Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  Ilyan! I screamed his name, trying to focus on the broken world before me, trying to dodge my friend as she attacked again, the powerful blast hitting against the stone I had been sitting on moments before.

  “Wyn!” I tried again. “You must give it to me … You can’t—”

  “No!” she screamed, another blast rumbling around me. This one was so close I could feel its heat against my leg, could smell the singed jeans.

  I could barely focus on what was going on in front of me. The overlay of sight became confusing at it altered even further, her motions moving forward and back in quick succession.

  “You can’t have it!” she yelled, another attack moving toward me.

  My joints seized in agonizing strain as they tried to fight the weight that sight always gave me.

  “You can’t have my daughter!”

  Joclyn! Ilyan’s fear filled me as his voice did.

  My sight shifted yet again, pulling away the superimposed image of my friend and taking me right to where my mate was, his terrified face clear as he stood still in what looked to be an abandoned department store.

  Ilyan! I called again as another attack sped from my friend. Without the warning, there was no way I could move fast enough, no way I could have dodged.

  Violent waves of heat ripped through me, the magic ripping through my flesh, convincing me I was being torn in two. I could feel the warm blood spread over my skin. I could smell it.

  “You can’t have her!” she yelled again, the sound of her anger barely distinguishable above my agonizing screams. The sound mixed with the heat of her attack in a pressurized agony.

  I clawed at it. I screamed louder, certain my head was about to implode, rivers of warm wetness flowing from my ears.

  “Help!” I screamed, knowing it was no use.

  I pried my eyes open, only to face her retreating back as she ran out of the cathedral at a high sprint, the sound of her retreat drowned by my screams.

  “Ilyan!”

  Her back was the last thing I saw before I collapsed to the ground in a ball of agony.

  The sights took control with more strength, more force than I had ever felt. Sight after sight flashed before my eyes. The strength of them grew with each image until they were embedded in my soul, speaking to me, a part of me, as if they were me.

  Before, I always looked into the visions. The visions always took me to what I needed to see. Right then, the sight surrounded me. It was a piece of reality, and I was a piece of it.

  Ilyan, I gasped, practically screaming his name in my desperation to get his attention from where he and Risha were off surveying another part of the city.

  Nothing came in return. No sound. No response. Not even the whisper of the fear I had felt moments ago. I lay there, paralyzed by the agonizing pressure in my bones that mixed with the weight of the visions until I could barely think. I lay, helpless, watching the images of children laughing in a field turn into strips of a grey-green sky.

  Lifting my head toward the door, I took a heaving breath, trying to think, trying to find a way out, desperate to push my way out of the sight enough so I could move, so I could see where I was going. The sky faded to the cathedral I was trapped in, the two images casting shadows over one another, making it hard to know what was real and what was sight.

  The large chapel was full of ancient pews and men in long robes while women cowered in fear of a god they didn’t understand. They moved around me, apparitions of smoke and past, people of a time long forgotten, surrounding me as though they were real.

  “Ilyan,” I gasped aloud as I watched them, watched as time shifted.

  The robed men were replaced with Victorian women in high lace collars and frilled dresses. A tall lady with her hair in curls walked past me, a white parasol flung over her shoulder. I looked from her to a child in knickers and a cap who ran away from a very haggard looking nun. A chill of ice rippled up my spine as he ran right through me, his body swirling into wisps of smoke at the collision.

  “Ilyan!”

  My arms gave way as I crumpled to the floor with such force my face compacted with tile in a thwack that resounded through my skull. The pain of before increased, the strain so much now I could barely think through it.

  For a moment, I worried that what was before me was based more on injury than magic until the same booming voice of before crashed through the pain and took the last of it away, letting me see the past as it was, letting me feel the future.

  “This is sight. This is real. This is pure,” the unfamiliar woman said, the loud boom crashing through me as the sights did.

  “Ilyan,” I gasped, anxious to hear him now.

  Joclyn! With a boom, his voice broke through the sight, broke through my mind in a rush of panic.

  I relaxed at the sound, at the flutters of his magic that I felt moving through me, only to have them leave again, the connection breaking up like a flickering light bulb.

  Where …? Are … okay …?

  His questions faded to nothing as the sight gained control, the magic coming on so fast I screamed with the force of it, the strength of the vision suffocating.

  A man, Edmund maybe, holding a baby as he stood near an ocean. It was calm, relaxing, yet my body didn’t feel the emotion. I didn’t feel the cool air of the sea. I felt heat, felt the heavy thump of fear that moved through my chest. I couldn’t ignore the fear that perhaps he was going to throw the wriggling infant into the ocean.

  The vision faded back into the distorted haze of the cathedral I was in, and this time, my sight showed me the medieval workers who had built the magnificent building and Ilyan standing before me as he worked amongst them. His hair was short as I had seen it before, his face spread with a wide smile as he lifted the massive stones.

  Ilyan. I wasn’t certain whom I was calling to: the man before me or the man in reality. It didn’t matter; neither answered.

  “You must move.” That voice came again, the foreign familiarity of it frightening.

  I looked up into the overlay of sight I was surrounded by, expecting to see the voiced woman standing before me, instructing me. However, it was nothing more than a few boys fighting with wooden swords, Ilyan and his fellow workers long since faded into history.

  “You must move.” The forceful voice came from a dense space of white near the door to the cathedral, the oddly shifting mass calling me toward it.

  I didn’t dare question it, not with the power behind it, not with the way it rattled my bones and connected with my soul.

  Looking toward the door, my vision shifted to a cathedral bare of any past or future shadows. It was now. It was pieces of glass that fell from the sky like rain. It was a white shape still standing near the door, the shifting mass looking more human the longer I looked at it.

  “Move.”

  I did, even while my joints were aching, even while every pull of my body over the stone cut into me, glass and rock and who knew what else falling down from the heavens. With each desperate pull of my arms, flashes of sight surrounded me: flickers of blood, sun-bathed beaches, children laughing, and dying and crying and bombs.

  They surrounded me, the uncertainty frightening, but I couldn’t focus on it. I couldn’t dwell. I could only follow the voice as I moved toward it while calling to Ilyan over and over within my mind. He never responded, though for brief moments, I could feel his magic, feel his concern as snippets of what sounded like his voice broke through. Nothing more than that. It was like the connection was severed, like the strength of my sight was smothering it. Frayed wires that weren’t connected, no matter how much electricity you tried to move through them.

  A rumble shook the world I was trapped in, shaking the floor as I screamed, clinging to the floor as if it was going to collapse underneath me. A crash of stone and bone reverberated through the destruction that lived in my mind. Tears streamed down my face as I reached the doors to the massive hall, my hands sore, knees screaming in agony. I didn’t want to move any far
ther. I wasn’t confident I could.

  Clawing at the old, wooden frame, I pulled myself up, my legs shaking as the world shifted. My heart plummeted as, turning, I faced the destruction of the cathedral I had escaped. The once ornate, ancient architecture surrounding me was in piles of rubble and clouds of dust. I saw it for a moment before my sight pulled me back into that same blinding light as before, surrounding me with it.

  White stretched before me in a brilliance that washed the cathedral away. Everything glowed with a white-hot heat, tongues of red and yellow licking in the distance like waves on white sand. They moved in the sunset I was trapped in, gaining proximity as I watched, as they burned everything.

  Burning. The word stuck against my ribs as the light continued to move into me, my muscles constricting painfully at the realization of what I was surrounded by.

  A bomb.

  I was inside of an explosion.

  I gawked at it, waiting for the sight to change, waiting for it to give some answer.

  But it didn’t. It didn’t even so much as deviate.

  It simply burned.

  “You must move,” the voice came again, so close I turned, expecting again to see the formless shape of white. Instead, I faced myself … or, rather, me in a few hundred years.

  I stood in the white space, staring at the vision of myself. A crown of red blood dripped over her face from her hairline, her eyes a hollow black staring yet unable to see.

  I fought the need to scream at what I saw, at the blood, at the sight, at the death that echoed from her.

  “Hurry, Joclyn,” the other me spoke, the voice I had heard suddenly making sense.

  My heart rate accelerated in agonizing fear before she disappeared into a speck of black against the brilliant white. Black so dark I was convinced it was devouring the light, sucking it into a vortex of nothing.

  “Hurry,” the other me said again.

  Before I knew it, I was running toward it, running despite my aching joints, despite gasping for breath. The fear mounted at what had happened and what I would be facing.

  There was only the sound of my frantic breathing, the black spec before me taking shape, molding itself into the bodies of two people.

  I could see their outline, see the way they held each other, feel the way their power moved around them.

  No, not around, not between. Away. Away from them.

  I had been wrong before. They weren’t consuming this power; they were creating it.

  They were the bomb.

  Continuing my run toward the pair, I looked around for some clue as to what I was supposed to see, what insight this was supposed to give me. There was nothing. No matter how much I ran toward the two figures, I wasn’t getting any closer.

  My fear was increasing, my panic stuttering through me.

  “Joclyn!”

  The familiar scream pulled me out of the world I was trapped in, the two figures replaced by one I would recognize anywhere—the way he moved, the swing of his hair so familiar to me now.

  “Ilyan!”

  He ran toward me as I toward him, my body stuck within the blinding sight, his running through it until I could see the wild worry lining his normally bright blue eyes.

  I saw him, but I saw so much more.

  I saw him from two hundred years ago, running like a shadow through the ancient halls, his face wide in terror as he raced away from something. The fear in him was more than I had ever seen before, the strength of it infecting me.

  “Ilyan!” I sighed, collapsing in his arms as the frightened shadow of the ancient man continued to run past us, a scream breaking from the sight and ringing in my ears. “What’s coming?”

  I felt his strong arms, but all I could see now was the fear in his eyes, the scream on his lips. Before I knew it, the scream was coming from me, the same voice I had heard before yelling from somewhere around us.

  “Run!”

  “He’s late.” My father’s voice was a growl from where he stood beside me, the heavy frustration that was intertwined with it putting me on high alert.

  “I’m aware,” I said to no one in particular.

  Of course he was late. Sain was partially reliable at best; it would make sense he would pick today, when my father had chosen to meet with Sain inside the city, inside the dome, to push the limits of what was acceptable.

  “I did not want to have to beat the information out of him, but if I am forced to stand in this alley much longer, I may be forced to.”

  Grumbling to myself at the warning behind my father’s voice, I took a few steps away from where he stood in the shadowed alley, the sound of my heels clicking loudly in the deathly silence of the decimated city.

  Narrowing my eyes toward the red-bathed street we stood next to, I chanced a quick glance away from the relative safety the alley gave us, even though I didn’t know if that was where he would emerge since we had no idea where Ilyan’s camp was.

  It was one of the many reasons I didn’t like this plan.

  We were too exposed, too vulnerable inside the city. Even though my father didn’t go anywhere without his guard, the powerful men already hidden by their magic as they surveyed the streets surrounding us, I didn’t feel comfortable, especially with how close Ilyan had come to capturing Sain the last time. For all I knew, my irritating brother had already gleaned information from the pathetic Drak and was standing on the rooftop right above us, watching.

  Waiting.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time in the last century he had done something so brazen.

  I wouldn’t put it past him.

  With a groan and a glare, I shifted my view, taking one quick glance at the roofline before looking back to where my father stood in the shadow of a dilapidated store overhang, the words poslední z květů barely discernible. If it wasn’t for the rotted twigs and wilted roses, I wouldn’t have even been able to tell what it was.

  “Leave it, Míra,” Father snapped, as though he was controlling a dog. I supposed, in a way, he was.

  He had barely finished the warning before the little, fair-haired beauty he had made his forward guard snapped to attention, running to his side and looking very guilty for having picked up what had been a beautiful red rose.

  “Sorry, master,” she grumbled, deep and fearful, obviously expecting a strike.

  Smirking at her reaction, I took a step away, not really wanting to see what would come next. She was lucky my father was more concerned with Sain’s absence than her foolishness, or a strike would probably be the least she would receive.

  She stood beside him like a rail, her tiny frame a foot above his waist, her hair a long sheet down past hers. If it wasn’t for the dirty rags she was still forced to wear, I would say she looked like a life-sized porcelain doll, right down to her bottle green eyes. It would be a much nicer sight when she completed her training and was allowed to wear real clothes.

  “Find him, Ovailia,” Edmund growled, the depth of his voice pulling me away from the child and right to him.

  My scowl deepened at the intense look he was giving me.

  “He’s coming,” I spat, feigned confidence spilling over my lips as I flattened them into a tight line.

  The anger in his eyes intensified as he took a step closer to me, his fingers flexing by his side. “You would do well to make sure that is not a lie, Ovailia,” he warned, the sound of his steps loud as they slapped against the wet cobbles.

  He moved around me as I stood in place, my head held high while I waited for whatever was coming.

  “Find him for me,” Edmund hissed in my ear as he moved a step closer. A shiver moved down my spine at the icy chill of his hand moving over my neck as he swept my hair away from my face. His scowl deepened as I peered at him from out of the corner of my eye. “I want to know definitively.”

  You are trying my patience, I sent to Sain through the shard of blade that was embedded in his spine. The piece matched with the one my father had spread throughout me, the one-wa
y communicator bubbling painfully through my blood.

  I turned toward my father with a flick of my hair, my eyes meeting his dead-on, and I smiled. His own malice matched my own as I saw the pride in him grow.

  “Do not worry, Father,” I cooed, an uncomfortably hot breeze moving through my hair, reacting with the residual chill of my father’s touch like ice on a sidewalk. “He is coming. You will get what you need.”

  “Wonderful. See that that it happens.” His lips twitched into what I hoped was a smile before he moved away from me, back into the shadowed overhang of the flower shop.

  The little girl who had gone back to her inspection of the dead and blood-soaked flowers snapped back into obedient attention.

  “I would hate to discover this little game he is playing is stretching to you, as well. We still need him, Ovailia. I would hate to make you prove your loyalty to me again.”

  Ice trailed down my spine at the warning. The hatred in his words moved through me so deeply I shivered, which caused his smile to expand.

  “That won’t be necessary,” I cooed, keeping my voice gentle as I tried to pull his focus from my fear. He would have none of that, though; he simply smiled more. “I am yours, Father.”

  “Good, because he may be my key to procuring Wynifred as my mate.” The greasy grin on his face spread wider. “And once that is done, we can attack Ilyan and his pathetic pack mules. Then we can end this.”

  My smile broadened with eager anticipation as he turned back toward the girl. The way he was looking at her and the way her eyes glossed over made it obvious he was taking control through the Štít he had placed in her heart.

  Looking away, I walked back toward the end of the alley, avoiding a puddle of what looked like fresh blood that had pooled in the middle of the cobbled street.

  Everything here was too red, too wet, and too dirty. Add to that the decay of a city left to rot, and I wasn’t about to touch anything. It was bad enough I had to smell it. I would have preferred the vile death of the camp outside the wall to this, and that was something I had never thought I would admit.

  “Ovailia,” my father called loudly from behind me, his voice carrying enough to awaken one of the many Vilỳs who lay hidden in the space. I heard the hiss and turned, ready to say the word, but with one look, the mutated thing retreated, its tail between its legs.