The Price of Survival

by Meagan Hurst

  Z hesitated until she felt she had been still for far too long before she reached out and accepted his hand. This was difficult—more difficult than she thought it would be. Midestol, here on the field, after she had spent so much time with him as part of her family, was unsettling. She had thought the most she would have to do was fight him on the field; this wasn’t something she wanted to handle. He yanked her close to his chest and put a blade at her throat as the Ryelentions started forwards with soft cries of alarm, but again she signaled for them to stand down.

  “I am not going to hurt her,” Midestol said slowly as he backed up, dragging her with him. “But I cannot afford another injury while I attempt to retreat to a place of relative safety.” He continued to back up with the dagger’s blade kissing the skin on her throat, but nothing else about him was a threat.

  Z, therefore, held her instincts and responses in tightly, grateful yet again for her time away from this world. Once they were far enough away—in Midestol’s opinion—he released her and stepped away at once while he slid the dagger back into its position at his hip. Z lightly traced the thin line of blood the blade had marked on her throat at some point and watched him.

  “What’s your angle?” she demanded at last. “You don’t really want to negotiate a retreat—or you do, but that’s not why you want to speak with me.”

  Midestol sighed. “One day you will have to learn the art of patience with me,” he observed. “But I won’t ask it of you today. You’re surprisingly settled, but noticeably impatient. I simply wished to warn you that you have an enemy in your midst.”

  “I am well aware of the threat, but he is likely one of many,” Z told Midestol softly as she twirled a dagger around her left wrist. “I am also aware he is behind the death of Nivaradros,” she added quietly.

  Orange eyes widened slightly in surprise. “And yet you haven’t chosen to take any steps against the threat yet?” he wanted to know as he stared at her in open astonishment. “Not even after the death of your Dragon?”

  “He was never mine,” Z argued slowly.

  She glanced over her shoulder at her Ryelentions. They were watching Midestol and her. It angered her. The enemy—not Midestol’s forces—could have been sneaking up on them right at that moment, and they wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late.

  “I thank you for the warning, Grandfather,” she added quietly as her eyes narrowed while keeping on her comrades; something was moving behind them, but she couldn’t tell what.

  She didn’t, however, trust it. Midestol was surprisingly gracious in this meeting; he didn’t even try to take advantage of her lack of full attention on him. Maybe Nivaradros had been on to something after all when he had suggested she spend ‘quality time’ with her murderous grandfather.

  “Now, about your retreat—” she began as she started to turn to signal the signs for enemy and attack to her Ryelentions.

  She didn’t make it in time. There was a horrifyingly familiar sound of something whistling through the air, and Z instantly flung up a shield around her people in vain as Midestol threw one up around her. She didn’t have time to even turn to him to question his reaction, and she didn’t have time to speak. The arrows broke through the shields. All of them.

  Z found herself thrown to the ground as one of them struck her low on her left shoulder due to her awkward position at the time it had been fired. Immediately she tried to stand, but she was pinned to the rock hard frozen ground, and a touch on the shaft of the arrow burned her fingers with magic. There wasn’t pain, but she would have preferred pain to the realization that the arrows they had been trying to avoid—the arrows that had killed Nivaradros—had just been fired on them, or at least her. She wasn’t certain about the others. Based on the fall of the shields, however, she could guess.

  “Ksiria!” Midestol was beside her in an instant, and she struggled to move.

  To be stuck here, injured, while he was above her in a battle setting wasn’t good. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. She couldn’t move, though, and she felt the arrow’s poison and magic rushing through her system despite all the blocks she threw up in an attempt to stop or delay the inevitable.

  “Stay still,” Midestol growled as he stood. He had nothing to fear—he wasn’t the target—and drew his sword.

  She felt the evil that tainted the metal of the sword as it awoke with delight over her current position. Felt the dark magic and felt the blood that it had claimed over the years. He would kill her, and she was helpless to prevent it. Staying still wasn’t a challenge, if he had told her to move on the other hand it would have been impossible. She held his eyes despite her vision beginning to fog. He surprised her. Midestol swung Swyante not at her, but at the arrow—the few inches of it he could hit—that had pierced her flesh and trapped her upon the ground. All in all, it wasn’t his best idea.

  Swyante struck the shaft of the arrow that was made entirely of a foreign metal, and Z felt the vibration through her flesh. Gritting her teeth as the magic on the sword reacted to the magic in the arrow, and then both viciously attacked her, she struggled to keep conscious while mentally cursing Midestol into an abyss. She didn’t care which one. Of all the times to decide to help her, this was the worst.

  “Okay, we won’t do that,” Midestol breathed as he knelt beside her.

  “You could kill me instead,” she suggested helpfully as he touched the part of the arrow that she could see.

  “Yes, I could, but that is not the course I have chosen to take.” He frowned and lightly touched her face. “Stay conscious.”

  “I never intentionally try to lose consciousness!” she snapped as she swallowed hard from the pull of the foreign magic against hers.

  “Where is this arrow from?” Midestol asked as he turned from helping her—or attempting to—to examining the arrow that now had his undivided admiration and attention.

  “Not telling,” she whispered.

  The last thing she needed before her demise was to offer Midestol access to a world he hadn’t discovered, or at least hadn’t been to. And she didn’t know where the arrows where from, or how her enemy had gotten access to them. She only knew the arrows were not from her world based on the metallic design and the magic they contained. The poison would wreak havoc on her allies, and she wouldn’t be here to help. She could feel herself drifting and she was certain the poison wasn’t one she knew, which suggested it was native to the world the arrow was from.

  “Midestol, Grandfather,” she breathed as she struggled to speak. “How many survived?”

  “Of your immortals?” Midestol clarified softly. He glanced up and around before crouching back beside her. “I would say none, but there is a possibility I am wrong; they are very far away for my human eyes.” He called up magic and attempted to burn the metal shaft through; he abruptly stopped when her flesh began to smoke as the heat traveled down the arrow instead. “Damn it to hells!” he cursed as he removed the cloak he was wearing against the weather’s chill and placed it under her head. “I cannot move you, I cannot heal you, and I cannot get this damn thing to break so I can remove it.”

  Coming from him, the words sounded strange. “Why?” All in all, it was a terrible question, but thinking was starting to elude her.

  “You’re my granddaughter. I am the only person who gets to kill you. This is cheating,” he added as she opened her mouth. He was starting to get very fuzzy in her vision. “Ksiria, stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll—” Midestol’s eyes burned and became the only thing she could see clearly. “I’ll see if I can contact your Shade—what is his name?”

  “Crilyne,” she murmured as she felt a good half of her senses shut off.

  “Don’t you dare die!” he snapped at her before he vanished on the spot, leaving her to wonder if her world was turning inside out, or if she had already died, made it to one of the hells, and ended up with an overprotective grandfather who still wanted to kill her, but only if it was by his hand alone.

  On
ce he was gone her distraction from death left as well. Struggling to keep conscious and wondering how in the hells Nivaradros had managed to fly with multiple of these damn things in him, Z reached out in vain with her few remaining senses towards her Ryelention warriors. She touched death and more death before a faint spark of life caught her attention. Shalion. Remembering what he had said about magic and the arrows, she did the only thing she could think of—she forced her magic into a healing and hurled it his way. She had no idea if it made contact or not; she lost consciousness before she could find out.

  She regained it when someone roughly yanked her shoulders upwards. The sensation of the arrow and the flood of magic startled her out of what had probably been a slow but steady slide into death.

  “Hello, Zimliya,” the Thinyen greeted her when she opened her eyes. He was only a blur in her vision, but as she wasn’t happy to see him—wanted him dead to be honest—she had to admit the blur wasn’t a curse at the moment. “I see we did manage to hit you, though you are still alive. You really need to learn to spare yourself agony by dying properly.”

  “Properly?” she murmured weakly. “And what agony? I don’t feel pain.”

  “No,” the Thinyen agreed as she felt him pull the arrow in her shoulder around in a circle since he couldn’t dislodge it from the ground. “But you can feel magic, and this must be driving your senses crazy.”

  And it was. Her skin twitched, everything felt as if she was being attacked by specks of magic, and she could do nothing to defend or block the onslaught of power that was striking her like a tidal wave every few seconds. It was like a minor seizure, and she’d had enough of those to last several human lifetimes. She struggled to awaken more, but between the poison, the blood loss, and the magic she was lucky enough to have regained consciousness to begin with.

  “You murdered the Dragon,” she accused evenly, knowing beyond a doubt who was behind Nivaradros’s demise.

  “He was becoming an annoyance and a threat. I don’t know how he managed to prevent your death and grant you immortality, but I wasn’t willing to have him continue to interfere with any further plans.”

  “And he was a test.”

  “You are so clever,” the Thinyen said mockingly. “But you did not foresee this. You will die here, at long last, and I will never again have to deal with the Mithane and the Islierre except in the tides of battle as enemies. It has taken me far longer than I thought to accomplish this; the ties you created between the heirs and the kingdoms were stronger than I had anticipated. It was beneficial for a time—I learned much about those I intended to attack—but I couldn’t act until your death, and you continued to survive.

  “It was impossible to move against you until now; your magic is more than a match for mine. While I regret losing your power, I will relish your death and the disappearance of the complications you have added. You were wise, Zimliya, not to trust me, but you were too cautious. You should have made a move against me long ago. Now, I have outflanked you, and the war I have sought for centuries will begin. Without your presence the Alliance will crumble, and there will be no one to keep the kingdoms I seek to destroy from succumbing to their much overdue fate.”

  “Dyiavea will never allow it,” she whispered as her thoughts turned to the Dralation heiress. “Between her, Shevieck, Zyrhis, and Shalion your goal to start a war with the Ryelentions and the Alantaions will fail.”

  “Not if I remove them. Dyiavea is easy enough to take care of, Zyrhis is likely to fall prey to his own people soon, and Shevieck is known to be accident prone. As for Shalion, now, surely you recall he was here with you?”

  She did, but he wasn’t here now. He had vanished into his shadowland, she presumed, which meant he had fled alive. It also meant he had escaped the arrow, or it hadn’t pinned him to the ground as it had her. Perhaps he’d even been exceptionally lucky, and it had gone straight through him.

  Smiling with ice in her eyes, she gathered her words with care. “But is he here now? You have played your hand, Thinyen, and he survived. He will alert the others to your betrayal.”

  “He’s injured. The arrow will take care of him,” the Thinyen sneered. “As it would have eventually claimed you, but I tire of this conversation. Goodbye, Zimliya.”

  She heard a bow being brought up and readied. Pulling together the last bit of strength she could find, she kicked her legs up and felt them connect with a bow—launching the arrow off target. It wasn’t enough; the arrow struck her to the right of her heart, and she could feel the damage instantly threaten her life in a way the other arrow had not yet been able to.

  “Damn you,” he hissed, but before he could do anything more she heard the familiar sound of a body meeting a sword.

  It was followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground and more fighting emerging around her. “Zimliya!” a frantic, but familiar voice called out before a lot of swearing followed. Dyiavea had arrived, and Z felt the heiress’s fingers lightly tracing her wounds. “Stay with me,” the Dralation whispered. “Help is coming. Crilyne sent a message to your allies that you were wounded; the Mithane is coming.”

  He was coming too late. Z didn’t bother to tell Dyiavea this because she knew the immortal heiress already knew it. “Shalion?” she whispered. She wanted to see if he would—could—respond to her call. She couldn’t sense him, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of her injury or because he was still walking the shadows.

  “Here,” she felt his arrival and then a touch of the shadows caressed her as he also knelt beside her. “You shouldn’t have helped me.”

  “Your life is worth a great deal to me,” she laughed.

  Hissing as the magic continued to swirl in the original injury, and then in the most recent, she struggled to win a battle that had rendered the weapons she was most comfortable with useless. She opened her mouth to speak and found even more blood in the way. Swallowing it with a grimace, she tried to speak again.

  “Shalion—” she managed to croak before beginning to cough heavily. The metallic taste of blood was only growing, but she forced herself to ignore it. She was dying, but that didn’t mean she was surrendering. After her battle against her price for awakening the Shades, this was easier to fight.

  “Don’t speak,” he advised as his hands touched her chest and shoulder. She was certain he was trying to slow the bleeding. “I’ll be alright. I don’t know how you did it, but you severed the arrow’s shaft from its head, and I was able to get away from it. Once I was away, your magic began to heal me. I will not be at my best for a few months, but I will be fine. You on the other hand—”

  “We will see what I can do before we call anything,” a vastly resigned and very worried voice said from somewhere above her and to her left. The Mithane had arrived. “Shalion, fetch your father. I believe he is going to have to help me once more. I would ask it of you, but you are injured, and I do not think you have the experience or the training required.”

  “What will you ask my father to do?” Shalion demanded sharply. “He is not to be trusted—”

  “Right now, Shalion, he is all I have in the way of hope. I need to find a way to detach Zimliya from the arrows and heal the damage they have done—I presume you can see the hole that is slowly growing in size and will soon threaten her heart? Not to mention the one that has demolished most of her shoulder? He has helped me once before, and I believe he will aid me again, but I have little time—or she does—to waste, and I need his help now.”

  “Which is why I summoned him after I left you,” Crilyne called out. She heard two sets of footsteps before someone touched her forehead and she found herself yanked through the levels of the world, past the presence of other worlds, and into the shadows.

  The Islierre was watching her keenly when everything cleared. She was standing in the mirror image of his castle. Standing, and able to see. Her subconscious helpfully filled things in and ignored the fact she was dying. The Islierre’s features were smooth, but icy. He was furi
ous. His eyes snapped with anger, and their color was an orange so vivid it made Midestol’s eyes look pink.

  “You saved Shalion,” he said without preamble when he realized she was somewhat alive and okay in his shadowland.

  “Yes,” she admitted, relieved it was easier to speak here. For now. “I couldn’t have used the magic on me,” she added before he could ask or accuse. “Having it outside my system slowed the progression of magic those arrows are infused with.”

  “Where are the arrows from?”

  “Another world. I believe that the price to acquire them was higher than the former Thinyen realized; the creatures we have been fighting slipped through when he was bargaining for the arrows.”

  “You are certain of this?”

  “No, but I know the creatures and the arrows come from the same world. I can sense it,” she clarified before he could ask. Closing her eyes as a wave of weakness struck her, she put her hand over one of the wounds missing from her form here. She could still feel the damage being done by it. “Since the Thinyen was always rather careless when he reached outside of our world, I am confident he accidentally delivered the doorway to our world to the creatures. I doubt he realized in the beginning—or even the end—what he had done.”

  “And his daughter?”

  “She had no knowledge. She’s been trying to help me,” Z replied evenly. She hated being interrogated, especially now. “Any other questions?” she asked in a testy tone.

  “Will you survive this?”

  “It is unlikely.” She met his gaze squarely. “I cannot help the Mithane, and I do not believe this is within his skill range. It is foreign magic and a foreign poison; there is little he can do.” Had she known where Dyslentio was, she might have had a chance of reaching him, but without Nivaradros she had no idea how to find the Kryhista. She didn’t even know if Nivaradros had kept him apprised of her condition.