47. FORTY-SEVEN #2
Beside them, a battle between Ruxians raged.
Raimee screamed as more crumbled stone crashed down.
She flinched as it skittered around her.
A pulse of energy threw her hair back. She gasped and it dissipated.
Her movements were sharp and uncertain. It was a miracle that she could distort with any control.
The boy’s hands balled into fists, and the rooftop around Raimee erupted into flame—all but the space in which she stood, hands raised, brow furrowed. Heat washed against Calver’s skin. He lost sight of her as Cul’Mon brought down a heavy swing. He’d taken Calver’s stance as resolution.
They clashed for an exhausting minute, neither gaining an advantage.
Cul’Mon swung an outside blow—an attempt to escape their holding pattern—and Calver’s weapon moved to meet it, sliding through the sloppy defense and grazing his side.
His moment of triumph fell short as Cul’Mon snapped his dowaga backwards, catching it into the clawed end of Calver’s.
He’d used an open defense as bait. Cul’Mon wrenched and kicked.
Calver grunted as pain blossomed in his fingers.
Both weapons flew a body-length away and clattered to the rooftop.
Cul’Mon was a grappler, and with far more body mass, he’d found a way to take an advantage.
He swerved to put Calver in a headlock; Calver slipped free and dove for his weapon.
Hands clamped on his boot, dragging him back before he got there.
Calver spun, fingers still burning, to come at his old master with fists.
Every hit was deflected. Cul’Mon started edging Calver toward the ledge facing the sea—away from any chance of getting the dowaga back into his hands.
He was fast. This time, Cul’Mon was faster.
A fist clipped Calver in the chin, and the world flashed and spun.
Splitting pain exploded behind his eyes until he was unable to do anything beyond keep his feet beneath him.
A warm mass pressed behind him until he was up against the ledge, salt-wind licking his face and dread skittering through his veins.
An arm pressed around his neck, another behind his head.
Calver stuck his battered fingers between the arm and his neck.
They were useless. His eyes bulged. His muscles strained. He had seconds.
He stole a sidelong glance at Raimee, still fending off attacks from the other Ruxian. Her whole body shook.
She’d come too fucking far for him to leave her here. He threw his hips backward, which did nothing to release the sleeper hold, but reminded him of the cool weight in his pocket. He reached down and triumphantly grasped a small glass orb.
Calver activated the lamp and thrust it under the waistband of Cul’Mon’s sirwal.
The release was instantaneous.
The lip of the roof rose up to meet Calver as Cul’Mon dropped him, ramming into his diaphragm.
Vision veiled by stars, lungs desperate to expand, Calver kept the presence of mind to scramble behind Cul’Mon while the man’s hands fished for the device.
He rammed into the Tera’thian commander with his shoulder, shoving him the arm’s distance to the edge.
Cul’Mon scraped for purchase, but a final kick sent him tumbling towards the sealine.
A few racing heartbeats later, and the sanguine sky lit with streaks of gold.
The explosion thundered below them, sending spray from the sea skyward in a cloud of mist.
Calver rasped for air as blood flooded his veins.
He sifted for clarity through the ringing in his ears.
It was done. Not even tissue would have survived the incineration.
But he felt no victory. No satisfaction.
Just another death, when he’d long stopped keeping tally, and there was not time to focus on it. He dove to retrieve his dowaga.
Never mind how he expected to contend against a Ruxian trained in Cul’Mon’s coliseum. Never mind digits that didn’t want to bend. Never mind his exhaustion. The fight was not yet won.
He turned, prepared to join the exchange.
And he hesitated…
The air surrounding the boy was distorted in the same way the space around the activated plate shields had been—like Raimee had created a bubble around him.
The boy’s erratic movements were useless against it.
They seemed to be hurting him. He stumbled backwards, hands to his cropped hair, but couldn’t pass through the barrier.
His moon-like eyes leveled on Calver before he looked to the sea, where Cul’Mon had disappeared.
The ships in port were flooded with evacuating Tera’thian troops.
Calver bellowed for Raimee’s attention and holstered the dowaga to free his hands. Her head snapped around to meet his gaze.
Raimee’s eyes went wide. Whether it was at the noise he’d made or the words he signaled, he wasn’t sure.
Chest heaving with short, desperate breaths, she dropped her hands, and the distortion field around the enemy Ruxian disintegrated.
The boy stared at her, face rippling. The air around them smelled of ozone, and Calver nearly expected a flash of lightning to crack between them.
Wind swept over the roof, pulling Raimee’s silver ringlets into a nest around her face.
Earth and dust swirled into a cyclone about them, but she didn’t raise her hands again.
She waited, watching the boy for long moments, until a tear cut through the dust on his cheek.
Calver hardly heard her hoarse whisper: “Go home.”
Never had he witnessed a thing more beautiful than her, in that moment. The wielding of great power had been awe-inspiring, but the choice to wield compassion in its stead was perfection.
The boy’s head swung from Raimee to Calver.
The look in his eyes reminded Calver so much of Fankalo, it struck him like a physical blow.
So much longing. The child backpedaled two steps and stopped, eyes narrowing as though considering another attack.
Then he turned and leapt over the edge. The ocean rose to meet him—water pooling upward to give him a soft bed to land on.
It carried him towards the ships in the dock below.
Raimees exhaled in relief before her knees buckled. She hit the rooftop hard, head cracking against the adobe.
Calver scrambled to her side and eased her onto her back. He half expected her to be comatose, but her silver eyes blinked at him.
“Made it.”
He dragged a hand over his face and into his disheveled hairline.
“Just in time. I think that puts our score at three to two? Not that I’m counting.”
Three to two. That she had stuck beside him long enough to save him three times…
“Old friend of yours?” she asked.
He nodded, still panting in recovery.
“You said you’d never met another Ruxian.” The statement wasn’t accusatory.
Although it seemed he’d been introduced to a number of conduits during the time he’d served Cul’Mon. He leaned closer to her, pushing the thought from his mind.
He wanted to signal, ‘You were incredible’. He wanted to signal, ‘I’m glad you’re alright.’ Instead, he didn’t signal anything. He resisted the urge to pull her into his arms.
In spite of his silence, Raimee reached up and cupped his face, thumb trailing across his beard. “It’s growing on me.”
How could she possibly, possibly want him?
Her nose scrunched. “You’re secretly funny, aren’t you?”
Preservation help him, she was magnetic. He put his hand over hers.
A dribble of energy sank into him. He pulled away too late. Raimee’s hand slumped to the roof.
Panic knifed into his stomach. Shit. The only thing he should have done after this fight was run in the opposite direction. Raimee could distort matter to her whim, shield herself against an impossible array of assaults, but she wouldn’t survive five seconds of touching him.
She’d been nearly this weak once before, after a day in Chira’na with a hand on his arm. His eyes raked the horizon. There was no Creation tree in Steila at the edge of the desert. Perhaps one of the swaying palms on the city edges… Perhaps a large patch of grass… Fucking idiot.
He needed to get her to a Red Wing medic.
Calver’s throat seized painfully as he bundled her wet kaftan around her and pulled her into him, careful not to touch her skin.
He stood, but his legs couldn’t seem to move as his mind spiraled into the well of inevitability that lay ahead.
A medic wouldn’t do anything. He’d seen Tume’amic like this.
Where their bodies failed and grew stiff from weakness and malnutrition.
Not knowing what else to do, Calver started humming.
Raimee’s head lolled into his chest. Chin turned upward, she tried to smile at him. Her eyes were dark rings, her cheeks concave. It was more of a grimace. “It’s not you… It’s that shadow… in you…”
The hairs on Calver’s neck rose.
No. No. No no no.
It rode his despair like a leaf acrest a wave. Calver stopped humming. He sought the same solution as before: fought to focus on the man he wanted to be… But he didn’t want to be the person who killed her, and for that want, the Survivor did not dissipate.
Her speckles were stark against the spaces between them. “What if I can hold it away the same as—”
The Survivor lashed forward in a sudden jolt, and another trickle of energy released into Calver. Raimee pulled in a sharp breath that never moved past her throat.
Her body changed then, in the way a body did when whatever it was that occupied it left it behind. The Survivor returned to the void’s rim, leaving Calver alone, and taking the only thing he’d ever dared to dream for with it.
No no no. This wasn’t real.
Heart pounding, he set Raimee down and put an ear to her chest. It didn’t rise.
He couldn’t breathe either.