Camiella sees Kara about fifty feet away. Her wings are vertical and not moving; she hangs below them, falling. Below her, Misery’s End hangs still attached to her wrist by the strap. Camiella sheaths her sword, Dawn, and uses her shield as a wing to guide herself closer, “BLUE, KARA!” She comes within reach and grabs her arm. Camiella calls on The Storm Bringer, channeling what little healing energy she has remaining, and then feels it. Another life, barely perceptible, “By the Storm Bringer, she’s pregnant.” She pulls herself in front of her, Kara is still unconscious, “BLUE, KARA, KARA, KARA!” Kara’s eyes snap open. She instantly clamps down on Camiella’s wrist.
Somewhere in the distance, in the dark, she hears her name, “blue, Kara, Kara, KARA!” Camiella has a hold of Kara as the wind rushes past. “Camiella must have used the last of her healing on me. Shit, we’re falling.” Kara spreads her wings and stops the fall. Camiella grunts as her joints nearly dislocate from the sudden stop. In the distance, they see Nexus disappearing like a tremendous flaming meteor. Camiella points and yells out, “There.” Kara sees three more people falling. She folds her wings for a dive, and Camiella lets out another grunt as the G’s hit. It feels like her arms are being pulled out of their sockets. As they get closer, they can see it’s Persival, the Alchemist, and two teenagers. Kara sees the red-headed inferni, “Crap, that’s Avallie. Why didn’t they make it to the evacuation portal to High Throne?”
Kara yells, more to herself than anyone else, “Why the Hells didn’t they evacuate?” Camiella yells back, “How should I know?”
Kara tucks Misery under her left arm, holding Camiella with her right. She angles under them and maneuvers while Persival grabs onto her back, between her wings, and the two teens grab onto her legs. She fans out her wings to slow the fall, but the weight is too much, and her wings buckle. The teens scream out. Kara releases Misery and lets it fall to free up some weight and tries again. Again, her wings buckle. She feels Camiella’s fingers let go, but she has a death grip on Camiella’s wrist. Kara yells at her, “Don’t you dare!” Camiella knows Kara can and will sacrifice herself to save all of them. She smiles at her, “Remember your promise, Blue.”
Kara reaches for her with her other hand, but Camiella slams her fist into Kara’s hand, breaking her grip and falling away. Kara screams at her, folds her wings, and goes into a power dive, chasing after Camiella, trying desperately to think of a way to save them all, knowing the only solution involves one dying.
Persival starts yelling at her, “We can’t hold on!” The teens are screaming as their grips begin to falter. Kara flairs her wings out and stops the dive as she watches her friend disappear through the clouds below. Tears are stinging her eyes. She screams out with such force that the air in front of her distorts, and thunder rumbles through the clouds.
They are still going down fast, but at least she can control it, somewhat. “It’s too quiet and feels lonely now.” It's hard to see, so she watches where she thinks Camiella fell. All she can manage is a controlled fall. She yells over her shoulder, “The landing will be hard, Persival.” She thinks, “Stupid girl, I should have known she would do that. If I wasn’t so stupid, I could have stopped her. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
Persival and both kids are hurt. They won’t survive the landing if she doesn’t heal them. She sends healing energy through them, the last of it she has. She wipes her eyes, “Time to cry later. Focus on living now. Camiella’s sacrifice isn’t going to be for nothing.” She tries to stay on the same descent that Camiella fell. Below the clouds, Kara sees a forest below and a city in the distance. There’s no way to make it to the city, and she doesn’t want to leave Camiella’s body in the wild. She points toward the city, and Persival yells, “I see it.”
Her wings are tired. She’s tired. “Please, Dawn Bringer, just a little longer.” The trail of smoke that Nexus left disappears over the horizon. The forest is coming up fast. She beats her wings as hard as she can. Pain shoots through her back as muscles and tendons tear apart. She knows it won’t be enough. She envelops Persival and the teens in her Aura of Benevolence, turns, and wraps all of them inside her wings, knowing she will take the full force of the impact, which will probably kill her. Tree limbs tear at her, the ground suddenly becomes the only thing she sees, and everything goes black.
Kara remembers meeting Elirae, the Goddess of Redemption, once before when the goddess, Dawn Bringer, stopped her from stepping off a cliff so she could kill herself. Once again, she is standing on that cliff, and Elirae is floating over the void before her. It can only be described as, well, there is no description. Kara goes to her knees, “Am I dead?” A warm light comforts her, and the goddess shakes her head. “No, Karael, you are not dead. You have never thought twice about sacrificing yourself for others. I warned you that it would be costly when I loaned you the power to maintain your angelic form much longer than it should have been possible. It will take you some time to recover. Both of you will be fine.”
Once again, Kara hears her name in the distance as the Elirae fades. She inhales deeply, gasping for air, and opens one eye, but the other refuses to, and it’s throbbing in waves of pain. Persival is kneeling over her, slowly pouring a potion into her mouth. She coughs, and one of the teens is also kneeling over her. He says, “She opened her eyes. Is she gonna make it?” Kara coughs and pain surges through her entire body, a pain she hasn’t felt since Azura put her in that prison. “Whoever said smell is the best memory trigger must have never experienced true pain.”
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She starts gagging on her own blood as Persival tilts her head to the side to clear her throat. She sees her right arm folded in the wrong direction and a bone sticking out. Persival turns her head back, so she’s looking at the sky and him, “You’re going to be fine. Stay with us.” Then he starts slowly pouring the potion into her mouth again. She tries to talk but only gets out a few gurgles as he turns her head back to the side. She hears him, “Don’t try to…” Everything goes black again.
Persival looks at the boy. He looks like he’s in his late teens. It’s hard to tell with half-orcs. “What’s your name?” He replies, “Aranark,” Persival removes the Bag of Holding from Kara’s waist, “Well, Aranark, I need you to turn this inside out so we can see what we have.” Aranark takes the bag, opens it, and looks inside. All he sees is void with no inside. Persival tells him, “Go ahead, reach in, motion like you’re grabbing the inside of a bag, and pull your hand out. Everything inside will spill out.
He looks at the girl. “What’s your name?” The girl seems about the same age as the boy; she has pink skin, red hair, and horns and is unmistakably an inferi. He’s seen her around Nexus and in a few classes. She answers, “Avallie Ser,” Persival says, “I’m no Ser. I’ve never been Knighted, but you watch what comes out and help Aranark sort through it all. Hopefully, it will be some stuff we can use. Place everything we don’t need back in the bag and note it in your mind. Later, you can reach into the bag, think about what you want, and pull it out.”
Persival looks back down at Kara. Some of her wounds have closed, and she’s stopped pumping blood out and coughing up blood. She is not healing like she should with the potion. Persival wishes he could make potions like he used to. He shakes the thought from his mind. He’s placed the bones back together, and they are knitting, but it took every healing potion he had. Best of all, her heart is beating steady again, but it’s faint. He tells the kids, “Look for potion bottles, blankets, anything we can use for splints. It may be mid-day, but who knows on this world? Every world is different. I want to try to make it to that city before nightfall.” He looks down at Kara, “We need to make it to that city before nightfall.” Thinking to himself. He looks at Aranark and Ava, “Listen to me. It seems like yesterday I was staring at The Guardians of Nexus, all wide-eyed and awestruck. Wishing I could be one of them, an adventurer, a hero. This is the threshold of becoming a hero. We need to get her to that city as soon as possible.”
Aranark does as instructed, the bag turns inside out, and an impossible number of items pour out. Coins, pouches of spell components, pouches of gems, a small tent, a couple of blankets, some essential survival gear, a book of some sort, a quiver with some arrows, a few bottles of what looks like rum or gin, but no potion bottles. They set aside the things that Persival asked for and put everything else back. Persival uncorks one of the bottles, “rum” he tears off a piece of his shirt, soaks it with the rum, and starts cleaning around the wounds that haven’t closed and trying to clean some of the blood. Kara doesn’t respond at all when the rum touches the open wounds. That is worrisome, especially as strong as it is.
He pulls her left eyelid open; the right is still swollen shut, her left eye glows a faint blue, and the pupil closes some; that’s a good sign. He sighs with some relief. “When you are done returning everything, come here and help me with her so I can carry her. There is a city in that direction. I think we can make it in a few hours. Both of you grab something to use as a weapon, anything that you can use as a club. Aranark, I’ll need you to scout ahead, but stay in sight, Avallie. Please keep an eye on our surroundings. Let me know about anything you see or hear.” Both nod the affirmative to him. Fortunately, Kara is small, at only 5’2”, but she is solid muscle, so she isn’t precisely light. Persival uses a blanket to make a sling to help support her weight, then slowly stands, resting her head on his shoulder. He grimaces but ignores the pain shooting through him. Aranark takes the lead as Persival motions in the direction he saw the city, and they start slowly walking.
Persival is better suited for studying, mixing potions, and making magic items. He’s not a fighter. He needs these two to protect them and keep an eye out for danger. More fell from Nexus than just them. He pushes as hard as he can but must stop and rest several times. He is determined not to give up and make it to the city before they rest for longer than a few minutes. After a little over an hour, the forest opens to farmland. In the distance, he can see the city walls. Kara is still out but is breathing steadily now. The few times they stop, he double-checks her wounds and tries to get her to drink a little water without much success; she begins coughing each time.
Avallie tugs at his arm and whispers, “Some riders are coming.” he looks back and sees four people mounted on horses approaching from the rear. There is no avoiding them in the open, so he pretends to ignore them and keeps walking. A rider comes up along either side, the one with what appears to be the most decorations asks, “What’s your business in Everwind, and what happened to the girl?” Persival keeps walking and answers, “We seek the aid of a temple, and we ran into some trouble in the forest. Sir, you could get us there much quicker on a horse.” The one on the other side says, “We’re not an ambulance service. We’re the Everwind Crownsguard. What kind of trouble did you run into? Did it have anything to do with that fireball in the sky?”
Persival stops and says, “I’m not sure what you would call them. Abominations, I guess. Maybe you could spare a healing potion for her?” Ignoring the request for a potion the leader asks, “Where are you from? Your accent doesn’t sound familiar?”. Before Persival can answer, Avallie says, “It’s a nowhere village off to the west Ser. You would have never heard of it. We called it Nexus because it was nestled in the crook of three valleys, but some monsters attacked, and we fled. The last we saw, it was burning. Priestess Cinderblade helped us escape, but we were ambushed in the forest. She’s a follower of Elirae, Sir.” Persival looks at Avallie. He knows the truth, and even he believes that story. The second guard says, “We don’t have any potions to give, but we do have a Temple of The Dawn Bringer in the city. You’ll need to hurry; the gates close after dark.” Avallie says, “Thank you, sir.” The riders turn and head back toward the forest.
Persival is about to comment on how convincing Avallie was when she says, “Did you hear that?” Persival asks, “Hear what?”, Avallie says, “They said Dawn Bringer. They didn’t ask what god Elirae is or call her by another name. They said Dawn Bringer. We’re the only ones that call Elirae the Dawn Bringer, and the only reason we do is that Kara calls her Dawn Bringer.” Avallie gets a proud smile. “We’re on Kara’s home world, Veniethea.”
Persival starts walking again, and Aranark falls back to them to find out what’s happening. Persival asks her, “How do you know all this?”. Once again, Avallie smiles. “Because I listen, and she’s my hero. I’ve wanted to join the Guardians since I first came to Nexus. She saved me, rescued me from the hell I once called home.”
Avallie remembers the book and reaches into the bag, pulls it out, and opens it. “This is Kara’s journal.” She starts skimming through it. Persival starts to object, but he’s too tired and worried they won’t make it before it gets dark. Avallie exclaims, “Here it is. Kara has been to Everwind, shortly after she started adventuring. Here, she wrote about the Temple of the Dawn Bringer. The High Priestess is Nirne Kitsk.” Persival picks up the pace some. The sun is setting.