Not A Mildly Aggressive Candle #2
The bodies looked stitched. Bone and blistered skin, limbs bending too many times in too many directions before they touched the earth.
Ribcages visible through translucent skin that tore a little with each expansion, something inside them writhing like it wanted out.
Five of them. Then more started peeling from every tree in the clearing and moved to circle us.
Their mouths opened wrong. Horizontally with teeth in rows.
“Sera,” Caelan said, voice low and careful. “Come here.”
The one in front of me took a step forward. Tongue clicking. A sickening sound. Then it lunged.
My dagger cleared the sheath.
But I didn’t move fast enough.
Caelan’s hand closed around my wrist and yanked me back hard into his chest.
Maelor charged without hesitation. His sword swung swiftly and cut the creature from abdomen to neck. Black liquid spilled from the cut. It didn’t slow and kept coming.
Maelor didn’t slow either.
He drove his shoulder into the creature and sent it staggering backward. Using the momentum, he pivoted his sword back around and drove it across its neck. The head came clean off and rolled toward my feet.
The creature—now headless—raised a limb that was pointed enough to skewer and slashed at Maelor.
Beheading it did nothing. The thing just got angrier.
It coiled to lunge right before flames engulfed it whole. The smell of burning flesh hit me before the warmth from the fire did.
“Fire.” Caelan hurled a ball of flame at another moving toward Riven. “We need to burn them.”
Another came for us. I pulled Caelan's sleeve, hauled him low, drove my dagger into the creature’s bloated abdomen, and forced it upward toward the sternum, two-handed on the hilt.
“Now!” I shouted for Caelan.
Caelan set the creature ablaze. The shriek it made could have cracked stone.
Chaos erupted around us.
They kept coming. I lost Caelan in the middle of it, the clearing breaking into separate fights, fire and shadow and steel flashing in the dark.
I rolled clear of a lunge. Riven shadow-stepped in front of something that would have taken my head off.
A tail or limb or something long and blade-like whipped past as he intercepted.
Maelor moved in and beheaded it. Caelan burned what was left.
One peeled from a tree beside Riven, mouth splitting open near his ear. I opened mine to shout.
Caelan got there first. A tendril of shadow wrapped the jaw shut. Fire followed. The sound it made was deafening enough that I felt it in my back teeth.
“There's too many!” Maelor yelled.
We needed to slow them enough for Caelan to set them on fire. The sheer number of them made that difficult.
Riven materialized beside Caelan. His blade caught the creature across the legs.
Once. Twice. Then he was gone. He came out at another creature’s left side, slashing with the same precision, and stepped back through the shadows before Caelan’s fire caught it.
The whole thing had taken less time than Maelor’s first swing.
I was hit from the side. The ground met my back, my head knocking against the earth hard enough to see spots.
Fluid dripped onto my chest, hot and pungent.
It opened its mouth, baring its rows of overlapping teeth.
Its breath hot and rotten. The tongue that came toward my face split into two an inch from my skin.
I drove my dagger upward into the jaw and shoved.
It slowed as ice crept across it suddenly, and then shadow pulled it clean off me before fire took it.
Caelan got a hand under my arm, then took a strike meant for my throat across his ribs instead. Claws went deep. His arm came around me and twisted us both clear as power detonated outward from him, violent and uncontrolled. Bark flew from the trees, two creatures catching fire mid-lunge.
Riven cut off another one coming for us from behind.
Then Caelan went down on one knee. His hand pressed to his bleeding ribs. His other arm still around me, already pushing me behind him.
A prince who ruled an entire kingdom of people stepped in front of his assassin without hesitation.
I watched him do it and tried to find the angle. A reason that made sense. My whole life I had been expendable. Useful when needed, disposable when not. Worth the coin to hire. Never worth protecting.
He stood in front of me like I was.
Something inside me came apart at that.
Across the clearing, Maelor went down.
Riven moved toward him and was slammed into a tree.
Caelan raised his hand toward a creature charging directly at us, magic gathering, already thinning. Rustling came from above, and two of them were already coming down at us.
My mind went back to the Twilight Night festival, when he looked up at the falling confetti with a boyish smile. To the inn, and the way he looked at me with a softness in his eyes and told me to let myself be taken care of.
I was moving before I decided to.
My hand found the back of his neck, and I pulled Caelan against me with one arm. The other I raised toward the shapes dropping out of the dark above us.
We will not die here.
I will protect you.
Power lit up beneath my skin. Not the familiar small warmth of my usual magic. Deeper, older. Cold. Something that had been sitting under everything else.
I let it out.
Light exploded from my palm.
Not the orb. Not the glow. Not the mildly aggressive candle.
A detonation. A sphere of white so complete and violent that the air itself made a sound, high pitched and long, like something tearing. Cold turned into heat as it ripped outward from my hand in a single wave and took everything with it.
The creatures didn't catch fire.
They were erased.
Bodies came apart like shattered glass. Nothing hit the ground. They simply disappeared. Every shriek cut off simultaneously, like a sound that had been playing and was switched off.
The blast kept going. Through the trees, bending the trunks. Rotten leaves scorched and fell. Somewhere, Maelor screamed.
Then silence as the dark came back.
I couldn't see. White filled everything, then white spots on black, my ears ringing so loud it had its own pitch. I was still holding Caelan. His arms were still around me. His chest rose and fell against mine.
He hadn't let go.
Maelor was flat on the ground, sword frozen at half-height, staring up at the sky.
Riven was on the ground against a tree, sword loose in his hand, blinking.
I looked down at my hands and my knees gave.
Caelan caught me before I reached the ground, arm tightening around my waist, pulling me back against his chest.
I stared at my palm.
“I don't—“ My voice came from somewhere far away. “I didn't—“
“I know.” His mouth was close to my temple.
The Hollow was quiet. Completely, entirely quiet. As if something was paying attention.
I turned and looked up at him. His brow was drawn together, reading my face like he was trying to understand.
“Was that me?” I asked. My hand was still raised because I wasn't sure it was safe to move it.
His hand came to my elbow. Slid down to my wrist. Warm and steady, grounding me back into my own body.
“Yes,” he said.
His fingers threaded through mine and brought my hand down slowly.
He didn't say anything else. Just held me there in the quiet as ash fell.
And for the first time since we had climbed down, the Hollow felt afraid of us.