Page 107 of Shadowlands Omega

I grab his shoulder as he finally tugs his blade free of the corpse. She comes at him again, but I lift a hand and her head all but disappears in the blink of an eye, leaving behind only ash and a flickering blue. More of the undead turn towards us then and Yaron’s battle cry gains in volume. He starts forward, but I grab his fur and tug as hard as I can. It doesn’t have any effect — wouldn’t if he didn’t let it. He obeys instantly, returning to my side. To heel.

“I said fall fucking back, soldier! Do not question me again!” I shout at the top of my lungs, my voice all but a shriek. “Behind the blue flames!”

“What flames?” he grunts in reply.

I step forward, nearly getting myself buried beneath two undead that loom much taller than I do and seem to have me in their sights. Renard manages to swing his sword across one of their throats while Yaron bites off the arm of the other. I use the small space they’ve afforded me to step forward into the undead horde while Yaron roars his displeasure at my back. I lift both arms and I recall words once said to me by Yaron as a compliment. Little did we know then that they were really a premonition.

You have the heart of a warrior, standing alone on the plane of battle against an army of the undead. You carry the conviction that you can and will vanquish them all because you have the lives of those you love to protect.

I gasp, breathing in a lung full of sickly, spoiled air and I see what I want, visualizing it, feeling it in my whole body, the desire not to hurt, but to save. I gather that deep breath, I gather my nerves, I gather all the love I have within and around me…and I exhale.

Blue and purple fire zips across the ground, a clean line that holds despite those who attempt to trample it. Shouts of confusion rise up from our people. Renard chokes once, but recovers in the next instant. “Fall back! Behind the flames! Cyprus, Dorsten, relay the order!” He shouts to his right and then to his left, somewhere behind us so that his voice can be heard over Yaron’s immense breadth. Even though I can’t see him over many taller bodies, my heart beats brilliantly, knowing that at least my brother is still here, fighting among the living against the dead.

The undead fall into the flames, undeterred, but our people are quick to burn, to hurt. I can feel their pain as the fire dances up their pantlegs, but eventually shouted orders are relayed back to us. Renard looks down at me and nods once. “It is done, but the undead are advancing…”

“Are you sure? Anyone caught on the other side of the flames willdie.” And I can’t have that. I can’t stomach it.

Renard blinks at me again, looking confused. An undead attacks, but he shoves them back with all of his might. He relays my order again and after a tense moment that lasts an eternity, in which time an entire line of undead are able to cross the fire, moving around and past me and Yaron, who works hard to dispose of them but isflagging, Renard shouts — half in fury, half in pain with a female hanging from his arm, her teeth sunk deep into his wrist — “It is done, my Lady. But you better act fast or we’ll be over…”

I duck beneath the swinging arms of an undead male and step forward, directly into the fire. Yaron roars at my back, but by now, two undead separate us and more are coming, closing in, crawling closer. I can feel the fire on the soles of my feet, soothing and warm in my wounds, and I can feel the heartbeat of the earth begging me to rid it of this abomination.

An abomination my family helped cause and whose sins I will now undo.

I suck in another breath that tastes of sour fruit and rotten flesh and close my eyes just as grizzly, skeletal hands close around my once severed neck. And when I open my eyes a heartbeat later, blue appears everywhere, as a wall, as the wind. It moves forward, rolling silently like a beautiful sapphire veil dancing in the lightest summer wind.

Lightness fills the world and it’s almost like a summer day, back in a world that once existed before the Fates and the rotten woods of Paradise Hole and inequity and cruelty stole everything. Every rose, every bloom, every dry grass, every full moon. The sun and the stars, it took those, too, but they can come again, I know it. I know it…

The blue rolls beautifully down the hill, away from the keep. The undead fall beneath it, but because they are dead, they don’t scream. They do not try to retreat. When the blue light reaches their reanimated bodies, the undead falls in its first step, turns to ash in its second, and then to nothing at all.

The fire burns so hot, it doesn’t matter if there is metal studding the moldy rags of their clothing, it doesn’t matter if they’re wet or dripping in undead venom or the blood of the living. It doesn’t matter, because the fire isn’t cleansing, it’s reductive, returning the undead to what they should have been the moment the souls left their bodies.

Nothing.

Nothing but memories of the lives that were before. Beautiful lives, I’m sure. Just like the lives of those behind me, still fighting the final undead my flames couldn’t reach without hurting someone breathing.

The blue makes its way all the way down the highway line, rolling over the ground and turning the tan, packed earth to a patchy dark brown and black. The grass is gone, blackened to dust, the mud is dried beneath it and its flakes spiral into the air in the second wind my body makes. The wind blows down the hill, chasing the blue and then billowing through it, dispersing it as the hill reaches its valley and then scattering it finally as it climbs up towards the next peak that leads to Orias.

There are no undead between me and Orias now. No undead in sight. There were also oxcarts and horse-drawn wagons left in the middle of the road, undoubtedly abandoned when the undead first attacked. They’re gone now, too.

The quiet fades as the last of the blue is washed away, like sandcastles fighting high tide. The cerulean fire licks and flicks at the air and it’s almost as if it succeeds in transferring its beauty, because without warning, the sky opens up. Right over the hill that leads down to the village, a patch of blue sky appears bright and holy. I know that the ancestors are watching now and I know that I’ve done them proud and brought them glory.

I turn as the clanging sounds of armor and shouts from the battle blink back into my awareness. I see the last of the undead fighting for nothing, because they don’t know they’ve already lost. They don’t know anything.

I turn to see my brother, Cyprus, striking one down a second before another turns to face off against him. His gaze meets mine and he tells me to look out. I turn and stagger a step back, feeling woozy and wobbly on my feet as I make eyes at the undead female who leaps towards me. I throw up my hands, but my magic is finished and also…unnecessary. A blurry shadow slams down between us as Yaron’s massive jaws crunch through her torso, tearing her to shreds. The pieces of the creature scatter around my feet and I slowly lower my hands when I sense the danger is over.

I blink to see Yaron kneeling before me in the dirt as a man, his naked body covered in black slashes and bite marks that make the scars on his back look like child’s play. I gasp, “Yaron…”

His chin tips up, his hair slashing through the air and away from his face, the grey at his temples revealed. He rises in one sinuous movement and grabs me around the ass, lifting me up high on his shoulder so that I tower over him and everyone else as he steps out onto the blackened field where undead once fought, where his people made their stand.

He moves out far enough that I can see to the left and to the right, all the way down the line of our fighters, all of whom risked their lives to fight with all they had. The undead are vanquished. I can’t see any more of them among the living, bruised, and very injured faces that shine back at me. All eyes are on us, on me.

Yaron transfers my weight to one arm and lifts his other fist. He bellows, “To the Lady of the Shadowlands! To our Fallen Fire Omega!”

A roar slams into me with more force than the fire had as our people scream and shout and applaud forme. Tears fill my eyes as I brace against the force of their cries of adulation, and against the force of the pride that batters me. Overwhelmed by emotions, by what I’ve just done, by my body’s spent energy, by the dust swirling around us, I cry and laugh at the same time and wave to the people.

Yaron lowers me to the ground a moment later and as soon as my feet touch down on packed, scorched earth, he staggers. I lunge to catch him, but he’s too heavy and we hit the ground together, me on top of him, both of us near naked except for the scraps I’m still wearing.

“Yaron,” I whisper down into his face.

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