Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  “No fair!” I growled into the space, certain she had shielded herself. “A shield and a stutter. Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

  No answer.

  My chest tightened in agitated fear as the minutes ticked by while I looked around me, spinning on the spot like a confused top. A confused top that was having unnecessarily large heart palpitations.

  I tried to feel her magic, but nothing was there.

  She wasn’t there.

  “Nice try, Wyn.”

  I moved the second I heard her, but I wasn’t fast enough. An attack slammed into my gut, heat and force moving through me as I soared through the air like a puppet, arms and legs flailing in a frenzied attempt to gain control of them before the floor found me. It was no use. With a dull thud and a loud scream, I intercepted with the hard floor, my body mush against stone.

  I grunted at the painful ripple that moved over me, grateful it had dislodged whatever control Joclyn had locked inside me.

  “Is that the best you can do?” I yelled with a laugh, knowing it was foolhardy yet not really caring. At this point, the lone weapon I had was snark. I had better use it, considering I could hardly see straight. My body was barely more stable than a puppy as I attempted to find my feet, my Chuck Taylors squeaking loudly in the open space.

  I hadn’t even stood before sparks of colors and sharp, conjured knives fanned toward me with a bang like a cannon.

  Falling back to the ground in a crouch, I held my arms up in a shield, magic spreading from my skin in a wide bubble that wrapped around me in a sheath of grey. In my head, it was a shield so powerful it should have blocked anything. It would have if I hadn’t been in such a rush to get it up. In reality, it was barely strong enough to deflect her attacks.

  I could feel the tiny pokes of strain as the knives hit the shield before falling to the floor with a clang. The heat of her magic seeped through the thin barrier, oozing into me like a painful gas I already knew I didn’t want to feel the full force of.

  I waited, desperate for her attacks to stop before the shield gave out. I shouldn’t have expected her to give up that easily. As though I was trapped in the middle of a war, the attacks increased, explosions and knives and who knew what else coming at me.

  I was vulnerable, crouched down like this with the shield up, and she knew it. Forget that silly rock and its dumb hard place. That didn’t even make sense. There was nothing worse than a weak shield and a powerful best friend with no shame.

  I was doomed.

  “Give up yet?” she shouted in a lull of attacks, her voice heavy and playful and pulling at me in all the wrong ways. “Or are you still pretending to be a master assassin?”

  “Ha! I’ll never surrender!”

  Darn me and my stubbornness. I could kill myself for getting into the position, and if this had been a real fight, it would have killed me. Of course, if this had been a real fight, I would have killed her by now.

  Either way, it was a stupid move, like eating cheese out of a can.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are…” she taunted, the laugh poorly concealed in her voice.

  I groaned loudly enough for her to hear, mentally kicking myself. “No fair, Joclyn.”

  “Come and face your reward, Wynifred!” It was a taunt, a loud one, and I groaned louder. I guessed I deserved the full name. I had started it in any case.

  I would have to be grateful she didn’t know my middle name.

  “You can’t call this…”

  Mommy?

  I froze with my mouth open, ice rippling through me, the game and the battle and the barrier all but forgotten. It was all gone in one haunting word that rang loud and clear through my mind.

  I couldn’t breathe. I could barely see straight through the panic. It was her voice, the same pleading that had haunted me for months, the same gut-wrenching heartbreak that ran through me. You would think I would have managed it better after so long, that I would have gotten used to it.

  But I didn’t think there was a way to.

  Not with this.

  Mommy? Where are you?

  “Rosaline.” It was a whisper, but I regretted saying it instantly. It was as though the shard of blade in my pocket could hear me. No, as if she could hear me, as if she could react to me.

  “What did you say? Did you say you give up?” Jos asked playfully, her voice sounding like it was a million miles away.

  Everything was warm, too warm. Heat was radiating from the tiny shard of souls and blood that I kept concealed, the voice coming again, making me flinch.

  Mommy? Where are you?

  “Wyn?” Joclyn’s voice came simultaneously with hers, but I wasn’t even convinced I heard it. I wasn’t even convinced anything existed behind the way everything twisted inside of me. Behind this past I was trapped in.

  Mommy?

  My hands ground against the floor as I stared at it while it shifted in and out of focus. I tried to concentrate on anything that would pull me out of this quickly descending spiral, but nothing was working.

  I needed to get out of there before I did something stupid.

  “Are you okay, Wyn?” The humor was gone from Joclyn’s voice.

  I flinched, a fear I couldn’t quite place taking over.

  “Are you crying?”

  Was I crying? I couldn’t focus on anything beyond her voice, beyond the memories.

  Mommy! Save me!

  “No!” I snapped, uncertain if it was to Rosy or Jos.

  “You better not be messin’ with me … I’m not going to fall for it, Wyn.” She was worried; I could tell. However, it didn’t stop the way my magic had begun to bubble, the way the fear was ripping through me in painful waves of heaviness and heat. “Wyn?”

  Mommy? She was crying, too. Please.

  I needed to go.

  I didn’t care how; I needed to go.

  Fingers digging into the stone, back arched, breathing ragged in my ears, I felt my magic grow, felt the heat of it, felt the desperation taking over. A small voice in the back of my head screamed at me that the magic was too strong. If only it was louder … if only I cared…

  In a burst of fire, my magic spread over the floor so fast I wasn’t sure Joclyn could avoid it even if she was paying close attention. I felt the stones. I felt the raw power of the fire magic move into them, heating them as the floor shifted underneath her, sending her tumbling to the ground.

  I heard Rosaline scream in my head, heard Joclyn yell in panicked fear, but I couldn’t think. I was stuck in a cage with the whimpers and cries of my child, and I forgot what I was doing.

  Suddenly, it was just another job.

  It was just another body to claim.

  Another beating heart to deliver to my master.

  Heart thundering in eagerness, I burst from the shield that had become a prison, my hand raised in preparation for attack, turning to face the woman I had attacked so ruthlessly in one swift motion, the floor beneath her shifting as it swallowed her whole.

  “Wyn!” Her voice was a scream of terror that ran through me with a trembling fear that brought a flood of everything right back to me.

  No!

  No body, no war, no blood.

  The game.

  It was just a game.

  “No!” I yelled as the voice left, the frightening reality implanting itself within me. “No,” I said again, my magic withdrawing back into me in one swift pull.

  The stones of the floor solidified themselves in an instant. Her scream faded into the mirror of my own heaving breath, our eyes meeting in a desperate look of fear and panic so heavy I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know what to say.

  How was I going to get myself out of this one?

  It was like I was stuck in a bad Michael Jackson music video.

  “Wyn?” Her voice sounded tentative from where she stood. I didn’t blame her for her fear. “Are you okay?”

  I glared at her, my jaw locked as the battle continued inside of me
. I had attacked her, and she was asking me if I was okay.

  Thankfully my little girl’s voice had taken a break. It made it easier to think. I wished the mass murdering side of me would be a little bit quieter. I didn’t want to kill this one.

  “What do you mean?” I was defensive, too defensive. I cringed against the sound in my voice, but I knew I couldn’t take it back.

  Calm down, Wyn, I told myself. You are starting to act like one of those deranged puppets parents make their kids watch on TV.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she began, her voice shaking, “but I am pretty sure you were trying to kill me for a second … and you were crying.”

  To anyone else, the combination might be seen as normal. In a way, it was for me—well, the killing people part. Strangely, the crying was more out of the ordinary. It was an odd reality when she was more alarmed by that than the “almost murder” I had “almost committed.”

  “I’m fine.” My voice was a growl, so unlike the personality she knew from me—hell, unlike both my personalities. I knew she wouldn’t believe me.

  She didn’t.

  “Wyn,” she prompted, “you can tell me.”

  Yeah right, not if I was going to save my daughter.

  “Please, Wyn.” She twisted her hands around one another as she always did when she was getting uncomfortable.

  I wanted to say she was reacting to me, that her demons where plaguing her, but not with the way she was looking at me, with that sympathy and understanding she always had. The combination was terrifying.

  I wanted to spill the beans about everything that had happened, everything I was feeling: about the blade and Thom and how scared I was to lose him, about Talon and how he still came into my dreams every night, about Rosaline’s voice echoing in my head.

  I wanted to, yet no matter how crazy that blade might be making me, I needed it to release Rosaline’s soul, to release Cail’s. I wouldn’t be able to do that if they knew I had it, if they knew what it was doing to me and how volatile it had made me. I wouldn’t be able to save my baby if they took the blade away, if I didn’t get a chance to find the others.

  Besides, it wasn’t my daughter beside me, not really. It was just her memory. I could handle it.

  I had handled it this long.

  “I’m fine, Jos. Please,” I said as I took a step toward her, unsurprised when she fought the need to take a step away. She still didn’t trust me. “I think I got nervous, what with the impending war and everything.” I added a shrug and a smile.

  Although it seemed to please her, she was still tense, her silver eyes continuing to study me far too closely.

  “You’re not the only one,” she finally groaned.

  My shoulders loosened a bit, though the knot in my stomach stayed firmly in place.

  We stared at each other, making it clear we didn’t really believe one another, but neither of us were going to say anything further, either. We both had too many secrets at this point.

  “I think I’ll take fake wars to actual ones any day,” I tried again, taking a few tentative steps toward her, glad when she didn’t shrink away. I really wished I had something better to say, but “I’m sorry I almost killed you” didn’t seem right.

  “But then, we may be looking at a war once Ilyan sees what we did to the floor.” I sighed as I moved to stand beside her, my shoulders dropping dejectedly as I caught sight of the pile of rubble she was trapped in, the beautiful floor smashed to bits.

  I was so dead.

  “I’m not accepting responsibility for this,” Jos moaned from beside me.

  “That’s fair,” I groaned dejectedly. It was. I couldn’t wait for Ilyan to unveil that little temper tantrum unless… “Maybe we can blame it on Edmund. Then Ilyan could be so mad at him he would just explode from the burden of Ilyan’s temper.”

  Seemed legit.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, her eyebrows unified in a deep furrow.

  “One could hope,” I said with a shrug, falling to my knees to begin digging her out of the pit I had trapped her in. “And I will. I will hope that Edmund will take the strength of his son’s wrath from me and that I will survive this unfortunate incident.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “It is the only chance we have to save us all.” Laying the melodrama on thick, I swept my hand over my shoulder from where I knelt below her, letting a bit of an American accent shine through the dull shadow of my Czech one.

  I expected her to chuckle, but she sighed, a bit of a groan escaping with the sound. Just like that, the playfulness in my voice evaporated.

  “Oh, bother.” The eye roll was obvious in her voice. “If only it was that easy.”

  “It might be; you never know.” I could hope.

  “Oh, I know.”

  She was dejected, and I didn’t blame her. Sometimes, Joclyn’s sights had a habit of putting a damper on any situation. All she saw was what was coming. She forgot to look at where she was. She forgot the future wasn’t supposed to be known; it wasn’t set in stone.

  “You can’t see everything, you know,” I whispered as I continued to pull a rock away from her partial tomb, her legs shifting around as I worked and she tried to free herself.

  “I’ve seen too much, Wyn. I know you can’t see everything. No one can, not even a Drak. But you can see too much. Sometimes, I think I have.”

  With a snap, I looked up to her, a warning of temper rumbling through me as agitation twisted through my spine. “So have I, Jos. We’ve all seen too much.” My voice was dead. It barely got above a whisper before it was swallowed by the vastness of the room. “It may not be the future, and it may not be what’s coming, but I’ve still seen too much. I’ve seen years of Edmund killing and destroying and hurting and manipulating and…”

  Mommy? Can you see me? Why didn’t you come for me?

  “I’ve seen my own daughter murdered before my eyes. I’ve seen the blood running over her cheeks as I screamed, fighting to get to her as she pleaded for Mommy to rescue her.”

  Joclyn was staring at me from where I still crouched below her, her eyes as wide as saucers while the truth of what I was saying hit her.

  But I didn’t see that.

  I saw Rosaline: her eyes wide and despairing, her cries soft and defeated as she was taken from me.

  I pushed the memory away, looking away from the woman before me, from the concern in her eyes, and went back to removing the rocks with renewed vigor—or would it be furious frustration?—freeing her in ten seconds flat.

  “He deserves to pay for that, Wyn. I’m ready for all this to be over, but I’m not really ready for everything that comes between now and the ending I’ve seen.” Her voice was low and garbled, the consonants blending together so much I was having a bit of trouble understanding her.

  “I know,” I said as I moved to stand, the dust in the air making it hard to breathe. “But you have to get through the bad in order to find the good.”

  “There isn’t a lot of good around us right now,” she sighed. Both of us knew how hard that was to find right now.

  “What did you do before there was magic?” The volume in my voice caught us both off guard. “When it was just you and no magic and no sights and no Drak, when it was just us going off into the night to crash Ryland’s graduation party?”

  “We crashed Ryland’s graduation party.” She repeated my words back to me in an answer that was so sarcastic that, for a split second, she actually sounded like the teenager she was.

  I tried to restrain the eye roll, but it came, anyway. In that way, we were a lot alike.

  “Did we know if we were going to succeed?” I asked, plowing on in a desperate need to get to my point.

  “No.” A tiny bit of a groan. At least she was catching on, even if she didn’t seem happy about it.

  I plowed on before she had a chance to stop me. “Did we have a definitive outcome?”

  “No … But, Wyn, we … We didn’t succeed.”
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br />   I smiled at how fast my set up had worked and turned to her with that same sly smile, the look on my face frustrating her more, and she groaned again.

  “You’re right. We didn’t. We failed. But did the world end?”

  She said nothing; she glared at me with those wide eyes, the silver so full of irritation I couldn’t help laughing, something that pissed her off more.

  “No.” It was a growl more than a word.

  I laughed harder.

  “Did we keep trying?” My voice rose in excitement as I drove my point home.

  The lines in Joclyn’s forehead increased with every word. She needed to stop that. We might be immortal, but that didn’t protect against wrinkles. I mean, had she seen Dramin?

  “Did we keep fighting?”

  She knew the answer to all of these as well as I did—yes, yes, we did—but I could already tell she was firmly standing her ground, too stubborn to say it, too scared to admit what came after.

  “But what if we fail this time, too?” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Then we try again.”

  “But the sights—”

  “And what if there were no sights, Jos?” I interrupted her steadily, not letting her disrupt my flow. “What if we had nothing to guide us and no guarantee of victory? We would still try. We did for centuries before you came along, and we will for centuries after if we need to. So what if you can see the future? If you told me anything, it’s that what you see isn’t set in stone. You’ve changed it before, so let’s change it again. Stop trying to guess what’s going to happen next and just find out for certain. There is more to see in life than the future, Jos. Sometimes, we have to look to the past to see the whole story.”

  There it was—the answer that not only she needed, but I needed, as well. It scared the bejesus out of me to even think the sights could be wrong, that I could lose Thom the same way I had lost Talon, the same way I had lost all the others. In the end, even if I did lose them, I would do as I always had. I would keep moving, keep doing what I had always done. More than surviving, more than trying, I would find another way to succeed.

  It was what we all needed to do: keep moving, find another path, find the courage to try again.