by Billy Wong
"But you're making war on humanity now," she snapped, "whatever the 'reason' is. You're doing the very thing you're trying to prevent, in order to prevent it! Can't you see how stupid that is?"
Justin shook his head vehemently. "It's not the same! I'll stop once I've achieve my goal!"
No, he wouldn't, Rose thought. Even if he tried, humans who feared the threat he posed would come after him and he'd fight back, until one side or the other was finally destroyed. But it'd never go that far if she and Finn had anything to say about it. "You'll never reach your horrible goal, because you will be dead. You know what I think? The real reason you're so adamant about killing my kids is because you still blame me for the deaths of your uncle and brother, and just want to torture me in punishment."
"No! You didn't kill them, and I would never hate you so as to target your family just for your failure to protect them. You tried your best, but it's just that now, I must save our world from myself and you stand in the way..." But she could hear the doubt she had put into his voice—doubt which he apparently shoved aside as he inhaled deeply and took on an angry grimace.
Finn squeezed her hand comfortingly while Justin's craggy hide bulged outward and his body expanded, only slightly, but enough to convey a sense of immense power yearning to be released. She sensed he had grown even stronger since his last death. At least he hadn't brought his friends with him... but as soon as she thought that, what seemed like every door of every house in little Tirrn opened and an army of creatures emptied out onto the streets. These weren't goblins or ogres or anything Rose could recognize, but rocky-skinned creatures like thinner, lighter-colored versions of Justin himself wielding axes and polearms. He grinned and explained, "My lesser kin. I'm not so prideful as to decline competent help." Demons?
Rose and Finn burst into action then. They struck out at the enemies all around them with sword and spell, mace and shield simultaneously, tearing into their ranks with the fury parents fighting for their children. Whatever Justin's cohorts were, it became evident they died no harder than strong, agile men in heavy armor, as blows split their hides open and they fell in death spilling dark ichor. The couple didn't abandon all caution, though, but backed away towards the gate; if they could reach that narrow point, they'd have a better chance against the tide of attackers.
Unfortunately Justin didn't wait to see if they would make it before joining battle himself. Cold blue flames blazed from the end of every limb as he rushed Rose, vapor misting the air around his freezing talons. A clash between her sword and his claws told her he had indeed grown more powerful as the impact stung her fingers, and she was hard-pressed to fight him and ward off his minions at the same time. With so many blows directed at her, she could hardly keep track of all her foes, and could only pray her endurance held out against the many wounds she would take.
She tried to kill lesser demons quickly enough to keep the number of opponents manageable, but while distracted by doing this Justin caught her up in a crushing bearhug. He lifted her off the earth before driving her into the wooden wall around Tirrn with enough force to break two thick timbers, carrying her out of town and landing atop her. Swipe after swipe from his talons sliced through even her armor with ease, giving her countless cuts around which the flesh grew numb from the invading cold. Screaming, Rose tried desperately to throw him off, but her increasingly heavy limbs could not muster the strength to free herself. Her head lolled back for a moment before she caught herself, the brutal onslaught threatening to shut off her mind.
"Rose!" Finn cried as he tried to fight his way to her, but he struggled to break through the press of demons, and could only watch while Justin butchered her, rending her armor to shreds and her flesh beneath it. One uppercut blow brought his claws ripping up into her from below her ribcage, sent a dire chill through her breast. Blood oozed over her lip, but sluggishly due to the freezing magic which strove to still her heart. She grabbed his arm and jerked it loose only for his other hand to flash down, this time plunging claws into her upper chest.
She wailed and he slashed at her eyes. But she smashed the rim of her shield into his wrist, knocking his arm out wide and hopefully breaking the joint. She struck back, tearing deep gashes into his thigh and chest. Justin leapt away with a scowl. As she tried to pursue, three of his minions took his place. She bisected one with her sword, left another writhing on the ground after she shattered its kneecap with a kick. Then Justin was on the attack again, engulfing her in a ball of magical flame which made her howl in agony.
Even as well as he knew her, he still recoiled in surprise at how suddenly she charged out of the fiery bubble. She whipped her burning cloak into his face to distract him, chopped down into his shoulder and nearly severed his left arm in a spray of blood. Eyes wide, Justin stumbled and turned to run. Not about to let her chance to put an end to all this slip away, she threw her sword and pierced him high on the back just to the right of his spine. He fell to all fours, and Rose darted in to end him. She still felt a pang of regret at having to kill him, but...
Between the time she pulled Thorn out of his body and when she would have brought it down on his neck, he somehow managed to cast a spell. As the blade descended, a tremendous eruption of earth burst beneath her, striking her with the force of a trebuchet shot directed up. She went flying over the wall and back into town, ironically to land by the still-fighting Finn's side. "Are you all right?" he asked, finishing off the demon she had landed on with his mace to the skull.
She stood wearily to rejoin the battle, shuddered to feel the strips of flesh hanging off her body where Justin's claws rended her. Some of the wounds had even cut slightly into bone from the distinctive pain she felt, but at least they weren't bleeding as much as they could due to the cold magic having slowed the flow of blood... yet the presence of that cold made her shaky and weakened her more than if they were normal wounds.
Ignoring her disgusting injuries for now, Rose laid into the demons with all she had left, seeing that Finn grew understandably exhausted from taking on the stony-skinned horde. The fight seemed endless, as each score they slew revealed a hundred more to replace them. Rose's wounds began to bleed profusely as the cold wore off, making her dizzy. How could they win, when the enemy's numbers seemed limitless? It was impossible and yet she fought on, unyielding as ever. In the end, the couple stood alone just inside the entrance of Tirrn, close to a thousand demonic corpses forming a sea of lifeless flesh around them.
Rose thought she had no strength at all and sagged against Finn as both of them sat down, breathing raggedly from the incredible fatigue. He turned to help her and she fell back into his lap, consciousness fading. But she surprised herself by springing to her feet when she heard Justin's laugh fill the air. Was he coming back for more? This time, she would get him. But instead of reappearing, he merely spoke words which dropped Rose to her knees more effectively than a mace to the back of her head. "You're as ridiculously strong as you ever were. Apparently, even a demon lord and his army can't pluck the Iron Flower. But your victory today proves hollow. Your children are already dead!"
No, it couldn't be true! What had he done?
Chapter 7
No matter how Finn tried to reassure her their children were fine, that Justin had been bluffing to crush their spirits, Rose couldn't drive the terror she felt just from the thought of her kids' deaths from her mind. Obviously Justin hadn't done the killing himself, being occupied with Rose and Finn, but had he known of Jacob and Amber's destination and set a trap for them along the way? Sure, her children were resourceful, and could have survived whatever that might have been. But if Justin did know where they were going, why had he bothered with confronting her and Finn here? Had he only wanted to add them to his collection of victims?
She didn't imagine so; Justin was crazed in his determination to murder her children, but otherwise not excessively bloodthirsty. Besides, if he'd set a trap for the kids, why not be there himself to assure their demise? The only reason sh
e could think of was if he'd thought it necessary to keep Rose and Finn occupied lest they save them. Yet that would require him believing them and their offspring to be near each other, and... and...
The fear Rose had felt for her kids abated significantly, to be replaced with a different if more bearable dread. "Finn, let's get back to our allies. Hurry!"
He looked at her with confusion. "What's wrong? He didn't say anything about them."
"He thought Jacob and Amber were with them! I bet he sent his monsters to attack the warriors we left behind while we fought him. He knew I'd scout ahead to try and protect them from whatever ambush might be laid in the town."
Finn clenched his fist. "What an ass, to take advantage of one of your good tendencies and use it against you even though you used to be friends. Let's hope he loses that arm."
"Save your wishes for hoping we're not too late to save our allies."
"You expect to fight for them in the condition we're in?"
She wasn't sure how much help they could be to anyone at the moment, but said evenly, "We'll just have to do whatever we can." If she'd led her allies into a trap, it was her responsibility to do her best to save them.
They soon arrived where they left the warriors who had fought alongside them just this morning, and Rose realized despondently that they'd gotten there too late. Close to one hundred human bodies—just about all who'd come to Tirrn with them—lay dead and broken in the forest. A single troll still wandered among the carnage, but the couple didn't even need to raise arms to get rid of it, as even the bestial giant recognized the wrath in Rose's eyes and fled. She let it go, hardly having the energy to give chase. Sinking to her knees, she wept at the tragedy she'd allowed to befall these courageous men. A whole village's husbands, brothers and sons lost in what must have been less than an hour of butchery... the so-called greatest warriors on the continent, useless in the face of the monsters' multifaceted assault.
Being the latest on a long list of awful failures on her part made this one no less heart-rending. Rose curled up around herself and cried long and hard, for the men she'd failed to save and those who would die in the future for her inability to slay Justin today when she'd come so close... As her sobs finally slowed, her battered, fatigued body no longer able to keep up with her grief and guilt, Finn cradled her in his gentle arms. "It's okay, Rose. We did all we could."
"Yeah, I suppose we did." While she couldn't help her guilt, she could bear it—very, very familiar emotion that it was. She stood up. "Let's follow the tracks we saw leading from Tirrn. Some people managed to at least escape the town; maybe they're still alive. If they're being chased by monsters, they might need our help."
"You still want to do some more fighting, after all this? It's already well into the evening, and we've been getting smacked around since early morning. I think we should at least get some sleep until the sun rises again."
Though he hadn't taken as many wounds as her, Finn looked positively exhausted, and Rose nodded more out of concern for her husband though she herself felt about ready to drop. Still, when she laid down by his side under a tree right near their dead allies, she felt sleep quickly beckon. "Isn't it bad luck to sleep with the dead?" she asked drowsily.
Finn shrugged while he draped an arm over her torn chest. "Our lives are full of death. Between the two of us, we've killed tens of thousands and seen even more die around us. What's one night of sleeping by the dead going to matter?"
Saddened by the truth he told, she closed her eyes. "You're right, Finn. Let's sleep, and hope that tomorrow we'll be able to avert some death." The weight of his huge arm on her comforted her like a physical embodiment of their tremendous love. She slept surprisingly peacefully, her mind forgetting to produce the nightmares to match her tormented waking thoughts.
#
The next morning, Finn managed to wake before his beautiful Rose and shuddered with a passing thought that she was dead, the knowledge that her wounds would have easily killed a normal person making it easy to imagine. As it was, though, his indestructible love seemed to sense his worry and awoke. Her eyes slowly opened to catch him staring at her gaping chest. "Don't worry, they're just flesh wounds. Now that I have some energy back, I can seal them up." She did so, and Finn helped her up with him as he stood.
"So we're going after those refugees from Tirrn, right?" he asked.
Rose looked at all the corpses lying just a few yards from them and wiped away a tear. "Yeah, they're going to have to wait for a proper burial. It's more important that we save the ones who aren't dead yet. Let's go."
As he followed the tracks leading from Tirrn alongside his wife, Finn thought about their children and wondered if they had encountered any trouble on their way to Whitehill. No way it could have matched what he and Rose had just been through, of course. He felt somewhat relieved for Jacob's cowardice as he mused, "You know, if Jacob hadn't broken down during that first fight, the kids would probably be dead now."
"Don't talk about such awful things," she chided him, but after a moment added, "Yeah, it does seem that way. I suppose most traits can prove to be good ones under the right circumstances."
Suddenly she stumbled and began to fall. Finn reached out to catch her only to find himself unfit for the task, borne to the ground by her weight. "Oh no, Rose! Are you alright?!"
"Hole under the snow," she explained with a laugh as she indicated the depression in the ground she'd tripped in. "Though the fact we're both half dead gives you good reason for concern when I fall down."
"But you're okay, right? You can keep going?"
"When you say okay, do you mean on an absolute basis or relatively speaking?"
Relatively speaking, she'd once chased after a chariot with a pike transfixing her guts and a sword impaling her from upper chest to lower back. Her unbelievable resilience was one of the things Finn loved about her, but sometimes he wished she could hold herself to the much more lenient standards she used for others, and insist less adamantly on pushing her limits so far for altruism's sake. He appreciated that she liked to help people, but what about him? Every time she was laid out from wounds that would have killed another, struggling for every breath, Finn felt as though he might die himself. He imagined that now, in his older age, he'd immediately drop dead by her side if her great constitution ever did fail to save her. Granted, their current battle was necessary, with their children on the line. But hopefully once it was over, Finn would have more success convincing her to risk herself less. As strong as she was, she too grew older, and he knew her immense vitality would begin to deteriorate one day or another.
He realized he'd been staring into space, failing to respond to Rose's question, when she snapped, "Okay, I can walk. Gee, where's your sense of humor? I know we went through a lot yesterday, but we've got to keep our hope alive..."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you. I was... thinking."
"That'd be a first," she replied, and Finn realized just how bad her mood was after that last terrible day.
He kissed her cheek, a gentle peck. "Yeah, I'm stupid. But you're fat!"
The old joke worked and Rose giggled in spite of herself. "It's still muscle!" she said, hugging herself with huge arms.
"Not for long, old woman."
"Shut up, Finn!" But she didn't really mean it, and as they rose together and continued on, their good-humored insults to each other were the only thing which kept their thoughts from sliding again into the gloom that so eagerly awaited.
#
"Damn, Jacob, my calf's killing me!" Amber complained as the pair limped down the road.
"Tell me about it. My thigh... ow!"
"I thought you said it wasn't deep."
He looked sidelong at her confused face. "It's not, by your standards. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like hell."
"I don't want to go all the way to Whitehill right now. It'd be a major pain, literally."
Jacob agreed with that. He could scarcely imagine going through a near-week
of walking in his condition. "Me neither. Where do you suggest we rest?"
She shrugged. "You think I know what's where in this place? It's a good thing I got a map."
"You have a map?" Jacob hadn't thought to get one of his own; he'd been relying on his parents' copy, which they certainly couldn't look at now.
"Strong and smart," his sister complimented herself. He couldn't really blame her; as they said, it wasn't arrogance if you could back it up. She unfurled the map for them to view. "So, which of these towns do you want to visit?"
Jacob hardly cared right now about the details of the towns, and the map didn't have much in the way of info anyway. "The closest one."
"Looks like it's called Poldak, and is on the edge of some famous lake that never freezes about ten miles from here."
Ten was still a lot in his mind at the moment, but... "If it's the closest, then that's where we should go."
Amber nodded. "I've got no argument with that. I need a change of clothes—these are way too embarrassing with all the sewn up holes in them—and a bath."
Jacob laughed. As tough as his sister was, she wasn't quite as low-maintenance as their mother. Well, except for the fact Rose used a bunch of facial creams, and Amber never did. Then again, Amber didn't have lots of facial scars she wanted to make go away at least so far. "I bet you need your nails varnished and hair brushed too, eh?"
Scratching at her filthy hair with her unkempt nails, Amber growled, "Washing and bathing prevents disease, dummy."
"So they say, but Dad never bathes and he's never sick."
She frowned, considering the matter. "It still doesn't hurt to be safe."
"Maybe bathing is as overrated as Mom's facial creams." Everyone including Rose knew that most of the products she tried were frauds, yet she kept trying more in the hopes one would help her damaged skin.