The poachers halt in front of us, a woman stepping forward. She stops inches from me. She cants her head, a wicked smile crawling on her bloodstained lips. Raiku tightens around my arm, and for a sliver of a second, I swear I feel Raiek move.
“Will you go down as fast as your brother?” The woman bares her teeth, and I see red. She’s the one who killed Beau? My dagger unsheathes at once. Beau’s killer stares straight at me, and all I want is for the knife to land between her eyes.
“Stand down, Archyr,” Wren instructs quietly. “She’s taunting you. She’s projecting thoughts to your mind. We can’t hear anything she’s saying.”
My wrist tightens around the hilt. It doesn’t matter that they can’t hear. This woman killed my brother.
“Archyr, donotmove,” Wren says, her tone measured, as if she doesn’t want to disturb the poachers. “She’s an Arkani Mortemagi crossmage, a reader-whisperer; look at her cuff and the key molded to it. She’s fueling your rage to break the barrier.”
“Unregistered crossmages are outlawed for a reason,” mutters a First-liner.
“Demoted for useless commentary,” Wren clips. “Archyr, for the last time, she is toying with you. That’s what they do.”
“She killed my brother.” I bite down.
Gryff tries to reason with me. “Beau is back now. Don’t engage, Sylas.Wearen’t immortal.”
He’s right. They aren’t immortal; we don’t have Railesza; and there’s only one healing Aspieri in this unit. I can’t risk everyone’s lives.
“What did you do when your father was begging for his life?” The poacher draws my attention back to her. “That’s right, Sylas. You ran. Like acoward. And now you’re hiding like one, too.”
I don’t think. I throw.
The next moments are utter chaos. Poachers swarm the unit. Wren barks out orders, but I ignore them. All I see is the woman with bloodstained lips running away into the woods. Raiku slithers from my arm. “Don’t let her get away.”
I stalk after her through the trees. The unit has half a decade more experience than I do on the field. They will be fine while I catch this monster who killed Dad and Beau.
Raiku stops. When I look up, the woman stands frozen in front of me, her head unnaturally bent forward. Her skin pales to gray, and in some areas, it begins to decompose, showing the ivory of her bone. And with it comes the agonizing stench of death.
No.No.It was a trick. How could I not see that she was a puppet?
Without second thought, I run back to my unit. Bodies drop, and what remains of our squad is swarmed by a row of skeletal creatures, oozing darkness, with the sickly sharp smell of death. The same creatures that killed Mom. The undead.
Are these undead ones our Mortemagi summoned, or are they the enemy’s? I have my answer when one of them digs their claws into a First-liner’s torso. Blood pours down her body as the sharp fingers rip across her chest. I bite down on my tongue. Why aren’t our Mortemagi snapping their threads? They are allowed to use the blood arts on the field for this very reason.
As I fight my way toward Gryff, Raiku bites as many poachers as he can. Some drop dead, and some are entirely unaffected. “There are too many puppets here,” I yell to Gryff when I reach his side. “Why aren’t the Mortemagi doing anything?”
“Because they’re all dead,” Gryff growls as his dagger tears through a poacher’s shoulder.
I look around at the carnage, and my throat closes. So many bodies, and in the middle of the pile, right next to his Aspieri, the unit’s only healing aspier snapped in half. Haal, this is barbaric.
Clutching my dagger, I’m unable to move, like the night Dad died. All this is because of me, because I didn’t follow orders. Again.
“Stop standing there like a statue,” Wren barks as she pushes a poacher off her. “Get their relics. Most of them have young children.”
Her words wring my insides. They have children. These children will grow up alone, without one or both parents. What have I done?
Tucking my guilt away, I unclip a cuff from a dead woman perhaps adecade older than me. I don’t know her name, but my hands are warm and crimson with her blood. Her abdomen is ripped, her legs bent in ways that shouldn’t be possible, and she lies there, alone and lifeless. Because of me.
“Sylas.” Gryff’s muffled cry snaps me out of my circle of self-pity. His arms claw at the ground as he tries to pull himself toward me. Two poachers are on top of him, one slicing his arm with a knife.
“Raiku,” I call out, but my aspier’s already ahead of me. He loops around one of the poacher’s necks until he’s weak. I push him to the side, planting a dagger straight to his heart.
Gryff turns and strikes the other one, and Freya slithers to the poacher’s throat, sinking her fangs in until his eyes are glassy and his breath stops. I reach for my friend’s arm to pull him up, but when he stands, I notice the gash in his left leg. “Can you walk?” I ask.
He tries to take a step and stumbles. I catch him, wrapping a hand around his back. “We have to leave. You’ll die without healing. Gorhail’s not far from here.”
“We can’t leave the unit, Sylas.” Gryff grunts in pain. “If we fall, we fall together.”