48. Chapter 48 #3
She whipped her head around at Lyra’s repeated call, eyes desperately searching through the retreating shadows and blowing sands as a flash of lightning lit the skies.
Lyra was about halfway between what remained of the The City’s wall and where they now fought in the open sands, the shadow of the section of the wall that had trapped Aurelia shading her from the sun’s rays.
Strands of brown hair whipped wildly from the braid that crowned her head as she screamed over the roar of the wind.
“You have to make them remember!”
Isla blinked, confused, then glanced to her stone ring. Her mind spun, stomach roiling.
Make them remember.
Suddenly, the memory of Isla’s fingers tingling when she’d unlocked the memory stone rose in her mind, unbidden.
She raised her right hand before her, the golden threads she knew would be there winding their way between her fingers, around her wrist, up her arm. And she welcomed them like old friends.
A sudden, deafening crack sounded, sending Isla’s ears ringing.
Her eyes snapped up and she screamed in horror as a solid section of the wall that stretched directly behind Lyra groaned, cracks spiderwebbing across the sandstone.
Even at this distance, Isla could see Lyra’s face turn white as a sheet, her eyes wide as she attempted to sprint beyond the shadow of the rise, her slippered feet sinking beneath the sands, failing to find any kind of traction.
The wall began to give way, enormous chunks of stone hurtling toward the sands.
And then Vaelin was there, crushing his body into Lyra’s and pushing her beyond the shadow of the crumbling wall.
The stone smashed to the ground, inches from where Lyra and Vaelin rolled to safety, sending more sand billowing outward.
Vaelin turned, throwing out a wall of wind to deflect the sands back out into the dunes, as though he knew Isla needed to see that Lyra was safe.
Isla fell to her knees, relief flooding her body, but then Vaelin was up and whipping a flame-imbued dagger at a Shadowborne that had emerged from the rubble.
He thrust out a hand and Isla watched as Lyra shuffled backward where she lay in the sands, scrambling until her back was pressed against the fallen debris, Vaelin standing before her, a shield.
“Shit,” Isla heard Evric snarl beside her, and then he was running, but she was frozen to the spot, horror flooding every inch of her body as she watched a wave of the Hollowborne descend on Vaelin and Lyra, encircling them.
Isla scrambled to her feet, watching as Vaelin’s shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths.
She started to run, too, following Evric’s path.
She was sure they were all approaching burnout, so tired it was a wonder any of them were still standing.
But even as she watched, Vaelin tightened his grip on his sword, and faced the enemy with his jaw set.
A blur of black flashed by in her peripheral vision, making directly for Vaelin and Lyra, moving faster than any of them — Drae had shifted back into his wolf form.
Vaelin fought, deflecting blow after blow with his blade, as Evric hurled a wall of flame his way to force back a handful of attackers.
Isla felt a spark of hope flare in her chest and then Vaelin turned, and staggered.
Surprise seemed to flicker in his eyes as he glanced down, where a spear had pierced through his back and out the front of his chest, finding its mark just outside of where he had failed to fasten his leather jerkin, dissolving into smoke after it met its mark.
A sound she had never made before escaped Isla, as though wrenched from somewhere deep in her gut all the way up through her throat — anguish, fury, desperation.
Sand caught in the tracks of the tears that painted her cheeks as she sprinted for him, Drae, Aurelia, and Evric unleashing their combined fury upon the remaining shadows.
Vaelin’s knees buckled, a look of faint confusion on his face.
His knees hit the sand, and he fell forward just as Isla reached his side.
She flung herself onto the earth beside him, trusting the others to hold off the Hollowborne.
She turned him onto his back, drawing his upper body into her lap.
Blood. There was so much blood. Instinctively, she covered the wound where the spear had pierced his armour. His eyes shuttered closed.
“Isla, I’m so sorry,” came Lyra’s voice somewhere behind her.
Isla tilted her face to the blood red sun and screamed.
Ropes of golden light erupted from her as she pushed, forcing all of the love, fear, and desperation she felt into a web of memories.
She cast the net as far as she could, screaming so loud she felt her ears pop, the ringing weaving with the shrieks of the Hollowborne.
The earth groaned like it was being torn apart - or put back together, she wasn’t sure - the golden threads snaking through the sands, over debris, up and over what remained of The City’s wall.
They wrapped the remaining Hollowborne in memories of what they had once been, and where her magic touched them, they screamed, horrified by what they’d become.
Lyra crawled toward her through the sands, gripping Isla’s arm so hard her nails cut furrows into her flesh, staring wide-eyed at where Vaelin’s body rested in Isla’s lap.
He lay still and unmoving in a river of blood.