Syr is standing frozen in front of me, but there’s something different about her. I peer up at her over my heavy shield, trying to keep my voice down as the insane growls and howls split the nights air, fire beating down on my back and singing my fur. I chant my weight magic just to keep the whine from escaping my throat.

Everywhere I look around us people are dying.

To my left a man who gave me stew is lying on the ground, not moving. The mercenaries and the fake moon-blessed alike are both stomping on his body as they fight.

It’s all his fault.

The vampire. The hunter that captured Papa and I.

He’s the one that did this and I can’t do anything to stop him again.

I swallow the whine building up in my throat, looking towards Syr. She’s strong, she saved Papa. Or she saved a part of him. She healed me, even when I was biting her and attacking her like all these people are now.

She’s strong and kind. She’ll save us.

Syr looks up into the sky, closing her eyes. A fake moon-blessed leaps at her, and I point my spear at him, trying to help even though I’m weak. Even though I can’t do anything.

As the beastly man throws aside my spear, I squeal and back away hiding behind my shield. It’s going to get her.

A body of a man I thought was dead, stands up in the midst of the battle, tackling the enemy before he can get to Syr. He hits and claws at the crazy man, fighting like a cornered animal, he doesn’t even care when he gets hit himself.

The mercenaries all around us are shouting, but it’s not all angry and mean anymore. No, they sound surprised.

More and more of the still bodies on the ground climb to their feet to join the fight and not one of them hurts anyone on our side. They throw back the waves of fake moon-blessed, tearing into them and ripping them apart.

Syr is with them.

I don’t know when she moved, but she fights with them, fights as one of them.

Claws dig into her side but she doesn’t even react, just severing the head of the man that attacked her, only for the lower part of his body to stand back up and fight with her. She’s quiet and silent and moves like she’s possessed by some great fighting spirit, or maybe even a god.

Dancing with the corpses, bathed in their blood, she keeps on fighting. She’s hit and hurt over and over again, but she doesn’t stop.

The other mercenaries are at her back, shouting and forming another shield wall like before. They don’t go out there to fight beside her standing further back and healing themselves, but she doesn’t need their help. She’s more than them.

She’s strong.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My body, my soul, my everything is fire. I am a being made only to channel æther and force movement through dead limbs so that the living will not follow in their fates.

Shadows and light.

Fire and ice.

Concepts and thoughts flicker through my mind, my hands never pausing in their work. There is always more work.

More bones to be broken, more flesh to be sundered.

My claws sink deeper into the enemies flesh before I use my strength to tear away strips of muscle, or even whole limbs.

Those arms wielding swords slash with all the force that might be mustered by dead flesh, not caring that the muscle is tearing and bones breaking.

My flesh is expendable.

It doesn’t matter if I break.

It doesn’t matter if I hurt.

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I just need to kill everything before me.

There are too many bodies for me to even know what to do with them all if I start thinking again, so I hide my thoughts away and let my flesh fight just as it’s meant to.

Every second is a war within myself, to keep the burning alive, to keep the darkness at bay. Flickering shadows sink into my vision, illusions that I cannot dispel and even with so many eyes I’m starting to become blind.

The enemy is not dead yet.

I need to keep going.

I can’t pass out yet.

Flickering green flames burn in the corners of my sight, something familiar, something I can’t put a name to. Something that I can’t let distract me.

I tear through another dozen creatures, but even dying they still manage to fight. They’re nearly as determined as I am, pushing themselves nearly as far as I push my own flesh. But they can only do so much before death takes them, and once that happens they become mine.

A shadow falls down from above and I catch it, tearing it asunder. Another snaps at my legs below but I crush it underfoot.

The human parts of them are small and weak and brittle. A man with two furred arms but a human head can be stopped with a strike to the skull. A changed head but a human neck means that they can be decapitated, whether through a blade or sheer tearing strength.

Those that can’t be killed easily can have their legs and arms broken so bad that they can hardly even fight. Throw them to the back and they’ll be finished later.

It’s hardly even a fight to me anymore. A fight demands that two sides give their minds and body to the exercise, whereas here, they’re simply thowing themselves at me while I find the best ways to kill them.

They never have new techniques, they don’t try anything different. They come to die like the dozens that came before them, a swarm of flesh hundreds in number, and yet still not enough.

I will destroy them.

I will save everyone.

This isn’t like the battles with the vampires.

Everyone likes to think of the vampires as evil and terrible, trying to look at from a moral view. As if there is a side of this that is good and a side that is not, but I don’t get it. I never really did.

We are all just living things taking from each other, fighting each other, killing each other.

When I fight with the bears, they see me as meat that can help them get through the winter, and I see them the same. The insane infected that come at me now, half covered in fur and without a sane word between them, only want violence and death.

It’s not their fault, and they’re not evil. If I could, I’d save them all, heal the madness from them, but I can’t.

I’m not strong.

I’m not even close to it.

Darkness ebbs away at my vision until I’m not even sure what I’m fighting anymore. All the people I want to protect are behind me, and even if all I can do is stand as a wall between them and the enemy, then that’s what I’ll do.

I won’t run away this time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Syr’s fighting isn’t working as well anymore, her attacks are missing and the enemy, the dozen still standing, tear into her and the others that she’s brought back. The people that she’s brought back just like Papa.

She’s letting them fight. Letting them save us.

Even the insane people are healed under her power, fighting the others to help quiet the howls and growls of their siblings.

She’s beaten most of them back now, but she’s still fighting; stumbling and fumbling, but still fighting.

I want to be like her.

I want to be able to fight and save people like she does.

Another of the fake moon-blessed jumps at her, but this time she doesn’t see it coming. He pushes her back his jaws around her shoulder as she falls backwards, and the swords drop from her hands.

All the others that she’s healed fall at the same time as her, their bodies; bone, flesh, and fur, all melt down. A wall of white ash puffs into existence in their place.

There’s no one to save her.

I try to shout, but my voice leaves me.

I’m back in my village again, hiding when that monster comes and takes everything from me. He destroys everything and all I can do is hide, I can’t even raise my voice, even when I know he’s seen me. Even when I know it’s already over.

The people around me charge forwards, fire bursts overhead scorching me on its path as it burns away the beast ontop of Syr. The two with shields rush in, smacking aside anything else that comes for her, while the older man grabs Syr and pulls her away.

It’s all done and over in less than ten seconds.

Another girl, the one with the stone man, rushes up and uses her magic on Syr. The cuts and bleeding almost instantly stops, but there’s something strange about the people looking at us. Looking at her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The green flames warm me, they burn inside but it’s not the same painful fires that I’ve grown used to in this place. It is something almost comforting.

“You may have doomed yourself, young one,” the dragon speaks, his voice a deep grumble as I rest in his warm embrace. “You have been reckless.”

“I had to save them,” I whisper back, meeting the eyes of the giant. The creature that should be long dead.

The god.

“You didn’t have to, you chose to,” he whispers back. “Just like I’ve chosen to help you, the ancestor of my enemy. If one is forced into an action, they cannot be held responsible for it, but if they have chosen a path, then all the good that comes of it, and all the bad, is truly and entirely yours.”

“I didn’t want to run away,” I say, not exactly even replying, just letting my mouth talk before I can think. “I didn’t want to leave them to die.”

“You are the reason they yet live, what should you do if they cause you harm because of this? Will you regret it?”

“No,” I shake my head firmly, lifting myself up and meeting the dragon’s eyes. “I’ll keep on saving everyone important to me, that’s how I want to live my life. I’m not going to stop.”

“Then I have chosen well in you,” he says. “Live your life, young one. You are no servant of mine, and I hope my words will only be treated as the wisdom of an elder. Whatever path you choose, be it destruction or salvation, I will not help you, but I will be here watching.

“Live well, young one.”

The flames flicker and burn all around me as I drift through the endless expanses of this strange dark place. I rest, and I heal, waiting to be woken by the heavy reality of the real world.