Chapter 38 #2
It’d been so long since Alissa left, she feared Dhalia wouldn’t recognize her when she returned.
A flashback of the past six months overwhelmed her with a sense of melancholy.
She remembered the moment she first saw the glowing threads encircle Dhalia’s small figure, the panic that led her to kneel on the cemetery floor, trying to wave the threads away with her bare hands.
She thought about how crossing the wall before had seemed so unattainable.
She reminisced about everything she had learned and everything she had seen, but one thing she knew for a fact: she would never have learned the truth if she had stayed in Bryniard.
She recalled the moment she met Eldric, the look of alarm mixed with annoyance in his eyes, and all the times he had saved their lives.
She remembered falling in love unexpectedly and seeing the ocean for the first time.
The memory of Desi also came to mind: the days they spent together in Nyfrel and flashbacks of her betrayal made Alissa’s blood boil with anger.
Her mind then triggered the moment her head fell to the floor.
She thought about Freyah. They left their hometown together as it always had been, but Alissa would be returning without her, and the feeling brought a stabbing pain to her chest. She replayed every fond memory she held of her sister of the heart, her passing forever a hollow space in Alissa’s soul.
The agony of knowing the Wellers kept her daughter safe while she failed to keep theirs alive hurt her to the bones.
Alissa didn’t panic, only because her will to continue was stronger.
And so, she did. She continued with Eldric right beside her. Fiercely, relentlessly, they rode as the wind whipped against their faces with the speed of the ride. As the landscape changed from mountains to plain fields, they rode.
12 HOURS UNTIL TIME OF DEATH
The child now was the height of a full-grown adult.
The teenage rough skin was replaced by the features of a mature woman.
She looked older than her own mother, and some of her golden hair strands gradually turned gray.
Her brown eyes still held the true innocence of a child, but also the ground-shaking fright of understanding this was the end of her life.
“I want my mother,” she cried, not knowing if her prayers would ever be heard.
Guilt hit when Alissa realized her daughter must look a lot older as the symptoms slowly crept in.
She thought about how confused and scared her little girl must feel at seeing all those changes and not really grasping what they meant, only knowing that those who had the same happen before her were taken to the grave.
Oh, how she wished she had never stayed in the capital for that long, how she wished she could be by her side right now.
“Hold on, baby. I’m coming home,” she whispered, as if hearing Dhalia plead for her.
6 HOURS UNTIL TIME OF DEATH
Dhalia’s golden hair had fully faded to gray, a shade that relentlessly changed into a whiter tone by the minute.
Deep wrinkles were etched around the sides of her eyes, and across her forehead, the skin of her arms and hands became softer, thinner.
Her senses now slipped through her fingers as her eyesight and hearing were no longer the same.
The energy of youth that fed her body when the day began was long gone.
Her body was almost six decades old, but her mind and spirit were still only five years old.
Alissa and Eldric let go of Zig and Zag when they were close enough to continue their path on foot.
Keeping the horses would call too much attention to themselves.
They lay low on the grass, hidden among the bushes.
Distant on the horizon, the great stone wall stood as tall and immaculate as Alissa remembered.
“Now I understand why we haven’t seen Iron Claws on the way back here,” Eldric spoke in a hushed voice, and it seemed he could read her mind.
“How many did you count?” she asked.
“About forty. Ten archers on the top of the wall, the rest wielding swords.” His expression filled with worry as he looked at her. They were skilled fighters, but the odds weren’t in their favor on this one. “How many can you take down with your magic at a time?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I’ll hold as many as I can.”
“So, here’s the plan—we will wait here until the sun has completely set. If we go now in daylight, we will have no chance against them.”
Waiting that long was a risk, but Eldric was right. Even with the aid of magic, she wasn’t sure if she would be capable of taking down twenty trained men on her own.
“When the time comes, you will first hit the archers—aim for their arms and hands to injure them enough not to be able to pull the bowstring,” Eldric explained.
She nodded.
“When the other soldiers realize the men on the top of the wall are injured, they will send reinforcements to the top, becoming more vulnerable on the ground. That’s when we’ll strike.
” His palm splayed on the back of her neck, his brows furrowed, showing his apprehension.
“We’ll fight together side by side, you disable them first with magic and finish it with your dagger or your arrow, I will take those you can’t hurt with power. Do you understand?”
She agreed, the immensity of what they were about to do finally coming to the surface. “Together.”
He kissed her forehead as a half-smile spread across his lips. “Always.”
3 HOURS UNTIL TIME OF DEATH
Dhalia aged four years an hour; she now appeared to be eighty-four years of age.
Her body had more wrinkled skin than soft, and her fair skin was filled with dark spots of aging.
Her back was hunched, and she could barely walk without assistance.
Mrs. Weller helplessly watched the girl’s life evaporate.
There was nothing she could do other than wait in desperation for the moment the siren would ring again.
Nightfall came in.
This was the moment Alissa had been waiting for.
Old wood scraped their backs as they hid behind a large trunk.
Alissa had expected after so long enhancing her magic and preparing herself to be back in her hometown, she would not let the obstacles ahead shake her confidence in victory.
Unfortunately, theory was never the same as practice, and taking the risk to glance beyond the safety of the trees was definitely a mistake because when her eyes captured a glimpse of the dozens of armed men standing in her way to save her daughter, her heart went into an erratic rhythm.
She was terrified.
Second only to love, fear was the most dangerous emotion a person could feel. It scrambled the senses and distorted reality, threatening the mind to believe the worst. Whether it was fear for her life or another’s, the fear of not being enough, or the fear of failure—fear was always the same.
As a child, Alissa imagined fear as a small, round, mischievous creature with wide, gleaming eyes and midnight-furred skin.
She pictured the little demon now, laughing with malice, as it tugged the strings of her brain, making her body sweat and tremble to its will.
She imagined her heart clutched in its tiny hands, squeezing it until the loud throb on her throat was the only thing she heard.
She had always been a brave woman, but even with her defiant spirit, resisting the tricks of fear demanded more of her willpower than she had left.
This time, she could not afford to let fear be the thing that stopped her. This time, she would not yield.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, searching for the center of gravity within her mind.
Before she mastered her power, it had been a struggle to locate that quiet place when the evil claws of her magic tried to dig their way through her mind.
Whenever she tried, her inner voice would surge to life, narrating every thought in a frenetic rhythm, dragging up traumatic memories and worries about the future.
But now, it felt like plunging into an ocean so deep that sunlight could no longer reach it, so peaceful that not a single thought could be heard.
It was effortless, and the vibrant energy coursing through her veins emerged instinctively, tingling her blood and enveloping her body in raw fire.
The energy her magic stirred within her was accompanied by adrenaline and ecstasy.
It was so overwhelming that she needed to concentrate to keep it contained.
She reached out to grasp Eldric’s hand one last time before the world was engulfed in the chaos of war.
He took her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles with a tenderness that opposed the tension in his eyes.
With her other hand, she waved her fingers swiftly toward the archers on top of the wall.
Her wisps of magic started to envelope one, two, three, five, eight, ten men at once.
Her mouth fell open. Alissa had suspected she could attack more people now, but surrendering ten men at once was a surprise even to herself.
With a wiggle of her hand, all ten armored men fell to the ground.
Their arm bones twisted at a ninety-degree angle in the wrong direction.
Between howls of torment, half of the standing guards climbed up the wall using ropes, just as Eldric had predicted.
With his signal, they ran toward battle with nothing but their weapons and fiery will in their hearts.
Alissa lost hold of the archers, leaving them incapacitated on the ground.
She moved her magic’s grip to another group, and ten other men fell under her cruel, powerful grasp.
While they agonized in pain, crying like babies on the ground, she grabbed one of the guards’ swords, mercilessly piercing it through their hearts one after the other.
Blood spilled.
Armor was set on fire somehow.
A hand fell on the ground by her feet.