Earth

by Rosie Scott

  Regardless, I waited at the base of Mantus, prepared to shield her before she hit the ground. I could not assume the prince's plan would work.

  Hasani launched the javelin a moment later in a display of muscle and skill, the weapon whistling and twirling through the air toward the bottom half of Mantus's raised body. It pierced through one of the beast's armored plates, the back half of the metal weapon vibrating back and forth with the effort as it stuck straight out of its victim. Nyx continued to fall, but her body was on course for the javelin. I held my breath as she neared it.

  Crack! The javelin stayed where it was, so I knew the crack was one of bone. I heard Nyx cry out, scrambling to grab ahold of the nearest armored plate of the beast as her body slipped off the javelin that had only been meant as a temporary fix for her fall. Given she had landed on the javelin with her stomach, I could only assume she had broken a rib. After all, if the crack had come from her spine, she would already be dead.

  No longer held by the javelin, Nyx hung from the plate, noises of intense pain shuddering out of her lips. I heard her mutter the word shit about twenty times in a row, since she had already broken a rib, and she still had a few sections to fall before she could make it to the ground. She was terrified of letting go, but Mantus's head still rivaled the clouds as it screamed into the skies with the pain of continued trauma.

  “Let go!” I screamed, the shield spells in my hands trembling with power.

  Nyx heard me, but she only mumbled in response. I heard a drizzling noise, and saw that blood from her wound leaked out from beneath her armor, splattering onto the plate of Mantus below.

  “Trust me, Nyx!” I yelled, desperate. “I will shield you! Let go!”

  Nyx glanced back, her face contorted with pain and fear. Her black eyes looked over me, and settled upon the two life spells in my palms. She knew she was slipping from the grasp she had on the insect's plate, for the rains that still pelted us from above were keeping the beast slick.

  She turned her head to the beast, and after another moment, she let go.

  My heart thudded in my chest as I watched her fall, holding both arms out to where I knew she'd land, prepared to shield her. Even though Hasani's javelin had cut her fall short, I knew the remaining distance could still kill her. I heard her screaming in fear as the ground rushed up to meet her, and I whispered prayers to no one in particular as I forced the shields forward, just in time to hear another crack.

  “Nyx...” My eyes wide, I watched her body slowly move toward the side of Mantus's thick back, limply sliding through the wetness of the rains. My heart shredded my ribs. Had the shields not worked? It had all happened so fast. I was sure I'd been accurate, but I hadn't remembered the shields surrounding her. Of course, I had given them to her just before the landing, so even if I had shielded her, the trauma from the fall had probably quickly broken through the protection.

  I rushed to the side of the beast, paying no attention to the fact that it was slowly returning its upper body to the earth. I didn't care if it came back to squish me. I held my arms out, ready to catch her.

  Nyx fell into my arms, though I wasn't strong enough to hold her up. I fell to the sands with her weight, her body limp in my weak arms.

  “Kai!” Hasani rushed up behind me, his voice echoing distantly in my ears. “Is she alive?”

  I was afraid to check. By the gods, I was afraid to check. I leaned back, my eyes searching for her face. Her black hair covered it, damp and in thick ropes across her features. With a shaking hand, I pulled the hair from her eyes. They were open, but blank. Exhales blew shallowly from her nostrils.

  I realized I was a sobbing mess, and I tried to clear my mind. I tried to pretend, for a moment, that Nyx was not one of the most important people in my life. I tried to pretend she was simply another injured soldier, because then I could think clearly about what had happened and what she needed.

  I shook over her, watching as she did not close her eyes even as water droplets from the sky pelted them.

  “She's...in shock,” I murmured, more to myself than anything. It dawned on me then that Hasani was no longer beside me. I was more confused than angry over that at first, until I heard the trotting of a hyena behind me.

  “Come on, Kai, we need her off the field,” Hasani warned, his voice soft, but serving as a warning. “The beast is coming back to the fight.”

  I turned to him, watching distantly as the large man took her from my arms and carried her over to a hyena that he'd led to us. I followed him, because I needed to heal her after finding her wounds. Hasani draped Nyx's limp body over the back of the hyena, and I noticed her leg dangling loosely from the knee. I hoped that had been the source for the second break, because it was better to break a leg bone than some others.

  Hasani kept Nyx still on the back of the hyena, before mounting the animal, being careful not to hit the Alderi as he swung his leg to the other side. He nodded toward me.

  “Grab that other hyena, Kai. I will take her to Jaalam.”

  I turned to where he'd motioned, finding a hyena in the midst of crunching through one of Mantus's legs which had already fallen. I grabbed its dangling reins, before mounting it, and kicking the animal into a run behind the prince.

  We were halfway to what little protection the lost city could offer us when the ground shook, for Mantus landed once more. I heard it slither across the sands again, free of the stone and still very much alive. My heart was torn, for I wanted to be back in the fight, helping the others and trying to protect them as best I could. But for now, I had to trust they could handle themselves. Nyx was dying, and I was the only one with the skill to heal her.

  Hasani dismounted his hyena near the building which held the injured Cerin and I had healed earlier in the day, and he pulled Nyx's limp body from the back of the mount, carrying her quickly inside. I jumped off my hyena, not even making a move to tie it to anything, hurrying in behind the prince and out of the rain. Hasani carefully laid Nyx down on the floor, where blankets and clothing had been laid out when he and his army had been stuck here. It still smelled of death and injury, but I tried not to equate that with Nyx. If anything, I would let it drive me in order to make sure she didn't die in such a wretched place.

  The prince turned to me, even as I collapsed beside my best friend and started to remove her armor to better heal her. “Tell me how I can help,” he said, warmly.

  I opened up Nyx's torso armor, and pulled up her undershirt. I wasn't worried about her leg injury right now. My biggest concern was her rib. As my eyes fell over her bare torso, I realized her injuries were worse than I'd thought.

  “I...I need my surgery tools,” I stammered, my eyes wide as I stared at Nyx's chest. Only one side rose and fell. The other side stayed still, and was sunken in, her already dark purple skin getting deeper with bruising. My ears picked up on her exhales, which began to wheeze noisily.

  “Where are they?” Hasani asked.

  “Back at camp. In a...” I internally ripped at my mind, desperately searching for words. “A leather satchel. It's in my tent. There were only four tents. Mine was one of the two that had two bedrolls.” A sob shuddered through my body, before I cut it short. I could not let emotion get the best of me. Not now.

  Hasani had left some seconds ago, and I hadn't even noticed until I heard his hyena galloping away toward our camp in the west. I could only count on him to return with my scalpels.

  You are a healer, Kai. Calm down. You can handle this. I shook over my best friend, the realization hitting me that I could either save or kill her today. For as skilled as I was at healing, sometimes healing wasn't enough. I could not mend her rib without setting it, and her injuries were mostly internal, save for where her skin split beneath her right breast from the pressure the hit of the javelin had put on her. That was where she bled from, externally. But the cut was not wide enough to allow me access to her rib, nor to the internal bleeding which kept her right lung from expanding. I would need to perform su
rgery today, and I was terrified. Like most healers, I had been trained to do it long ago at the Seran University to complement my magic, but I had never needed to perform it, much less on someone I loved.

  I did all I could while waiting for Hasani to return, which meant I siphoned energy to her in an effort to keep her body clinging to life. The winds still blew heavily outside, the last remnants of the sandstorm I'd used to create the rains. Thankfully, I knew the weather would grant me enough energy with which to heal Nyx, if she could only cling to life long enough to be mended.

  Hasani returned minutes after he left, carrying two leather satchels. I recognized the one being Nyx's, for she'd carved her initials into the leather at the corner flap out of boredom one night as we'd gotten drunk together in Sera years ago. I wasn't sure why that memory brought tears to my eyes now, but I didn't focus on it.

  “I brought both, just in case,” Hasani explained, letting Nyx's bag fall to the floor once I took the other. I rushed through my satchel, my fingers casting unwanted objects to the side before landing on the small surgery kit I kept with me.

  “Please tell me you know what you're doing,” the prince breathed. I ignored him for the moment, pulling out a scalpel.

  My hands shook as I lowered the tool to the split beneath her breast. I took a breath and exhaled slowly, which stilled my hand as much as it ever would. The blade cut through her flesh as I made an incision I would need to heal later, just to save her.

  There was pain in Nyx's next exhale, a moan that hitched a ride alongside of a wheeze. I didn't doubt she could feel it as I slowly opened her up, my mind forced blank because anything else would cause me to break down. I did not know illusion magic, otherwise I would have used a spell to calm her and dull her pain. For now, I was finally looking at the sheen of her ribs, and saw the one which was broken inward toward her right lung. I forced all thoughts from my mind other than solutions for her injuries.

  I let both of my hands hover above her open chest cavity. Promotus le imun, I thought, letting the life spell settle directly into her organs, giving her protection against any possible infections from field surgery. I reached into my medical kit, next, pulling out a syringe. Holding the syringe in my right hand, I took the broken rib that had punctured her pleural cavity with my left, and snapped it back, removing it from the soft flesh. Nyx mumbled incoherently as she finally passed out from the pain and trauma. Relieved she could no longer feel the pain, I pushed the nose of the drainage syringe into the break of the bleeding cavity, pulling back the plunger and watching as it collected blood.

  Hasani stayed quiet, watching me with a morbid fascination as I worked. I was no longer crying, and I paid no attention to the fighting that continued outside. I drained Nyx's wound, only satisfied when the relieved pressure encouraged her lung to expand once more. I healed the punctured cavity next, watching the flesh reconnect beneath my hand. Then, I kept her rib stable as I slowly allowed more life energy to work through the bone, healing the rib until it no longer needed my support, the marrow slowly reconnecting, accelerated greatly by my magic.

  Within minutes, Nyx's torso was visibly mended, though I knew the trauma from the ordeal would keep her asleep. I wanted nothing more for her, knowing her fatigued body needed it. I told myself the worst was over as I moved to her broken leg. Nyx's worst injury was healed, and I'd needed to use both surgery and healing to do it. With that thought in mind, a simple broken leg was nothing.

  I turned to Hasani. “Go, Hasani,” I said, my ears still caught on signs of the battle raging on outside. “Fight with your men.”

  “You no longer have need of me?” He questioned, as if double checking.

  “No. The worst is over. I have mended simple breaks before. It was the surgery I haven't had a chance to practice since my training.”

  The prince's sharp black eyebrows raised. “You fooled me. Right, then. I will return to the fight. Best of luck, Kai.” With a glance toward Nyx's sleeping face, he added, “I hope she heals.”

  “As do I.” I watched him turn to leave, and called out, “Thank you, Hasani. For everything.”

  The prince glanced back, giving me a friendly smile. He lifted one hand to his forehead, giving me a casual salute that said he would do it all again if need be.

  Hasani rushed back off to the fight, and my admiration for the man only grew. I had only met him the night before, but already, I considered him a friend.

  Twenty-two

  The battlefield continued to rage on for hours, our fatigued army slowly whittling down at Mantus's health. The beast had been rumored to live for hundreds of years, and its refusal to die despite everything we threw at it proved the rumors were based more in fact than myth.

  I had returned to the fight after finishing healing Nyx's wounds and leaving her in the makeshift ward to rest. When I first emerged from between two buildings of the lost city and faced the battlefield once more, a messy sight greeted me. Mantus's back end was separated from its front where Cerin had chopped through it earlier, and the beast's front end still rampaged through the sands, chasing after soldiers and at times catching up to them. Now that the fight had been raging for hours, the soldiers were fatigued, and so were most of the hyenas. The animals faltered, leaving themselves and their riders alike at the mercy of the beast.

  The hyena I'd ridden into Jaalam earlier was long gone, having run away from where I'd left it in control of its own reins. I found another mount, a mostly black hyena which had scavenged through the dead and was chomping on a human corpse that was splayed across the wet sands in a mess of gore and acid. I pulled its reins back from where they'd fallen against its ears, and mounted the animal, determined to finish off the ancient beast once and for all.

  Corpses littered the sand, both of Mantus's recent kills and of the casualties from Cerin's undead army. I thrust death energy toward the sands near the side of my hyena, and black tendrils rushed off to bury themselves in the corpses surrounding me, rising them for another fight. With my eyes toward the east, where Mantus was circling with its remaining body, I kicked my hyena into a gallop.

  Fire energy glowed intensely orange over my right palm as I neared the beast's back end. Since Cerin had cut through the creature long ago, its mushy entrails were dragging along behind it, its insides glistening from within its outer shell. I directed my hyena right behind it, and the animal complied with gusto, happiest when it was giving chase.

  Mantus was turning, so my hyena slowly caught up to it, and I threw the fireball into the beast's guts, the fire scorching its moist, vulnerable insides. As the beast screeched from far off to the side, where its head still gave chase after the infantry, I realized I hadn't thought the element through. The fire was burning through the insect's guts, yes, but the resulting burst of flame now was fed by the passing winds, and licked out toward me and my hyena, where we ran directly in its path.

  My mount darted off to the side with no input from me, chuckling nervously with fear of the fire. Within the few seconds that we'd been behind it, the heat from the flames had burned my eyes, and I directed the hyena off to the side of the battlefield for the moment, squinting hard and attempting to wash them out with the falling rains. My hyena shook its head, lowering it and pawing at its own eyes with its front paws. I reached down, patting its neck with a hand.

  “I'm sorry, bud,” I said, blinking through the rains as my eyes finally cleared of the smoke. I noticed for the first time that Mantus had multiple riders now. Cerin had made his way up to its head, and chopped away at the beast with his scythe, though I could tell he was tiring. Theron was now on the creature's back as well, using one sword to keep hold of the beast while stabbing with the other. He'd clearly run out of arrows at some point during Nyx's surgery and had come down to fight with melee. There were a few other soldiers on the beast, mimicking Cerin's approach.

  I kicked my hyena back into a gallop, heading straight for Mantus's head, a stone of earth magic hovering above my palm. Stopping the beast ha
d allowed us to heavily damage it, so I decided to stop it in the way I knew how. The beast noticed me with its two large black eyes, and its remaining legs carried it quickly over the earth, zooming toward my hyena with a vengeance.

  I thrust the earth energy at the ground before it, and like earlier, stone towered into the air from beneath the earth. This time, however, Mantus was still meters away, and he veered off to the side, avoiding the stone and crawling past it, still headed for me.

  I cursed beneath my breath and tugged at the reins, urging my hyena sharply to the left, dodging Mantus's clicking claws. I headed straight for the curve of its body near the stone. Like others before me, I stood in the stirrups, the pounding of my heart shuddering against my chest. Sections of Mantus slithered to my right ahead, and as my hyena neared him, it darted to the right to follow the beast.

  I held onto the horn of my saddle, the passing winds shouting in my ears. With a monumental effort, I pulled the weight of my body onto the top of the saddle against the pressure of the winds, one careful foot at a time, my eyes on the slick sections of the insect body that was passing beside me. I had limited time. After all, Mantus was shorter now than he'd been at the beginning of the fight, and he was traveling faster than I.

  With both boots on the saddle and my hyena still running alongside the beast, I jumped toward it with all my might, a yelp escaping my lips as the insect's body rushed toward me. I had no weapons; I would need to resort to using my hands to maneuver on the beast's back. I hit Mantus's plates with a huff, the impact forcing the air from my lungs. I was tumbling down the back and toward its end, my hands scrambling for a hold on one of the creature's many plates, the world shuddering by my eyesight in a mix of sand and rain.

  Then, something hot landed on my arm, and my tumbling came to a screeching halt. Though the rains pelted down from above and the winds passed by with the beast's immense speed, I was now still, held by a man's hand. I glanced up, blinking away the rains to find Theron watching me, his right hand gripping my arm as his left kept its hold in the beast's back.