9 – 4

There comes a flicker in the corner of my gaze. Milo stands lookout at the emptied woodshed, hand on his sword's hilt and a diminishing stack of drywood at his feet. The torch he carries burns steady and bright. There is no breeze to give sway to its flame. Not him.

Clarke stands in what will be the ring of fire's center. Blue light wisps from between the clenched fistful she carries, born from the glittering star at the hollow of her throat. She brought it to life in the breathless moments after the bramble-beast threw a boulder at us and has yet to release it. As steady and still as Milo with his torch. Not her.

Adelaide constructs the first curve of the ring. She lays the drywood down with quick and trembling hands, pressing a palm to her side every time she rises. She'd pulled a darkly wet splinter from there, not moments ago. The wound is ugly and weeping blood, but far from lethal. She carries no light and makes no sound. It could be her.

It is not Lavinia. She sticks to her father's side like a roadside burr and shivers, from cold or fear or shock's fatigue. I look past her, down the path of dropped and lit torches we left behind. Twenty paces from the woodshed to the house's door, a burning brand at every five. Four torches. Four.

Three.

The torch nearest the door has gone out. Not gradually, but in an instant. It is the bramble-beast. It makes not a sound, nor can I see it, but it is there nonetheless. Just beyond the edge of the remaining light. I breathe harshly through my nose and grip tight to the animal-horn hilt of my knife. Milo sees my stillness. “You see it,” he says, halting Adelaide and drawing Clarke's eyes. It's not a question. I look down the torch-path with unblinking gaze, and feel no surge of fear when an eight-fingered hand curls in from the dark and snuffs out the second torch.

So quickly does it happen that, should it be seen from the side, it would be nothing more than a flicker. Clarke, brilliant and beautiful, is first to act. She thrusts out her hand, hurling her gathered fistful of magic down the torch-path. The icy star at her throat flares and a great slice of the night's dark is pushed back by a burst of bright, open-sky blue.

The bramble-beast stands in harsh relief. A looming shape roughly that of a man. It stands on squat legs that are too short, reaches with thin arms that are too long. Thin, pale hide stretches tight over bone and sinew in a sunken, hollow look. A long and narrow face framed by the curl of a ram's horns and maned in dead, thorning brambles. Empty pits of shadow where eyes ought to be, and a lipless mouth filled with a jagged protrusion of blackened, broken fangs. A mouth that cannot form a smile and yet, for an instant, does.

I draw in a single, shaking breath. The bramble-beast bends, standing at a strange angle with its eight-fingered palms pressed flat against the ground. Grass and ground rip as they curl around fistfuls of hardened earth. Sinew writhes beneath pale, thin hide as its squat legs bunch. There is a moment of stillness, of silence, broken by the hiss of Cobalt steel leaving its leather sheath. The bramble-beast emits an ear-bloodying shriek of blighted joy and hurls itself forward. Its stride leaves scooped craters and torn furrows behind it. It comes for me.

Good. It's not the expected fear that wells within me, but that newfound hatred that burns strength and courage into every last inch of me. I peel my lips back into a snarl of my own and raise my knife. I'll meet it halfway. The scab on my back stings and cracks as I push into a sprint. Clarke screams my name, reaching for a magi's power. Lavinia makes herself small in the woodshed's shadow. Adelaide moves to stop me. Or join me. Unarmed and bleeding, she runs. She'll not make it before the bramble-beast and I collide.

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Milo's torch spins through the air, thrown hard and with keen eye by the once-and-current soldier. It flies well and true, striking the bramble-beast in the side of its hide not two strides before it reaches me. Sparks fly and catch among the mane of dead, thorning brambles. Fire blooms. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Its speed does not allow it to stop at once. Its own momentum drives its chest into the point of my knife. The impact drives the animal-horn hilt into my chest, wrists howling at the sudden and off-angled wrench. For one moment I stay on my feet, sliding across the frost-dusted grass while the bramble-beast's weight bears me down.

The knifepoint punches through pale hide. The rest of the blade follows, driving to the hilt in the join of its chest and shoulder. I see its pain in the dark, empty pits of its eyes. Its fear, of the fire that feeds and grows on its very self.

Then we fall, and the breath is struck from my body by the landing. The bramble-beast opens its hideous mouth. No foul saliva stretches between jagged teeth, nor falls in drops on my face. No tongue, just a dry and darkened cavern. It's going to bite me, and there's naught I can do but brace myself for the pain of it. I'll not scream. A jaw-grind oath. It will not have that from me.

Milo strikes it in the side of the head, the steel of his sword reflected in his dark eyes. The metal bar that separates blade from hilt cracks and splinters one of the beast's horns. The sword's edge splits its hide from eye to mouth, and the point breaks a handful of those awful teeth. It's not blood that pours from the wound, but a thick, black liquid that stinks of rot. The beast rears, swinging a too-long arm to gut him with its long, vicious talons. Milo steps back, once and again. He uses the flat of his sword, braced against his forearm, to parry the strike away. “Now, Clarke!” he shouts.

A pale star blooms to light, a brightly furious burst of icy blue. Clarke gives a wordless cry, and ropes of woven magic lash out to bind the bramble-beast: around its head, around its shoulders, and around its chest. With another cry of effort, Clarke pulls the beast off of me.

- - -

The tapered point of a ram's horn drags cruelly across my cheekbone as it rolls into the pull, using the force of it to rise into standing on its strangely proportioned limbs. The fire that spread down and across its back was smothered between its body and the cold ground. A charred mane of dead, thorning brambles and a few wisps of smoke are all that remain of it. I lay gasping where I fell, open-mouthed and breathless, as the bramble-beast reaches up and shreds Clarke's woven ropes with a swipe of its curved, glistening talons. Shock and horror crosses her face and the pale star at her throat's hollow goes out.

Cold pain across my ribs as I roll to my side and, finally, breathe. Press my hand to the cuts the bramble-beast left behind and soak my hand with my own blood. I hadn't felt them until now: three long and shallow lines cut into my skin, narrow in width and close together. It left me these. I, my knife in its chest.

Clarke darts away, towards Adelaide, whose torch swings in wide and swooping arcs before her. She touches her piece of silver-trimmed ice and returns to light that pale star that dwells within its heart. The bramble-beast hesitates, from the threat of either or both of these things. It moves slow, stepping cautious, with none of its joy or cruelty to be seen. We robbed it of those with our fire and our steel. We can hurt it, and it knows that. Milo races in from behind, silent and sword-swift. His strike must hit bone, for it rebounds with such force that shakes him from steel to shoulder. He leaves behind a shallow cut, sluggishly oozing the foul, dark liquid that passes for blood, and earns the beast's attention.

With its back to her, it doesn't see Adelaide muster her courage and attack. It doesn't see her hold that burning brand in front of her with both of her hands and charge. She means to relight the flame that scorched its back, and it doesn't see her coming. Milo dances back and away from the beast, eyes intent for its retaliation. It comes, but not for him.

It is the brightness of the flame, and the memory of its burn, that saves Adelaide's life. The bramble-beast flinches, a mere twitch of its outstretched arm, and of the eight talons that should have impaled her, it is only one that does. It is the thickest and shortest of them that does it, going into her belly and out of her back in a spray of blood. So sharp is the talon that she doesn't notice, driving her lit torch into the dark, empty socket of its eye.

The bramble-beast shrieks. No joy or cruelty here, only pain. Adelaide's grin is vicious, and vengeful satisfaction is in her bloody smile. It reels from the blow it was dealt, dragging the talon against her insides as the beast pulls it free. A black-red river flows. She lifts her hands to dam it. They tremble. The waters rush around it, squeeze between the squeeze of her fingers. Through her back, she bleeds freely.

A howling denial tears free of Milo's throat. He charges the bramble-beast.

Clarke follows the bleeding woman's slow collapse to the ground. Her hands are filled with magic.

I stand, mouth twisted in a rictus of pain, and limp towards my knife. Faster and faster, until I am running.

In the shadow of the woodshed, a little girl cries for her mother.