Chapter 18
AIMILIA
Aimilia gave up on her peplos shortly after finding the first three novices.
All three of them were in decent shape, having been able to kill the chimeras they’d fallen in with.
So she told them to follow the trail her vitae rope made to get to the exit.
She’d then been forced to climbed down through a tiny hole in a rock wall, and as her peplos snagged, she cursed.
Once she was through, she made quick work of slicing it at the knees.
She tucked the extra fabric into her belt in case she came across anyone with an injury that would need it.
After finding and killing two chimeras, finding five more novices, she did come across a novice who needed it.
She was trapped beneath a large rock, a chimera dead beside her, but she was gasping for breath.
Aimilia wasted no time, quickly casting and sliding a vitae platform between the girl and the rock.
Aimilia lifted the rock up and to the side before setting it down gently.
She was lucky so far everything seemed stable.
Sweat poured down Aimilia’s back. Her vitae was depleting quickly. The rope connecting her to Nikias had taken a large chunk, and if it began to flicker, she’d have to pour more into it or risk being trapped and useless, unable to find her way back.
Which meant Aimilia couldn’t afford to waste any vitae. Especially not to heal any non-life-threatening wounds.
“Commander?” The girl opened her eyes.
“Don’t speak, just listen,” Aimilia said as she inspected girl’s arm.
The girl let out a sharp hiss when Aimilia touched it.
Broken, but not horrifically. “Sit up, I have to fasten your arm to your chest to keep you from damaging it further. This will hurt, but I can’t heal it right now.
What this will do will make it easier for you to follow the vitae rope and get to the exit without your arm flying about and making it worse or causing you to scream in pain.
So in that case, a little agony now to save you some later makes sense, yes? ”
She didn’t actually give the girl time to respond. Instead, she took the arm, pinned it against her chest and started wrapping even as the girl screamed in her ear.
Once she’d tightly secured her arm, Aimilia pushed her in the opposite direction. “Take a few deep breaths if you need to, but don’t wait forever. The faster you get moving, the sooner you get help.”
And then Aimilia was off again as well.
She couldn’t stop to catch her breath. She couldn’t let herself focus on the scrapes she was accruing or the bruises she was accumulating. Honestly, why had she bothered to heal the bruises Clelia had left?
She crawled, climbed, walked, or fought.
She was coming through a narrow opening to the other side of the wall when an explosion of searing pain went through her arm that was already on the other side.
She cried out, getting a mouthful of dirt as she did so, and the sound of snarling on the other side informed her what was the cause.
But Aimilia dug her now burnt fingers into the dirt and pushed forward with her legs until she was through.
She came tumbling through the other side and was greeted with sharp teeth sinking into her shoulder since spitting fire at her hadn’t done the trick.
Aimilia twisted, launching a kick right into the goat-like middle of the chimera’s body.
It yelped, let go and staggered back, but its teeth had left a mark.
Aimilia moved her hands, unfortunately both of them since she’d been putting off letting Marcella teach her the clan mages’ style, and with a quick but definitive move, she severed the monster in two.
Right before the snake’s tail managed to hit her.
Aimilia huffed, crouched on her knees as the chimera fell into the wall Aimilia had just crawled over. Aimilia could only dully stare at it in the dim light of her harness as the wall shifted and came down.
The only thought in her head was the darkest, most vulgar curse she knew as the heavy rocks hit her.
Then…
Nikias was going to be insufferable if she survived this.
Which she might not, given the way her shoulder was bleeding and her legs were now pinned under the rocks.
And the worst part was, she’d only found twenty-five of the novices. Half of them were still down here somewhere.
“Aimilia! Up! Wake up!”
She jolted back to full consciousness as the weight pinning her legs disappeared and hands were skimming over her.
“Marcella?” Aimilia muttered, blinking as her eyes burned with the sudden addition of vitae wrapped around the curly-haired girl illuminated the tunnel further.
“Good, awake and alive,” Marcella said right as her hand came into contact with Aimilia’s shoulder, ripping a hiss from her. Marcella jerked back and looked at the blood on her hand. “Mostly.”
“I’ll—I’ll be alright. What are you doing here?”
“Gavril also did not fit. I did.” Marcella’s eyes landed on the body of the chimera and shook her head. “I did not like you being alone down here.”
Aimilia reached up with the better of her two hands and unclasped her peplos. “If the handlers hadn’t turned out to be cowards, then I wouldn’t have had to. Now I need you to tie this to at least slow, if not stop the bleeding so I can keep going.”
Marcella took the fabric and began to do so, pulling it tightly against the punctures. “Cannot heal?”
“There’s no guarantee I’d be able to manage it. It’s so complex and I’d lose vitae either way. I’m already running lower than I’d like.” Aimilia gritted her teeth as Marcella tightened it again.
“Then you go back. I will go on.” Marcella’s accent thickened as her focus deepened while wrapping the fabric.
“Not happening.”
Marcella held the fabric in place while fumbling in the dim light for the clasp before pinning it in place. She glared at Aimilia. “You are bleeding. You are burned. Go back.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d ever seen me in action before. Believe me, this is nothing. I’m not leaving you down here alone just as much as you’re not leaving me. Now, let’s go.”
Marcella sighed but didn’t argue it any further.
Instead, they pressed on together in silence.
Aimilia could feel the dirt staining the skin her rearranged peplos exposed on one side and she tried to focus on that unpleasantness instead of the pain in her shoulder and arm.
Her hand was already blistering and the skin was red even with their dim light.
She fought the urge to scream every time she was forced to use it or even when it brushed up against anything.
Thankfully they came across a large cluster of novices, all five arguing about which way to go before they spotted them on the other side of the tunnel.
Aimilia opened her mouth, ready to begin barking orders when one of them started running toward them. “Marcella!”
Marcella rushed out ahead of Aimilia and embraced the young girl, who immediately collapsed into sobs. Soon enough the other children were piling on top of her, all trying to reach Marcella. Marcella ran a hand over the first girl’s head and murmured, “I am here. It will be well. Do not be afraid.”
Aimilia cleared her throat, the stinging in her shoulder and blistering skin urging her to press forward.
“Novices, focus. You all want to be commanders, don’t you?
Then listen and obey my orders. Follow the vitae ropes attached to me and Pax Marcella.
You will not deviate; you will not lollygag.
You will follow it until you reach the top where you will be pulled out. Is that clear?”
The novices released Marcella, snapping to attention. “Yes, Commander!”
Marcella gestured for them to go. “On now, you will be out soon.”
Aimilia and Marcella pressed on. Aimilia murmured, just to have something in the air that wasn’t dirt, “I didn’t realize how much they’d warmed up to you.”
“Some,” Marcella nodded. “I am fond as well.”
When they came across the next pair, the young boy who was stuck beneath a pile of rubble his friend had not been able to free him from sobbed into Marcella’s curls the second she and Aimilia had freed him.
She held him and ran her hand over his back while his friend murmured to Aimilia that he was a no-name mage.
The sympathy Aimilia had felt for the boy was twisted as she regarded him anew.
He’d been a no-name mage trying to get on the command track? He was a fool.
Runai born to Solitus parents didn’t make it onto the command track, much less survive it.
But she supposed this was a traumatizing enough experience and for a boy who only knew the Academy as home and had no family, someone like Marcella was as close as he would ever get.
Marcella finally managed to calm him down enough that Aimilia could give her orders, but the young boy was reluctant to let Marcella go. It took far longer than she would have liked, but finally they sent the two boys on their way.
Aimilia muttered as they crawled through a narrow tunnel, trying not to bite her tongue off as her burnt arm scraped the ground, “You have more patience than I do.”
“He is good. Some just need patience. I have it, but often it is not received.”
“You must have spent a lot of time with your clan’s children then, growing up.”
“No. After my parents, Hypatia was the only one interested in me. I was familiar, but it was not the same. It was lonely.”
“Then I guess you’re just a natural with children.”
Marcella hummed in response. “I hope to be.”
They had eighteen left to find.
The two of them appeared just in time to rescue three novices from two chimeras and once the chimeras were dead, sent the novices on their way.
Aimilia was losing steam quickly, but the bleeding on her shoulder had stopped, at least for now. Every movement risked causing it to start again.
Marcella was growing exhausted as well. She’d never been a particularly powerful mage, but after Nikias had her tortured her strength had never fully returned.
Some of it had been an act, some of it had been true.
But neither woman was going to give up until they’d found all the novices. Dead or alive.
So far, alive.
When they reached the next cluster, after finding one novice alone, they had a massive problem, and the reason why the novices were so far below.
Of the five, one had a broken arm, another a twisted ankle, another bleeding from the side, and one was completely unconscious.
Alive, but knocked out. The novices had been trying to bring their unconscious companion with them, but with only one in decent health, they hadn’t gotten far.
Aimilia justified healing the girl with the wounded side, just enough to stop the bleeding so she could assist the one with a twisted ankle. It brought Aimilia to a dangerously low level of vitae, but it was worth it.
But what would they do with the unconscious girl?
Aimilia pushed herself to her feet and caught Marcella’s gaze, forcing the clan mage to pull away from the novices clinging to her.
She whispered, “One of us is going to have to help them.”
Marcella’s eyes landed on Aimilia’s arm and shoulder. “You cannot carry.”
Aimilia nodded grimly.
“So you mean, I will have to turn back.”
“I don’t see another solution. We still have more novices to locate. The head injury that knocked her unconscious needs to be looked at as soon as possible.”
“Aimilia-—”
“I know! You don’t like it, but you don’t have to. I’m a commander, that is my order. Do you trust I am making the decisions in everyone’s best interest?”
Marcella took a deep breath and nodded. “I hope I have the strength.”
“I know you do.”
So with that, Marcella, with some help and maneuvering from Aimilia and some precious vitae as a harness, secured the girl to her back and they turned back.
Aimilia was left alone once more.
A snarl echoed in the distance. She flexed her burnt hand.
And she pressed on.