Tristan parries and spins, driving his twin short swords into a man’s chest, and then turns towards the rise with a grin.
“Dessa!”
“What!?”
“Marry me!”
I huff out a laugh, despite the situation. She grins widely and lets another arrow fly.
“I’m a bit busy at the moment, but I’m happy to oblige when we finish this battle!”
He blows her a kiss and turns back, charging forward to find another foe.
“Did you...did you just become betrothed in the middle of a battle??”
“I think I did,” she says with a shrug and a laugh.
I turn my gaze back to Killian, sending a star of ice into a soldier on his right as the Commander quickly decapitates two others in quick succession.
He turns to glance at me over his shoulder again and I can’t help but smile—and alright, yes, agree with Dessa: it’s intensely attractive, the blood and dirt splattered across his neck and face making it more so. Makers, don’t ask me to explain it.
But all of those thoughts melt from my mind as a root the size of a sapling surges from the earth just beneath him, flinging him skyward.
Spindly branches reach out like fingers and grab him, slamming him back to the ground as a scream tears free from my throat.
I send a surge of ice forward, coating the limb, but the fingers of that hells-birthed hand keep squeezing Killian, pressing him deeper into the earth.
I grit my teeth, about to encase the entire thing in a block of ice so thick it would take years to dig it out, but I stop myself as the power surges within me.
I can’t be sure that I won’t hurt Killian in the process, the limb too intertwined with him to be sure I’d only coat the wood.
“Killian!” I scream as I dash forward. Dessa tries to grab at my arm but I’m too quick, spinning out of her grasp and sprinting down the rise, Soren beside me.
I may not be able to freeze the thing, but I can sure as hells chop it to bits.
Fury and rage and a strange calm all settle over me as I throw myself into the fray.
I form my sword of ice again, thick and sharp and ready to taste blood.
Soren shifts as we run and I’m tossed into the air and settled on his back in one quick, practiced movement.
I curl my fingers into the small notch in his armor, put there for this very reason, and he sprints through the throng.
I swing out with my blade as we speed by soldiers, not able to see where they fall or in how many pieces, but then Soren falters, shaking his head as if something’s wrong.
-Something is coming. Something…big.-
-What? Another abomination?- I send waves of ice forward, tossing soldiers aside like ragdolls as it clears a path for us.
We can’t move fast enough cleaving one at a time with my sword, drenched in blood as it is.
I send silent apologies to our men who are tossed aside as well and hope none of them are hurt too badly in the process.
-Um, not quite…-
And then the air shifts overhead, a strange, immense pressure, and then the sound, almost like the beating of…wings?
The first scream rings out, followed by hundreds of others. Soren digs his claws into the churned earth, a mix of blood and melted snow and mud, sliding to a stop, and we both crane our heads upward.
“Makers,” I whisper, reeling backward.