Page 36 of Rift
“Thank you,” Astra whispered, running her fingers over the soft velvet cover. When she looked up, Ehlaria was gone, all her splendor disappearing in a blink.
Astra stood, careful to rise slowly and methodically, curious to explore the strange numbness of the dream. As she edged closer to the forest, she heard footsteps cracking over skeletal twigs and decaying leaves.
She felt it then—so much softer on this plane. A warmth, damn near pleasant through the rippled wavelengths of the dream’s distortion. She tucked herself behind a thick tree trunk, the bark peeling off in dead strips, listening.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice hissed from the other side of the tree, sending a shock through her ribs. She reached for the pin in her hair, a crescent Moon with two fine points that wrapped around her fist. She could still hear footsteps, several sets, voices low as two men discussed something in a tongue she didn’t understand.
They must have been twenty, maybe thirty paces into the trees.
“Wake up, Princess,” the voice pleaded.
She squeezed her knuckles around the cool metal of her pin, her curls slipping freely over her shoulders as she leaned around the tree, the warmth growing more insistent.
“You,” she whispered through clenched teeth, spinning from her stance to shove an arm beneath the voice’s chin, pinning him against the decrepit bark.
He hadn’t anticipated she’d be bold enough to move on him.
Astra leaned into her stance, applying brutal pressure to the man before her, the heat of his skin intensifying with each passing second as he reached for the sharp pin in her hand. She pushed it harder against the soft flesh beneath his ear, digging the tip under the hood covering half his face.
The exposed skin she could see was a deep bronze, buzzing beneath her touch in a way that repelled her, that told her he was absolutely a threat. He glared down at her with an amber gaze that mirrored her own.
Thick, dark brows knitted together in irritation.
“Get your breathing under control or they’ll hear you,” he whispered harshly, holding his hands up in surrender. His eyes darted from her clenched jaw to the treeline.
The point of her blade carved a sizzling line beneath his ear as he moved, a mark that would surely hurt more when she released him from this strange dream state.
“And for gods’ sakes if you’re going to pin a man against a tree, at least anchor into your back foot so he can’t do this,” he muttered, shoving Astra backward and catching her hands in his fists. He was only slightly taller than her, but he was broad in ways with which she could not contend, and clearly experienced in hand-to-hand combat. He squeezed her fingers together, the pain jarring—she’d expected the strange, dull haze that suggested pain, but everything about the sear in her knuckles was real.
Her pin dropped to the brush between them as he released her hands without warning.
Astra tumbled to the forest floor and snagged the blade as the man attempted to run. She swung her boot out and caught his foot, kicking it out from under him. His heavy form slammed to the ground beside her. She scrambled after him, climbing over his flattened body and regaining her position as she slid the curvature of her blade against his throat, pushing him into the undergrowth of the Midwood. He wriggled beneath her, shoving his knee into her back and sending her forward but she regained her position quickly.
She could taste the anger on his breath, the misery in his sweat.
“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded, his flailing stopping as the voices grew nearer.
“It doesn’t matter who I am! What matters is two Solarian sentries are about to step into this clearing and they won’t hesitate to kill us both! You. Must. Wake. Up.”
Astra stared down at him, adrenaline flooding her lungs. She could not read a single whiff of emotion within him, neither intrinsic nor in the panicked expression falling over his face. Another log shattered beyond the trees, they were closing in. She squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to rouse herself, but she wasn’t sure what brought her here, let alone what might send her back.
“Come on, Fire Queen,” he growled against her blade. “Either wake up, or finish the godsdamned job. I’d rather die by your blade than theirs.”
Astra thought about it for a split second—she need only reposition her weight. A mere tilt forward and she’d sever the artery pulsing with the sizzling blood of the men who never once thought to spare her ancestors.
His knee rammed against her back again. “Make a choice, Princess!”
Her bones resisted as she made to lean forward, every flickering muscle in her back refusing to comply. She tilted her head, the panic in his eyes reflected in hers.
“Who are you?” she asked once more, her fingers loosening their grip on her pin. The man shoved her away from him, the sudden sting against her shoulder shaking the flames begging to spring free from her fingers loose. They leaped from her fingertips before she could gain control of the fury.
“Ah, fuck!”
He screamed and thrashed as he gripped his shoulder. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, though perhaps she should have, but she was too panicked to concentrate. He froze as she tried again, eyes wide as he took in the scarlet fire in her palms.
“So the nickname isn’t just because of the hair, then?” He smirked as Astra closed her eyes, letting everything within her burn her way out of the astral plane.
She heard two sets of boots sprint as the men yelled, the body beside her twisting and shuffling as she felt her grip on the forest fade.
