Page 100 of A Rising Hope

“Orest sent a note to Xentar, but we have yet to hear from him either,” Tori quietly added.

“You have to fight it. If not for yourself, then for us,” Motra pleaded.

“Everyone knows we don’t have Justice Wielders anymore. Every Destroyer is now making a claim to the throne. The Ten are broken. The world is literally falling apart right now, Zora, while you’re rotting here,” Tori’s voice shook, she sniffled the tears away.

“I don’t know how you are going to fix this, but fucking fix it,” Ashe retorted.

But I stayed silent, not replying to them, ignoring their pleas as I drowned in the void within.

“We leave tomorrow,” Ashe said. “And you’ll be left behind.”

“I do not care,” I scolded, even as tears rolled down my cheeks, each drop scolding me like acid against my skin.

“Goodbye Zora,” Motra whispered as their steps echoed through the rock.

The dugout cellar that I was locked in felt even smaller now. But I deserved it.

I only hoped it’d cave in on me, burying me alive.

61

OREST

The marching army behind me was silent. There were no cheerful whispers, nor lively conversations as we strode through a series of defenseless villages on our way to Svitar.

Soon the rustic cottages and the dusty roads would turn to gravel and then to stone, becoming wider to accommodate traveling carriages and buggies.

Villages would turn into towns and in two days we’d reach the city walls of the City of Light.

We had to take Svitar soon. There was no time we could spare, and we had already wasted so many days caring for the wounded, nursing the ones that lived.

Each hour we wasted was another hour given to our enemy to gather, to prepare, for them to realize just how destroyed our armies were and how nonexistent our allies had become. We had to march today; we had to attack now, otherwise we’d be picked off one by one in the battles to come.

I called for every soldier we had. Soon the northern defense battalion would join us, surrounding the city on the north. The rest of Lachlan’s battalion would march on the south corridorand the remainder of our armies would come from the cursed east.

I forced myself to only focus on tactics and when my mind could no longer think of strategy and the slim odds of us winning, then I’d focus on the pain radiating through my body from my wounded shoulder that was still slowly healing. I kept my helm on, hiding the yellow bruises under my eyes from my broken nose. My thoughts, like sour milk, left everything bitter the further we marched from the chateau, from the cellar welded shut.

A little tremor went through my hand. I squeezed the hilt of my sword at my side tighter. I willed myself to take another step, propelling me forwarded, but my heart was, like a fucking string, taut, ready to snap and pull me back to the dark cellar, to her. Another step and I would fall apart, erupt in flames, burn to ashes, the heartache was unbearable. I wished a thousand arrows would tear me apart; I wished for sharp blades to cleave me in half, for the flames to sear me. Perhaps then I would feel the reprieve from agony that suffocated my heart.

But instead, I marched silently with my soldiers.

And I did not look back.

Minutes turned into hours; hills turned into flat valleys. The last village we past must have been an hour away, the next one already peeking on the horizon beyond the never-ending stretch of cornfields.

A loud horse’s huff yanked me from within the depth of my thoughts.

A rider, dressed in civil clothes, galloped towards us.

“Four battalions approaching. Fifteen clicks away.” My scout warned. “One calvary, one archer battalion and two infantries,” he proclaimed, pulling on the reins of the wary horse.

“Attack or defend?” I questioned him, my mind shifting to a predatory stance, my breaths becoming shallow yet calculated, saving every ounce of energy for the rapidly approaching battle.

“Attack. Though from the provisions they carry, they are prepared for a two-week journey.”

“The fuckers are coming to the chateau to finish us off,” Daibog swore near me.

“They don’t know we have already left,” Bear added. On instinct I turned to Broderick for his input, but he didn’t say a word, his glassy stare lingering on the horizon, the light around him weak, dwindling with each passing day.

---