Chapter 28 #4
The avatar unleashed a barrage of divine arrows into the frozen beast, piercing him all along the length of his scaled body.
Aurora held on until long past the moment when her mind felt like it might split open.
Blood rushed from her nose and filled her ears.
Pain exploded all over her body but still she held on.
It was only as her heart seized that she let go.
Her vision went dark as Drakon plunged to the ground, broken and bleeding.
The avatar then used her holy blade to tear a hole in the fabric of the world beneath the beast. As Death swept over her, Drakon slipped into the chasm, sealed away.
Then she was atop a loper, baiting Drakon into the canyon trade road.
He screamed invective at her, and she back at him, taunting him.
On a promontory nearby, the avatar was waiting to leap atop the beast and split its skull.
Drakon dove, just as they’d planned. But then the beast opened its mouth, flame building in its throat.
Merciful Triad, there was nowhere to go.
As the purple fire blasted from its mouth, her magic surged inside her for the first time.
The world around her slowed. Only she and the loper were moving.
She screamed at her mount to ride as fast as it could.
If they could just make the bend ahead, they might survive.
But her magic drained out of her long before she could take shelter.
All she felt was a roaring heat before the end.
When she opened her eyes again, she was waving to a cheering crowd before entering the palace. Nobles bowed, congratulating her and the avatar at her side, his famous sword at his hip. Children threw flowers on the path before her, their smiles heartwarming. These were the people she’d saved.
“Avatar, a word?” the High Priestess of Knowledge asked, approaching them.
“Of course, Orithyia,” the avatar answered.
“Go on ahead, we’ll be there shortly,” Orithyia said, smiling.
Aurora continued into the receiving chamber where she was instructed to wait until called by the queen.
She was to be given a noble title for her efforts in quelling the Beast of Old.
It had been such a near thing, too. If not for an army healer, her overuse of wild magic might have killed her. The avatar joined her in short order.
“What did Orithyia want?”
But whatever joy the avatar had felt moments ago was long gone.
“I’m sorry, Oracle.”
“What do you—”
The holy sword pierced her heart. Her last sight was of the avatar’s pained expression.
“I’m sorry. If you live, Drakon will return,” he said, sobbing.
Death swept over her.
A dank prison cell greeted her next. Cold, hungry, and bruised from her beating, Aurora curled up on the filthy straw in the corner and prayed for salvation. All around her, the moans and screams of the other prisoners echoed off the stone walls, making it impossible to sleep.
Heretic.
That was what she’d been branded.
And soon, the paladins of Justice would take her away. Would any of them believe her when they all thought her a mad traitor?
A light illuminated the hall outside her cell, and soon the sound of footsteps followed. Prisoners shrieked and screamed. The only thing worse than rotting here forgotten was to be trapped here, waiting to be remembered.
Aurora froze, praying the jailor would pass her by. But if she’d ever possessed an ounce of luck, it had long run dry. Outside her cell, a figure swathed in black. Orithyia.
“Your Holiness!” Aurora raced to the bars of her cell. “Please, you must tell them I’m no heretic! You know I never colluded with Drakon! Please, vouch for me at the trial!”
“I’m afraid I can’t, Oracle. The trial is long over. Soon, the paladins will come to take you to your execution. It won’t be a quick death. The people are outraged that you lived while the avatar fell.”
“I kept her alive as long as I could! I-I’ve had so little training! Please!”
“This is all I can give you, in recognition of our long association,” Orithyia said, producing a vial. Dark liquid sloshed inside. “It is painful, but it is quick. A better death than the one that awaits you outside.”
So it had come to this? Great, heaving sobs wracked her.
If poison was the better bet, what had they planned for her?
Burning? Crucifixion? Torn apart by wild dogs?
Fed to the beasts in the gladiator’s pit?
It would be slow and horrifying if this was the kinder death.
Aurora held out her hand and took the vial.
“Do not tarry. They will be here any moment.”
Aurora uncorked the vial and swallowed the contents. Agony ripped through her, an acid devouring her throat, burning its way through her body, annihilating everything in its path. Orithyia’s smiling face was the last thing she saw.
Over and over again, Aurora foresaw her death.
Most played out the same as the first few she’d seen.
A few deaths snuck up on her in the dead of night, a blade pressed to her throat and a whisper that it was better this way.
And in one memorable death, she’d been tossed a vial as the last bricks were laid, sealing her inside her tomb, given the options of a quick death by poison or slow suffocation.
In each reincarnation, she never lived long after the cycle of calamity, if she survived it at all.
On and on it went until she’d seen her death a dozen times, spanning the course of three thousand years.