CHAPTER 36
Choosing a god was no longer an act of wonder, but of alignment. Each deity governed not only faith but function. With function came a life worth living, designed by the favor of the gods.
Snippet from “The Book of Natural History” By Priestess Antonella Killoran
Lyra scrambled backward, adrenaline screaming through her veins, a frantic, unthinking motion to get out of the epicenter of the slaughter.
The fear that had been cold and distant was now a hot, suffocating presence, urging her forward.
She darted through a narrow gap next to a pair of clashing figures, the raw, metallic clang of their swords a thunderous sound to her ears.
She couldn’t distinguish one combatant from the next; they were all just swirling blurs of desperate, lethal intent.
To her left, a male in battered bronze armor let out a chilling, guttural roar as he was driven back by a figure wreathed in shadows.
Lyra leaped over a tangle of broken limbs and twisted metal, her thin silk dress snagging and tearing on the debris.
The battlefield seemed to defy logic, stretching endlessly in every direction.
Every desperate sprint she made, every corner she turned, only led her deeper into the thick of the conflict.
The horizon was obscured by a constant, shifting curtain of black smoke and raining ash, and the perimeter—the edge she so desperately sought—remained an impossible, unreachable illusion.
She felt like a trapped animal in a collapsing maze, running in a sickening loop of violence and death.
Her breath hitched, a ragged sound in the roar of battle as her wide eyes scanned the chaos. The acrid smell of smoke stung her nostrils, and the jarring clang of steel on steel echoed around her. Her skin prickled with desperate fear. She had no weapons, no armor, and no skills to keep her safe.
Lyra dodged a wild swing from a combatant in rusty armor; the male’s grunt of effort echoed like a war drum through the chaos.
She stumbled backward over a discarded shield, her feet tangling in the leather straps.
She hit the pulverized earth hard; the impact jarring her teeth.
For a sickening moment, she lay sprawled, the sounds of battle roaring inches from her head—the thud of boots, the clash of steel, the raw, terrified screams. Before she could process the pain, she rolled onto her hands and knees, scrambling to rise.
She pushed herself back into a shaky run, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
She was low to the ground, weaving through a chaos that had no pattern.
As she sprinted past a large, armored soldier who was trading blows with a cloaked figure, a dark, feathered streak flashed past her face, the sound a sharp, lethal hiss in the air.
Lyra instinctively flinched, the wind of its passage snapping at her hair.
The arrow found its mark with a wet, sickening thwack just ten feet away, burying itself deep in the soldier’s throat.
The man dropped his sword with a clatter, clawing uselessly at the shaft protruding from his neck as he gurgled, collapsing into a heap of dead weight.
Bile rose up, threatening to explode from her.
She swallowed hard, turning her eyes away from the horror; the brutal finality of the death was a fresh, terrifying force to keep moving.
Lyra stumbled forward, her movements clumsy and uncoordinated, driven solely by a frantic need to escape the immediate periphery of the slaughter.
The chilling crimson sliding down his armor, though no longer before her eyes, was etched in them forever.
Her stomach churned violently, threatening to betray the iron will she was trying to impose on herself.
She kept her gaze fixed on the ground immediately in front of her feet, trying desperately to avoid looking too closely at the horrors that littered the battlefield: the fractured bodies, the sickening pools of drying gore, the twisted wreckage of metal and flesh.
Tears burned at the back of her eyes, a sharp, physical pain that threatened to spill over and blind her if she stopped moving, but she kept stumbling forward.
Every ragged breath was a silent, desperate plea for distance from the absolute, unbridled savagery.
Her dress snagged with a sharp tearing sound as it caught on debris. The sudden resistance yanked her backward with an abrupt jolt; she crashed onto the ground; the impact jarring through her bones.
Metal boots came into her vision, causing her eyes to drift up.
A massive figure, towering and broad-shouldered, burst from the smoke directly in front of her.
She rolled over with a grunt; she pushed herself upright, her muscles protesting the movement.
He was clad in heavy, spiked iron, and in his hands was a brutal, broad-bladed sword, easily as wide as Lyra’s torso.
His gaze, sharp and unwavering, fixed on her with an icy, detached focus.
He didn’t see her as a person, but as an obstacle, a piece of flesh to be cleaved.
The massive sword swung in a swift, horizontal arc.
Lyra dove, a desperate, instinctive move that brought her crashing onto the pulverized earth.
The wind from the blade’s passage was a physical pressure above her that caused her hair to flutter.
A second swing of the blade caused a searing, white-hot line of agony as it ripped across her right forearm.
She cried out; the sound lost in the cacophony, and scrambled backward, her free left hand immediately pressing against the gash, trying to staunch the sudden, alarming flow of hot blood that seeped instantly.
It flowed past her fingers as she desperately tried to stop it.
The male didn’t pause. He followed her down, hacking the broadsword wildly at the spot where she had been. Splinters of pulverized rock and gore flew up around her as she desperately tried to push herself away, her good arm straining, her injured one uselessly pinned to her chest.
Then he paused. Towering above her, silhouetted against a backdrop of distant, raging fire, he raised the massive sword high above his head, preparing the final, decisive blow. The light glinted brutally off the edge.
Fear, absolute and paralyzing, gripped her. This is it, she thought, the realization settling with a sickening finality. This is the moment I fail. It’s over. Will they know what happened to me? Or will I be forgotten?
But in the instant before the swing began, the fear transformed.
It curdled into something foreign, something sharp and cold, yet intensely focused: rage.
A raw, potent defiance against the injustice of her end.
No, I will not die here. I need to fight.
I need the strength to save myself. I refuse to allow another person to come at me with a blade. Not again, not ever again.
A sudden, intense surge of energy, sharp as a physical blow, flooded her core. It wasn’t warm or gentle; it was electric, volatile—a sensation she had never experienced before. It was raw and made the hair on her arms stand on end.
The broadsword began its descent, slow-motion in her heightened perception, the air tearing around the blade.
With a primal, ragged cry, Lyra threw her uninjured arm up in a desperate, last-second defense, the motion purely instinctive.
The surge that had filled her amplified, rushing out of her, channeling through the tips of her trembling fingers.
A brilliant, blinding flash of blue-white lightning erupted from her fingertips, a bolt of pure, contained chaos.
It struck the heavily armored male full in the chest with a deafening crack.
He bellowed, a sound of absolute shock and agony, stumbling backward as the armor around the impact point glowed cherry-red.
Then, he fell, crashing onto the ground in a tangle of limbs and blackened iron, his broadsword skittering away.
The scent of smoke, burnt hair, and barbecued meat assaulted her nose.
Lyra lay there, her arm still bleeding, staring wide-eyed at her hand.
She was trembling, her mind reeling. What did I just do?
The raw, terrifying power that had erupted from her felt alien and utterly overwhelming.
Could I do it again? Was that pure luck, or was it the start of the command Eldric had spoken of?
She looked at her crimson-stained hand, tilting it back and forth.
She looked at the other blood still seeping from her wound.
With a ragged rip, the threads of her dress tore, the sound a harsh whisper against the chaos.
She brought the torn cloth to her forearm, feeling its soft but dirty texture against her skin, and pressed it firmly against the warm, sticky flow of blood.
She wrapped it as tightly as she could to staunch its escape.
The vicious, relentless rhythm of the battle continued unabated around her; the figures fighting and killing, oblivious to the small, unarmored woman lying in the mud tending to her wound.
Lyra pushed herself up, staggering to her feet, her mossy green eyes scanning the smoky, violent panorama.
She needed to find the end, the path, the way out.
But the endless stream of warring figures and the blurring expanse of the battlefield remained a suffocating, terrifying circle.