My small and bruised fingers locked around that curved tusk.
Let go? No. It's all I have left of him.
The only solid thing in a drowning world. The jagged tip dug into my palm, sharp pain I should've felt but didn't.
Pain was in my lungs.
Burning. Every breath came out in short, crackling wheezes. Liquid gurgling in my throat instead of air.
Damn magic.
"Damn the fire. Damn the water." They'd promised power. They'd delivered only ash and cold.
The crunch of glass under a boot cut through my bones.
I looked up.
The room was completely destroyed. Shattered glass. Furniture reduced to splinters.
And them.
My parents' bodies lay one on top of the other, in a pool of their own pink blood. Locked in the final embrace.
I took a step. Glass crunched. I wanted to reach them.
Then I saw him.
My legs stopped responding.
Vrogat stood in the shadow.
Blood poured from his torn snout like a viscous mask. Broken tusk with jagged edges, raw bone gleaming red. His eyes were narrow, yellow. He was staring at me like meat.
Not far away, among the remains of the sideboard, Ronak pushed himself up. An animal grunt escaped his throat as he shook off the table pieces covering his back. Like a wet dog. The wound at his temple bled too fast.
"Little bastard. You're finished! You hear me? I'll kill you."
I took a step toward them. The glass crunched again. My hand reached for magic, for fire, for water, for anything.
My knees buckled and I fell.
My arms dangled. Wouldn't respond anymore.
It was an instant. A flash of dark and red.
~ * ~
I saw myself.
Again. Like before. Like always.
The future. Or the past? This time I recognized it: my small body, lifted by the neck in Vrogat's massive hand. Skull cracking against the wooden beam, wet, final. The heat of the blade piercing my chest. In the same spot, the same spot where it had hit Mom.
My eyes went glassy. Fixed on nothing.
The boar was laughing. Spitting in my face.
I can change it. I have to change it.
If I stayed there, I'd just be another corpse in that pool.
~ * ~
The vision vanished. The taste of bile filled my mouth.
The footsteps grew closer.
The tusk I gripped so hard had torn through my skin. My knees shook violently. Terror of death surpassed, for one heartbeat, even the agony of loss.
"No! Not again!"
"What are you babbling about, brat?"
Both of them came toward me. Slow. Sure.
My parents are dead.
I can't do anything for them.
My legs were lead, but they still responded.
Use them. Use these bloody legs. Run.
My mind knew: I had to flee.
My heart pulled toward Mom. But my legs were already moving.
Ronak lunged first, a few steps separated him from me. The mass of fur and muscle charging through the room's mud, arm raised to grab.
But I was tiny. I was nothing.
I used the slippery floor. Let myself fall sideways. The world spun as I rolled, his massive legs passed over me, a breath from my face.
"Little…" He said something but I didn't care.
Move or you're dead.
My body wouldn't obey. Shock. Fear. Something was nailing me down.
No. Move. NOW.
I raised my hand.
My cheek exploded with pain.
I looked at my hand. A slap. To myself. Run, you idiot body. Run!
The pain tore through the fog.
I jumped to my feet.
Felt the displaced air from a missed blow. A whistle. Above me. Where my head had been one heartbeat earlier.
Vrogat tried to block my path. He made a high-pitched, metallic sound coming from the stump of his broken tusk. He reached out with his free hand. Fat fingers searching for my tunic.
I took a step toward the window.
Vrogat took the bait.
I pivoted. Door. Run. Now.
One step.
Two.
Threshold.
I stopped looking at their bodies. Only looked ahead.
I crossed the door.
The cold hit me like a slap. Rain. Darkness. Everything different from the warmth we had in the house just a few bells before this horror.
That had been my last breath of safety.
The wind stole my breath. Gusts of freezing water like ice needles on skin still warm.
I shuddered.
That movement tore through my torso. My lungs made a horrible sound: a wet gurgle. I coughed, doubling over. Spat out a stream of pure water that tasted like death.
I'll never use magic again. Never again.
All magics were traitors. My fire had killed my father. My water had filled my lungs until I nearly died, while they actually died.
Parasitic power.
It had tricked me into thinking I was strong while dad burned. Promised me revenge while mom collapsed.
And in the end?
In the end I'd only destroyed the house. Shattered the walls. Sent furniture flying. But I hadn't saved them.
Neither magic, fire or water, had done what actually mattered.
I'd rather die here, in the mud, without magic, than let that poison out again.
This was the promise I made to myself. To them.
Never again.
But dying wasn't an option yet. Run, came the voice inside my chest.
Sound of footsteps behind me.
I tried to run faster, but I fell. My strength was vanishing.
"I have to get up. I have to run!"
GET UP.
My foot sank into the frozen slush of flooded alleys. The tusk like spiky ice in my fist, jagged tip cutting through palm. The pain was the only anchor in this reality.
Real. Solid.
This is the price I've ripped from the monster.
My foot stuck in that slush.
I lost my balance.
I slammed into a wet barrel with my cheekbone and bounced off, ending up flat on my back. Cold seeped into my bones, extinguishing the warmth of life I'd left in that dining room. Hot blood covered one eye, viscous, dripping on my eyelid. Everything was half red.
In the impact I lost a shoe. Where did it go?
The sound of footsteps approached. Rhythmic, fast. Another sound then, labored breathing.
"With this rain I can't smell him, boss."
"Ronak, you always disappoint me."
They are predators. Filthy animals that prey on people.
And me wounded prey leaving a trail of gasps and terror.
I got up slowly, careful not to make noise. They were close.
I threw myself into the first dark alley. The rain washed away tears I couldn't stop shedding.
I'm not Arek Grey anymore!
The loved child had died in that room.
I was a shadow among shadows, hunted by nightmares that had no intention of letting go.
I slipped between alleys. Narrow. Stone and brick walls, soaked, closed in as I passed. I changed direction every time it was possible to try and lose the bastards. Left, then right after a few steps. Water poured into my eyes.
Behind me, trampled puddles.
"I'll get you... worm..."
One of their voices came muffled by rain. Too close.
I saw his shadow cast against a wall by lightning: deformed, huge silhouette with hunched shoulders filling the entire alley.
Too close.
I dove into a side street, nearly slipping into a black, muddy channel.
The tusk stung my palm, frozen and wet. I gripped it with strength that made my entire arm shake. I wanted to throw it away, rid myself of it like I wanted to rid myself of every memory of this night. Most of all, I wanted to smother the cursed spark I still felt vibrating deep in my chest.
The moisture in the air pressed against my skin. Dense, almost alive. Like it was waiting. Just a gesture and I can command it. I still have some energy in me…maybe…
But I shoved it back with hatred that burned hotter than the cold.
The oath burned hotter than the golden mark on my skin. No more magic. Never again.
I'd rather die here, in the mud, than let that poison out again.
Another splash. This time from the left.
They were cutting off my path. One of them further ahead than I thought, moving through shadows with coordination I never would've believed possible for their size. I saw him for an instant through rain's fog: his grotesque profile, his disfigured snout searching for my trail in the air. It was Vrogat. He was using his nose to locate me too, beyond sight.
Faster. Stay low.
The words inside my head were mine, but they seemed experienced. Maybe a part of me that had already lived those flashes, those visions...
But my legs wouldn't obey anymore. Heavy logs moving by inertia. My chest made a sound like broken glass with every gasp of air.
They were hunting me.
I was a wounded animal running only because staying still meant accepting the end.
I turned to look behind be and the world spun.
Slam. The shoulder against solid and unforgiving stone. "Gasp!"
Something tore inside the skin. Pain exploded inside.
Knees on the ground. Blood in my mouth.
Get up, Arek. Now.
The impact was dull and brutal. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I slid to the ground.
My face pressed against frozen mud. Vomiting what little air I could wrench from the effort. Blood from my cheekbone mixing with street mud in dark rivulets sliding into slush.
I still felt the residue of magical water weighing on my chest. Something cold. Inside.
I couldn't cough it out.
"Where is... where's the brat?"
Ronak's voice was a hoarse growl, almost an angry bark. I heard the heavy sound of his footsteps, the rhythmic dragging of his wounded leg hitting puddles.
I got up staggering, pressing my hands against the slimy wall to push myself. My fingers slipped, nails scraped the cold stone, but I managed to stand.
I saw their shadows stretch on the wall ahead of me, deformed by the dim light of a distant lantern. They were there. Two monstrous silhouettes, one huge and limping and the other hunched and stocky.
Where do I go now? Even if I lose, where should I go?
The cold extinguishing my heart was torn by a sudden stab of pain.
Right at the center of my chest, a pain, a familiar sting ignited, strong, pressing until it became burning. It wasn't fire's living heat: it was a searing brand, a compass of pain that seemed to want to break through skin.
I lifted my tunic. Golden marks flowed across my small chest: warm, almost feverish to the touch, like they were burning just under the skin.
"Again? What the hell are you?"
Pain seemed to push me in a direction.
"What do you want from me?"
A sensation of emptiness. A path. Away from the Bestials' shadows.
Could it be a trap? Could it be salvation?
Footsteps behind me approached.
I have no choice.
Run that way!
I obeyed myself.
I turned again, dragging my shape along walls, leaving a trail of blood and mud on stones. The burning in my chest became unbearable. Magnetic pull pushing me toward a plaza opening ahead, wrapped in the first gray lights of a dawn that promised nothing good.
I emerged into an open dark space. A plaza not too wide, but exposed. Wind hit me with renewed ferocity, carrying the grayness of a sick dawn.
I didn't know where I was. My vision was a blurred smear of fog and blood, building outlines melting like wax.
Ahead of me was a fountain with five faces and beyond, in the background, a huge building with a tower pointing toward the dawn.
The fountain was just a few steps away but seemed on the other side of the world.
I dragged myself across the plaza's smooth stones, my bare foot a raw mess of cuts and bruises. Every step was a hop. Every movement cost breath I didn't have.
My other leg gave out and I fell, but I reached the edge of the basin. My fingers slipped twice on the wet surface before I managed to grip the frozen marble. I pulled, hauled myself up.
Every exposed inch of skin burned from cold, but at the center of my chest that mark kept radiating unbearable heat. A compass of fire that had led me there.
The fountain I was holding on had a large basin of dark stone, geometric and rigid in shape: five perfect sides enclosing still water, almost dense.
At the far end of the plaza was a massive building of some kind, strangely familiar, solid, with a small tower pointing toward the rising dawn behind it.
I didn't recognize the place. To me it was just a pile of rock to hide in or die.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts.
I wanted to drink, rinse away the taste of ash, but when my eyes met the surface of the water, I froze.
Even in the dark I could see the monster's reflection staring at me from the bottom.
That destroyed poor thing, still gripping a white bloodstained bone between bruised fingers, was it me?
A violent coughing fit shook me, making me spit more water into the basin. The perfect circle of the reflection shattered into a thousand ripples, erasing that unbearable image.
No more air.
No more strength.
No more Mom, No more Dad.
No more… No more…
I let myself fall against the hard stone and the tusk nearly slipped from my hand, but my fingers closed on it with the last shred of will.
I looked up, on the building's steps, wrapped in a black dress that seemed made of smoke and rain, a figure stared at me.
I closed my eyes, resting my head against the marble. The heat on my chest pulsed one last time, a frantic beat that seemed to want to call someone in the darkness about to swallow me.
This place... the recognition hit me like a slap.
I knew it.
Every stone. Smell of the water. The fountain's shape.
How? When had I ever been here?
The questions had no answers. Only the taste of iron and the certainty that everything was about to end.
It had to end here.
I was just a piece of mud at the foot of a stone giant.
I was at the end. Or is this the beginning?
My fingers, locked around the tusk, had no strength left; I felt the bone slip away, slick with blood and rain. The sun rose from behind the building, projecting the first ray of sunlight through the clouds straight into my eyes. I closed them and I gave up. Even the sun was against me. Waiting for the blow, the claw, the darkness.
A long, slender shadow stretched over me, obscuring dawn's grayness.
I opened an eyelid and clenched my teeth, ready for the violent impact.
It wasn't a Bestial's deformed silhouette.
The blow didn't come.
I forced both my eyelids open, vision clouded by a veil of exhaustion.
Before me, silhouetted against the morning's dim light, was a figure dressed in black.
A dark dress, heavy, appeared to absorb the air's moisture itself. Tall, motionless as the column behind it. I couldn't see her face, but at the center of her chest something happened.
A glow.
A transparent medallion, five-pointed, caught the first rays of sun filtering through clouds. The light passed through it, shattering into a thousand colored shards: artificial rainbow dancing on frozen mud and my bruised hands. I already saw that thing somewhere…
A moment of warmth, then nothing.
And in that precise instant, the burning on my chest stopped hurting.
No longer red-hot iron. It became a sweet, deep warmth that began to suck the cold from my lungs.
The warmth I'd searched for all night, away from darkness, away from monsters.
The woman took a step forward. The rustle of her dress covered the sound of light rain for a moment.
"My parents are in danger… No they are… they are… dead?"
The words came out broken, barely a whisper. My head fell back against the column's stone.
Before the black veil of unconsciousness descended completely over my eyes, I saw movement.
Behind the folds of the woman's black skirt, in the shadow's darkness she cast on the ground, two scarlet points ignited.
There was no face.
No body.
Only those two eyes, red as ancient blood, staring at me with supernatural fixity through the blackest shadow.
They'd been watching me from the beginning, from another time.
They'd been waiting for me.
Emma.
The medallion flashed one last time, blinding me.
Then the silence took everything.
And I fell into the void, carrying only the taste of iron and the image of that unnatural red claiming me from the darkness.