A Fistful of Frost

by Rebecca Chastain

  “Nope.”

  I stumbled into a run. Niko sprinted in my periphery. The width of the track and the empty grass behind the goalpost separated me from the tyv, but drones and small newborn tyver cluttered the airspace. Palmquell in one hand, soul breaker in the other, I ducked and wove through the throng, burning through energy I couldn’t spare in an attempt to avoid being struck. I couldn’t distinguish between drones and tyver, not without slowing, so I shot anything in front of me and dodged the rest. Niko kept pace beside me, and I had a sense of him shooting drones that attacked from above and behind us, but I didn’t bother checking. I trusted the optivus aegis to cover my back and to warn me if anything got through his guard.

  I pelted across the soggy track, searching the sky for Jamie, and almost flubbed the transition to the grassy football field. Catching my footing, I spotted my pooka zigzagging through a cloud of drones to punch his proboscis into the tyv’s thorax. A fine spray of atrum gushed from the wound, dying back to a trickle. Countless additional glossy rivulets of atrum already seeped from puncture wounds in the tyv’s side, but they might as well have been paper cuts for all the effect they had on her.

  Jamie retreated, but the tyv chased him skyward, catching him on a barbed claw. He flailed and fought, but she clung to him. Together, they floated through the air away from me, carried by the tyv’s momentum, and when she landed, she drove her foot into the ground, pinning Jamie. The pooka spasmed in her grip. Ducking her head, the tyv stabbed her thick proboscis into Jamie’s thorax. His body shuddered and convulsed.

  Last night’s nightmare replayed in front of me: Jamie helpless and dying; the tyv devouring the pooka’s powerful energy, gaining strength even as she killed Jamie; and me, too far away to do any good.

  A sob escaped me. Niko no longer ran at my side. All the smaller tyver I’d avoided had converged on his brighter, stronger lux lucis, driving him toward the stands. He yelled at me. My harsh breaths drowned out his words, but I could guess he ordered me to wait. Even at full strength, I wouldn’t have had enough energy to bring down a tyv the size of a semi-truck by myself. But Jamie didn’t have time for me to wait for Niko to catch up. He needed rescuing now.

  Without Jamie to direct attacks against the tyv, the drones and smaller tyver avoided the air space close to her, leaving me a clear path. I sprinted up behind her, terror giving me an extra burst of speed. The urge to bury my soul breaker into the pulsing blend of lux lucis and atrum of her thick abdomen warred within me. Stabbing the distended segment wouldn’t kill her, but it might distract her from Jamie. Or it might chase her away, Jamie still impaled on her claw, and destroy any chance I had of rescuing him.

  Thorax. It has to be the thorax.

  My lungs burned, each gasped breath searing my esophagus. I ducked unnecessarily when I passed under the sharp, ten-foot arch of her back leg. Her abdomen curved upward to a tiny insect waist where it connected with the round thorax, and through the gap beneath her body, I spotted Jamie. Pinned on the tyv’s far side, his feeble struggles went unnoticed by the gorging monstrosity.

  I pushed everything I had into the next three strides and impaled the tyv on my soul breaker. The weapon’s barbed tips punctured tiny holes in her thorax. I pulsed lux lucis through the soul breaker, then withdrew. Atrum gushed from the wounds in twin fountains, and I sidestepped to avoid the poisonous spray. My soul didn’t contain enough lux lucis to overpower her vats of atrum, so I used Jamie’s method: I kept stabbing. Eventually, she would bleed out.

  “Let him go, damn it! Die!” I yelled, the words unintelligible between my ragged breaths and sobs. Working my way up her thorax, I stabbed again and again, opening dozens of cuts in her side, my stumbling steps propelling me ahead of the spurts of atrum.

  The tyv shifted, and I lurched to follow her, seeing too late that she’d ripped her horrid proboscis from Jamie and turned her attention to the puny enforcer harassing her. In one seamless strike, she impaled me.

  Agony tore my world to shreds and rebuilt it in torturous waves of misery. My soul imploded toward the tip of her sharp mouth, rending bones, shredding nerves and muscles. I clung to my soul. Pain intensified, melting my organs.

  With an anguished cry, I flung my lux lucis away from the tyv. The torment retreated a fraction and my vision cleared.

  A white haze filmed the air, casting the monstrous tyv’s eyes in a soft, dreamy glow. Hundreds of my reflections stared back at me, a diminutive woman kneeling in the snow, mouth agape, eyes saucer-wide with shock. My chin dipped to my chest as I followed the line of the thick proboscis to where it punctured my gut. Pain ratcheted and eased, and a bulge of lux lucis slid up the tyv’s tubular mouth. My lux lucis. I blinked away the fuzzy black spots in my vision and braced a weak hand on the tyv’s wicked proboscis. I met resistance; then my hand sank into the creature’s raw atrum. I jerked back, and my hand reappeared, blackened with evil soot.

  The tyv ripped another mouthful of my soul free, pain bowing my spine, and I searched for Jamie, needing to see him one last time.

  Pinned by her claw, he convulsed, jackknifing up around her leg over and over again. No, not convulsing; fighting. When the tyv had latched on to me, she’d shifted her bulk toward Jamie, and each time he jerked upward, his proboscis struck her thorax. Each time he fell back, atrum spurted from a new wound into a widening puddle. Impaled, his soul so faint I could almost see through him, Jamie still hadn’t given up.

  I wouldn’t either, not until he was free, but . . .

  Shouldn’t I be dead already? It hadn’t taken the tyv this long to detach my soul last night. Befuddled, I fought through the pain to focus. The white glow . . . my lux lucis.

  I’d netted the tyv! A fatalistic thrill pinged through me.

  I hadn’t caught the whole tyv—she was too large for my paltry soul to encompass—but I’d netted her head. The maneuver had been muscle memory more than conscious thought, an attempt to escape the focused pain of her proboscis. By some miracle, it’d worked, too. Thinning my soul had slowed the tyv’s ability to consume it.

  And I could move.

  I jabbed the soul breaker into the tyv, my hand a lead ball on a limp wrist. The weapon prodded the tyv with the force of wet paper. I fumbled to channel lux lucis through the tiny hooks, but stopped when my net threatened to collapse.

  As defenses went, it was pathetic.

  I mustered another weak stab. The soul breaker’s hooks slid across the tyv’s proboscis, scratching long welts into her intangible flesh. She jerked, tearing the sharp tip of her mouth from my gut. I screamed. Collapsing sideways, I caught myself with my right hand still fisted around the soul breaker, my tendons crunching under the awkward impact. Through the shimmer of my soul, the tyv’s large, foreign eyes contemplated me. When she flicked her tongue out, tasting my net, flames sizzled across my nerve endings. When she swallowed, agony toppled me onto all fours. Without touching me, she consumed my soul.

  I clung stubbornly to the net. Even with pain muddling my thoughts, I remembered the net was the only thing keeping me alive. Keeping me and Jamie alive. I’d given up on my own survival—the moment I’d flung my soul around the tyv, I’d forfeited my life—but the net forced her to slow down, and the longer she focused on me, the more time Jamie had to escape.

  “Save yourself.” My words squeezed through my constricted throat, barely audible. Jamie’s insect head tilted in my direction, a multitude of spinning irises meeting my gaze. Then, his movements clumsy and exaggerated, he stabbed the tyv’s thorax. I waited for him to withdraw, to let the newest wound bleed like he had the rest. His proboscis bulged and contracted, and a dark lump of atrum disappeared down his throat. The faint ribbons of lux lucis twining through Jamie’s soul faded, darkening. Another swallow ate through the glow of lux lucis in his abdomen.

  I shook my head, my sluggish thoughts having no problem grasping the danger of Jamie feeding on the tyv. If he consumed too much atrum, he’d be irrevocably altered. He wouldn’t be my pooka. He’
d be alive, but he’d be something darker, evil.

  That isn’t what I meant! I wanted to shout.

  The tyv jerked her head toward Jamie, coming up short against the edge of my soul’s net. I pitched sideways, wrenched off balance by the displaced energy of my soul. Fire sparked through my synapses. She yanked her head again, angling her sharp proboscis for Jamie. Again, she slammed into the intangible internal wall of my net. A backlash of pain cracked my skull. My soul lurched and my stomach heaved.

  The tyv spread her wings and bunched her legs, alarm stiffening her enormous body. When she tried to lift her head, my soul held it pinned. When she twisted to stab Jamie, my soul brought her up short. Moaning, I clung to the net even as it tore my body apart. Throughout her struggles, Jamie didn’t relent. Mouthful after mouthful of evil energy siphoned down his throat into his abdomen, blackening him even as he visibly strengthened.

  Had his return to me been a lie? Had he told me what I wanted to hear? Had I lost him and not even realized it?

  No. My heart denied the thought. Holding Jamie’s soul in mine had been peaceful, comforting—even euphoric. I hadn’t made that up, and Jamie couldn’t have faked it. If he had turned evil, I would have felt it. Plus, he’d had plenty of opportunities to steal the tyv’s dark energy before tonight. He wasn’t acting on some nefarious plot. He was martyring himself to save me.

  Oh, you stupid, wonderful pooka.

  The tyv finally thought to lift her leg, hauling Jamie to her mouth. I staggered to my feet and stumbled in the opposite direction, dragging her head with me. Running against the pressure on my soul felt like peeling my tendons from my legs. My knees buckled. I crawled, flaying the flesh from my own bones. The tyv jabbed her proboscis into my back, ripping a hunk of my soul from my body. I crumpled to the snow. My vision narrowed, darkening to a pinprick. I fought to stay focused on Jamie. He ripped free of the tyv and blasted into the sky, and my heart flew with him, plummeting back to despair when Jamie spun to sink his claws and proboscis deep into the top of the tyv’s thorax. Atrum swelled to fill his emaciated form.

  I couldn’t allow him to make this sacrifice. If he turned dark, Pamela or Niko would kill him before the night was over. I couldn’t let all his wonderful potential be corrupted in the name of saving me. I’d made this choice. I’d decided to fight evil. Jamie had merely made the mistake of tethering his life to mine, and I refused to be his downfall.

  The tyv floundered and fell, the impact of her huge body soundless on the grassy field. I gathered the last of my strength. I’d get one shot at this.

  Retracting the net, I channeled all my lux lucis into the soul breaker and rammed it into the tyv’s thorax.

  29

  What Doesn't Kill You Will Probably Try Again

  The soul breaker sliced into the tyv’s thorax, and my lux lucis sank into her weakened body. She struck back, ramming her deadly proboscis into my side.

  Pain shredded my thoughts, all but one: Save Jamie.

  The tyv latched on to the spindly remains of my soul, trying to swallow it whole. With every ounce of my diminished strength, I shoved my energy in the opposite direction, pushing it through the soul breaker.

  It hurt. Oh God, it hurt!

  I screamed until I ran out of breath and pain closed my throat. Full-body tremors toppled me to my knees, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. Inch by inch, my soul ripped in two.

  Jamie. Must save Jamie.

  I peeled another layer of my lux lucis from my bones and thrust it down the soul breaker’s short arms. My fragile energy slid into the void of atrum comprising the tyv’s massive thorax, disappearing without a ripple. High above us, drones mobbed in a widening chaotic blur of legs and wings and segmented bodies, forming a deadly, living cyclone of evil.

  The tyv swallowed, tearing another scream from me. I jabbed the soul breaker deeper into her thorax, shoving through the dense atrum of her body until her evil sludge coated me from my knuckles to my elbow. With the last of my strength, I ripped lux lucis from my marrow and thrust it through the soul breaker.

  The pressure inside me snapped. My tattered lux lucis surged through the soul breaker and tore into the tyv. Her thorax collapsed. A tsunami of atrum engulfed me, thick and malevolent, replacing the all-encompassing agony of the tyv’s proboscis with a biting, burrowing, smothering pain. Gravity spun, and I smashed against the frozen field. My teeth clenched, I fought against the invasion of atrum, but my lux lucis sputtered and gave out. A cold trickle of tears leaked down my temples into my hair.

  The darkness thinned, imperceptibly at first, then faster as the tyv’s imploding energy rebounded and exploded skyward in a tight column. Soundlessly, it lifted, leaving me panting and limp with pain. Higher and higher the atrum surged before billowing into a dense mushroom cloud, and still the energy climbed. The tornado of drones fractured, individuals scattering across the sky in pandemonium. I blinked heavy eyelids, tracking the expansion of the toxic cloud’s onyx rim as it overtook fleeing drones. It stretched wider than a trampoline, than a hot air balloon, than the football field—and it continued to spread.

  I flopped onto my back and dragged the soul breaker onto my stomach. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t tell if my lips moved. Inside my head, I performed a victory dance. I’d killed the tyv. She wouldn’t harm Jamie ever again.

  A blissful numbness stole through my limbs—snow or atrum induced, I couldn’t tell and I didn’t look. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t survive the inevitable fallout of the tyv’s atomic cloud. I had expended everything I had for Jamie.

  Where are you, my pooka?

  Drones buzzed in disarray, but a few were already straightening from their directionless flights, homing in on something behind me. Niko, I decided. They must have caught sight of his soul, or Summer’s or Pamela’s. Without the tyv to control them, the drones were reverting to their base instincts, hunting the nearest food source: my coworkers. Perversely, a cheerful spark came and went with the thought—the others were strong; the drones didn’t stand a chance.

  Jamie, where are you? A tyv broke from the drones and plummeted toward me, proboscis extended—death on the wings of a mutant mosquito. My heart pattered in my chest, the beat erratic. I struggled to rise, succeeding in little more than a shuddering wriggle. The tyv bore down on me, filling my vision. When it landed, it caged me inside its six legs, its long body covering but not touching me. I strained to see around it, hunting for my pooka, needing to see him one last time. My right hand feebly twitched the soul breaker toward the tyv’s thorax before falling back to my chest.

  The tyv tipped its head, angling its proboscis down the length of my body so it could lean its multifaceted eyes close to mine, filling my vision.

  A kaleidoscope of lux lucis and atrum swirled in the tyv’s eyes.

  “Jamie?” My voice cracked.

  Atrum bathed him from proboscis to abdomen, the only lux lucis visible on him spinning faintly in his irises. Fresh tears blurred my vision. He’d consumed too much atrum, and it had changed him. I’d done everything I could to save him, but it’d been too little.

  “I don’t care . . .” I swallowed and rasped in another ragged breath. “I don’t care how dark you are, I still love you.”

  Jamie reared onto his hind legs, spreading his front four legs and wings wide, towering over my prone body. I tensed in anticipation of his final strike.

  This isn’t his fault. He was trying to save me.

  I couldn’t move. The only defense I could muster was a child’s: I squeezed my eyes shut. My breath wheezed and rattled, my heart skipping in my chest. When nothing happened, I opened my eyes. Jamie still stood over me, his insect body horrifically tall from this perspective. Behind him, the sky shimmered, the atrum fallout brightening. Faint swirls of lux lucis particulates twined through the black mass, collecting into tiny clumps as they fell—metaphysical snowflakes among poisonous ashes. Faster, the lux lucis coalesced, tightening into a singular mass separate from the exploded rema
ins of the tyv. It fell over us, tenting us from the descending atrum for a breathless moment; then it transformed into a singular, blinding-white stream that shot into Jamie.

  I gaped in wonder.

  Lux lucis rolled through his ebony body, transforming him back into the pooka I knew, the twin energies corkscrewing in the confines of his body. Impossibly, he’d collected the parts of his soul the tyv had devoured. The darkness wouldn’t consume him; he wasn’t lost.

  The tenuous tension holding my consciousness to my body released. Jamie was safe. I closed my eyes and opened myself to the peace of death.

  It came on a rush of warmth that soothed my body’s lingering pain.

  “We need to move.”

  Jamie’s voice burst loud across my eardrums, jolting my eyes open. I blinked into his human face, his eyes whirling pinwheels of lux lucis and atrum. A white haze stretched between us, siphoning from his naked chest directly into my heart.

  What are you doing? My throat refused to work and the question didn’t make it outside my skull.

  “I can’t retrieve your soul. It’s too damaged.” Jamie glanced up. The tyv’s massive thundercloud of atrum had broken, unleashing its evil energy on the field below—with Jamie and me centered at the heart of the fallout. The first flecks landed on me, stinging. Odorless, tasteless, and chilling to the soul, the black dust thickened the air, settling on my frozen legs and arms, polluting my esophagus and lungs with each breath. The stream of lux lucis Jamie fed me weakened, atrum eating through his clean energy before it could settle in my body. Black splotches took root and spread across my torso. Panic floated at the edges of my thoughts, held at bay by a surreal, dreamlike fog.

  Is this death? Am I dying?

  “Sit up. Come on, you have to help me.” Jamie squirmed a weak arm beneath my shoulders, but I couldn’t locate my neck muscles, and my head flopped back.

  You can’t die today. Not after Jamie worked so hard to save you, my subconscious chided. You’re in shock. Snap out of it.