Page 43 of Bite Sized Bride
My fists, my claws, my entire body crashes against his golden shield. The impact shakes the very ground, but the shield holds. It does not even flicker. I am a hurricane beating against a mountain.
He laughs. “Your brute force is useless against true power, beast.”
He is right. I cannot break the shield. The other warriors are regrouping. Vexia is stirring. I cannot win this fight. I cannot protect her.
I look at Mikana’s body, so small, so still. I look at the pillar of pure, white light in the middle of the clearing. The center of the Wildspont. A place of unmaking.
And I know what I must do.
It is not a choice made of despair. It is a choice made of love. It is the only move a warrior has left when the battle is lost. A final, defiant sacrifice.
I stop my assault. I stand before Malakor’s shield, my chest heaving.
He smiles, thinking I have surrendered. “Wise,” he says. “Now, kneel.”
I do not kneel.
I turn and scoop Mikana’s limp form from the ground. She is so light. So cold. I press my face to her hair one last time, inhaling her scent, the scent of summer grass and impossible hope.
“I love you,” I whisper to her still form.
And I turn back to Malakor.
Before he can react, I charge again. But this time, I am not aiming for him. I am aiming past him.
I use his own impenetrable shield as a battering ram. I slam into him, my massive shoulder against the golden energy, and I do not stop. I push. I drive him backward, his boots skidding on the glowing moss, his face a mask of shocked disbelief.
“What are you doing, beast?” he snarls, his confidence finally cracking.
I am taking him with me.
I drive him backward, step by agonizing step, toward the pillar of white light. Toward the heart of the storm.
“Stop him!” Vexia screams from somewhere behind us.
But it is too late.
With a final, desperate surge of strength, I push us both over the edge.
We fall into the light.
It is not a fall. It is an ascension. It is a dissolution. The light is not light. It is pure, untamed creation. It has no heat, no cold. It is everything and nothing.
Malakor’s shield shatters instantly, a pane of glass in a supernova. He screams, a sound of pure, terrified outrage as the light begins to unmake him, peeling away his silks, his skin, his arrogance, his very being.
I hold Mikana tight against my chest, my body a shield around her. The light hits me, and the pain is absolute. It is the pain of the first unmaking, magnified a thousand times. The Urog’s curse, the hardened hide, the fused collar—it is all burned away in an instant, not by fire, but by pure, untamed possibility.
The orc’s soul, the ghost of Kael, is laid bare. The memories, the grief, the love—it is all there. And the light begins to unmake that too.
I let Mikana go.
My last conscious thought is not of the pain. It is of her. Her face. Her name.Mikana.
The light takes me. The world dissolves into a symphony of white, silent sound.
And then… nothing.
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