by Elise Kova
But how to enter the city, that was the question that hovered in all the majors’ minds. When they neared, only about an hour away, Vhalla gathered her magic and said a small prayer to the Mother. She turned her eyes toward the overcast sky and swept her fingers through the air. Vhalla envisioned gusts of wind cutting through the clouds, pushing them away, dispersing them.
Vhalla assessed her work. She hoped it looked like a wing. But even more, she hoped Grahm was still alive to see her signal.
They proceeded with their march, and Vhalla maintained their signal in the sky. They began to hear a clamor rising from the capital. The horrid cry of a crystal beast tore through the sky, and far ahead, the drawbridge of the capital of the Solaris Empire began to open.
It had worked, and they had their war.
As soon as the bridge was down, as soon as they were within distance, the charge was called. There was no turning back now, and Vhalla’s head seared from temple to temple. Victor was already trying to worm his way into her consciousness, to dissuade her from her attack.
Vhalla clenched her fists multiple times. This was it, the precipice of her destiny. She would lay it all down here. Her eyes swept to her left, meeting Aldrik’s. They both looked terrible. Waterlogged, haggard, filthy, and exhausted. But flames were already lighting the air around his face. The wind was in her hair. They would burn and howl together.
Victor’s tricks started just on the other side of the gate. A wall of crystals had been erected, cutting off all paths from the gate. Vhalla held out her hands, unleashing his power, the power of the crystals. She would let him in, but only to use his strength against him. The crystals darkened and fractured, collapsing under their own weight the second she rendered them useless.
Fritz, Elecia, and Sehra led a portion of the army down the main road. Vhalla, Aldrik, and Jax headed right. The majors wanted to see Vhalla and Aldrik split, to double the odds of one of their sovereigns making it through alive, but the couple had refused. Splitting them now would only hurt their chances.
Vhalla waved her arm through the air. Aldrik’s magic rode the back of hers to create a curtain of flame suspended over them, blocking the ice and fire attacks from the sorcerers on the roofs above. Vhalla pulled on Lightning’s reins.
“Archers, rooftops!” she cried.
Fighting had already broken out in the streets before they’d arrived. Vhalla saw blood staining the ground ahead. Spread lifelessly before sorcerers were men and women with silver wings painted on their breasts and backs.
Vhalla drew her sword and threw it. Directing it with her pointer finger, it sliced across sorcerers’ throats, felling two before she summoned it back. Aldrik’s fire burst forth at her left, and Vhalla brought her attention to where it burned, helping it with her winds.
The Imperial army made steady progress into the city, until the first monster descended upon them. The beast had a clear path, all talons and gaping jowls. Vhalla tried to suck the wind out from under it, but a searing pain from the back of her mind caused her magic to falter at the last moment.
She narrowly dodged, tumbling off Lightning. Gripping her head, she rolled to her feet and tried to find her sword. The monster had taken out Lightning, and half the army with him.
The horse had taken her to the end of the earth and back. Its death hit her in the chest, as hard as the death of any dear friend. Rage built in her throat. She didn’t care if it was Victor’s emotion or hers. She hoped it was both. She hoped she could feel his anger at knowing that her army was upon him. That they were not backing down, not now, not after they’d come so far.
Wincing, Vhalla drew herself to her feet as the monster banked high through the clouds. Sorcerers around her sent tongues of fire and spears of ice, but the magic failed to penetrate its leathery skin.
“Stay your magic!” Vhalla ordered. The soldiers faithfully turned their attention elsewhere. “Jax, guard me!”
Vhalla didn’t even check to ensure he was. She trusted her guard and friend to be where she needed him. There was no room for fear or doubt in this battle. Her friends would do what they needed to do to survive, just as she would. The worry was etched in her heart, the closest to prayer she could afford.
She invited Victor’s magic within her, and she felt it build. If he could make crystal monsters, she could destroy them. Vhalla unleashed his magic with a cry, and the monster exploded with a burst of light, shards of blackened crystal falling to earth like dark starlight.
She gasped for air, slumping. An arm was across her chest— strong, holding her up, supporting her. The magic had taken more out of her, using it more quickly than the last time. The army rushed around her, the battle raging on. A shield of fire sprung up, blocking an attack on the prone Empress.
“Thanks, Jax,” she panted.
“Not quite.” Vhalla looked up. She hadn’t been expecting Aldrik there. His armor was scorched, scuffed, and bloody. “Are you all right?”
“I will be.” She put on a brave front—there wasn’t another choice.
Aldrik’s arm lingered for one more brief moment. It couldn’t have been more than a second, but it felt like an eternity. He spoke silent volumes. His heart sung to hers, and Vhalla’s replied in kind. She knew he was there; they fought as one. No matter what happened, they stood here together.
Stable on her feet, Vhalla turned back, reentering the fray.
Victor had clearly prepared his soldiers for this attack. While the road they walked on was mostly un-trapped—Vhalla suspected Fritz, Elecia, and Sehra weren’t having nearly as easy of a time—there was more than one large-scale assault from the false king.
Attack after attack, they pushed on. Vhalla had waved on more men and women from back lines to front than she could count. She was sending them to their deaths. They knew it, as they sprinted over the corpses of their comrades, but they pushed forward anyway. The whole army persisted with one goal in exact precision—get to Victor, kill Victor.
Victor’s men were clever. Every crystal soldier could count for two of the Empire’s army, taking advantage of magic and terrain. They jumped in and out of buildings. Stalled with walls of ice and fire. Groundbreakers ran from alleyways, slicing throats and continuing on without engaging, swords ringing clumsily against their hardened flesh.
Another monster soared overhead, so Vhalla repeated the process from earlier. She focused all her magic to strike the beast down from where it flew. As the crystal beast’s corpse fell harmlessly to the ground, so did she.
Aldrik hoisted her up with both arms, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and carried her.
“Aldrik, we must—”
“You cannot stay on the front line.” He pushed backward.
Vhalla hated the taste of retreat. “But you can.”
“Vhalla—”
“Jax!” she called. Vhalla had no idea where the Westerner was, but he couldn’t be far. Her assumption proved correct as she retreated into the center of the host. “Jax, I’m turning useless. But Aldrik isn’t.”
“I’ll look after you.” He knew what she was asking before she voiced her request.
They held up the rear guard as the fighting pushed into the night. When the moon was a third through the sky, Victor’s men seemed to stop coming. Vhalla had destroyed one more crystal beast, but it took nearly everything she had to do so.
It was a stalemate, frustratingly quiet for both sides. The Imperial army held their line, Aldrik mindful not to give up their advance. Victor stopped sending men and monsters—or had no more to send.
Crystals littered the streets like dark shards of glass. Vhalla watched how they pulsed softly in the moonlight. Everyone had told her she could use crystal magic without it tainting her. Maybe that much was true. But it felt like it was tearing her apart every time she summoned it. Such unassuming stones, already fading and turning to dust, held so much weight.
“How do you feel?” Jax asked quietly, setting her down. They’d found a tavern, long abandoned, to
regroup with the majors.
“How do I look?”
“Like death warmed up.”
“Then assume how I feel to be ten times worse.” Vhalla pressed her eyes closed, holding her head. Victor had been quiet; perhaps he was as exhausted as she.
Their table of majors was thinner than it had been the night before, reflective of this day’s death toll. Aldrik had ordered them all to sit rather than stand.
He looked just as dead on his feet as she felt. Someone had struck his cheek, and a small chunk was missing from his ear, which indicated a sword had swung way too close to his face for her liking. But, otherwise, their Emperor was mostly in one piece. Vhalla breathed an internal sigh of relief, focusing on the plans before her.
Strokes of the pen on parchment began to carve out the remnants of their army. Compared to the host that had started at the city’s entrance, only a small number—maybe a couple hundred—remained. They would need a miracle, and another hundred or two soldiers to stand a chance.
The door to the tavern was kicked open. All the majors turned, startled, half reaching for their weapons. Fritz stood in the doorframe, bloody, and holding their miracle.
“ELECIA!” BY THE time Vhalla said the other woman’s name, the healer was already on her feet.
Elecia crossed the room and helped Fritz carry the man he was supporting to the table. Majors moved out of the way, freeing up a space where they could lay down Grahm. Vhalla looked at the Eastern man’s body, Fritz at her side fidgeting.
Her eyes landed on the source of Fritz’s stress. Grahm’s hand was covered in tiny crystals jutting out from blackening skin. His fingers looked like they were in the late stages of frostbite. Spider-webbed veins connected each crystal, pulsing deathly taint between them, working their way up Grahm’s arm.
“What happened?” she asked Fritz.
“We were beginning to establish a wall, a-a perimeter, so we didn’t lose the ground we gained,” Fritz started. “I saw more fighting. I thought it was another guerrilla force, the Wings, you know?” Her friend was clearly struggling to keep himself together. “But there were a lot of them. I went to investigate; I brought help with me because, you never know . . .”
Vhalla slipped her hand into Fritz’s. She held him gently enough that it didn’t distract him from his tale. But her fingers were firm, insistent that he wouldn’t escape her. At any moment, her Southern friend looked like he could fall apart, and Vhalla would be there if he did.
“It was a group of Silver Wings, a large one. Not like the rest of them. They were trying to regroup as well, and Grahm was leading them.”
There was a deep gash in Grahm’s shoulder by his neck. A finger’s width in almost any direction, and it likely would’ve been a fatal wound without a healer. Elecia’s hands smeared with blood as she pressed them into the severed flesh, trying to force it to knit together.
“Elecia, can you fix him?” Fritz whispered.
“I’m trying,” the woman didn’t glance up, not removing her focus from the wound.
They were ignoring the inevitability of the crystals. Vhalla dropped to a knee, looking closely at Grahm’s hand. He groaned softly, awareness returning with Elecia’s ministrations. From her new vantage, Vhalla could see Elecia’s eyes regularly darting to stones as well. The other woman was nervous about magically interacting with someone who was tainted.
“I have an idea.” Vhalla caught Elecia’s gaze. “But I want him to be physically stable before I try it.”
“That sounds foreboding,” Elecia mumbled.
Vhalla couldn’t disagree. “I’m going to take control of the crystals and destroy them, like I do with the monsters and the gates.”
“What will that do to him?” Fritz asked.
“I can’t say for certain.” Vhalla wasn’t going to make it out to be something it wasn’t. It was a last resort that could just as easily kill Grahm as save his life.
“Well, if you’re going to do it, do it now.” Elecia pulled her hands away. “While I have enough strength left in me to try to put him back together when you finish tearing him apart.”
No one expected Elecia’s sarcasm to be literal.
Vhalla raised her hand over Grahm’s, blinking her eyes and shifting into her magic sight. Her magic was thin and struggling. Vhalla briefly wondered what would happen at the moment when she had the same amount of her own magic as she had crystal magic laced with Victor’s. But she didn’t give it thought. Her friend was before her and ailing. It wasn’t the time for doubt.
Just like she did with the monsters, Vhalla connected herself to the crystals and willed their destruction. They exploded angrily off Grahm’s hand. Black shards littered the ground along with chunks of Grahm’s flesh.
All the majors took a step back to avoid being splattered with tainted blood.
The man lying on the bench cried out, roused back to awareness by the pain.
“Hold him down!” Elecia demanded.
Fritz was the first to respond. Sitting, he cupped Grahm’s head in both of his, stroking his cheeks with his thumbs. “Grahm, it’ll be all right.”
Elecia hesitated only for a second before her hand thrust into the tainted flesh that had ripped open with the destruction of the crystals. Skin that was blackened and leathery turned into mush and goo in the instant the crystals had exploded. Elecia pulled her hand away, black flesh clinging to it like coagulated meat fat. She tried again in a different spot, the skin literally sliding over Grahm’s bones.
Grahm twisted his head, trying to shake them off.
“Hold him down!” Elecia insisted, thinking quickly. She turned to the other person in the room she trusted implicitly. “Aldrik, I’m going to need your fire.”
The Emperor gave his affirmation without question.
“Fritz, I need you to freeze him.”
“What?” Fritz didn’t follow.
“I need you to freeze him, slowly, don’t shock him. I need his heart to slow; the less aware he is of what’s happening and the slower his blood flow, the better,” Elecia spoke slowly and clearly.
“He’s another Waterrunner and—”
“And the taint has already passed his elbow. The damn things were like boils, and the infection is flooding the body!”
Vhalla stared in horror, wondering if she’d damned her friend. She swallowed, trying to follow Elecia’s train of thought. Grahm was dead from the moment the taint set in. This was their only chance to save him.
She ran over to the tavern’s bar, locating a long rag. On the way back she scooped up one of the major’s swords.
“Wait, that’s—”
The Empress silenced the major with a pointed glare. She didn’t really give a damn that it was his. It could’ve been the Mother’s for all Vhalla cared. The man realized it and silenced himself. Most of the majors took it as the cue to flee the room.
“Wait, you can’t possibly mean to . . .” Fritz gaped in horror as Vhalla began to tourniquet Grahm’s upper arm.
“This needs to go in his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue.” Vhalla twisted up the other rag, placing it between Grahm’s teeth.
“Isn’t there—”
“Freeze him, hold him still, and say nothing else.” Elecia’s breathing was heavy, nerves beginning to take over. She was a good cleric, but this was going to be a test for the woman. “Vhalla, push over that bench, spread his arm across it.”
Aldrik helped Vhalla accomplish Elecia’s order. It had become the most makeshift operating table the any of them had ever seen, and it was all that stood between Grahm and certain death. Elecia drew the sword and adjusted her stance a few times, pushing the benches into just the right spots.
“Vhalla, hold his arm. Fritz his shoulders. Aldrik be ready with the fire,” she commanded.
Vhalla gripped Grahm’s wrist. Her fingers compressed against the rotted flesh and bones that squished and slid like pond scum on a rock. She ignored the chilling sensation and held the arm as straigh
t as possible.
“Can’t we rethink this?”
“Keep him subdued, Fritznangle!”
“But—”
“Fritz, trust Elecia!” Vhalla pleaded with her friend.
Fritz turned his head away as Elecia lined up her mark with the sword. Vhalla saw her plant her feet to the ground. She felt the tingle of magic through the air as the Groundbreaker made her arms as heavy as rocks in order to create as much momentum possible.
The blade whizzed through the air, and Fritz flinched as it connected with bone. Vhalla felt the crack reverberate through Grahm’s arm. The man screamed into the rag in his mouth.
Elecia was undeterred. She freed the blade with a small jostle, and raised it again for a second swing. Marrow oozed from the wound, blood pooling on the benches and dripping to the floor.
It took two swings to sever Grahm’s arm from his body.
“Aldrik, cauterize it, lightly,” Elecia instructed. “I only want to help the clotting along, I may need to remove more later once I see what the taint or infection is doing.”
“Remove more later?” Fritz swayed weakly.
“Hopefully when we have proper medical supplies,” Elecia murmured.
Grahm moaned in agony as wisps of flame sealed his wound. But his pain seemed to be lessening due to Fritz’s numbing of the spot, a makeshift sedative. Vhalla prayed that, when he woke, he would barely remember what occurred.
Elecia quickly bandaged the wound. But she didn’t release the tourniquet until the blood stopped seeping through the cloth. Fritz hadn’t let go of Grahm; he stared in dumb shock at his lover’s face.
“I’m going to go find something for him,” Elecia announced. She swayed slightly. Vhalla knew the exhaustion was just as much mental as it was physical. “Some cleric in the rear guard must have something . . .”
“Will he be okay now?” Fritz whispered.
“I hope so.” Vhalla cringed as she picked up the severed arm, enough meat left above the elbow for it to wag uncomfortably. She deposited it in the alleyway behind the tavern. Vhalla ran her hands over her pants legs all the way back, trying to remove the feeling of liquefied tainted flesh and a limp severed limb.
