by Elise Kova
Vhalla reached the wall and hoisted herself up. It was much taller on the other side, taller than even the bookcases of the Imperial Library. She looked down a moment, uncertain.
“Vhalla, they may not even be there.” Aldrik had caught up with her. His breathing was fairly easy where hers was labored.
Vhalla began to rip at the gathering on her skirt, starting a tear between her calves and knees. “They were there,” she insisted.
“You don’t know,” Aldrik insisted.
“Come down.” “Sareem would have waited all night for me!” She choked a sob of guilt as she looked at the sky. It was past their arranged time to meet. If she had just told him the truth, he and Roan may have spent the evening in the palace as the three of them had so many years prior. Burdened with guilt and grief, Vhalla jumped off the other side of the wall.
The air rushed past her ears and around her, blowing the remaining skirt this way and that. Vhalla braced herself but she landed lightly in a crouch.
“Vhalla!” Aldrik called from atop the wall.
She stared up at him, offering an apologetic expression before plunging herself into the chaos of the streets.
While she had lived in the capital all of her adult life, Vhalla had spent most of it in the palace. The alleyways could be tricky and maze-like even on the best of days, but now they seemed like passageways through the horrors of the afterlife for evildoers. People pushed against her from every which way, fleeing from the place she was struggling to reach. Some had burns covering their bodies, their clothing hanging in tattered rags. Others had open wounds with blood flowing from them.
Vhalla stepped in something warm and soft that squished between her toes. She looked down in horror to see the remnants of a man who had been trampled to death by the stampede of people. His skull had been crushed and his bones shattered on the street. Unable to handle the sight a second longer, Vhalla darted down a dead-end ally and vomited, screamed as she stared at her bloody feet, and her stomach heaved again.
A third explosion thundered through the air. Vhalla cried out and dropped to the ground covering her ears. She was much closer this time, and she could hear the houses groan around her as the earth shuddered with the force of the blast.
“Vhalla! Come here!” A man’s voice cried loudly, and she looked up. Aldrik stood atop the palace wall. He had run parallel to her as she descended the city, but the wall was going to make a turn.
She clutched her knees to her chest and trembled, her mind going numb momentarily. A woman’s cry pierced the air, jolting Vhalla back to her senses. Roan and Sareem were still out there. She stood and looked back again at Aldrik with apologetic eyes.
“You stupid girl!” he roared and then jumped from the wall.
First, he landed onto a thatched roof not too far below, ran along it to a single story home that lined Vhalla’s alley and rolled down until he caught the edge of the roof. Releasing himself, he landed fairly easily and stomped over to her. Vhalla could almost feel his palpable anger as he grabbed her arm.
“You—are—completely—mad,” he ground out through grit teeth, shaking her.
“You didn’t have to come!” She shrugged him off with a step back.
“You must think me soulless if you really thought I’d sit back and watch you gallivant to your death!” he shouted, though in the mayhem she could still barely hear him.
“So are you forcing me back into the castle?” Vhalla asked, ready to turn and run once more.
“I should,” he snapped. “But I can see you desire nothing more than to be the martyr, and since no one else is here to prevent that, the task falls to me. So lead on.” She looked at him in shock. “Go!” he snarled.
She ran with him at her back.
Back in the pandemonium no one seemed to notice—or care—that the crown prince was among them. Vhalla saw women clutching babes to their breasts, struggling to escape from the horrors below. She saw an old man simply sitting on a step, waiting for his fate to come.
Slowly the crowd began to thin and the temperature rose.
“Vhalla,” she turned. Aldrik pulled off his coat and handed it to her. She looked at him strangely. “For the heat, and for some protection from the flames.” Vhalla considered the orange glow on path before them and took his coat with a nod. He rolled his eyes and pulled off his shoes and socks.
“Don’t you need them?” she asked as she quickly donned the garments. The shoes were too large, even with the laces as tight as possible, but they were better than nothing.
“Remember who I am before you ask stupid questions.” He rolled up his sleeves and stood barefoot in his trousers, white shirt, black vest, and tie. She might have laughed at the sight, if the world wasn’t ending around her.
Vhalla turned back to the road ahead. Soon they began to pass more dead bodies than living ones. The smell of burning flesh assaulted her senses. After they were six flaming houses deep, the scent forced her to stop and retch again. Aldrik placed his hand on her back and she looked at him weakly.
“I don’t smell it anymore,” he explained. His face had taken on a freakish stillness, whereas Vhalla felt she was slowly loosing herself to madness. There was no choice now but to press on.
The fire popped and cracked around her, and she heard a building collapse not far away. The square wasn’t far now. Aldrik used his magic to gain control over smaller flames, to extinguish fires with waves of his arms as they went, clearing their path.
Vhalla came to a sharp halt.
Bodies littered the square. Men, women, children scattered about with their remains twisted in unnatural positions, their faces locked in horror even in death. Some of the corpses were aflame, others soaked in pools of their own blood. They had been blown apart, limbs scattered this way and that, disconnected from their previous owners.
“By the Mother...” Vhalla raised her hand to her mouth, a renewed panic pulsing through her veins. The street with The Golden Bun was off to the left. At first, she tried to step carefully over the bodies, but in the end she ran over them, a horror rising in her gut with each sickening soft spot her feet landed on. She was crying, despite the heat and the flames, tears streamed down her face.
Then she was falling.
Tripping on an arm, a leg, or over her oversized footwear, Vhalla landed across a woman’s body, face-to-face with a girl who had a piece of wood lodged in her skull, one eye staring at her blankly.
Vhalla screamed and tried to move away, but all around her was death and carnage. Two strong hands helped lift her up and back onto her feet.
“It is not far now, is it?” Aldrik asked almost mechanically. She shook her head. “Go on.” He pushed her gently, and Vhalla found her feet again.
She rounded the corner and broke into an all-out sprint. Half of The Golden Bun had collapsed, the rest was aflame. The building next to it had been reduced to rubble, and a small crater in the street suggested one of the explosions’ epicenters.
“Sareem!” Vhalla put her hands to her mouth and called frantically. “Roan!”
Her voice was raw after shrieking three more times. She looked at the bodies on the ground, turning them over or trying to imagine what their faces may have been. By the outside patio she shifted a fat man and saw a tuff of familiar, cropped, blonde hair beneath.
“Aldrik!” Vhalla screamed frantically. “Aldrik, help me!” He was at her side in an instant, pulling the fat man off Roan. Vhalla looked at her friend, she was bruised and broken but in one piece. Vhalla put her ear to the other woman’s breast.
“She’s breathing!” Vhalla cried. “We have to find Sareem.”
Vhalla looked around; if Roan was here, Sareem had to be close. She began to shift more bodies, treading closer to the former bakery. Vhalla tore at the rubble, leaving bloody handprints behind, no longer sure if the blood was hers or others. Aldrik took control of the nearby inferno and kept the fire at bay while she searched. Larel had said that Firebearers could not feel heat, so the
beads of sweat that rolled down his temples could only be explained by exertion.
“Vhalla,” he said faintly, looking around.
“He’s here somewhere,” she pleaded, more with the universe than her companion, hoping that she was not wrong.
“Vhalla.” Aldrik’s voice was sterner.
“I know he’s here. He wouldn’t leave Roan, and he was waiting for me.” Her voice was frantic as she lifted a rock and heaved it aside. “I-I never told him I wasn’t coming. He thought I was still going to come for him.”
“Vhalla!” Aldrik shouted.
She let out a scream.
Underneath the rock was a face—half of a face—that she had known since she was a girl. A face who had made her laugh, who had taken care of her, who had been a friend, like family. Vhalla fell to her knees over Sareem’s burnt and debris battered body, her shoulders heaving with sobs.
“Sareem, Sareem, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She placed a hand on the cheek that wasn’t crushed and oozing. “I...” She hiccupped, snot dripping from her nose. “I didn’t want this. Oh, Mother, I-I-I’ll never keep anything from you again, Sareem. See, see I came, so wake up now, Sareem. Please, please.” Her stomach hurt from her sobbing and her shoulders ached, as though all the nightmares that she had endured threatened to tear apart her body. Vhalla leaned back on her feet, not caring who or what else she sat on, and stared hopelessly back at Aldrik.
“Aldrik, how do I save him?” she asked, tears staining her soot-covered cheeks.
“Vhalla...” he said faintly, taking a step closer.
“How do I save him?” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
“You can’t do that.” He shook his head. There was a sorrowful kindness under each word.
“I saved you.” She took a shaky breath. “How do I save him?”
“It doesn’t work that way.” He knelt down next to her, putting a hand on her back. “You can’t fix this.”
“Then why have magic?” she screamed at the prince as her tears forced their way out again. Aldrik spread his fingers across her back.
“Because,” he said very softly, his voice strained and tense. Aldrik glanced over his shoulder, careful to move only his eyes and not his whole head. “You need to get down.”
Vhalla hiccupped. As the words registered in her brain as not making any sense his hand was pushing her down forcefully into the bloody carnage of her friend. Aldrik ducked too as a quiet swoosh cut through the air above their heads.
He pushed off her back and spun upward, his hands alive with fire and Vhalla heard a woman’s laugh.
VHALLA TURNED TO look at their attacker. The silver embellishments on the woman’s arms glittered in the firelight. She wore base leather armor overlaid with a strange piece of clothing over her shoulders and chest, like a rectangular pennon with a hole cut in the center for the head. Embroidered upon it was a foreign script that Vhalla had never seen before. At the woman’s waist was a large belt, an empty sword sheath hanging off of it.
“Well, well, this makes things easy,” the woman spoke, her voice barely audible from behind the faceless mask. If the green skin wasn’t enough, the attacker’s accent was proof that she was one of the jugglers. “I never expected the mighty Crown Prince Aldrik to come running all by his lonesome. It’s too noble for the man who torches babes in their beds.”
The woman rounded them slightly. To the couple’s backs were piles of rubble, to their side was an inferno, and before them was a sword-wielding Northerner. Vhalla knew nothing of combat, yet she was able to see that they were not in a good position.
Aldrik was silent. He stood straight and tense, his hands clenched in fists, fire crackling and hissing around them. It trailed up his arms and singed the bottoms of his rolled sleeves.
“Vhalla,” the prince said roughly. The other woman raised her eyebrow and glanced over to her. “Go, get out of here.”
“What about Roan?” she asked weakly.
“Go, that is an order.” Even though flames raged around her, Vhalla suddenly felt cold.
“It’s rude to leave a party early,” the woman chimed in.
“Here I was merely trying to spare you the embarrassment of dying a pathetic death with an audience,” Aldrik lashed out.
The woman growled and lunged.
Aldrik stepped to the side, the Northerner ducked below his flaming punch and twisted, shifting her weight to bring her sword up. Aldrik jumped back, the tip of the blade missing him by a hair’s breath. She pursued with a back-handed slash, targeting his opposite shoulder. Aldrik spun around her side, grabbing the arm holding the weapon. Flames burned brightly, licking up the woman’s skin.
At first, Vhalla thought her immune to the flame. But as she watched the flesh changed color before her eyes, it dawned on her that the green color was actually a fire-resistant paint. She stared in shock as the woman’s mask was thrown off during a vigorous spin to land a sword hit into Aldrik’s side. He cried out, losing his balance and stumbling. Vhalla struggled to find her feet and escape the rubble.
“Vhalla, go!” he grunted.
As the woman raised her sword arm again, Aldrik reached up and grabbed the dark bare skin with his hands. Fire seared across her flesh and she cried out as it began to ripple and bubble under the heat. Her agony rose to a torturous scream unimpeded by any mask, and she dropped the sword. She twisted and fought with her free hand, but Aldrik held fast.
He stood slowly and released his right hand from her arm, which had almost burned away to the bone. Taking advantage of her shocked state, Aldrik pressed his palm to the woman’s face and her body seized. It jerked and contorted as flames licked around her eyes, boiling them in their sockets. Her throat swelled with the internal blaze, and she finally went limp. Aldrik tossed the charred corpse aside and looked to Vhalla.
Vhalla stared on in horror, her hands were over her ears, trying to block out the echo of the Northerner’s last desperate noises before death. She stared at the charred corpse. That was what they were fighting in the North? Certainly her skin had been slightly darker than a Westerner’s, and her hair curlier than a Southerner’s. But she had been human. She had been no more or less than Vhalla, and Aldrik had killed her.
Her eyes swung up to the man who had both saved her life and burnt a person alive. He had killed this woman and countless others. Aldrik took a step forward, and Vhalla took a step back. She swallowed. Why were they fighting these people at all?
Aldrik laughed darkly. “What did you think I was?” he snarled. “Did you think I went to war and read books?” Vhalla took another step back. “You ran head-first into my daily hell. Would it not be more convenient if weapons of death and torture could not talk back?” Vhalla forced herself not to tremble as she looked at him. He glared at her; the orange of the fire reflecting in the black mirrors of his eyes.
With all the bravery she possessed, Vhalla crossed the distance between them; he straightened and looked down at her, imposing. Vhalla swallowed hard and tried to muster her last scrap of confidence. There would be time later to ask him about the real reasons behind the war. For now, they needed to go home.
She grabbed his hand, praying it didn’t burst into flames at her touch. It didn’t.
“Quit being stupid, Aldrik. Let’s go.” His features barely softened, but it was more than enough to know she had made herself clear. Whatever this man was, he wasn’t a monster. Vhalla took a step back, turning to grab Roan and start the gory trek home.
With stunning clarity, she heard the distinct twang of a bowstring piercing the air. Vhalla moved instinctively in front of her prince.
She screamed a noise worse than any she had never made before as the arrow pierced her shoulder.
“Vhalla!” he roared as she fell to her knees.
She gasped for air, she gasped to make a sound. The pain seared through every nerve in her body, across every synapse in her mind. It seized her muscles and forced her to blink dizzying blackness from the e
dges of her sight. His hands were supporting her but his attention was elsewhere. Vhalla turned her head to try to see what he saw. But when she caught sight of the arrow sticking out of her body she instantly struggled with consciousness.
“My, isn’t this charming?” Vhalla tilted her head over her other shoulder to see the source of the voice. Her vision was becoming tunneled and she willed her eyes to focus.
There were three of them.
“It’s the jugglers,” she murmured.
“Don’t talk,” Aldrik whispered harshly, his thumb caressing her shoulder as he supported her.
“Careful, they’re, they’re missing...” She struggled to count. “They’re missing two still.”
He glanced at her and then back at the people.
“Don’t you think it’s charming?” a man asked.
“It really is,” came a nasally woman’s voice.
“The noble prince, defending the damsel. Who knew the Fire Lord had it in him?” the man snarked.
Vhalla heard the ring of metal on metal as a sword was drawn. These people truly wanted to kill them, Vhalla realized as she felt blood soaking down to her waist. She wasn’t in a position to run anymore; if he carried her, she would only burden him.
“Aldrik...” she whispered. He didn’t move but she knew he’d heard. “Go, go and leave me.” It was her fault he was there in the first place. The last thing she could do in her life was to ensure the heir to the throne did not die on account of her stubbornness. Vhalla closed her eyes and dipped her head.
“No,” he replied in a soft and low voice.
“Your life is worth more than mine. It’s the life I partly gave you, isn’t it?” She smiled faintly as she heard footsteps and the crunch of bodies across the street. Aldrik said nothing. “I should have some say over whether you throw it away or not. So, go.” His fingers gripped into her arms. She was fairly sure he was bruising her.
“You know, we thought it was a lie you were alive at all.” It was the man’s voice again. Aldrik still hadn’t moved. “Our leader brewed the poison that was on the dagger. One prick should’ve killed a large Noru Cat, and I hear you had the whole damn thing in your side.”
