by Jada Fisher
Perhaps it was a bit silly to try to brute force a situation filled with magic, sorcery, and creatures from other realms, but it was what she knew best. Her body was her tool, honed through years of training, and she was going to use every tool she had at her disposal.
She crashed into his chest, and they hit the ground. He went to strike at her, but she blocked it with one arm before slamming her other into his face. She recognized that she was moving with more force than she ever could before, and she didn’t know if it was because of her pure, unfiltered anger or the gifts she was tapping into.
The sorcerer tried to surge upwards, to shift her balance so he could roll the two of them over, but Eist hooked her leg around one of his arms, anchoring them. She pulled her fist back before slamming it home again, and this time, it was her who crackled with spell-like energy.
“You took them!” she heard herself cry. She hadn’t meant to say anything, because what was there to say? Her dragon and best friend were dead, and she was alive, and everything was wrong.
“You’re the one who led them on the path of death!”
Something gripped the back of her collar and she was yanked violently backward. She faintly heard a familiar voice cursing her and caught a glimpse of the battered Valatos as her body moved without her consent. The world spun again, and she was pinned to the ground, the sorcerer above her, his lips and eyebrow bleeding from her blows.
“This could have happened so differently, if you would just listen!”
She tried to push against him, but Valatos grabbed her hands, trapping them with his knees against her wrists. She could feel the bones grind in protest, but he didn’t relent. With her hands out of the question, Eist jerked her leg up, trying to slam into the sorcerer’s groin, but he pressed the point of his own sharp knees into the thickest part of her thigh, his body weight forcing her legs to the ground.
She’d been in this situation before, all bound up and unable to strike. But she still had other weapons to her, one in particular that she’d used ever since she was a child. “If you wanted me to listen, then perhaps you shouldn’t have tried to kill me so many times!”
He smiled, his eyes entirely too bright and happy. “Kill you? Eist, my stubborn little friend, when have I ever tried to kill you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, how about when I was fourteen and your follower nearly beat me to death in the healer’s hall?”
“That was truly a performance,” he said as if he was recalling a fond memory. “But I think we can both agree that wasn’t me.”
“In the forest, when you tried to take Fior!”
“Ah yes, our first true meeting. But even then, I was just trying to snatch up your boy. He’s connected to very old magic, magic that I thought I would need to enact the last steps of my plan. But it turned out that magic was in you the whole time. I didn’t realize it until after you were gone, but I knew you would return to me, and return to me you did. So no, I didn’t try to kill you then either.
“All I’ve done is give you chance after chance to see the light. I have been gracious, merciful even, and you spit in my face!”
Eist gave him her own bright smile at that. “Yeah, I remember that. Good memories.” She drew up saliva to do it again, but then his good hand was back on her face, fingers pinching into her cheeks so hard that the inner parts of her mouth touched between her teeth.
“Let’s not repeat that, shall we?” He looked her over and Eist swore his expression seemed almost wistful. “You could grow up to be so much. It’s a shame that you’re forcing my hand now.”
She tried to tell him he was the only one forcing himself to do anything, but her words just came out as an angry, muffled sound. He continued looking down at her, as if he could see right through her, before sighing.
“It almost seems wrong, you know, to snuff you out here on the grass like a common nuisance. You have gifts that could change this entire world. You deserve a death like what they write in legends.”
His fingers left her cheeks and went to her hair again, gently stroking. Caressing.
“I wonder what history will paint you as. The earnest but naïve girl who was led astray by the lies of the corrupt, or the diabolical villain who almost stopped it all? I hope the former, personally, so others might learn how one could be given such great power and still fall away from the light.”
“You want light?” Eist gasped, her middle screaming in pain where his free hand pressed into it. “I’ll give you light.”
She reached back into that swirling pool within her, back to the burning, churning feeling that had been lingering within her for so long. Maybe even before the forest. Maybe ever since her parents died and she had almost followed them with that violent fever. Its origin didn’t really matter. The only thing that mattered was that she was able to dip her hand in and yank as much of it out as she could handle.
Brightness shot out of her like an eruption, going every which way. Eist had to close her eyes for a moment, the luminosity was so intense. She felt, rather than saw, both Farmad and Valatos knocked back, freeing her limbs from their hold.
Good.
She surged to her feet without telling her body to stand. One moment, she was on the ground, and the next, she was running forward. Farmad had recovered enough to get to his knees from where he had been blasted, but she rewarded him with a sharp kick to his face, her boot landing against one of his cheekbones.
She didn’t let up, pressing forward. Her open palm went in an arc, more light blasting from it. The sorcerer barely raised his own arms up, crossed at the wrists and deflecting her blow with what looked like a semi-transparent shield.
Two could play that game.
She concentrated on the energy flowing through her, the light and the anger and the need to stop all of this once and for all. Focusing, she was able to form it into a halberd in her hand, and she swung it down at the man. He blocked, because of course he did, and the ground rippled like a wave below her, sending her stumbling backward.
Once more, she was struck about the irony of two magic users falling back to basic weaponry and fisticuffs, but there was little time to ponder it. He was on her again, a glowing sword in his own hand, striking out at her again and again.
She slipped into the forms of battle that she had been training for, one hand gripping over her halberd of light, one under. Using all parts as both a defensive and offensive item. Keeping the opponent at bay.
It was clear that Farmad, for all his supposed power, wasn’t used to fighting physical and certainly wasn’t used to fighting while wounded. And wounded he was. Blood was streaming down his swelling face from her blows, as was his hand with the missing fingertip. He had cuts and scrapes everywhere from Fior’s initial blast, and Eist had to wonder if she was only alive because her boy had tired the sorcerer out with his powerful roar.
Eist, however, was used to fighting injured. She had fought tooth and nail against a possessed healer who was ten times stronger than she could ever be. She’d been thrown around, had her nose, ribs, and leg broken, but she hadn’t given up. She’d ridden through a forest after being knocked in the head twice and shot with a poisonous arrow. She and pain had long since made friends, and she knew how to push her body beyond it.
And so, she began to gain ground. Her weapon of light struck more often and harder, sending sparks or smoke shooting up from Farmad’s shield, which he moved slower and slower. She advanced on him like a wave, unstoppable, determined, and finally she saw her opening.
Deflecting a blow from his sword, Eist swung her halberd around, summoning as much energy as she could into the glowing blade. It all took less than a breath, and she was about to thrust forward through his defense and into Farmad’s body when what felt like white-hot fire bloomed in her lower back.
“Just die already, you sard of a half-breed!” she heard Valatos spit as he pulled what must have been her own dropped knife from her back.
Eist stumbled forward, her legs seeming to
be too confused to hold her up anymore, right into Farmad’s arms. He caught her like one would catch a friend as they fell, and gently lowered her to the ground, cooing and chiding.
She hated him.
She hated him so much.
She gripped him, trying to keep right on fighting like she always did, but her breath was coming in short, hard pants as pain flooded her body. It was worse than her stomach. Worse than being shot. And she was just so cold.
“Shhh,” Farmad urged, both of his hands coming up to wrap around her neck. How funny, all the supposed power in the word and he was going to strangle her.
Perhaps funny wasn’t the right word.
His fingers squeezed, cutting her off from air and, try as she might to push him off, her body felt weaker than bread soaked in water. She could feel herself slipping away, succumbing to the darkness creeping into the edge of her vision.
Oh well. At least she would be with Fior, Dille.
A reunion would actually be pretty nice.
After so much fighting, so much pain, it would be a relief to not have the responsibility of living anymore, wouldn’t it?
That made sense to Eist, and with her eyes tilted up to the stars, she let herself go.
9
During, After, Before, Always
The night sky was beautiful, all velvet-soft obsidian with sparkling points of light. Stars danced and quivered in her failing vision, her shepherds on the path to whatever great mysteries were beyond the veil.
But then suddenly all those dazzling points of light were blotted out by a circle of blinding blue that popped into existence. It spun, burning brightly, before a dark, unidentifiable shape punched out of it, moving far too quickly to see.
The shape rushed toward them, but Eist didn’t even have the strength in her arm to point. Instead she watched, her vision on the verge of blinking out entirely, as the shape hurtled toward them and then bright, silvery claws bit into Farmad’s shoulders.
The shape rose, lifting the sorcerer off of Eist and flinging him away. Something rolled off it and landed on the ground beside Eist just as Valatos rushed her.
“Hello, remember me?” the shape said to the jester.
Eist blinked rapidly, realizing there was a woman standing next to her with a massive head of wild curls and umber, almost glowing skin. The jester pulled up short in horror upon the sight of her, and she just made a strange gesture with one of her hands in response.
The swirling bit of blue she had shot out from in the sky vanished only to open up again right behind the bleeding man.
“I can’t say it was good to see you again,” the woman said before kicking him square in the chest, sending him flying backward into the portal before it snapped shut entirely.
“W-wh—” Eist tried to wheeze out a question that made sense, something, anything that would clear up whatever had just happened. The voice beside her sounded so familiar and the silhouette felt like one she should know, but her vision was still so blurry and flickering between how a normal man might see the night and how her gifted sight worked.
“Oh, hey there. Hold on, Eist, I got ya. Don’t worry.”
Suddenly the woman was kneeling beside her, a dark hand pressed to Eist’s chest. She was muttering something while pulling a vial from the sack at her waist, and as she poured the liquid over the wounded girl, Eist suddenly found that she was able to breathe a little more steadily.
Her vision cleared a second later, and she was surprised to see a face bordering on familiar. The slope of the forehead, the broad spread of her noble nose. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was…
“Dille?”
The woman laughed, too old and too grown and too everything to be Eist’s friend, but she knew that laugh anywhere.
“How can you be Dille?”
“It’s a long story,” she answered, voice quavering behind her full, ruby lips. “But right now, I want to hug you. Are you able to be hugged right now?”
Utterly bewildered, Eist nodded, letting the woman draw her up into an embrace. As soon as they touched, she knew it had to be her friend. But how Dille had ended up as a fully-grown woman in very strange clothes and decked out in what looked like an entire battle’s worth of potions was beyond her.
There was a sharp shriek from above and Eist barely registered that the sorcerer had been let go by the dragon that had pulled him off her. He landed behind Dille, his entire body bursting with energy, and abruptly, Eist had had enough.
Pulling one of the long daggers free from grown-Dille’s belt, she whipped her hand forward, sending the knife tumbling end over end until it buried itself true in the man’s neck.
His eyes went wide, and he stumbled back one step, and then two. For a moment, his knees bent, as if they couldn’t support his weight anymore, but then Eist could see the moment when he already began to recover.
“You know what?” Dille said, looking over her shoulder but not letting go of Eist. “I’m getting real tired of you.”
Eist felt her friend make the gesture against her back and another swirling pool of blue opened behind the sorcerer. Before he could get a single spell off, the large shape that had ferried him off the first time finally landed and let out a roar that was unlike anything Eist had ever felt.
It was a booming wave of power, and Eist recognized it as sound, but she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything. But the total deafness didn’t even register as important to her, because standing in front of her was Fior, fully grown and blasting Farmad backward.
The sorcerer tried to hold his ground, he really did, but he was no match for the bellow from Fior’s mouth. Eist watched, jaw hanging open, as the man was physically lifted and thrown back into the swirling blue.
Dille snapped her fingers, and then the portal was gone.
Eist had almost expected the monsters to fall, dropping to ash as their master disappeared, but they kept right on fighting. There were somehow more of them around Ain, Yacrist, and the dragons while another group had set upon Athar, who was covered in scratches as he swung his great sword this way and that to fight them off. Had he been battling on his own, separate from the group the whole time? Eist had forgotten there was anything beyond the sorcerer in front of her.
“Come on, we need to get all of us out of here,” Dille said, rising to her feet and gently pulling Eist with her.
But all Eist had was eyes for Fior. She stumbled forward and her dragon whirled on her, crystalline eyes looking over her. He was so big. How was that even possible?
She reached forward tentatively, almost not daring to believe it could be her little guy. But she knew those black, copper, and brown scales anywhere. That sweet smile. The way he tapped his not-so-little claws against the ground when he was uncertain.
Her fingers almost reached his snout when he pulled away slightly, his nostrils flaring. Eist froze, allowing him to catch her scent. How long had he been without her? It had only seemed like minutes to her, and yet he was so much older. Stronger. He could carry her on his back if he remembered her.
The moment stretched on, her standing there in the middle of a battle with her hand outstretched, then it was over in a blink. Fior rushed forward like he wanted to tackle her.
He stopped at the last moment, but his body curled entirely around her, tongue laving all over her face and hair. There was spit, so much spit, but she didn’t mind. No, Eist didn’t mind at all.
Throwing her arms around his neck, she hugged him as tightly as her battered and tired arms would allow her too.
“Fior, I love you. I love you so much. Never leave me like that again. You can’t, okay? You can’t, I won’t survive it.” She sobbed into his scales, relief flooding every bit of her. Fior made a chorus of whimpering and comforting sounds as well, as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to provide comfort or ask for it. But that was alright, because Eist was going to pamper and spoil him until he was sick of her, and then she’d do it some more.
; A short whistle had Fior untangling himself from her, and Eist was surprised to see the fully-grown Dille standing there almost sheepishly. “I’d hate to interrupt what I know is a really important reunion, but we should really go.”
Eist nodded, but her mind was still busy comparing how Dille looked now to what she should appear as. Her face was broader, wiser, and utterly beautiful. While Eist had been aware that her friend was maturing into a gorgeous woman, before she’d gone in the portal, she still had much of the girlishness that came along with youth. But the woman in front of her wasn’t anything like that. She was fully realized, filled out and confident. Her eyes were mysterious and her full, full lips curled into a weary smile. What had happened since she’d let herself fly into that vortex? She was so much more now. Eist looked up at her, still trying to figure it all out. “How are you…”
“It’s a long story,” she said again with a sigh. “One I’ll have to tell you later, when it’s safe. Oh, but there is something I should mention.” She made that same gesture with her hand and another portal opened. For a moment, nothing issued from it, but then a truly massive red snout stuck through followed by a fully grown and gargantuan red dragon. “I kind of have two dragons now.”
Eist stared, just one more straw to add on top of the pile. No dragon rider ever had two dragons. The closest that ever happened was blue dragon twins choosing siblings, or having a two-headed dragon. It wasn’t possible, and yet Eist knew as the red beast ambled to Dille that she was undoubtedly the girl’s mount.
Fior let out a happy chirp and danced over to the great dragon, nuzzling her snout.
“About that,” Dille muttered. “I think your dragon has a crush on mine.”
It was such a non sequitur after so much violence and pain that Eist couldn’t help but laugh. “Huh, what is it with both of your dragons being heartbreakers?”
“I don’t know, but—”