Decimate

by D. Fischer

  “One born to love,” she names the line she draws to Eliza. “Born of strategy,” she continues to diagonally pull the stick until it stops just in front of Dyson. The voices silence, waiting, almost . . . watching. She continues the line to me, not missing a heartbeat. “Of mercy, of compassion,” she deems my and Kat’s lines in a purring sort of way.

  “And lastly.” The beautiful, powerful woman peers up to Tember as her line completes to the new fee. “Of vengeance.”

  Working swiftly, the fee completes the rest of her drawing, then leaves the middle of the manmade circle, careful to avoid each fur line. Each of us peers at what she created, following along each perfectly straight and visible line to see the picture as a whole.

  Kat gasps. “A pentagram.”

  Indeed, it is a pentagram, a five-pointed star, each point belonging to one of us. My veins hum to it, my heart hammering. Mercy, that voice had echoed to me when I killed the woman when I sucked the fear from her and left her at death’s door. Mercy . . . That one word had me picking up the ringing phone to make the doctor on the other end aware that the woman was no longer amongst the living. Born of mercy . . . For the first time since my third birth, my stomach rolls. I didn’t want to be involved in this sort of way. I only wanted to protect the woman I love . . . the woman born of love. I lift my gaze to her, watch her blink slowly at me, watch as the shock settles into her bones. She didn’t want this either. She didn’t want to be so heavily in the bigger picture.

  Mercy. That was Fate’s voice. I know it.

  “An eternity of stability, of truth and clarity,” Erline whispers, her tone like ice along my neck. “Of strength.”

  “My god,” Tember mumbles, eyes wide. She lifts them to Kat, and a silent communication passes between them, questioning whether they should have figured this out long ago. “Fate assembled a pentagram meant for destruction.”

  “No,” Dyson says bluntly, shaking his head like he knows otherwise. I frown.

  “Not destruction,” Erline further clarifies, striding back to the middle. Her blue dress cascades down her hips, flowing like water. “To right the wrongs that have become.” She turns to me. “Fate is one of the Divine, Aiden.”

  “He’s been dipping his sparkling toes into this . . . matter since before the battle,” Tember grumbles. “He means no harm except to his children. No offense, Erline.”

  “Offense taken,” she grumbles, and Tember shrugs.

  “Wait a second,” Kat barks, holding up a hand. “Are you saying Fate has visited each of you?”

  Everyone nods except me. She quirks a brow at me when I say nothing when I refuse to move. I don’t feel like I can move, the shock settled too far into my bones, my joints.

  “Aiden?” she presses, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Once,” I admit, clearing my throat. “Once. He spoke to me once.”

  For a brief moment, I see the dragon creeping under her skin, the scales shifting underneath, but Kat loses a breath, and it’s gone. Dyson watches his mate with concern as she begins to pace a few stomps at a time, the only room allotted in this smaller teepee.

  Tember continues, changing the subject with a stretch of her wings. “Corbin knew Kat would come to the colosseum, and the guardians soon after, because of her tie to Erline and Erma’s love for her fee sister. He barged into Erma’s office with such news of Kat’s arrival to that realm, and I’d bet all my feathers he had expected Erma to show with an army of warriors.”

  Erline gently places the stick back on the ground. “Erma told me as much.”

  “So he could weaken her,” she adds more gravely, ignoring Erline. “By ordering all his demons to slaughter her guardians.”

  “When she didn’t arrive,” Kat mutters, stopping in her tracks, “he fled and began another plan: the battle on the Guardian Realm.” She looks to Tember, blinking rapidly. “We really have been playing into his hands all along.”

  Dyson licks his bottom lip. “Fate told me Kheelan killed several lives his own life is tied to, effectively weakening himself according to Corbin’s master plan. Sureen’s is tied to her dome, which is run by her own creatures. Her slaves.” He spits the last sentence, and without voicing it, he promises vengeance for them. I know revenge when I see it. I’ve dealt with the restraints of it all my life, in some form or another.

  I sniff and stretch my neck, relieving the tension settled there. “What’s the plan, Dyson?” I’m not oblivious to the role he’s taken. Somehow, someway, this man, this shifter has gained authority above the others. Born of strategy.

  He puckers his lips and sucks on his cheeks. “To plan an attack, and soon, if we want to catch the fee at their weakest. But you’re right, Aiden. We can’t stay here and continue to endanger this village. We need to go home.” Squaring his shoulders and widening his stance, he adds, “Tell me everything you learned.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  KATRIANE DUPONT

  GUARDIAN REALM

  I pace the outside of the woundeds’ teepee, packing in the snow as my shoes squeak against the wetness. The wind blows, rustling against my coat, but at least the snow is holding off. For now. I’m wholly sick of all of the bland whiteness, and the thought of going home is the only thing keeping me upright at the moment.

  Elves linger close by, watching me with concern but not saying a word. They sluggishly go about their tasks – chopping wood, roasting meat over a fire, and tending to their children who are none the wiser about the events today and what they mean for their future. The smell of the meat lingers in the wind and my stomach growls, begging for it more than my body aches for sleep. I haven’t received much of either lately, and the effects are starting to show as weariness creeps into my bones, my joints, my thoughts.

  Everyone is still inside discussing battle plans, and every now and then, I catch a few of their hushed words. I had needed escape, a moment of peace to digest everything. Everything I thought to be true is false, and any speculation I had had in the past, spoofed at the intel Aiden has revealed. But still, even with all the deceit and manipulation, I can’t get past the fact that Myla is alive. Again.

  Aiden said she’s a dragon unlike any he’s ever imagined. Every part of her once gentle soul is now gone. She’s a demon. A demon wrapped in scales and fire. A dragon beyond my own size. My mind can’t adjust to that fact. It can’t see her as anything besides what she was – a gentle voice inside my head, a teacher to the magic I now have thrumming through my veins, a mother to all the witches roaming the Earth Realm. How have we fallen so far that we resurrect souls not meant for a third life?

  “There is no way to save her,” a sweet, musical voice says behind me.

  I whip around mid-pace, startled, and find Erline standing calmly a few feet from me.

  “We have to try,” I say, heat in my voice while tugging on the roots of my hair.

  She shakes her head slowly. “There is no way. She’s a demon, Katriane DuPont. You cannot alter a demon’s form. You cannot save someone who doesn’t have a sliver of themselves left.”

  I fling my hand out, gesturing to the inside of a teepee. “And what of that demon? He looks pretty damn saved to me!”

  She glides closer to me, hands outstretched. When I don’t go to her, when I make no move to seek comfort in her arms, she drops them back to her sides. “He is the son of Corbin and made only by Corbin’s seed. It took three fee seeds to resurrect Myla. Whatever these things are, he made them to not be like Aiden. No feelings, no emotions, no soul. That is what you’ll find when we march to war.”

  I briefly close my eyes, knowing she’s right but wanting to deny everything she says. Aiden relayed this information, all the information he learned on the Demon Realm, most of it stirring the teepee’s occupants into a panic. It isn’t lost to me that he’s my kin. I connected those dots on my own. A distant relative, but still. The same blood courses through my veins as it does his. He’s powerful, more so than he’s showing.

  Erline presses
on, cutting off my thoughts. “She was made by three seeds, Kat. Three seeds of other realms, three dark fee, three malicious intents. She is my daughter. My only daughter. And yet, I know there is nothing left to save.”

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I concentrate on breathing through my mouth to keep down the bile threatening to rise in my throat. All I want to do is vomit. All I want to do is fall to the ground in a crumpled heap and grieve for all I’ve lost.

  “You need to come to terms with this.” She invades my space further and rasps, “There will come a day when you have to battle her. To choose between your life and her cursed one. You need a clear conscience, and you need a plan, but I beg you, Kat. I beg you. Don’t let her suffer like this. When the time comes, end it as swiftly as you can.”

  I chuckle darkly and drop my hand, tingling with tiny flames. “A clear conscience? That’s what you want? When I take down the only person who ever accepted me for what, who, and how I am? The only one who hasn’t deceived me, who hasn’t manipulated me, right? Strike her down as though she meant nothing to me, and call it a mercy?”

  Her lips firm and we stare at one another. “Much is coming in the future. Many will fall by your hand, and many will fall at your feet. We’ve already seen this. Aside from the five as a whole, you are what the realms need. I’m asking you to show compassion.”

  “Compassion,” I spit. I have half a mind to show her what my compassion truly means, but I refrain from burning her to a crisp, from allowing that rearing darkness inside me to grab the reigns, because I know, deep down, that I’d regret it. “I never wanted this.”

  “But you have it nonetheless,” she answers in quick succession. “Own it, or die like the rest.”

  And with those last words, she leaves. I watch her retreating form, her dress billowing out behind her in her haste until she turns and enters the teepee once more.

  The rest of the day slowly dribbles by, almost agonizingly sluggish. Each elf tends to what they can, do what they can, while grief thieves them from the hasty, lively atmosphere they once had. And when it comes time for the dead’s ceremony, we gather by the edge of the lake where I once stood and discussed my future with Fate, the very divine being who plotted this before I was even born.

  TEMBER

  GUARDIAN REALM

  The frozen crystal lake seems less mystical than the last time I saw it, flying above a lifetime ago. A lifetime ago when territorial and prejudiced wars were all this realm sought to fight for, back when that was all that mattered to its people. That day was just as dark and dim as this one, but that day had also splattered the black blood of every elf warrior and wife of those who dared lay to rest their people in the midst of war. I regret that day, having pioneered that attack, knowing they’d be weeping over corpses, leaving the living vulnerable. I knew an air strike would decimate their numbers. And now, now it’s me who feels decimated. Everything in me feels scooped out, hollowed, empty. The dimness of the once blood-splattered frozen lake greets me with a bitter cold breeze, remembering me as the disappointment I am.

  To some, this place may be that of great beauty. But to me, there’s no shimmering loveliness, no sparkle of hope to admire. This isn’t a place to lay a loved one to rest for me. This is a place once scored with many deaths and many rotting underneath the thick layer of ice. And now I pay the price – the price for the past, the price for the present, and the price for my future.

  The breeze drifts away from me, a living thing, and churns around the tribe behind. Like them, it’s grieving for the losses on its own, for the two mighty corpses amongst their fallen people. Animals gather at the other side, seemingly aware of the ceremony about to take place – the air thick with sorrow – while slow tumbling snowflakes dance from a dense, cloudy sky, silent to honor the dead.

  Everyone is here, sporadically situated behind Erline, Jaemes, and me, while Mitus and Erma are on slats made of logs. Each log was stripped of bark and chiseled in detailed swirls of the language characters of the elves. For a moment, I marvel at them, using the artistic splendor of it all to distract myself from Erma’s lifeless body, from the memory of the sneak attack I carefully planned so long ago. I don’t remember these logs being so beautiful, so carefully carved, such thought put behind the designs. The rest of the dead are on smaller, less intricate slats, already set strategically on the frozen lake, waiting for their creator and leader to join them in a slide across the ice.

  A slow beat to a drum begins somewhere in the silent crowd. Their drums are fashioned of animal skin stretched over hollowed-out tree trunks, small enough to easily carry with one arm. It’s why they never heard that attack so long ago, too consumed with the sounds of their instruments. The beat is to the pounding of a heart, my wrist throbbing against the sharp pumps of the stubborn organ, the organ that keeps me living when all I want to do is curl up next to Erma and go with her to whatever afterlife awaits her.

  Delicately, a female elf hums a tune. It’s hauntingly beautiful, full of life and memories and pain. Before long, many have joined her dips and sways of sorrow with their own voices, a chorus of the grieving.

  “Are you ready?” Jaemes asks me, his voice thick.

  I incline my head, my body too numb to speak properly, to care that it is the phrase I usually fling at him. But he didn’t fling the words, and he doesn’t seem to remember that those words are often spoken before we do something grave. Those three words I often ask him are usually a distraction to my own fear of the future, of what awaits. Perhaps he too asks them with the same intention.

  He had spoken softly, so softly, a rhythmic question to the song at our backs. Erline’s gaze bores into my cheek when she doesn’t hear me speak nor catch my nod, seemingly attempting to burn a hole into the skin. I ignore her and the trapping probe her eyes betray. She worries for me. She fears for me. She seems to know that I’d rather not live in any realm where Erma doesn’t exist. She need not. I’ve been through death, I’ve been through loss. And though this has hit me harder than the others, I will get through it. I think. If not for my people scattered and scared across this realm and the Earth Realm, then for Katriane DuPont who has set aside her own fears to save people she doesn’t know. If she can do it, then so can I, and this gives me a kernel of comfort for a future so uncertain.

  Slowly, as one, Jaemes and I part from the head of the crowd and take carefully measured steps to the ice. As we reach the two dead leaders, we bend together and place our hands on the edges of their slats. My fingers roam the etchings, my thumb dragging across the smooth marks, memorizing them, so I’ll never forget this day. In hopes, I never forget her and what we shared, even in secret, I commit them to recall when the grief cripples me from moving on. I want to be everything Erma couldn’t. I want to make her proud. I want her memory to remind me of all the things others could lose if no one fights for them.

  “Today,” Erline starts, speaking over the crowd. “Two spirits will soar with their people. Today, we allow grief. At this moment, it consumes us. But tomorrow or the next day, we will avenge what we’ve lost to honor them and what they sacrificed for you. For us. For the realms. And in doing so, we will remember their lives, knowing they’ll be there in spirit, guiding us to true form.”

  It is then that my reluctance gives way and I peek at Erma’s face. It only looks as though she’s sleeping, like I could call her name, and she’d blink up at me. But her face, that silent, solid beauty . . . that stone-set face is enough to cripple my senses and drown the rest of Erline’s speech. Several emotions take my body hostage, stiffening my muscles. An abundance of love shredding in my heart, in my soul. A betrayal that it no longer exists for me because the woman my veins thrum to is gone forever. Grief wrapped in rage. Memories encased in numbness.

  Her red hair is perfectly arranged to frame her face, and a light wintry breeze ruffles a few strands, caressing her cheeks. It’s almost eerie that she doesn’t lift a hand to remove the offending curls. I almost expect her to. Instead, her
fingers are weaved together, resting just below her breasts.

  Someone had clothed her in a different gown than the one she had worn when she . . . died. That dress had been splattered with blood, torn in places, too, if my memory serves. I silently thank whoever was careful enough to do so, to take away the reminder of the planned betrayal of her fee siblings, of the betrayal of me. I had pushed too hard, asked too much of her, and perhaps if I hadn’t, she’d still be alive.

  To hold back the threatening tears, I blink to the sky. The clouds churn with the threat of more snow yet to be truly unleashed. It waits for us to put our loved ones to rest before it grieves on its own. I take in each detail, each shifting puff, and silently plead to Fate to take these souls and make sure they find a place among the dead. To encourage Hope to grant me some. To ask Despair to banish itself from the hearts who cry. To beg Choice to be returned to the living in faith that they make the right ones.

  A subtle movement brings me back to the present. Jaemes, murmuring in his native tongue, quivers as he pushes Mitus’s slat across the ice, biceps rippling. With one last look at the red-framed face I’ve adored for my whole long life, I follow his movements. And then I stand. It soars across the frozen lake as quiet as the retreating wind, seemingly being sucked back across the ice, and my whispered goodbye is taken along with it.

  A roar bellows from over the trees, and soon after, the whoosh of a large-scaled body creates its own gale through the iced clearing. Snow gathers from the surface, swirling upward like a shaken snow globe as she glides across the sky.

  The two slats are almost to the first row of dead warriors waiting in the middle. Upon an effortless tilt in the air, the dragon’s chest lights with a brilliant pumpkin orange, and a stream of fire exhausts from her mouth. It engulfs Mitus and Erma, and then each fallen warrior, woman, and child who was killed by ham-fisted might of battle is lit as their leaders pass, the flames touching the dead’s last bed.