Chapter 35 - Ambivalence

The scream dies in my throat, a knot of acid and air.

My body is hollow, a vessel scoured clean by a horror it cannot contain. 

Around me, the world burns and shrieks, but in the shell of this house, there is only a dead, ringing silence. 

My eyes are fixed on them, on the impossible kindness and life that was once Elara and Hakota. My mind tries to build a wall, to protect itself, focusing on the absurd minutiae of the scene.

I retreat to face my clothes. Clean. Mended. Folded. The last act of a gentle hand.

My legs are stiff, disconnected things, but they obey. I skirt the edge of the devastation, my hand trailing against the cool stone of the ruined fireplace. 

I reach the bundle and kneel, my fingers tracing the perfect seam Elara stitched. They’re perfect.

I lift the clothes up, pulling them close to my chest, embracing them tight. Somehow the fabric feels softer. It’s all I have left of them.

A sound breaks free from the roaring flames and distant battle cries. A thin, high-pitched wail. It’s coming from the collapsed remains of the house next door. It sounds like a child.

My grief for Elara and Hakota doesn't vanish; it transforms. It curdles into a fierce, protective resolve. I can’t save them. But I can save that child.

I move toward the sound, clutching my clothes in my left arm. I scramble over a collapsed wall, the heat from the smoldering timbers scorches my skin intimately. 

“Hello?” I call out, my voice hoarse. “Is someone there?”

The crying doesn’t cease. Tucked in the small, triangular space beneath a fallen roof beam is a little boy, no older than five or six. His face is smeared with soot and tears, his eyes are wide and white.

“It’s okay.” I say, my voice softer than I thought possible. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He just stares at me, trembling.

“We have to go.” I say gently, extending my free hand. “It’s not safe here. I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

He hesitates for a long moment, then his tiny, soot-stained fingers wrap around mine. His grip is surprisingly strong. 

I pull him carefully from the wreckage. He begins to calm down as I pick him up, his small body shaking with silent sobs.

Where? Where is safe? My mind races. The southern gate is a battlefield. And the forest has to be the source of this nightmare. The chief’s house was fairly intact but that could have changed by now.

I just need to get as far away from here as possible and the northern palisade is the furthest point in town. 

“We’re going to go on a little run, okay?” I tell the boy, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “You have to hold on tight.”

He just nods, his eyes fixed on my face with a desperate trust that both strengthens and terrifies me.

We move. I hold him tight, my body shielding his as we dart between burning homes and heaps of rubble. The speed incantation is long gone, and my legs are leaden, but I have to keep going.

We’re halfway across the central square when something abhorrent skitters out from some wreckage. A low-slung, insectoid looking thing with too many legs.

Its multifaceted eyes fix on us, and a low, chittering sound rattles from its throat. It’s different from the creatures I saw pull the other villager down.

I freeze, putting the boy behind me. There’s nowhere to run. It crouches, ready to spring.

A whimper from the boy ignites my fury. Grief for Elara and Hakota, terror for the child, and rage at the senseless destruction, it all converges into a singular, blazing intent.

I thrust my left hand forward, palm open. I don’t have time to think about a candle. 

Only one picture infiltrates my mind. 

The incandescent, world-ending torrent of white-hot flames. 

I pour every ounce of pain, loss, and anguish into that image.

A violent, tearing agony starts in my wrist and screams up my arm as bruised lilac light erupts from my scars, no longer a faint pulse but a sundering, sickly liquid.

White-hot plasma shrieks from my palm.

The creature evaporates, its chittering cut short as it’s consumed by the impossible heat.

The light dies, and I stare at my hand, which is red and raw.

But it’s the relentless pain in my arm that halts my mind.

I look down. 

The pale, silent lines of my past are no longer pale, they have been torn open by the beauty of magic in my present.

The phantom pain has become real. 

Liquid seizes hold of my scars, purple and putrid.