Chapter 49 The Avanki #2
They do not rush me, which surprises me more than anything. For all the movement around us, for the urgency that has taken hold of the clearing, no one reaches for me without pause. The soldiers hold their distance, their attention fixed but restrained, waiting rather than acting.
Colsar does not wait. He steps in close, his hand firm at my back, and when I move it is because he guides me forward.
The transport is closer than it looked, and stronger.
I feel it before I reach it, something low and constant beneath the fabric, a contained power that hums against my skin as though the structure itself is alive and holding.
The movement getting inside is what costs me, the shift, the moment my body changes position and everything pulls at once, deep and immediate, the wound across my abdomen tightening beneath the bandages.
I draw in a slow breath and let it out just as slowly and force my body to follow.
Once I am upright and holding there the pain changes, moves deeper, becomes something I can sit inside rather than fight.
He feels it and adjusts without being told.
Inside the air is warmer and dimmer, layered in thick cloth and furs built to absorb the force of movement before it reaches whoever rests within.
Saurin follows us in with the children held close, already wrapped against the cold, and passes them to Colsar one at a time.
He places them beside me with a focus so complete that nothing else seems to exist while he does it, adjusting the blankets, making certain they are secure before he allows himself to look anywhere else.
Then he looks at me. "You should rest."
"I will," I say, and do not close my eyes.
Footsteps approach from outside and Trophi appears at the opening, one hand braced against the frame. His attention moves from Colsar to me to the children and back.
"We move now," he says.
Colsar's gaze does not leave him. "The undead are not done. They will come.”
“They will not follow you through this.” Trophi presses his hand lightly against the frame.
“It is heavily warded, and you will not be moving alone. You have seen our numbers. The front line will clear everything ahead of you, and the rest will move with you, holding the perimeter the entire way.” A brief pause. “They avoid us in numbers like this.”
No explanation in it. Only certainty.
Colsar studies him for a moment and then nods once.
Trophi inclines his head and steps back, and a woman slips inside before the opening fully closes. No armor, no insignia, only a small satchel at her side and hands that move with quiet certainty.
"The healer," Colsar says.
She nods and comes to me without hesitation, her fingers pressing lightly along the bandaging at my abdomen, then higher, then at my wrist, measuring something I cannot see.
"You have lost a great deal of blood," she says, her voice low and even. "The wound is holding, but not strongly."
She opens her satchel and withdraws a small vial. "Drink."
I do. The taste is unfamiliar, something that spreads warmth through my chest and out into my limbs, steadying where everything has felt too thin. Her hands move again over the bandages, a faint heat following her touch, not enough to heal but enough to hold.
"This will keep you stable," she says.
"For two days?" Colsar asks.
She looks at him. "For as long as it needs to."
Then she steps back and is gone as quietly as she came.
Colsar does not move immediately. His head lifts toward the sky and something shifts in him that I feel before I understand it, the air pulling tight in a way that has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with what he has become.
His blue eye changes first, the color deepening and then burning through into copper, bright and unnatural.
His gray eye remains the same. The faint glyphs along his arms, neck, and jaw begin to glow.
The sky answers.
Gray spreads outward, smoke rolling across the morning in slow gathering waves until the light dulls beneath it. Then the sound comes, low at first and then rising, something vast and alive moving just beyond sight. The soldiers look up. Even the horses shift beneath it.
Forms move through the smoke and then break through it.
Firebirds, wings wide, cutting through the gray in controlled arcs, one after another until the sky fills with them, hundreds moving in formation above the Avanki lines. They circle once, then again, holding position above us, watching and guarding and entirely without question.
Colsar lowers his gaze to where Trophi stands beyond the transport. "I am not taking any chances with them," he says, nodding once toward me and the children.
Trophi looks at them and then back at him. "I understand."
Colsar steps fully inside and the opening closes behind him. The light dims. The hum presses faintly against my skin as though the interior has sealed itself around us.
My eyes are still on the firebirds. They are beautiful. Some burn deep orange, alive and consuming. Others move in colder flame, blue and sharp in a way that does not belong to fire.
Firebirds are rare. Known to exist, but seldom seen. The kind of creatures people place in distant terrain and leave there, as though distance alone explains them. I had never seen one. Not like this. Not in numbers.
The birds continue above us, though Colsar’s glyphs no longer glimmer and his eye is now blue again.
“Colsar,” I say quietly. “How are you doing that?”
His attention stays on the sky. “I’m not.”
I look at him.
“Then what is this?”
A brief pause. “I reach,” he says. “And they come.”
My eyes return to the sky, tracking their movement, the way they hold formation without breaking, without colliding. “All of them?”
Another pause.
“It doesn’t feel like all of them,” he says slowly. “It feels like… a few.”
I glance back at him.
“As though there are some that answer first,” he continues, his voice quieter now, more uncertain. “Core ones. And the rest…” He exhales. “The rest gather from wherever they are.”
“From wherever they are,” I repeat.
He nods once, though his expression tightens slightly. “That’s what it feels like.”
Then the world begins to move, not with the jolt of wheels or the pull of uneven ground but with something smoother and faster.
I close my eyes.
The pain is still there, and the weakness, and the hollow place left behind by too much blood lost, but beneath all of it something comforting holds. We made it this far. I pull the children closer, one on either side, their warmth grounding me in a way nothing else can.
"Two days," I murmur.
Colsar's hand finds mine without looking. "Two days," he says. “We will make it.”
I believe him.