She was terrified.
Second only to love, fear was the most dangerous emotion a person could feel. It scrambled the senses and distorted reality, threatening the mind to believe the worst. Whether it was fear for her life or another’s, the fear of not being enough, or the fear of failure—fear was always the same.
As a child, Alissa imagined fear as a small, round, mischievous creature with wide, gleaming eyes and midnight-furred skin. She pictured the little demon now, laughing with malice, as it tugged the strings of her brain, making her bodysweat and tremble to its will. She imagined her heart clutched in its tiny hands, squeezing it until the loud throb on her throat was the only thing she heard. She had always been a brave woman, but even with her defiant spirit, resisting the tricks of fear demanded more of her willpower than she had left. This time, she could not afford to let fear be the thing that stopped her. This time, she would not yield.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, searching for the center of gravity within her mind. Before she mastered her power, it had been a struggle to locate that quiet place when the evil claws of her magic tried to dig their way through her mind. Whenever she tried, her inner voice would surge to life, narrating every thought in a frenetic rhythm, dragging up traumatic memories and worries about the future. But now, it felt like plunging into an ocean so deep that sunlight could no longer reach it, so peaceful that not a single thought could be heard. It was effortless, and the vibrant energy coursing through her veins emerged instinctively, tingling her blood and enveloping her body in raw fire.
The energy her magic stirred within her was accompanied by adrenaline and ecstasy. It was so overwhelming that she needed to concentrate to keep it contained. She reached out to grasp Eldric’s hand one last time before the world was engulfed in the chaos of war. He took her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles with a tenderness that opposed the tension in his eyes.
With her other hand, she waved her fingers swiftly toward the archers on top of the wall. Her wisps of magic started to envelope one, two, three, five, eight, ten men at once. Her mouth fell open. Alissa had suspected she could attack more people now, but surrendering ten men at once was a surprise even to herself. With a wiggle of her hand, all ten armored men fell to the ground. Their arm bones twisted at a ninety-degree angle in the wrong direction. Between howls of torment, half of thestanding guards climbed up the wall using ropes, just as Eldric had predicted.
With his signal, they ran toward battle with nothing but their weapons and fiery will in their hearts. Alissa lost hold of the archers, leaving them incapacitated on the ground. She moved her magic’s grip to another group, and ten other men fell under her cruel, powerful grasp. While they agonized in pain, crying like babies on the ground, she grabbed one of the guards’ swords, mercilessly piercing it through their hearts one after the other.
Blood spilled.
Armor was set on fire somehow.
A hand fell on the ground by her feet.
A helmet passed by, flying in front of her at full speed.
A man ran carrying another over his shoulders, crying for help.
Soldiers screamed and fell at a record speed.
Men she had never met came from everywhere with a fury she could not comprehend. Eldric’s fighting lessons resurfaced; the sword in her hands moved with familiarity. When her fighting skills failed, her magic would take the lead. Even as she twisted and turned bones and muscles with no restraint, she could sense the energy of her magic far from being fully drained. It was only then that Alissa understood the true capacity of her abilities.
Although she fought like a warrior queen, her focus was her own liability. Her thoughts drove back and forth to the girl on the other side of the wall and the man fighting for her somewhere in the bloodbath field. Her skills moved against every new face that appeared threatening her life, but she could not stop the feeling that any moment a sword would find its way through her chest.
In the meantime, Eldric hit a man on the back of his knees, and as he fell to the ground, his blade slit the Iron Claw soldier’s throat open. The second man came behind him, using a thin flannel as a weapon, moving it around Eldric’s throat to suffocate him. He struggled to breathe, his vision blurring and darkening as the fabric at his throat blocked the flow of air into his lungs. Eldric opened his legs and gathered strength to push his upper body forward. With both his hands, he grabbed the man’s leg from behind. The Iron Claw fell to the ground just when Eldric’s sword was waiting to impale the man through his spine.
Another opponent came next and was unable to strike when Eldric hit him in the throat, leaving him breathless. A second later, the soldier was permanently prevented from breathing as a blade crossed his lungs. The moment Eldric glanced back, Alissa had already finished killing the first and second waves of guards she had disabled with her magic. She killed them five times faster than he. He observed as her magic reached a third group of men; their cries of suffering sent shivers through him.
The kind of pain she was capable of inflicting others with only a subtle twist of her fingers was unfathomable to him. When he thought she was done, Iron Claw soldiers that had climbed up the wall to help their comrades suddenly fell from the wall in a rainstorm of dead bodies as Alissa’s arrow crossed their hearts until none were left standing. She moved around, killing with the same ease as she breathed. Eldric feared her motivations to kill now were far beyond the will to save her daughter.
He couldn’t judge her, though, not when he had just hung a fourth man from his sword like a piece of meat. The excessive blood pouring from the poor creature’s mouth made him grimace.
Soon, the place started to look like a cemetery, impossible to walk without diverting from the trail of bodies that were left behind. For every dead person, two other living guards came out of nowhere. Their original count of forty opponents soon doubled. Alissa had badly injured her right shoulder and knee, while Eldric bore deep cuts and bruises all over his body. At some point amid the frenzy of the battlefield and the chaos around them, someone cut down the ropes that were being used to climb up the wall, and some died from the fall as they tried to climb up without the assistance of ropes.
Alissa and Eldric continued moving. Even at a distance, their attacks mirrored each other’s. It was the kind of synchrony reserved for people who found in one another their other half, even at war. They were driven by adrenaline, their bodies covered in other people’s blood as they neutralized every living being standing in their way back to Dhalia. Most men were slaughtered; some ran away. When no Iron Claws soldiers were left, the darkness of the sky seemed light in comparison to the horrors left on that battleground. “Are you okay?” Eldric asked, panting. He scanned her body for any signs of injuries, but with all the blood sprayed over her, he couldn’t tell if any of it belonged to her.
“Yes, I’m just tired,” she breathed. Her eye caught sight of the terrible cut on his eyebrow. “You’re injured, let me heal you.”
Eldric gently stopped her by the wrist. “Do not waste your magic on me.”
Although he hadn’t said it outright, it was implied that healing a man destined to die soon would be a waste of precious magic. Alissa didn’t know how much of her power would be needed to reverse the Senectus Subita curse, and while healing his injury wouldn’t cost her much, it could drain energy crucial for saving Dhalia, especially after how tired she felt. Instead, she swallowed her words, her hands gently framing his face beneaththe stubble of his growing beard. Her lips thinned with the weight of all the things she wanted to say, but time wasn’t on her side. It never had been.
She turned her back to him, hiding the tears that made her eyes shimmer, and sprinted around the walls of Bryniard toward the place that had changed everything six months ago. The tunnels were more than an escape route; they had become the path that changed her life. Because of them, she had found a way out, the means to save her daughter. Because she fled, she met Eldric and became a mage. But they were also the reason Freyah wasn’t by her side for the return.
Alissa had never seen the piece of land where the tunnels emerged from the outside. Back then, she had been hiding inside a barrel, and the fleeting glimpses through its opening were just distant memories. She crawled, relying on her touch to feel the soil and detect any changes in the dirt or the ground’s vibrations. She searched for any sign that she had found the secret entrance to Bryniard, but the entire expanse of land looked exactly the same. Her hands were already stained a dark brown when she heard footsteps growing louder, closer.
“We must be in the wrong part of the wall,” she stated.
Eldric had only been to the walls of Bryniard once, but his sense of direction never failed him. “It was right there.” He pointed to a spot only three steps ahead. She followed him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” His hands landed on the wall before him. “Do you see this lighter piece of rock right here? I used it as a reference for the entry point. It reminded me of the shape of a diamond.”