Chapter 09 #3
“I will handle them.” Velten gave her a half-grin. “I promised you I would, and I always uphold my word. You take care of extinguishing the fire.”
She didn’t believe him. Blood seeped from the wounds on his arms and torso where fangs and claws had rent his flesh. Velten had shielded her at the cost of his own safety and was nearing his limits. If the fight kept on for much longer … he’d die.
He’d die. And then she’d be next, and it would all be her own, Crone-forsaken fault for insisting on burying her Elder.
The realization hit Semras like an icy gale. “Forgive me,” she murmured.
If death meant to claim someone today, then she’d decide who.
One by one, Semras let go of the threads of blazing fire. Freed, the flames leapt onto the dried leaves of the forest floor and climbed the surrounding trees. The burning wave spread until flames licked at the tree keeping her coven sister’s remains, but she had no time to spare to watch its fate.
Semras closed her eyes, then reopened them into the Unseen Arras.
The sight shocked her. The world’s luminous filaments flailed about violently, their colours washed out by bright red and orange. Fire devoured their tethers and remade them into flames—and heat, and ashes, and death. In the gaping holes it created, the Night peered in.
Given time, the fire would consume the world, and let It in.
Expanding her strained sight as far into the Arras as it could go, the witch raised one hand toward the sky and lowered the other to the depths of the earth.
Deep down below, water coursed through the soil in underground rivers and lakes. Far above, winds blew through light clouds. Bringing above as many of the threads below as she could, Semras begged the world to fill the sky with rain clouds.
Whether it would answer or not remained to be seen. She could do no more; she needed her remaining strength for one more feat.
Semras turned her attention to the warp shape of the inquisitor.
In the stretched time of the Unseen Arras, his movements drifted, as if wading through time itself.
Hunched down, he was gripping his sword with both hands to face the three wolf-shaped masses of threads in front of him.
Velten swayed on his feet, unbalanced by exhaustion.
A deep weariness had crept through his warp shape in the form of insidious, blackened veins. The same plague afflicted her hands, but not as extensively as his. She had been right; in this state, he wouldn’t last much longer.
There was no time to hesitate. Semras ripped the blackened wefts out of the inquisitor.
At once, strings of agony twirled out of his faceless mouth. Velten fell to one knee. She blanched but kept weaving. Turning her fingers against herself, she plucked threads of vigour right out of her core.
To give, something had to be taken. A thread woven in was a thread woven out of somewhere else, in an endless, delicate act of balance.
Semras wove the inquisitor’s gashes closed with her own wefts. Left exposed, her empty core pulsated with pain, and she took the strained, blackened threads of Velten to replace her own. The foreign sensation of someone else’s lifeforce invaded her as they furled around her warp shape.
Then sheer pain hit her, and Semras staggered back, breathless. Velten had shown no hint of how much he’d been suffering, and now she knew it intimately—in the shaking of her arms and legs, and in the wild beating of her heart, and in the weakness that seized her entire being.
His worn-out, wounded lifeforce was now hers—and hers, still strong, his—for as long as it would take for their threads to unravel and return to their respective core.
Now he could fight for them both. This was a fair Bargain—a true witch deal.
Semras hoped he would uphold it. If he didn’t, she would become easy prey.
Slowly blinking away the Unseen Arras, the witch returned to the Seen World.
The sight that awaited her made her sacrifice worth it. Velten had risen again, his grip on his sword reasserted. He thrust the blade down the muzzle of an approaching beast, and it tore through its skull in a clean cut. The wolf didn’t even have time to yelp in pain.
The inquisitor paused in front of the bloody corpse, bewildered by his renewed strength.
Ears flattened on their heads, the two remaining wolves growled. They charged again, and Velten followed suit. Semras stared at the inquisitor, unable to tear her eyes away from him.
He looked mesmerizing. Through the blood, the gore, and the screams of the beasts, his dance of death was a sight to behold. He seemed unstoppable; a single-minded force of nature, driven by a purpose beyond himself.
Lost in awe, she saw the attack too late.
One wolf threw itself at the inquisitor, teeth aiming for his throat, while the last one—the silent, fifth predator—slipped past him.
And then lunged at her.
Weakened and sluggish, Semras passively watched the sharp fangs aim for her throat as if she was still wading through the Arras.
The world swirled, and she fell.
Jaws snapped in the empty space she’d been mere seconds ago. By sheer luck, her enfeebled body had fallen to the ground just in time to avoid them. Blinking her lethargy away, Semras lifted her head.
The wolf circled back, then pounced at her once more. A primal, visceral fear froze her in place.
Time slowed down in front of the jaws of death.
Blood pooled on her lips where she had bitten them in her fall, its metallic taste seeping onto her tongue.
Beneath her palms, cool dirt and dried leaves crinkled at her touch.
The sun shimmered somewhere far above the treeline, and then faded as gathering clouds obscured it. A shiver ran down her spine.
Semras took a deep breath.
The Vedwoods were her world. She would not succumb to its danger.
The beast lunged at her, and she raised her hands. Grabbing a few threads from the wolf’s mind, she jerked them closer, then wove them to the warps of her own. At once, she felt it. The connection was weak, amateurish, but it was there. It would be enough.
Staring into the eyes of the beast, the witch pushed her will into its mind. Like a bear trap, her willpower clamped around its spirit.
She took control. Commanded it to stop.
The wolf landed on its shoulders, rose back up, and shook its head in a last-ditch attempt to resist. Its body shuddered and then fell prone.
Semras stood slowly, still clutching the threads connecting them. That wolf wouldn’t harm her, nor anyone else, as long as she kept their connection undisturbed.
She’d been told once that controlling the mind of an animal bordered the Bleak Path dangerously. Now she knew why. The intoxicating feeling of holding a sentient mind in one’s grasp threatened to fill her with vicious mirth. It could twist her. She needed to let go.
Semras didn’t get the opportunity. Velten rushed past her, sword aimed toward the beast.
“No …” she said, voice weak and hoarse, “no, wait!”
The wolf’s neck split under the inquisitor’s blade.
The threads snapped, and Semras fell to her knees. She was dying; she could feel the blood trickling from her neck, rushing down between her breasts, soaking her clothes, the soil, the—
Her hands clawed at the smooth skin of her neck. Her throat was fine. She was not dying.
It had only been the lingering mind of the slain wolf. There was no blood. She was fine.
She was fine.
Chest heaving painfully, Semras crawled to a menhir and braced herself against the stone. She retched. Tears spilled from her eyes, unbidden yet welcomed. They made her feel alive.
Damn that inquisitor. Death was not an aftertaste she’d ever forget.
Velten’s shadow fell on her, but Semras kept her gaze on the ground, trying to steady her dizzying vision. “Old Crone curse you, Inquisitor,” she said, throat burning. “I told you to wait.” She wanted to scream at him, but her voice wouldn’t let her.
Velten didn’t answer.
“Have you any idea what you’ve done?” she spat out.
A sharp metallic edge, slick and warm from wolf blood, slid beneath her cheek. The unnatural, chilling aura of cold iron stung her skin.
“Have you?” Inquisitor Velten echoed her words back at her. His sword slithered beneath her chin, forcing her head up to look at him. “In the name of the Inquisition: answer me, Bleakwitch.”