Only a week had passed, but the white specks had arrived. They had approached at double the speed. Clyde, Aura and Syllis could not slow down and wait for them to arrive. They needed to push forward, the water would only last so long.
“Is she fine yet?” Syllis asked, tapping her foot. “Please tell me she’s ready.”
Clyde shook his head side to side. “I don’t know if she will be ready at all, not without a push at least.”
Syllis scoffed, looking past Clyde at Aura, staring longingly. “Is the threat to our lives not enough of a push? Do we mean so little? I mean, maybe me but you… The both of you have been friends for how many years?”
“Fourteen”
“Fourteen years…” Syllis mumbled to herself. “That long and she can’t get her act together for a single day. Forget a day, not even an hour.”
“Relax, Syllis,” Clyde urged the secare nymph. “We can’t rush her. She might break even further, beyond the point of recovery.”
“Rush? It’s been weeks,” Syllis said. “Weeks that we don’t have. In only an hour… they are going to arrive. You’ve seen the flames that fall from the tips of their spears. You’ve seen the scorched—even larger piles of ash they leave in their wake.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Syllis asked, seriously. “Without her, we will die. I don’t want to die, do you?”
“Whatever the case, she isn’t ready.” Clyde said, turning away slightly.
Syllis turned around, looking at the legion of soldiers approaching them. They wore white garments with black spears. Red and orange flames were left in their wake and it tinted the tips of their weapons.
This legion did not seem to need to eat or drink. They were sustained on something else entirely or perhaps they needed not be sustained at all. They never stopped marching forward, towards something.
“Well she’s going to have to be,” Syllis said. The secare nymph turned around to face the aphasic woman. “Aura.”
Syllis received no response, again. She was tired of it. More than tired of it, entirely fed up. ‘How much longer should a grown woman be allowed to remain in this state? No longer.’
“Aura, look at me.” Syllis grabbed the woman’s shoulder and pulled it back. “Korman is dead, Aura. And you sitting here looking back at him—no, not even a corpse—is going to kill us.”
Aura remained silent. She jerked her shoulder from Syllis’ grasp and continued to look back.
Syllis laughed slightly. This singular movement that her companion made was the most emotion she had shown in nearly an entire month.
“Do it again,” Syllis said. She pushed Aura onto her back, against the ashen ground.
“Hey!” Clyde yelled. “Syllis what the hell are you doing!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him.
Syllis looked down to Aura. She pulled herself back up and continued to look where they came. The secare nymph smiled, looking back to Clyde.
“Do you not understand what is happening? This is the most emotion that this woman has shown in literal weeks!” Syllis said with an almost crazed smile. “We can’t let her get complacent.”
Syllis saw Clyde’s reluctance. His face was stern and he could not bear the sight of the secare nymph. He turned away in shame.
“You do it,” she said.
“What?”
“You do it, push her.”
“No, Syllis. I’m not going to do that,” Clyde said. He sounded appalled.
“It would mean the most coming from you Clyde—don’t look away. You have to push her,” Syllis urged him. She was almost pleading. Seeing the lack of a reaction of any sort, she continued. “Do you want to die? Scratch that actually… Do you want those tens of thousands of citizens in Asanoch to die?”
“Of course I don’t!” Clyde yelled. “The only reason we’re in here right now is because of them!”
“What do you think is going to happen once we die?”
“We won’t!”
“That’s right,” Syllis said, “as long as you get Aura back to normal. If you can do that, then we can live.”
Clyde’s expression turned from one of reluctance to one that almost resembled eagerness. He walked in front of Aura, shielding her view of Korman’s ‘grave.’
“Aura, get up,” Clyde said, sternly. “Korman died for nothing if you’re just going to kill yourself and us in the process!”
“So what?” Aura finally broke her silence. “Maybe I’ll see him—in heaven.” She clutched at her black coat, fiddling with the frayed bottom.
“You’ve never believed in Halarion Holis,” Clyde said. “You’re willing to compromise everything that everyone has ever given to you based on some lunatic theory? What kind of pathetic woman does that?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Lunatic theory?” Aura mumbled. “Maybe it is—I am. So what if I’m a lunatic? Even if I don’t go to heaven… at least the pain will stop. As long as I don’t need to feel like this anymore then I don’t care.
“What are you going to tell me next? That everyone in Asanoch will die if we fail here? That couldn’t be further from the truth. Syllis I’m going to let you in on something. There has been a group of nomads on standby since we entered. Anytime that anyone enters a fable, the government pays a team to stay there until it opens again for them to enter.
“We do not matter.”
“That’s it,” Syllis said, relenting. “I don’t care. Kill yourself if you want. You have the capability.” She pointed at the longsword, securely tethered to her waist. Aura had specifically gotten it commissioned by an elmannise on the wall.
Syllis turned around and headed towards the legion. She was going to meet them halfway. ‘Hopefully with enough javelins whittling down their numbers, Clyde and I will be able to deal with them.’
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“You see, Clyde?” Aura said with a crazed and mentally drained look. “Even Syllis doesn’t care about me anymore. Follow her to the north and fight that legion, survive. But I don’t need to.”
‘This woman…’ Clyde thought. ‘Her bond has always acted in an odd way but… is this really the infection or is it her true thoughts?’ He wondered, scrutinizing the woman as though it would give him a hint into her psyche
“You would really disregard Korman so easily?” Clyde said. “He died so that you could live. If you die, then you would have burned under the four suns instead of him. If you see him in ‘heaven’ then he will resent you forever.”
Aura looked at Clyde with curious eyes. She pointed upwards, towards the heavens. “Haven’t you heard, Clyde? There’s no sadness in heaven. No resentment, nothing negative. I’ll be happy up there.”
‘Well there’s an obvious flaw with that thought…’
“Haven’t you heard?” Clyde said, with a shaky smile. “They only let decent people into heaven. I’m pretty sure you’re excluded from that category.”
“You…” Aura muttered. She stood up and approached Clyde.
“Finally feeling like moving, huh?” Clyde said, irritatedly.
“Fuck you Clyde,” Aura said, spitting on the ground below. She pushed her arms forward sending Clyde tumbling to the ground.
‘Finally,’ he thought with a smirk. “What did you do that for? Holis definitely won’t get you into heaven now!”
Aura huffed, furiously. She climbed over the top of Clyde, pinning him to the ground. She grabbed onto his neck. “Take it back!”
Clyde placed his arm around her side and easily pushed her off of him. He immediately looked over to the ephemeral crows, wondering if they had vanished. They stood firm, as ethereal as ever.
‘Interesting, her ability to utilize her bond remains untouched but her mind and body still inherit the rest of the infection. Her strength is several fold lower than it typically is.’
Aura groaned as she hit the ground, clutching at her arm. She had fallen on top of it. She seethed, nearly hissing through her teeth as she saw Clyde approach her.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Aura…”
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Syllis looked out at the legion in the distance. The bright orange and red flames they left in their wake were intriguing to say the least. She noted their lack of footwear. The flames seemed to extend from the soles of their feet. Their clothes did not burn though, and the wooden shafts of their weapons remained equally unscathed.
‘Are they a group elmannise that managed to cross the cavern?’ Syllis ruminated. This was one of the many possibilities her and Clyde had discussed over the last week. Every time they heard the screams of unknown and unseen creatures being slaughtered, they would discuss the legion.
The theory had backing, somewhat. Elmannise commonly used incantations at the foot of the wall. While Syllis and her companions had never quite gotten a straight answer on the workings of them, many scoured flames over the environment and their weapons. There was only a finicky detail that this theory overlooked. This was that the legion did not burn.
These figures did not hide from the flames of the four suns. Instead, they continued their march. Similarly to their own flames, the suns’ did not burn their clothes or weapons. Even for a fable it was… bizarre.
Syllis hesitated to throw any javelins towards the legion. ‘If they’re really elmannise then…’ She remembered her time on the wall. It had only been a few months since but that time already felt so far away for her.
“Self-preservation over all else…” Syllis muttered under her breath. It felt sort of disgusting to her. On the wall they worked as a team and she had saved so many elmannise in that way. Now, she was just supposed to throw it all away?
‘Return to who I was on the outer ring, before my time on the wall? This is another trick on my great string of fate. It seems that whoever has control of it is a manipulative bastard. I can’t do anything about it now but… maybe in the future. For now though…’
Below her hand, a rough javelin began to take form. It shone icy-blue and would have sparkled under Asanoch’s false sun. In the dark night though, it looked dull and fragile.
Then she commanded waves of ice below her feet. Her body spun before stopping, transferring the entirety of her momentum into the javelin. It whistled as it cut through the dark night.
Syllis was thankful for the flames that emanated from the crowd. It would have been impossible to see them in the night otherwise. The light was a decent target to aim for, even if it was difficult to pinpoint exactly where their bodies were.
Screams erupted as the far away bodies of many legion members were torn apart in an instant. If Syllis had been standing close enough, she would have seen the horrid act that the legion had begun to perform.
Waves of flames spread out from the back legion members. They tore apart the bodies of the men and women that had died. Each limb was pulled from the rest of the body and devoured.
A loud sound caught Syllis’ attention. It was the swishing of wind. Something was moving behind her—and quickly. She swung her head around, looking for the threat.
There, high above in the sky like a deity looking down on mankind was an ephemeral creature. It had wings formed of bone which emanate ethereal green flames that did not waver. The flesh that dripped from this bone—held together by void—began to pool on the ashen ground, reinvigorating the null embers below.
‘Aura.’
“Guess who I got to help us deal with this horde ahead of us?” Clyde asked, jokingly.
“You don’t seriously want me to do that, do you?” Syllis asked, seriously. She was fed up with jokes and had not recognized this one.
Clyde remained silent. Under ordinary circumstances he would have been stifling a laugh but now, he only remained stationary.
Syllis looked at Aura, she was worse for wear. She had lost a lot of weight that the secare nymph had not noticed until now. Looking down at herself, she realized that she lost a lot too.
“Whatever the case, it’s good,” Syllis said with a tense expression. “Because they aren’t very happy with me.” She gestured to the legion—a couple kilometers away.
They looked at the billowing flames that the legion emitted from their feet and now their hands. With the shortened distance between both parties, Syllis could now see the flames coiling around each other and climbing the long-handled weapons of theirs.
It was not merely that their weapons were immune to the flames. Both flame and weapon seemed to have a symbiotic relationship, a pact that bound them to and disallowed harm between one and the other.
‘This is getting more troublesome.’