Jake’s POV
“Jake! Are you injured?” Suma shouted once I’d reappeared beside her. I was back in the village. Around em were several members of the squad, but not everyone. I saw Nine, Rou, and Lieutenant Datahu. Behind them were other Neame of various sizes, none of which I recognized. Some were wounded, others were dead. Their blueish-green blood shimmered in contrast to their dark-blue feathers. Dust and dirt hung thickly in the air, mixed with a smell like burnt hair and wood-smoke.
“I’m fine, where are the others?” I asked, the dizziness leaving me as I stood up.
“They are helping hold back the enemy while we evacuate the civilians.” She said.
Another Neame landed beside us heavily, clearly in a rush. “Lady Suma, Sir Viky; the enemy are pushing past the defenses! We must leave now!”
“Where are we evacuating them to?” I asked, summoning my armor, Jericho, and shield, Aegis.
“For now, out of the village. Getting them to the forest will make tracking them more difficult. Everyone here knows to go to one of the other strongholds, or how to hide.” Nine said.
“They should leave the island. We all flew here. They can fly away, back to the mainland.” I suggested.
“This is our home. We will not leave it. Not yet.” One of the injured Roshia said.
“But you could be safe.” I said. An explosion outside vibrated the ground.
“They are getting closer. We do not have time for this. Everyone! Prepare to leave! If you can fly, help those who cannot!” The Lieutenant said. The room turned to chaos as Neame either flew away, or started casting spells to lift others up with magic. “Sentinel, you are coming with me. Follow close.”
“But Suma-”
“Your master will be fine. She is assisting evacuations. We are going to fight. You heard the messenger. They broke through the line, so we must form a new one to buy time.”
“Yes ma’am.” I said, summoning Mori and following Lieutenant Datahu outside. The smoke was thicker outside the hole we were in; a lot of something, or several somethings, was on fire nearby. From the front, strange and loud sounds echoed. Thunder, cracking, screaming; all of it mixed, slurred, and mushed together to form one singular magnanimous noise. Like how a waterfall is made up of thousands of drops of water hitting themselves.
“Be ready to cast defensive magic, and wide attack range spells. Remember all that training I put you through.” Datahu said, and created twenty dummies from the ground, wrapping them in vines, tree limbs, and roots. After she finished that, she looked up and locked eyes with me. “Sentinel… give me your mana.”
“How much?” I asked, kneeling down, and placing a hand on her.
“I will tell you when to stop.” I began pushing my mana into her. At first, she seemed fine, but after a few moments, she began to wince, and I slowed down. “No, keep going.” Returning to my original speed, she winced again.
“You’re in pain.”
“It is necessary.” What felt like a minute later, but probably wasn’t, she told me to stop. Despite gasping several times, she claimed she felt amazing.
“What now?” I asked, putting my shield between myself and the direction of the noise.
“Now we wait.”
Truthfully, less than two minutes probably passed. But when your heartbeat is shacking your eardrums, when your knuckles are turning snow white because you’re gripping your sword too hard, and when your breathing is so heavy you could pass out at any second… two minutes doesn’t feel like two minutes. And I spent those stretched out minutes thinking. (Is Suma still alive? Did she escape? Will I ever see Mum again?) I wondered.
About that time, an explosion occurred. Not one of fire, or lightning, but of flesh. Specifically, of feathers and beaks and claws. Horrified, I watched as Neame poured out of the nearby forest like a living tidal wave. They flew up and down and twisted around each other. It looked like a blue splotchy cloud, and sounded like flapping thunder. Lights and sounds came from that living cloud and it quickly drew closer. Bolts of lightning and balls of fire spewed out. That cloud was at war with itself. The burnt, broken, and mangled remains of Neame were ejected from the cloud like rain in every direction, but they always hit the ground in the end… if there was enough left of them to make it that far anyway.
“By the dragons…” Datahu whispered.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Let it get closer, and avoid friendly fire as much as possible. Our only job is to buy time, remember? Enough for the evacuation to finish.”
“How can I tell who is friendly?”
“If they are trying to kill you, kill them instead.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke!?” I yelled, frightened.
“Not at the moment, no.” A few dozen Neame pulled out of the cloud and flew straight for us. “Defensive spells, now!” Datahu said and two of the dummies she made placed themselves in front of her. I cast a spell I’d come up with during training. Using magnetism, I created a bubble of North polarity around myself, strong enough to stop something, almost anything, at the atomic level. Just a half-second later, three bolts of lightning and a ball of fire tore them apart. She bolted up into the sky in a blur. As for myself, nothing hit me; not for a lack of trying, however. One of the Neame had attacked me with lightning, which was what I was hoping for. The lightning was caught in the magnetic field and danced around me like tree branches made of light before popping into the ground with a crackle.
Outside of the magnetic field, I created fireballs, as many as I could. I’d killed before; in the alleyway I killed a familiar, in the desert Deyja made me kill those mages. But this time, when those fireballs launched at my whim, when they connected with three of those Neame, I… Jake… Sentinel… chose to kill them. Their blood was on my hands. Knowingly, and intentionally. There was no running from it anymore.
I repeated that, throwing fireballs, over and over again. Until they were too close to throw fire at. Then I swung Mori. What happened next was a blur. Later, I would remember every disgusting moment. But at the time, it was just a blur of blood, fire, and screaming. The next clear memory I have is of stabbing Mori into a Neame I’d hit with my shield after I ran out of magic and my defensive barrier faded away. One solid blow with Aegis’s edge probably killed him, but in that blur I still stabbed him. Stepping back from the broken, burned, and gutted bodies, and from the shattered remains of almost all of Datahu’s dummies, I looked around, dazed. My ears were ringing so much that I barely even heard Lieutenant Datahu fly down and land beside me.
“Are you alright Sentinel?” She asked. I didn’t answer. How was I supposed to? I could barely even breathe or think. “Sentinel? Are you alright?” She asked more firmly.
“I… I… lived?”
“You are covered in blood. Are you injured?” She asked. Looking down, I saw the blood. I was covered in it. Mori, Aegis, Jericho, and me were dripping blueish-green and red blood.
“I don’t know.” I looked off to the cloud, and saw it had thinned out. Below it laid countless bodies, like a trail of death marking where it had been. Not only had it grown smaller, but it was quickly getting further away. “They’re pushing them back?” I asked.
“No… that doesn’t make sense. They had us outnumbered. We should be-”
“Do you hear that?” I asked, as the sound of a violin slowly grew louder. Without warning, the cloud suddenly dispersed. Thousands of Neame flew in a single direction, away from the sound. What Neame remained cheered, and shot attacks at their retreating enemies. “GET BACK!” I shouted at them. “FLY AWAY! GET AWAY!” But they did not listen, or could not hear me. A dozen or more at a time went silent, and fell out of the sky right to the ground. Like a wave they moved slowly closer to us.
“Harbinger.” Datahu said.
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“The runes! We need to get the runes!” I said, and summoned my bag. As soon as it appeared, I opened it and pulled out every rune engraved leather strap I had made, whether they worked or not. I tied one of every kind to her leg, and to my wrist, then activated them with a daljar.
Lieutenant Datahu looked down at the slightly glowing bands, then at me. Her beak moved up and down, but no sound came out. I tried to say something too, but just like her, there was no sound. Her eyes glowed, and I felt something.
“Hopefully, this means these runes work.” The Lieutenant’s voice inside my mind said.
“That would be good, yeah.”
In the distance, maybe one-hundred meters away, a wild looking woman with a violin stepped out of the forest. She walked among the corpses, looking around carefreely until she spotted me.
“Kill her, kill her now!” Datahu shouted in my mind. I knew it was time. There was no getting around it, not really. I could pull out a ball-bearing, cast Railgun, and end this mission then and there. But I had to try one more time.
“Please, can I… can you do to her what you’re doing to me know. I want to talk with her. I can get her to stand down. I know I can.”
“That is not the mission.” She said.
“Frick the mission. Just let me try to save her. Please. I know it probably won’t work. I know what happens when someone becomes a familiar. But maybe she’s like me. Maybe she still has her own mind.” I begged, never letting my eyes leave Harbinger. She started walking closer, her violin under her chin, being played the whole time.
The Lieutenant stayed quiet for a moment, but eventually said, “fine, but I need to pull back. We cannot be sure these runes work. I will look for her master.” Datahu spread her wings, and flew upwards. As she got further away, she added, “You have three minutes. If she is not dead or on our side by then, I will kill her myself.”
At that moment, I felt a third presence enter my mind. “Can you hear me?” I asked, and Harbinger stopped walking, and looked around.
“Is this you?” She asked. But the voice in her mind sounded wrong. When someone speaks to your mind, you feel them. You feel their presence, their soul even. But Harbinger echoed, like she was hollow. Something was missing from her mine, and I could feel it.
“Yes… What is wrong with you?”
“Well that’s quite the question to ask, isn’t it? But really, there is not a single thing wrong. In fact, I’m better than I’ve ever been.” She said, drawing closer, still playing the violin the whole time, even though I couldn’t actually hear it.
“No, you’re broken. Please stop this; let me help you.”
“How come you aren’t dying?”
“What?”
“I should be vibrating your brainstem so hard it pulls itself apart. Even at this distance you should still be in agony. But you’re fine.”
“Is that Death-Magic?”
“Death-Magic? No… I’d wanted that because I thought it might please my master, but unfortunately I couldn’t use it. Master Lokaria was sooooo disappointed. I cried for half an hour over that, but it ended up fine, because I learned how to use my music to fulfill her desires.”
“Your master; are you under her spell? If not, then you don’t need to serve her. You’re trapped here like me, but if we work together, I’m sure we can-”
“Trapped? No, I’m not trapped. Why would I be?”
Because of the dragon. You haven’t seen him?” I asked. Harbinger was closer now, maybe only fifty meters away.
“Dragon? You mean the fire guy? I wondered about him. I saw him like six months ago, but that was it.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to fight. If you’ll just surrender, this can all end.” I pleaded. She was forty-five meters away now.
“This doesn’t seem to be working at all.” She said, looking down at her violin. “How are you doing that?”
“Please surrender.”
“No.”
“Why not?” I asked angerly. Forty meters.
“Because that isn’t what my master would want.”
“Frick your master! What do you want?” The moment I said that, she put her violin back against her chin, and struck one of the cords hard. My feet vibrated, and for a split second the ground to my left, right, and directly in front of me shook so hard it cracked.
“How dare you! You blaspheme Lokaria? I will rip out your tongue and-” At the thirty-five meters mark, Harbinger suddenly stopped. I felt a new mind enter my own. “Master, are you okay!?”
“I am being attacked!” A new woman’s voice shouted.
“Please summon me!”
“I cannot! It would take too much time. I am flying in your direction!”
“Are you the Neame that took over her mind?” I asked, angry.
“What? Who is speaking?”
“Just another human. Don’t worry master, he will be dead soon.” Once again, Harbinger resumed walking. With every step, she struck her violin, and with every strike, the ground tore itself apart. I felt the other voice, Lokaria, leave my mind.
“Stop this, your violin clearly isn’t working.”
“Clearly…”
“Just talk with me. I’m sure-” I was interrupted by a forceful shock to my side. A large rock had slammed into my armor, knocking me to the ground. I cried out in pain for a second as a few of my ribs broke, but of course no sounds were working around me at the moment. Silently screaming was trippy though. I flowed mana into my armor, and the runes began to heal me. Twenty-five meters now.
“So, whatever is protecting you is only affecting sound then? They aren’t my forte, but I can use other spells.” She said. I threw a fireball at her. It connected, and she writhed and shouted for a moment. She even threw her violin to the ground, and rolled around until the flames were out. For a second, I thought I’d killed her, but she slowly stood back up. When she turned around, her clothes were burned, but the area of her face I’d hit was already healing.
“Stop this.” I said.
“Is the one attacking Lokaria your master? If that’s the case, then I’m going to liquify her guts in front of you.”
“Please stop this. Or I’ll have to kill you.” I said, one final time. She started running. Ten meters. I cast Railgun. The ground beside her exploded. (A miss?!) I thought. A second shot, another miss! Her body slammed into me, knocking me back. She was on top of me now, caught in the rune’s area of effect. Her mouth was open, her face was contorted. Was she screaming? She just body-slammed a guy wearing full-plate armor, she could be screaming…
I hit her, tried to push her away. Each of her blows vibrated me; shook my brains out. Both of us were probably screaming, but there was only quiet and pain. I was bigger, stronger. I pushed her off, summon Mori, and stabbed. Once, twice, three times. She never slowed down. Something hit me from behind, another rock. It made me drop Mori. She hit me in the nose, it broke. Hot blood poured down my mouth. I summoned Aegis, and hit her with that too. She still didn’t slow. It was like fighting the wyvern all over again. She wasn’t afraid of being hurt, she didn’t stop just because she’d been stabbed. I may have been bigger and stronger, but she fought like a trapped animal.
Suddenly the whole world filled with sounds again all at once. “AHHHHHH!” She screamed, or maybe it was both of us. At that point we were just beating each other senseless on the ground. Neither of us was even trying to use magic anymore. But almost as soon as the sound turned back on, I felt dizzy.
“Finally!” She bellowed, and got back to her feet. I tried to stand up, but quickly fell over again. My whole world was spinning. Looking at my wrist, I saw that some of the rune engraved straps had come off in the fight. Two of the five were lying almost ten meters away on the ground. Picking up Mori, she stood over me. I launched a fireball, but couldn’t see straight and missed entirely, even though she was just a few feet away. She swung, and I put my hand up in front of me, then it fell to the ground beside me.
“ARRAGGGHHH!” I screamed, and spurts of my blood flew from where my left hand had once been and into the air. “AHHHHHHH!” I continued to scream. She raised Mori up again, but I cast a spell. One I’d told myself I’d never use. Spells are cast by putting magical power, mana, into one’s thoughts or intentions. And when she swung that sword down at me again, I could only have one thought, only one intention. I’d been fighting her. Fighting to survive. Fighting to kill. That was my intention. And the spell cast… was Death-Magic.
I spoke no words, I didn’t need to. The moment the spell was cast, I almost regretted it. She dropped Mori behind her and started screaming. Worse than she did when my fireball had hit her. Worse than anything I’d heard since the alleyway that day, all those years ago. Blood poured from her face where no cuts had been. Her limbs contracted and bent in unnatural ways. She just screamed and screamed, until she stopped. Her face frozen in agony, and discolored in blood. And I just laid there, frozen. Still bleeding from my stump, but unable to put any mana into my armor. Unable to do anything, except regret my spell.
I think I passed out. Everything went from all too real, to more of a dream. For the next little while, my memories got a bit fuzzy as I slipped in and out of consciousness. One clear memory I have is how clammy and dizzy I felt. Cold, that’s what I was. No matter how hard the sun beat down on me, I was freezing. It was probably a side effect from blood loss. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I was just dead, and that’s why I was cold.
“Sentinel?” Lieutenant Datahu called out. I didn’t answer, but she found me anyways, and landed on the ground in front me of. “Sentinel! Can you hear me? Are you… by Ashem. Your limb… hold still. I may not be the greatest healer, but I can stop the bleeding.” She cast a spell, and the pain in my wrist faded, but it didn’t go away. After my wrist was healed, Datahu surveyed the area and contacted the rest of the squad. That’s about when my head started to clear up.
“Lieutenant?” I asked from the ground, lying on my back and still in my armor.
“Sentinel, good. I was worried my healing spell was ineffective. Do you remember what happened?”
“…I killed her.”
“Yes. You completed the mission and killed the target. Good work.” She said. Hearing her congratulate me made my stomach turn.
“My hand.” I said, looking at my stump.
“Yes, it seems you lost it in the fight. I do not know much about healing magic, but perhaps your master can reattach it for you?”
“Where is Suma? Is she alright?”
“Captain Gigoales said that he regrouped with Privates Suma, Rou, and Nine. They were able to finish evacuating the survivors before they retreated. However, Odens did not survive the enemy’s assault.”
“Dang it.” My cheeks grew hot and soon tears were streaming down my face. Between my hand, Odens, and Harbinger, I really don’t know which one of them I was crying for most. I just sobbed quietly and whispered swears and curses under my breath; until I heard flapping sounds getting closer. Suma landed on my shoulder. The others all landed nearby, except for Nine. He stayed in the sky, and circled around; keeping an eye on the surroundings. The enemy had retreated, but only because of Harbinger. With her gone, they’d be back sooner or later.
“Jake! Thank the dragons, you are okay!” She said, and gently placed her head against the cold metal helmet I hadn’t bothered to send away yet.
“I lost my hand.” I said, raising up my stump. Her eyes went wide, and her feather pressed flat against her body when she saw it; I even noticed that natural sparkly glitter-like glow she always had got a little dimmer.
“I found it over there. Can it still be reattached?” Datahu asked.
“No… I’m so sorry Jake. Once a wound has been healed, severed limbs cannot be reattached.”