CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: STAND ON
Entwined, they fell, struggle still ensuing.
Coming up with ideas is oftentimes a great deal easier than their execution. Bridget found herself reminded of this a million times over in the tiny pieces that surrounded her, poking through her borrowed Shroud and glittering dangerously near her bare feet. Sure, uttering the word ‘Run’ and the concept of getting away from the abominations creeping their way down the side of Loyalty house were great, but they provided little comfort for her exposed skin. Practically speaking, ideas were great, but she didn’t have a leg to stand on.
She was still scoping a way out of the sea of shards when Gail scooped her like a sack of onions and sent her sailing over one shoulder. Glass crunching under her boots, the tall girl ran with a labored gait toward the line of crooked shadows cast by branch and leaf. As they burst through the treeline, her fingers released Briddy’s side, and they toppled into the trunks in a tangle of limbs.
“Ow.”
“Your foot is in my armpit.” Gail groused, knocking the offending appendage away.
Bridget flailed, not from the contact, but because the foliage behind her head had begun rustling. The leaves bounced and swayed as she shot away, bolting upright alongside Gail. Together, soundless words graced their lips, and weapons materialized from the air. Briddy rolled her shoulders, forcing herself to ignore the slow, ebbing sap of exhaustion that demanded more of her each time she called and lost her Relic that night.
This is what we trained for. She reminded herself.
Training will always fail to encompass reality. Vex answered. It’s the measure of what you do with it that matters.
“Briddy!” She was yanked to the side, further into the darkness. “What is wrong with you?”
Gail peered down at her, eyebrows knit together in concern.
“I’m not-What?” Bridget blinked.
“Not the best time to be staring off into space.” Gail rapped the back of her chest with a gauntleted knuckle as she peered around the tree she had pulled them behind. Bridget leaned in, letting the cool metal of her friend’s fist press into the skin of her collarbone so she could get a peek, too.
Jutting from bushes nestled between the trees, a shadow blotted out the pattern of shadows cast through the boughs overhead.
“I–” Briddy began to whisper.
Gail whisked herself away, slinking towards the protrusion. Biting her back teeth in frustration, Briddy followed, silently trying to get her attention. They took a few steps forward, and she squinted. There was something familiar about the wide stretch of the figure’s bulk, even slumped forward, that quite notably lacked any jointed, mutating appendages.
“Hey.” She hissed.“Wait.” But the tall girl hadn’t paused. Instead, the dark shape of her arm was already coiling her metal-clad fist back for a strike.
Surging forward, Bridget barely wrapped herself around Gail’s forearm in time. Her feet left the ground, dangling by a few inches as the fist shot forward. Briddy clung to the layered metal plates of the Relic like the most stubborn piece of laundry to ever be put on the line. No matter how Gail flapped and waved her arm around, Bridget staunchly refused to let go.
“Wait.” She begged.
Gail stilled, peering down in bewilderment. Behind them, the shadow turned its head and staggered over.
“I knew it was you,” Tuck said.
The girls dropped their summonings and rushed over to him with soft, glad cries. He still clutched a tattered shoulder with a freshly stained hand but accepted their hugs all the same.
“This way.” He jerked his head back through the bushes. “There’s wounded through here that can’t run so well and we’re trying to all get to safety as a group.”
Tuck turned, gingerly picking his way back the way he came. Bridget made to go after him but was shocked when someone seized her hand.
Gail towered stock-still, remaining near the path that led back to the Lower Dorms.
“Gail?” Bridget swallowed a sour mixture of concern and confusion that arose in her throat. She took a step back towards her. “What’s wrong?”
Dark eyes seemed to avoid hers in the low light, searching the forest floor in sharp, jerking sweeps before suddenly snapping up to hold Bridget’s gaze. “Do you think this is a good idea?” Gail's husky tones pitched low, her grip taut where it held her fingers.
“I–but–” Briddy looked between her and Tuck’s mangled back, disappearing into the darkness.
“They can’t run.” Gail gently turned her chin back towards her. “He just said as much.”
There was a softness to her words, her eyes, that Bridget wasn’t accustomed to. It rubbed against her senses the wrong way, as though someone had slipped a piece of ice down the back of her shirt and let it slowly slide down her spine. Affection was not the sheathe blunting Gail’s edge. Fear was.
Her hands moved, as though with a will of their own. Delicately, they came to rest over the long fingers that gripped her chin and gave them a long, slow squeeze. “We can’t leave them,” Bridget said simply.
Gail stayed silent, searching her face as though she were finally deciding to start studying a book this far into the school year. Her hooded eyes flitted and lingered in torturous intervals before finally, reluctantly, she nodded.
“Are you coming?” Tuck’s question gave Bridget a start, and she snatched her hands away as she whirled around.
“Sorry. Yes.” She fumbled the words as she scrambled forward, following his path into the trees. Bridget couldn’t shake the feeling that something else should’ve happened there on the path, but the thought fled her head when Tuck led them to a small huddle of masses bubbling with murmurs and hisses like a spitting pot of stew.
“What took you so long?” Someone asked the moment he came back. “We need to–” The rest of the murmured conversation was cut off as Tuck drew near, and Bridget and Gail took stock of the rest. A weak light spell hovered about shoulder height, tossing pale shadows over the roots and fallen branches. Murmurs of “Vigni” seemed to be at a near-constant flow. One body lay unmoving near their feet, two others drooped against tree trunks in copper-scented hazes. Besides the injured, Briddy, Gail, and Tuck, four others remained upright. Their heads whipped at the trees every time a noise was made, or bent down to tend fallen classmates. Bridget tried to join them, the efforts of her Tuck-trained Vignis excruciatingly slow as the healing magic knit the flesh of a severed arm back to cover a glistening stump. The boy she was trying to help sobbed, begging her to help him, end it, make anything better, just to have it stop.
After her fifth attempt resulted in a scab that only barely clotted the flow, Bridget pulled away, close to tears herself. Try as she might, she could not simply will this better, and the weight of that realization nearly broke her. The boiling pot of hisses riled, their voices ragged with the strain as they threatened to boil over.
“I’m just saying going to Courage is a horrible idea right now! That’s all!” A pointy-faced boy named Felix gestured wildly.
“There are teachers there,” Tuck replied.
“And at Administration! There’s no way they haven’t been roused with the commotion going on–”
“Hang on.” Bridget’s hands felt leaden and shaky. “Why are we changing the plan now?”
“There’s the same amount of distance from here to Courage or Admin, what difference does it make? There’s probably more teachers there than Courage.”
Murmurs of assent ran through the group.
“Fair point.”
“It’s not as though we were given an evacuation-in-case-invasion plan.”
Briddy couldn’t escape the feeling of the stony pit that rolled around her stomach, refusing to let her forget that something about this just felt… wrong.
Luckily, Gail figured it out for her. “You want to go to Admin.” She snorted. “Over that much open ground? It’s practically asking for a massacre.”
Pressing her lips together, Bridget nodded vigorously.
“We won’t know until we try.” One of the girls leaning against a tree piped up.
Gail didn’t even turn around. “You. Can’t. Run.”
Like a burst of hot air escaping from a boiling kettle, opinions erupted across the forest, whether it was to debate their plan, voice their pain, or try and make peace. Bridget shut down, the voices mashing together until they washed over her as though she had sunk beneath water.
We’re never going to make it like this. She felt so tired.
Some of you, perhaps.
Vex’s chilling acknowledgment sickened her, and yet, with what she had already seen, she could not refute it. Bridget looked around the clearing, at the faces barely lit by the weak spell, twisted or wiped blank with the horrors they had witnessed and just wanted to further avoid.
We’re just kids. Her inner voice was a whisper. Who would do this?
You still ask the wrong questions, Bridget. Vex admonished. You ceased to be children the moment your inheritance shared itself.
What did…we become? The words sluggishly formed, as though rising to the surface through mud. Outwardly, there was nothing, no sensations, only a great numbness to everything except her need to know.
Heirs.
One of the boys began waving his arms, separating sounds and voices enough that she heard caught the edges. “-coming! Gogogogogogogo!”
Bridget wheeled around, looking for the monstrosities, ears straining for chimes, but was left bereft. The woods were still, absent of crunching twigs or the disturbance of rustling leaves. Then whoever had cast the light spell extinguished it, dousing the group in darkness. A mad scramble ensued as they rushed to pick up the fallen.
“Guard the rear,” Felix grumbled at Bridget when she tried to help support one. “In case you and your girlfriend need to run.”
She would’ve retorted spectacularly, but a long shriek cut through her chance.
“Look!” A girl who had been on the ground pointed up, the silhouette of her arm barely visible. Bridget vaguely remembered her being called Jun.“They’re on the trees!”
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Nobody seemed too concerned with halting to turn around and squint through the leaves, Briddy least of all. Straining her eyes, she tried not to trip as the students hurried past tree trunks, pushing through branches that twisted out to snag on hairs and clothing like devilish, delaying fingers. Through the shoulders of her classmates, the burnished glow of lamplight started to wash out the grey overtones of night, and within seconds the students poured out onto one of the wedges that made up the campus’ wheel-like shape. In the distance, dark mammoths towered out the night, their huddling shapes spread out across the horizon, claiming the spots where the class buildings usually stood.
Bridget swung her head back, and forth. Peeking up through the trees like a tiled mountain back off to her right was Courage’s roof.
“You clubheads–” Gail started.
“Move!” Bridget screamed, diving into her. A faint whistling noise filled the air overhead. Barely seconds after she struck Gail, a piercing limb shot from the tree tops, boring deep into the ground at the back of the group. The girls slid toward the trees, regaining their feet just in time to see it fold forward, easily balancing the entire weight of the creature’s body on one slanted tip before the rest tiptoed down to the ground, one articulated leg at a time.
Cut off from the group, Bridget could only marvel in quiet horror at the precision with which these creatures moved. Its feet barely, whether mutated to points, scythes, drills, or otherwise, barely made a sound as they touched down, a shimmer of shifting triangles rippling through the limbs like light off fish scales before snapping back to their myriad configurations.
“Gail!” Tuck cried, from the other side. “Briddy!”
If the Strange creature could understand him, it gave no indication. The bulbous sac of its body compressed and churned as it reared back, stretching the shadows of dark limbs over the bigger group of prey. Screams issued from the group, trying to surge forward, but the injured stifled their strides, begging to not be left behind. Chiming once, the creature let its limbs descend upon the students in a cascade of carnage and cruelty–or it would have, if half a hefty branch hadn’t connected with the back of its featureless head first.
“Briddy? What are you doing?” Gail nervously chuckled through gritted teeth as the wide, diamond head slowly turned to face them.
Sprinting towards another, Bridget snatched a thick bough off the ground. “Not thinking?” she offered, barely straightening before it was sliced cleanly in two by an appendage. She threw both of the chunks at the creature before dodging away, winching at the furrow ripped where she had been moments before. At least it was light enough out that the sticks were easy to find.
“Clearly,” Gail growled, Relic raised, she circled close to Bridget. Readying herself to summon Vex, Briddy caught the reflection of something brightly glistening in the sheen all over her friend’s dark skin, and her brow creased.
“Hey, Gail..” She slowly backed away, their shoulders knocking into each other as they met, back to back.
“Uh-huh,” Gail grunted, barely jerking out of the way of an attack.
“Bad time, I know.”
“Yep.”
“And I hear that. It’s just–when did it get so bright out?”
Gail froze, eyes swerving about. Their surroundings had become bathed in a daisy-yellow glow, harshly contrasting the gentle luminescence of lamps. She glanced back at Briddy at the same time that she put it together.
“The Wards.”
Swearing, Bridget somersaulted to the side, praying that Gail was following close. In everything else that was going on, the school’s security system had completely slipped her mind. Just as they had during the Menagerie catastrophe, curtains of lemony light already spread to cut off the night sky completely, and were unrolling themselves in wedges that matched the campus’ spokes beneath. Behind the Strange creature, the greencoats were rushing towards the rapidly closing yellow line, except for a single, solitary, broad-shouldered figure, holding back.
Briddy’s legs pumped with everything she had, her exhaustion a distant memory as she made for the wall of the Ward. Gail kept her pace, urging her faster. Tuck stood, firing spells over their heads that seemed to leave him progressively paler the closer they got. Bridget could see the curtain was fast approaching the ground, barely higher than a doorway.
“Come on!” He said as they arrived, a healthy window still open.
“What if it follows us?” Bridget gulped at the air. “Will the Ward close fast enough?”
“No.” Gail wheezed. She had skidded to a halt beside her, chest rising and falling rapidly. “This stupid plan.”
Swiping her nose and mouth, Bridget wordlessly turned around. Not one, but two of the Strange creatures now streaked towards the ground behind them, moving noiselessly like her Shroud over the rocks and stones beneath. Her stomach sank and then did a complete loop at the sight of the second one, nearly caught up to them. She felt like someone had hooked her navel to a particularly high tree branch, pulled it down, and then released.
“Go.” She couldn’t bring herself to look at the two people behind her. Her decisions had led them here. “I’ll lead them off–”
Gail made a noise halfway between a choke and a chortle. “After what you just put me through Briddy?”
“I-”
“Not alone, remember?” Gail drew flush with her.
“Not anymore.” Tuck appeared to encompass Bridget’s other side, swaying and wan, but smiling.
Licking her lips, Briddy tried to sort out the million different ways this could go wrong. There was more than enough space for the monstrosities to slip around them, and they had no prayer in a battle. If it were possible to get away from the creatures…
By the fervent fire burning to a brighter blaze in Gail’s eyes, any argument about staying back would be a lost cause, and Tuck could barely stand. So she tried to salvage what she could.
“We need you to get the group to Admin.” She gestured towards the Ward wall, still open. “Please. We’ll try to draw them away. Make sure they can’t follow.”
Horror crushed Tuck’s handsome face as he realized what she was asking of him.
“No,” he whispered.
“We’ll be alright,” Bridget lied.
“You’re hurt,” Gail added, not unkindly.
“Help the rest of them get there. Guard them. Make sure Terna knows where these things are.” Briddy placed her hands on his good arm, dragging him over to the buttery-colored barrier. At the last moment, he dug his feet in, halfway ducked down. Even with the difference in their size, he could barely fight her off. How much blood had he lost?
“But I want to stay here. I want to help here.” Tuck’s voice cracked with tremorous tensity, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Even with his back soaked in a fresh coat of wet liquid, he tried to set a brave angle to his jaw.
Bridget felt her throat swelling shut in response. She could sense the wavering in her resolve; knew that her hands wouldn't force him into the crack between the ward and the ground.
A dusky arm appeared beside Bridget’s, gripping Tuck by the scruff of his neck.
“You can’t,” Gail said, shoving him the rest of the way through.
Tuck toppled his side, sliding back with the force. He bounded to his feet seconds later, distraught face distorted by the wavering wall of light. Once, twice, the boy pounded against the Ward in frustration, massive ripples wavering out in bright yellow rings. Bridget’s hand rose halfway up her side, as though to explain. He took a step back, shook his head, and then turned to catch up with the others.
Be safe, for once, she thought, watching the back of a Sanlaurant fade away for the second time that night. Please.
Not that she had a leg to stand on, there.
With Tuck (hypothetically) safe(er), Briddy barely had time to process that there was no real plan for what came next before Gail was hollering at her to ‘get out of there’. Sure, a few other choice words were mixed in too, but Bridget chose to focus on the important ones and offered a rude gesture for the rest. Their backs had been pinned against the wedge created by the wall of light, the copse of trees that offered shelter cut off by the creatures now close enough to strike.
Wind rushed in the hollows of Bridget's ears, which threatened to burst from the drumming beat building pressure inside. Breathe, just… breathe. She told herself, trying to take everything in, to watch Gail, the creatures, her surroundings; everything at once.
Then, there was a glittering flash of black chitin that rent the air. Any false bravado that might’ve still lingered in Bridget fled, and so did she. Like they were loosed from a drawstring, she and Gail scattered in different directions, rolling, scratching, sliding, and leaping across the packed brown ground. The boughs of the trees seemed to stretch toward them offering shelter, and obfuscation from their hunters.
Just a few more paces, maybe a leap. They were going to make it.
Leaves, their edges waxy and rippled, were just centimeters from being pushed out of Briddy’s way when an almighty force yanked her back by the shoulders. The foliage disappeared, replaced with a blurred view of the forest rushing past, painted with the lemon tones of the light, and then she landed, hard, facing the sky.
Before she could breathe, even cough out the force battering against her spine, a hooked appendage swung over Bridget’s body. Its point aimed directly at her stomach, and in an instant, all she could see was her father, prostrate to the Mountaincore’s mercies.
Are you ready to die today, Bridget Vasily? Vex asked her. So simply, so devoid of emotion.
No! Her voice screamed out. Bridget didn’t care for fancy, arcane riddles right now.
Then stand on.
In the back of her mind, she heard Gail’s scream and was aware of the dripping liquid that splattered across her front, spattering over the shorts and thin shirt she had been wearing. Bridget even vaguely understood that somehow, a crescent of pain had opened from her right elbow, up her arm, and across her ribs.
What escaped comprehension was how she came to be partially upright, Vex in her hands, its tip angled downward at the beast. Tattered bits of Gail’s loaned Shroud, pinned to the ground beneath a spiked foot, flapped at up her with cleanly severed edges. Briddy exhaled, inching further back toward the trees. The memory of the moments in between was blank, but the blade she held in her hand was steady.
That was, until the pocket of her shorts began to burn as though someone had slipped in a fresh ember from a fire without her knowing. All of the sudden, this unexpected pain brought all of her other wounds rushing in to cry their grievances, while the mysterious new malady grew hotter by the second.
Gasping, Bridget scraped at her leg. A flash of silver light erupted, filling her surroundings as though someone had released a small bomb, and then it was gone, flickering through the trees before she could blink it clear. The heat went with it.
Then, “-NO!”
A shoulder shunted Briddy aside, and there was a wet thud.
“Gail!” The name ripped from her throat. She had just registered Gail, down on one knee, a thick articulated limb piercing through her bicep when another whistled in.
Instinctively, Bridget darted in front of her, narrowly diverting the attack with her parry. The reverberation knocked Vex’s summoning from her hands, which she was already silently urging back to existence. It was well she did, because a stealthy limb came drilling at them from the side, and then another dove from above, and then another, over and over, slamming and striking the blade from Bridget’s hands as she diverted, dodged, and deflected, losing count of the summonings.
“Do you have that thing out?” She gasped. Wood chips sprayed as a limb struck a nearby tree.
“It’s got hooks or some rot!” Gail snapped. “Look, it keeps changing–”
“Gail.” Bridget’s voice cut low. “Hurry.”
She didn’t want to say it, but she could barely summon Vex, let alone hold the summoning at this point. Each blow shuddered through her like an entire week’s worth of abuse to her body, sending new waves of pain screaming through her mind. Fatigue piled another leaden weight on the scales as she lost Vex to a cruel uppercut to their flank.
Bridget held out her hand, golden mist trickling in.
Like a black smile on the one who dealt the hand of death, a dark-scythed limb sang out as it sliced toward her and Gail’s necks.
The mist took the shape of a sword but did not solidify.
Vex? Vex! Bridget panicked.
Brid…g…
Just before dark, monstrous metal bit the skin of her neck, a leather grip solidified beneath her fingers, catching the hook in the crossguard of a flickering golden sword. Briddy’s feet skidded across the ground, nearly smashing her legs into Gail. Hands slipping, she struggled to keep Vex, and herself upright. As she slipped, she was reminded out of nowhere of the footing Abaget had used against Hennigan. With a shuddering breath, Briddy attempted to brace her back leg.
Behind her, Gail emitted a sound halfway between a scream and a roar, and the sound of ripping flesh begged Bridget to look away from the opponent she was staving off. She couldn’t, though, because the second her eyes began to wander, she spotted the softening near Vex’s edge, a wavering like smoke on the water.
No, you don’t. She bit down on her jaw, sweat pooling down to join the blood dripping from the cut on her arm. I need you Vex.
If there was a reply, she couldn’t hear it. The only sound filling her ears was a thudding pulse.
All she could do was stand on.
So Bridget stood, holding for more than one dear life. Willing her sword to do the same. Demanding it, because she wouldn’t imagine what would happen if they fell.
Suddenly, her ears were pricked by a gasp, and the sound of Gail’s feet scrambling to stand. “Got the little-”
Briddy didn’t hear the rest. Elation pumped the sun through her veins to burn new hope through her heart. They were free. She relaxed her grip a little, looking for a way out of the grapple and further into the trees.
Gratitude surged through her. You did it, Vex.
Together. It whispered back.
Then, without warning, the hooked curve caught in the crossguard heaved down so hard Bridget thought her shoulders would rip out of their sockets. With a resounding crack that rattled her skull, it passed through her blade, the tip just missing Briddy’s stomach before it dove deep into the ground at her feet.
She had no time to celebrate this miracle, her sunlight was stained as though smoke had choked the beams. Because rather than fading to downy mist beneath her fingers, Bridget felt her father’s sword shatter into bits.