Chapter 38 #3
A helmet passed by, flying in front of her at full speed.
A man ran carrying another over his shoulders, crying for help.
Soldiers screamed and fell at a record speed.
Men she had never met came from everywhere with a fury she could not comprehend.
Eldric’s fighting lessons resurfaced; the sword in her hands moved with familiarity.
When her fighting skills failed, her magic would take the lead.
Even as she twisted and turned bones and muscles with no restraint, she could sense the energy of her magic far from being fully drained.
It was only then that Alissa understood the true capacity of her abilities.
Although she fought like a warrior queen, her focus was her own liability.
Her thoughts drove back and forth to the girl on the other side of the wall and the man fighting for her somewhere in the bloodbath field.
Her skills moved against every new face that appeared threatening her life, but she could not stop the feeling that any moment a sword would find its way through her chest.
In the meantime, Eldric hit a man on the back of his knees, and as he fell to the ground, his blade slit the Iron Claw soldier’s throat open.
The second man came behind him, using a thin flannel as a weapon, moving it around Eldric’s throat to suffocate him.
He struggled to breathe, his vision blurring and darkening as the fabric at his throat blocked the flow of air into his lungs.
Eldric opened his legs and gathered strength to push his upper body forward.
With both his hands, he grabbed the man’s leg from behind.
The Iron Claw fell to the ground just when Eldric’s sword was waiting to impale the man through his spine.
Another opponent came next and was unable to strike when Eldric hit him in the throat, leaving him breathless.
A second later, the soldier was permanently prevented from breathing as a blade crossed his lungs.
The moment Eldric glanced back, Alissa had already finished killing the first and second waves of guards she had disabled with her magic.
She killed them five times faster than he.
He observed as her magic reached a third group of men; their cries of suffering sent shivers through him.
The kind of pain she was capable of inflicting others with only a subtle twist of her fingers was unfathomable to him.
When he thought she was done, Iron Claw soldiers that had climbed up the wall to help their comrades suddenly fell from the wall in a rainstorm of dead bodies as Alissa’s arrow crossed their hearts until none were left standing.
She moved around, killing with the same ease as she breathed.
Eldric feared her motivations to kill now were far beyond the will to save her daughter.
He couldn’t judge her, though, not when he had just hung a fourth man from his sword like a piece of meat. The excessive blood pouring from the poor creature’s mouth made him grimace.
Soon, the place started to look like a cemetery, impossible to walk without diverting from the trail of bodies that were left behind.
For every dead person, two other living guards came out of nowhere.
Their original count of forty opponents soon doubled.
Alissa had badly injured her right shoulder and knee, while Eldric bore deep cuts and bruises all over his body.
At some point amid the frenzy of the battlefield and the chaos around them, someone cut down the ropes that were being used to climb up the wall, and some died from the fall as they tried to climb up without the assistance of ropes.
Alissa and Eldric continued moving. Even at a distance, their attacks mirrored each other’s.
It was the kind of synchrony reserved for people who found in one another their other half, even at war.
They were driven by adrenaline, their bodies covered in other people’s blood as they neutralized every living being standing in their way back to Dhalia.
Most men were slaughtered; some ran away.
When no Iron Claws soldiers were left, the darkness of the sky seemed light in comparison to the horrors left on that battleground.
“Are you okay?” Eldric asked, panting. He scanned her body for any signs of injuries, but with all the blood sprayed over her, he couldn’t tell if any of it belonged to her.
“Yes, I’m just tired,” she breathed. Her eye caught sight of the terrible cut on his eyebrow. “You’re injured, let me heal you.”
Eldric gently stopped her by the wrist. “Do not waste your magic on me.”
Although he hadn’t said it outright, it was implied that healing a man destined to die soon would be a waste of precious magic.
Alissa didn’t know how much of her power would be needed to reverse the Senectus Subita curse, and while healing his injury wouldn’t cost her much, it could drain energy crucial for saving Dhalia, especially after how tired she felt.
Instead, she swallowed her words, her hands gently framing his face beneath the stubble of his growing beard.
Her lips thinned with the weight of all the things she wanted to say, but time wasn’t on her side. It never had been.
She turned her back to him, hiding the tears that made her eyes shimmer, and sprinted around the walls of Bryniard toward the place that had changed everything six months ago.
The tunnels were more than an escape route; they had become the path that changed her life.
Because of them, she had found a way out, the means to save her daughter.
Because she fled, she met Eldric and became a mage.
But they were also the reason Freyah wasn’t by her side for the return.
Alissa had never seen the piece of land where the tunnels emerged from the outside.
Back then, she had been hiding inside a barrel, and the fleeting glimpses through its opening were just distant memories.
She crawled, relying on her touch to feel the soil and detect any changes in the dirt or the ground’s vibrations.
She searched for any sign that she had found the secret entrance to Bryniard, but the entire expanse of land looked exactly the same.
Her hands were already stained a dark brown when she heard footsteps growing louder, closer.
“We must be in the wrong part of the wall,” she stated.
Eldric had only been to the walls of Bryniard once, but his sense of direction never failed him. “It was right there.” He pointed to a spot only three steps ahead. She followed him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” His hands landed on the wall before him. “Do you see this lighter piece of rock right here? I used it as a reference for the entry point. It reminded me of the shape of a diamond.”
“It’s not here. They must have changed the entrance.” She paced from left to right, her hands smearing dirt through her hair.
“No.” Eldric’s look of instant panic frightened her before his words did. “I think they sealed it, Alissa.”
They hadn’t known it, but one of Ranier’s first orders after leaving Bryniard had been to seal the tunnels. He couldn’t risk the people discovering there were secret passages leading outside.
“Tell me there’s another way in, Eldric!” Alissa stuttered desperately.
He shook his head, his gaze falling on the ropes the guards had used to climb up and down, now cut in half.
There was no way in.
1 HOUR UNTIL TIME OF DEATH
The girl’s body was fully aged. Starting the day as a child and ending it as an elder was wicked and vicious.
Her consciousness and memory slipped away from time to time, and it was hard to stay awake as she carried in her body the heaviness of more than ninety years of living, years she never lived, years that were taken from her.
She cried in silence because she didn’t have the strength to scream.
She still held tight to the hope of being in her mother’s arms again before she ran out of time, even if only to say goodbye.
Alissa’s journey through Heldraine had been anything but easy.
Each day outside Bryniard brought its own trial.
From almost dying at the canyons to being attacked and wounded, to Freyah’s death and Eldric’s captivity.
Challenge after challenge tested her will to keep going.
It never occurred to her that failing to cross the wall back into her hometown could be the obstacle that would cost her everything.
Life, it seemed, had a cruel sense of humor.
Was it too much to ask for a safe and simple passage after all she’d endured?
How many times could a person rise after being knocked down so many times?
Feeling the weight of those thoughts, Alissa collapsed to her knees.
She screamed until her lungs emptied of air, until her vocal cords gave out.
She roared, pounding the earth where the tunnel should have been.
Her power reacted to her rage, feeding on her agony and awakening feelings she had never felt before.
Alissa sobbed, and this time the screams originated from her soul and reverberated through their surroundings.
At the same instant, thunder roared in the sky above.
Rain poured incessantly as if the heavens had been holding back for months.
For every scream, a new thunder, and for every punch of her knuckles against the ground, lightning struck.