Page 42 of Oracle of Ruin

I land atop the teen, doing the best I can to cover her body with my own. Neris stands a few feet away, drawing the scent her way, her sword drawn. A crash later and a bloodied Mavis stumbles through the trees, her breathing haggard.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Emi!” Mavis admonishes, even covered in mud and blood. She accepts a swig from the canteen Neris extends. Her lips leave a bloodied mark on the lip of the container.

Emi’s eyes widen and water at the sight of her idol beaten half to death.

I step forward, my shoulders squaring. “Kijova?” I ask, even though I know a Kijova doesn’t sound like that.

Mavis shakes her head, dread settling in my gut. “Wraith.”

“A wraith? Like the ghost things from those children’s fables?” Neris supplies my question, her strong brow furrowing.

Mavis nods, a chill shattering my spine.

Wraiths were a warning against violence against children in fables. The tales spun were told in our primary school by teachers and students alike, each weaving a different image of the story. Still, the origin and ending remained the same.

Wraiths are the souls of children who met violent ends before their time. It starts with a man who lusts after a woman, only she refuses to marry him since her child is old enough to remember her real father. In order to have the woman, he steals the daughter from her bed and strings the child from a tree on his farm. Legend says that the wind took pity on the swinging girl and gave her three gifts: flight, transcendency, and the ability to take revenge. On their wedding day, the wraith stood at the altar behind the man, and her screams sent him spiraling to his death.

“Yeah, the stories didn’t warn us about their fangs and claws though.” Mavis gingerly raises a finger to her swollen and bloody cheek. “The poor thing’s voice is the least of our worries.”

“Where did they come from?” Neris muses aloud.

My heart turns to lead in my chest and I fight the desire to sink to the snowy ground. “Are there any towns nearby?”

Mavis nods, her gaze slanting in suspicion.

I inhale sharply. “The Kijova don’t discriminate.”

Mavis swears lowly and Neris begins to shake. Only Emi stands perfectly still, so unflinching that a stranger might have mistaken her for a frozen body or a statue. Her eyes are wide, that of prey cornered and staring into death’s insatiable face. One terrifying question lay in the frosted air before us: if the unthinkable were to happen, if we were to lose her, would she turn into one of those?

Mavis’s split lip dribbles, the blood marking a slow line down her chin before it drips into the snow. Gold flecked.

Emi’s brown eyes watch each drip, her knees trembling in tandem.

Mavis turns, her dual-colored hair swishing with the motion. Her movements are languid, like a smooth river flowing peacefully under a full moon. Her footsteps crunch in the snow, the only sound in the evening as she approaches the girl.

Emi lifts her chin, defiant even as the first tear drips down her freckled cheek.

Mavis lifts her arms, her cloak like the fiery wings of a phoenix, wrapping around the teen as her shoulders begin to shake. Not shielding the world from Emi, but the girl from the world. For the fears she should never have been forced to have. She cloaks her in a darkness different from the one we stand in. This one is quiet, safe. Mavis is a fortress, the stones slick with rain and crumbling, yet impenetrable.

The wind refuses to whistle, that low howling no longer audible as well. Neris and I share glances, but neither of us dare to ask what happened to the wraith. Perhaps we both know our souls will never rest easy if we know. War can only take so much from a man before he breaks, and Mavis knows she is already gone. Neris, Emi, and I are still salvageable. Despite it all, I want to reach out and tell her there is something in her worth saving too.

Dawn etches the sky golden, roses blooming in the clouds. A hazy pink glow covers the mercenary and the child. In this moment, I wish I could paint, wish I could capture it in saturated hues forever. The viper and the canary.

Snow dusts the top of their heads and Mavis closes her eyes, the cloak falling to Emi’s shoulder when the girl allows it.

They turn to us now, her arm draped protectively around the teen. “We need to move. There could be more and we don’t have time to waste.”

We wisely choose not to argue. Despite never having seen a wraith and apparently having a perpetual curiosity for things that spell detriment to my health, I would rather not see one today. My stomach roils with nausea at the picture of Emi’s face, twisted in fear and horror. I’ve never been overly fond of children, but the thought of one dying such a violent death that their soul must roam for eternity, then that child being Emi? My fingers splay across my sternum and I focus on the rise and fall of my cascading breath. Pity will get us killed, just as much as panic will.

We only stop once to allow Mavis to tie a splint to her leg. She swears nothing has broken for sure, and if it has, it must only be a hairline fracture, but still. A weak leg will get us killed. Panic, injury, pity. Just existing. All of it spells death in these dire hours.

Emi stands close to the mercenary at all times, and if she isn’t touching Mavis, she is touching her cloak, clutching the red fabric in her tiny, freckled hands. I never thought of fourteen as young before. With Irene as my mother, I never had the option of fully being a child and never understood the weight of childlike innocence. I can see it now, spelled with grief across the teen’s face. I can feel it in the silence where her irate quips would usually occupy the air. Anger is her shield against her youth, and now with the snowy night having cooled it, there is nothing left but a wounded child.

“We are almost there,” Mavis calls from ahead. She is slightly more winded now, but still doing far better than anyone else in her position would be. I would’ve collapsed in the snow and allowed the wraith to take me at this point. Even uninjured, I debate it, but Neris somehow has a sixth sense for when despair and foolishness settle in, always gripping my elbow in silent warning.Don’t you fucking dare.

The general is the only one who doesn’t look out of place in the snowy wood. With her fur hood up and stern face, she looks every bit the part of the borderline feral wolf that bites at Mavis’s heels. Then a smile splits her face in two at something Emi says and that notion is gone with the howling wind.

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