Nina collapsed to her knees in the mud, her hands gripping the earth tightly.
“But I fought so hard.” She said pitifully.
There was a rapid patter of feet and suddenly Escrya was there, looking just as lost as any of them, Helena and Kaylee at her side, just as they had been from the beginning.
A good thing too, as they caught her under her arms when her knees buckled, holding her close as she began to hyperventilate.
This was not the reunion she had dreamt of.
All the while Volka held Nameless to her breast, her heart broken. But still she shed no tears, merely wiping the water from his face as the last of the rain fell.
“How?! How did this happen?!” Nina suddenly burst out, stumbling towards the Valkyrie.
Volka finally raised her head, drawing a heavy breath as she did. She had lost all of her sisters and now she had lost her husband. But she had endured, and would continue to endure.
Her duty was clear, and she had not forgotten his final plea to her.
She had to take care of them now.
But first they needed to know the truth.
“Our Husband… our love… his power is not limitless. With it he stirred the primordial laws and the laws of the divine. And such a feat could not come without cost.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Milly sobbed out.
“You know what it takes for him to save a single Tenebrae Milly. Erica, and you Nina, you two especially know. Our husband saved thousands of monster girls today, excepting those that died on the field before we could reach them. Such a feat is unprecedented. It would have taken five hosts of Valkyrie at full strength working together with no distractions to accomplish this…”
“But what did you do?” Erica wailed.
“The only thing we could. He opened himself utterly to their pain, drawing in all of their false memories, all of their rage and grief, and trapping them within his mind.” She drew a shuddering breath, a single tear trailing down her cheek; “And then I opened the sacred gates within myself, as my sisters did so long ago to create the first Empaths, and I flooded him with my divinity. It burned away the memories that did not belong, and everything that he was. Saving them, and ending him.”
“You… you killed him?” Escrya whispered, finding her voice.
The look of absolute betrayal on her face was staggering.
But Volka accepted it, nodding slowly.
“He told me to, it was his choice, I will not ask for your forgiveness. It is what needed to be done. Our husband- no, our Nameless Lord... has ever been about what was needed.”
The Amazon stumbled away from Helena and Kaylee brought her fist up as if to strike the angel, but ultimately she couldn’t. In her heart she knew that she was right, they all did. Instead she collapsed into Volka’s arms, Nameless’s body shifting to one side as she cried over him.
“What is this, what’s all the fuss?”
Having passed off the task of retrieving Jonathan, too concerned with Nina’s abrupt race to her bond-mate, a limping Miranda broke through the circle of monster girls to see them huddled around him.
It was as if someone had knocked the wind out of her as she took in his prone form.
“Ah no… shit kid, what did you do?”
Her voice faltered as she slumped into Kala, who supported her weight while Jan took up position on her other side, nuzzling into her shoulder with a plaintive whine.
“He saved them, he saved them all.” Sadie whispered, her words filled with equal measure of awe and sorrow.
Coming from where the medics and Dryads were working, Ophelia flapped her wings in desperation to reach them.
She landed in the mud and was on her knees beside him immediately, her normally pale complexion somehow even paler.
“Ophelia...” Volka began.
“Get back!” She shrieked; “All of you get back!”
The Flutterby slapped her hands away and tore Nameless’s uniform open, exposing his scarred chest.
She seemed barely in control of herself, but she remembered her training and began chest compressions, Volka’s eyes closing in pain as she looked away from the futile effort.
At the Valkyrie’s side, Escrya sobbed at the very obvious pain her bond-sister was enduring, but she didn’t try to stop her either.
The Flutterby’s wings, already weary from carrying her around the battlefield in the heavy rain, were limp at her back as she bent over and began to breathe into Nameless’s mouth.
After three deep breaths she resumed pressing against his chest.
“You can’t.” She sobbed out; “You don’t get to leave us!”
“Ophelia, he’s gone.” Volka’s voice broke as she set her hand on the medic’s shoulder.
The Flutterby turned away from Nameless long enough to slap her across the face, hard, and then went back to her life-saving efforts.
It was a stunning turn to witness, but no one dared interrupt her again.
Even when her tears flowed so freely that they dripped off of her nose and onto Nameless’s face.
“Erica, my bag! Get me the big needle with the red plunger!”
The Katje didn’t move, still frozen with shock, but Milly did, rustling through the satchel before finally giving up and dumping its contents in the mud beside her motionless bond-mate.
If the Flutterby wasn’t giving up, than neither would she.
Ophelia snatched up the desired needle and clenched it in her fist, then splayed her hand out over Nameless’s chest to count his ribs.
Everyone watching flinched when she stabbed it downwards into his heart.
“You don’t get to die!” She screamed down at him again as she cast aside the empty syringe and began to pound her fist into his chest.
It was horrible to watch, and it broke the hearts of the already heart-broken widows.
“YOU DON’T GET TO DIE!” She shrieked at him again, more out of control than ever.
And evidently he heard her, because a moment later his head lolled to one side and he let out a weak cough.
The movement was slight, so slight that some of them missed it, but Volka hadn’t.
“Impossible!” The Valkyrie exclaimed with mouth agape.
Picking up on the shift in her attitude, the other girls stared with naked hope at Nameless, though tears still stained their cheeks.
This time when he coughed they all saw it and exclamations of shock and joy came from all around him.
“Nameless! Can you hear me, my darling?!” Ophelia cried out after she brought her fist down on his chest one final time.
“Whozzat stop hittin’ me.” He slurred out, his hands rising limply out of the mud to fend her off, his eyes still closed.
The girls gasped at the sound of his voice, their relief palpable.
“Beloved? Speak to me!” Escrya urged.
“‘Scrya? What…” He coughed again, with more energy this time; “Chest hurts.”
The wave of relief that went through his bond-mates likewise went through the watching Undines, who began chattering at each other in excitement.
Seeing that he was alive, Miranda took a second to experience some of that relief herself, before turning on the spectating crowd, her priorities taking over.
“What the hell are you all standing around for?! We got wounded on the field! Triage protocol! Now!” The authoritative woman barked; “Show’s over, the kid is alive so get your asses in gear!”
As much as she wanted to scoop Nameless out of the mud herself, she had a job to do.
Though she wasn’t stupid enough to try to order any of his bond-mates to leave his side.
While the others carefully helped Ophelia load her husband onto a stretcher, Volka stayed on her knees in the mud, stricken.
“Volka?” Milly asked.
Concerned for the Valkyrie, she turned away from their bond-mate as Escrya, Nina and the others took him towards one of the hastily erected medical tents.
“I-” The
Valkyrie looked to the Minotaur and slowly shook her head in wonder; “I was certain that I had killed him.”
The Minotaur reached down and helped her to her feet, then pulled her into a hug.
“I think maybe you did.” She replied with a worried frown; “I... I don’t feel him anymore, not like we did before.”
Volka nodded as they caught up to the others.
“That is because the divine essence has been scoured from his soul. He isn’t an Empath anymore.”
“He’s also probably blind.” Ophelia spat at her, her bitterness hard to contain.
While Nina and Escrya carried his stretcher, she’d taken a moment to flash a light into his eyes, only to find them cloudy and grey, barely a hint of his original muddy brown colour remaining.
The Valkyrie flinched back as if the Flutterby had thrown acid on her, but she recovered quickly as concern rose within her.
“Blind? You are certain?”
The Flutterby rounded on her and she drew back again.
“Of course I am certain you dolt! Just as I was certain that he needed help and you just… you were just sitting there!”
Of all of the emotional pains that Volka had experienced in her life, being cursed out by the kindly Ophelia was amongst the worst.
As a Valkyrie she had an infinite capacity to bear such pain, but she still felt it keenly.
Especially since the Flutterby was absolutely right: she had been so convinced of the scope of their bond-mate’s sacrifice that her inaction very nearly brought it about.
Heedless of the Dominar’s pain the sun burned through the last of the Undines’ clouds, and it was much like the first dawn for the former Tenebrae as all over the field their eyes began to open from the nightmare they had been subjected to.
They remembered their lives, their loves, and everything that they ought to remember.
But they also remembered him: the one who called out to them in the dark, who showed them naught but selfless love, and endured their pain thousands of times over to spare them from it.
And they loved him.
Chapter 54:
The Ripple Effect
Olena looked over the seven bleary eyed Ogres, sitting in confusion in a strand of trees at the edge of the battlefield where she had kept them trapped with her magic.
“Where am we?” One of the big girls asked fearfully.
The Witch drew in a deep, deep, breath and spoke with a heavy sigh of relief.
“Awake. At last.”
Glad she was that the Undines’ rain reached their heartstones and that Nameless’s soul had found them.
She was tired from holding them with her magic for so long, but her weariness was inconsequential; none of the blue-skinned giants saw when she slipped her largest bone needle back into her shawl, nor could they conceive of just how relieved she was not to have been forced to use it.
A Gigas was one thing, but the Witch had strength enough to pierce the jugular of an Ogre if needed.
It would have taken two arms and all of her weight, but it was doable.
Whether she had the strength of will to do it seven times though...
She pulled her shawl close as she shuddered from the thought.
“The Aegis is there. Just through those trees. Go. They will look after you.”
The Ogres turned and left, though the first one to speak looked back at the Witch and smiled uncertainly.
“Thanks for help us?”
Based on her speech she was clearly on the younger side amongst the surviving giants.
Olena slowly shook her head, though she smiled a genuine smile at the innocent girl.
“Do not give thanks for a curse.” She chided; “Now shoo, precious darling. Before I gobble you up.”
Unlike Nina, this giant saw no cause for alarm in the Witch’s strangely accented words, merely smiling wider before chasing after the others, the ground shaking slightly as she went.
Once the Ogre was out of sight, Olena looked up at the sky: the Undines’ rain was spent and so now she had no excuse for the moisture trailing down her cheeks.
“Sideways or not, I need to get laid.” She complained thickly.
__________
While Nameless was carried off and most of the others left to tend to their duties, Kriss’s scales shimmered to their natural cinnamon colour to reveal that she had been there the whole time, her tongue slipping out to taste the air.
Wet dirt, churned earth, sweat… blood.
She’d heard the news about Evadne’s passing, and now she was torn about whether or not she wanted to see the body for herself.
For so long she’d sought only vengeance for her mother’s death, now a great hollowness filled her breast where that drive had been.
Without it, she was free to think of other things, one of which inevitably had to be her brother, or rather her relationship with her brother.
If she wanted one.
It was confusing to her: though she had searched for him on and off for years, she never desired an emotional connection, but when she thought that he was gone…
Her scales flashed white at the thought, and a moment later she made her decision, stalking towards the tent where he had been taken.
She knew what he had done, with so many gossipy Undines present for it, word spread quickly.
Girls who only an hour before would have torn a child to shreds in their madness were now free because of him, so the Trog was forced to accept that he was a good man.
And with that acceptance came the realization that she could do a lot worse for a family.
But as she thought back on the four terrified teenagers she had killed when she had gotten separated from Tora, she had to ask herself if he could do better than her.
Plagued with uncertain emotions, she disappeared from view again, assuming a silent vigil outside her brother’s tent.
__________
Standing amidst the ring of Myrmidons, the leaders of the Longinus family were taking stock.
Or, at least, the queens were.
“This has been an adventure! We ought to leave the colony more often.” Barnabas Rosenbaum Longinus pronounced happily.
The wiggling Antennae of one of his daughters paused as her attention shifted from her soldiers having injuries treated by the Dryads and medical teams.
“I love you as my mother’s bond-mate and as my father.” She replied with some exasperation; “But you truly are a big fat stupid idiot.”
She at least had a sense for the gravity of the situation.
“Do not disrespect your father.” Queen Julia chided with a smirk.
Without taking his daughter’s complaint to heart, the silly man plopped his silly helmet back on his head.
“I’ll admit, I had my doubts. But you were right Jules. He is good enough for Avita.”
“What else could anyone possibly do to beat him out?” One of his other daughters asked rhetorically.
It seemed absurd for the royal family to be having the conversation in the middle of the battlefield, but in truth the Antlion Queens were contributing more than most, their colonies hard at work assisting the Aegis even while they seemed engaged in idle chatter.
Julia stretched out her arms and cricked her neck to one side, having stood still too long during the fighting.
“Yes, I was right. But don’t get your hopes up too much, my husband. The Gigas has already stated that they aren’t looking for any more monster girls to join their family. And given what we just witnessed her do to that wretched Chimera, I’m not going to press the matter.”
Barnabas sucked air between his teeth in annoyance as he conceded that his bond-mate had a point.
“Still, she needs a bond-mate to help her through this, and if it isn’t going to be him, than we will have to find someone else to suit her.” He announced firmly; “Avita deserves the same happiness that we share. And if it takes my dying breath to make it happen, she will get it.”
Something that Name
less and pretty much everyone else had missed about the man was the look of cunning behind his eyes.
Sometimes a fat idiot only wants you to think he is a fat idiot.
A secret of their family, the little fat man helped his bond-mate rule their family far more than people realized, because although the queen led their colony, Barnabas was not the trophy he pretended to be.
That isn’t to say that he couldn’t be a horny fat idiot from time to time.
“Come then my darling.” Julia proclaimed while directing bedroom eyes at him; “Let us retire from the field and see if you can earn another medal for your uniform.”
His face brightened and he wobbled after her, their daughters rolling their eyes at the loving couple, but smiling nonetheless.
__________
Not all of the people on the battlefield could afford to be so jovial though.
Nameless was unconscious again, and showed no sign of waking up.
But they had all found the bond within themselves again. As Volka soon explained to them, what was missing was his Empathic connection; the way that he subconsciously held his anchors, always reaching out to them and dwelling in their minds.
It was an absence they all lamented, just as Milly had, but mostly they were just thankful he was still alive.
With their bond-mate safe, Ophelia turned her attention to Nina, using a wet rag to wipe her body clean of blood and mud before bandaging her injuries, particularly her ribs and the nasty claw marks across her face.
Just outside the tent, the giant’s hammer still glowed dully in the mud, no one able to touch it.
“I’m glad that you are alright.” She said softly, hugging the Gigas close when she was finished tending to her.
“Yeah, me too.” Nina murmured, once more feeling the sting of killing the innocent Ogres.
Nearby Erica was milking Milly, both for the sake of the giant’s ribs and for the other wounded that could benefit from her cream.
Volka hovered by the flap of the tent, torn between spreading her aura within to comfort her sisters and being as inconspicuous as possible to evade Ophelia’s notice.
The Heartstone Saga Page 46
