31 | Kiandah
Shadow Keep
The Last Stand
I expected to wake up back in Yaron and my chambers in Okayo’s care after having had my throat slit and being stabbed in the back by fucking Merlin. Instead, I woke up to the feeling of Yaron’s furry body wrapped around me, a deep, stabbing pressure in my back and in my throat — and shortly thereafter, to the sight of zombies attacking the castle.
Yaron’s beastly body charges to a stop in the center of the highway line and, if given the chance, I know what he’ll say, so I speak first, “You can’t leave me here.” My family’s in there. The town is in there. All of Shadowlands is in there. But I know those arguments won’t sway him, so I try another. “There’s nowhere for me to go.”
He glances towards Owenna, his fur matted with venom. He has scratches all over him, deep and appearing infected. Owenna’s still asleep — ancestors, I hope. Yaron glances up at Sipho, who is barely conscious as he holds her against against his lap to the best of his ability.
“I can watch them, my Lord,” he says, each word laced with pain as he pulls Owenna up and against his chest. Her body is slumped, but she moans when Sipho moves her, a pained sound that fills me with relief. “I’d give my life before I let anyone harm them.”
“Sipho,” I command, speaking without giving Yaron a chance to. “Take Owenna and find cover. We will come back for you when the battle is won.” And then to Yaron, “Sipho and Owenna are too injured to fight. But I can.”
He doesn’t speak. I don’t even know if he can. I gently tangle my fingers in his fur and tug. “I couldn’t fight before because there was too great a risk of hurting the living, but not now, not against them. You have been my shield before, for all of this time. Now let me do this. Let me be this for you. Let me do what I do best — the only thing I know how. Let me save them. I can do this.” Let me save you.
He still doesn’t move, he barely even acknowledges me, but keeps his snout swiveling between Sipho and the undead on the hill, so I do the only thing I can think of — I punch him as hard as I possibly can. “That, my little Berserker, is my command, now move before you anger your Lady.”
He releases a roar and doesn’t hesitate a second more. He plunges ahead, leaving Sipo and Owenna behind, fighting on despite the wounds he’s sustained. I can feel him flagging, though, and it worries me. He can’t even help me fight an entire army of undead…
…I’m going to have to do this all by myself.
Nervous flutters pick up in my belly as we approach the undead masses swarming the gates of the keep. There are so many of them. Maybe more than hundreds, even. They face away from us, trying to get into the castle. High walls keep them out, but some are climbing and climbing successfully. They haven’t gained entry yet and it’s because of the mounted resistance — not just Crimson Riders, either. The people have come out in defense of their town, their city, their Berserker Lord and his Lady.
They are defending the keep.
Townspeople fight arm in arm with Crimson Riders using swords and battle axes, sure, but also torches and pitchforks to try to hold back the horde. I can’t make out faces from here, but I can see up the hill how savage the fight is and I can see that the dead are gaining ground. They’re winning.
My heart is a drum and I taste ash in my mouth. I can feel Yaron’s indecision, sense his hesitation. He would abandon his castle and his keep to protect me, I’m sure of it. And I both love and hate that I could be the downfall of the Shadowlands.
I won’t be its downfall. And I won’t be his, either.
I’ve had enough of other people saving me.
I use his fur to pull myself higher on his body so I can speak over the sounds of battle, battling for his attention. “Charge ahead. Get me past the horde. Get me on the side of our fighters.” He lunges ahead, but rears back up the moment the first undead — a male with one eye missing and a broken left arm — turns towards us. He opens a mouth full of fangs, dripping with venom that’s black, not silver like the venom that now swims through my veins, bonding my lovely beast to me forever.
I grip his fur harder and shift, pulling myself up onto his back with shaking arms. I’m strong enough from my time in the kitchens, but injury and inactivity have taken their toll. I’m panting by the time I’m upright. He lurches forward and decapitates the zombie, but he’s not moving forward with any sort of zeal as eight or nine undead Alphas turn towards us.
He releases a low growl and begins a slow retreat. I bend forward over his back, my fingers tangled in the black fur of his neck, streaked with silver. Those silver streaks do things to me. I brush my lips behind his ear. It twitches wildly, this massive thing as large as my face is, as I say, “Move forward, beast. I am your Omega. Do not disobey.”
He starts forward, rattling loudly and swiping creatures out of the way with his massive paws. He’s attacked by several at once but he’s quick to dislodge them, and the ones he doesn’t, I am able to douse in fire. Bright blue flames spiral from my fingertips in gusts and bursts, incinerating zombies to dust the moment they make contact.
We move forward like this, the swarm getting thicker and thicker, my flames getting hotter and hotter, my hands shaking with need — a need to do something even greater. We reach the line of our fighters, who part before us, trying to create a path for their Lord and his Riders to reach the keep, but I shout, “Stop, Yaron. Turn. Let me dismount.”
As my feet hit the sodden ground, I see Renard fighting close to where I stand and shout up at him. “Order your soldiers to fall back behind the line of fire.”
He swings his sword and it lodges into the shoulder of an undead female who lunged at him and grabbed hold of his forearm. His vambrace is covered in black bite marks. He’s sustained many bites and scratches so far, but his determination is clear. I can see it in his eyes, in the lines of his face. He looks at me and at his Lord standing at my side, fighting off any undead who come too close to me.
“You should get inside, my Lady!”
I grab his shoulder as he finally tugs his blade free of the corpse. She comes at him again, but I lift a hand and her head all but disappears in the blink of an eye, leaving behind only ash and a flickering blue. More of the undead turn towards us then and Yaron’s battle cry gains in volume. He starts forward, but I grab his fur and tug as hard as I can. It doesn’t have any effect — wouldn’t if he didn’t let it. He obeys instantly, returning to my side. To heel.
“I said fall fucking back, soldier! Do not question me again!” I shout at the top of my lungs, my voice all but a shriek. “Behind the blue flames!”
“What flames?” he grunts in reply.
I step forward, nearly getting myself buried beneath two undead that loom much taller than I do and seem to have me in their sights. Renard manages to swing his sword across one of their throats while Yaron bites off the arm of the other. I use the small space they’ve afforded me to step forward into the undead horde while Yaron roars his displeasure at my back. I lift both arms and I recall words once said to me by Yaron as a compliment. Little did we know then that they were really a premonition.
You have the heart of a warrior, standing alone on the plane of battle against an army of the undead. You carry the conviction that you can and will vanquish them all because you have the lives of those you love to protect.
I gasp, breathing in a lung full of sickly, spoiled air and I see what I want, visualizing it, feeling it in my whole body, the desire not to hurt, but to save. I gather that deep breath, I gather my nerves, I gather all the love I have within and around me…and I exhale.
Blue and purple fire zips across the ground, a clean line that holds despite those who attempt to trample it. Shouts of confusion rise up from our people. Renard chokes once, but recovers in the next instant. “Fall back! Behind the flames! Cyprus, Dorsten, relay the order!” He shouts to his right and then to his left, somewhere behind us so that his voice can be heard over Yaron’s immense breadth. Even though I can’t see him over many taller bodies, my heart beats brilliantly, knowing that at least my brother is still here, fighting among the living against the dead.
The undead fall into the flames, undeterred, but our people are quick to burn, to hurt. I can feel their pain as the fire dances up their pantlegs, but eventually shouted orders are relayed back to us. Renard looks down at me and nods once. “It is done, but the undead are advancing…”
“Are you sure? Anyone caught on the other side of the flames will die.” And I can’t have that. I can’t stomach it.
Renard blinks at me again, looking confused. An undead attacks, but he shoves them back with all of his might. He relays my order again and after a tense moment that lasts an eternity, in which time an entire line of undead are able to cross the fire, moving around and past me and Yaron, who works hard to dispose of them but is flagging, Renard shouts — half in fury, half in pain with a female hanging from his arm, her teeth sunk deep into his wrist — “It is done, my Lady. But you better act fast or we’ll be over…”
I duck beneath the swinging arms of an undead male and step forward, directly into the fire. Yaron roars at my back, but by now, two undead separate us and more are coming, closing in, crawling closer. I can feel the fire on the soles of my feet, soothing and warm in my wounds, and I can feel the heartbeat of the earth begging me to rid it of this abomination.
An abomination my family helped cause and whose sins I will now undo.
I suck in another breath that tastes of sour fruit and rotten flesh and close my eyes just as grizzly, skeletal hands close around my once severed neck. And when I open my eyes a heartbeat later, blue appears everywhere, as a wall, as the wind. It moves forward, rolling silently like a beautiful sapphire veil dancing in the lightest summer wind.
Lightness fills the world and it’s almost like a summer day, back in a world that once existed before the Fates and the rotten woods of Paradise Hole and inequity and cruelty stole everything. Every rose, every bloom, every dry grass, every full moon. The sun and the stars, it took those, too, but they can come again, I know it. I know it…
The blue rolls beautifully down the hill, away from the keep. The undead fall beneath it, but because they are dead, they don’t scream. They do not try to retreat. When the blue light reaches their reanimated bodies, the undead falls in its first step, turns to ash in its second, and then to nothing at all.
The fire burns so hot, it doesn’t matter if there is metal studding the moldy rags of their clothing, it doesn’t matter if they’re wet or dripping in undead venom or the blood of the living. It doesn’t matter, because the fire isn’t cleansing, it’s reductive, returning the undead to what they should have been the moment the souls left their bodies.
Nothing.
Nothing but memories of the lives that were before. Beautiful lives, I’m sure. Just like the lives of those behind me, still fighting the final undead my flames couldn’t reach without hurting someone breathing.
The blue makes its way all the way down the highway line, rolling over the ground and turning the tan, packed earth to a patchy dark brown and black. The grass is gone, blackened to dust, the mud is dried beneath it and its flakes spiral into the air in the second wind my body makes. The wind blows down the hill, chasing the blue and then billowing through it, dispersing it as the hill reaches its valley and then scattering it finally as it climbs up towards the next peak that leads to Orias.
There are no undead between me and Orias now. No undead in sight. There were also oxcarts and horse-drawn wagons left in the middle of the road, undoubtedly abandoned when the undead first attacked. They’re gone now, too.
The quiet fades as the last of the blue is washed away, like sandcastles fighting high tide. The cerulean fire licks and flicks at the air and it’s almost as if it succeeds in transferring its beauty, because without warning, the sky opens up. Right over the hill that leads down to the village, a patch of blue sky appears bright and holy. I know that the ancestors are watching now and I know that I’ve done them proud and brought them glory.
I turn as the clanging sounds of armor and shouts from the battle blink back into my awareness. I see the last of the undead fighting for nothing, because they don’t know they’ve already lost. They don’t know anything.
I turn to see my brother, Cyprus, striking one down a second before another turns to face off against him. His gaze meets mine and he tells me to look out. I turn and stagger a step back, feeling woozy and wobbly on my feet as I make eyes at the undead female who leaps towards me. I throw up my hands, but my magic is finished and also…unnecessary. A blurry shadow slams down between us as Yaron’s massive jaws crunch through her torso, tearing her to shreds. The pieces of the creature scatter around my feet and I slowly lower my hands when I sense the danger is over.
I blink to see Yaron kneeling before me in the dirt as a man, his naked body covered in black slashes and bite marks that make the scars on his back look like child’s play. I gasp, “Yaron…”
His chin tips up, his hair slashing through the air and away from his face, the grey at his temples revealed. He rises in one sinuous movement and grabs me around the ass, lifting me up high on his shoulder so that I tower over him and everyone else as he steps out onto the blackened field where undead once fought, where his people made their stand.
He moves out far enough that I can see to the left and to the right, all the way down the line of our fighters, all of whom risked their lives to fight with all they had. The undead are vanquished. I can’t see any more of them among the living, bruised, and very injured faces that shine back at me. All eyes are on us, on me.
Yaron transfers my weight to one arm and lifts his other fist. He bellows, “To the Lady of the Shadowlands! To our Fallen Fire Omega!”
A roar slams into me with more force than the fire had as our people scream and shout and applaud for me. Tears fill my eyes as I brace against the force of their cries of adulation, and against the force of the pride that batters me. Overwhelmed by emotions, by what I’ve just done, by my body’s spent energy, by the dust swirling around us, I cry and laugh at the same time and wave to the people.
Yaron lowers me to the ground a moment later and as soon as my feet touch down on packed, scorched earth, he staggers. I lunge to catch him, but he’s too heavy and we hit the ground together, me on top of him, both of us near naked except for the scraps I’m still wearing.
“Yaron,” I whisper down into his face.
He grins up at me and says, “I knew you were capable of taking a life when it truly counted. Thank you for saving us.” His eyes are fluttering. He needs medical attention. I can hear people approaching us, voices shouting orders. I know he’ll be okay. He’ll have to be. Because I didn’t do what I did to kill anybody. Only to save. Always to save him.
“Saving you,” I whisper. I lean down and kiss him gently, tasting the venom on his silver-coated mouth. “Besides, it’s not taking a life if they’re already dead.”