Rosalea stood with her eyes narrowed as she looked out toward the trees. What is it? The aura was dark. A feeling of dread began to fill her as a faint recognition came to her. She could not recognize the creature from this distance, but it was on four legs and big, and she had seen that aura somewhere before on a horse. It has Madness, she recognized.

Rhainnon moved a little forward and to the side, to make room for more people to come. Lio was still holding her hand. They were the closest to the orchard, with their backs. Rosalea looked to Kaylar, and she realized instantly that the dragon had not sensed the animal approaching.

In her heartbeats of confusion and inaction, the beast had closed a lot of distance. She could clearly see that it was a rather large brown colored bear, and the disease had taken so much hold over it that it was running even though it wheezed and saliva frothed from its mouth. Rosalea began walking forward, she held out her hand, clasping it in the air. A red blade to her vision formed in her hand, long, curved, sharp, designed with one purpose: to kill.

She reached forward with her other hand, to grab and pull Rhainnon and Lio behind her, but she felt a presence behind her. It made her skin prickle all over, and made every part of her feel alarmed. She felt like she should know that feeling as she turned, looking back toward the castle. “Oh no, Nadia, it will not be that easy! You have lingered here too long! Feel our strength!”

Rosalea's hands flew to cover her ears as the voices boomed in her mind with searing pain. She lost track of the magical weapon she had just made, and she crouched down. The same voice when Lio was born. Back then, she had fought it too, to keep her little one alive. She was wracked with pain and a pressure in her skull that made her feel like she was hearing a loud rushing noise, a little like someone screaming in her ear.

A real scream sliced through her paralysis. Rhainnon, the panicked thought sliced into her consciousness. The bear had reached her. Lio was screaming to and half a dozen voices joined it. Rosalea forced herself to focus through the pain, and she pulled the death knife back into existence and lunged it and her whole body forward from her awkward crouch to stab into the bear that was viciously shaking her friend.

There was a sense of foreign magic creeping through every part of her body, the knife in her hand grew as she stabbed upward with it, becoming more like a sword in her hands than a knife as she drove it straight through the beast's shoulder and into its heart. It weighed so much in her hands as she dragged herself forward, calling essa magic to ram into the struggling animal, shoving it back and off of Rhainnon as her magical blade passed through its heart and out its other shoulder.

That sense of foreign magic putting pressure on her increased. Go away whatever you are. You will not take my family from me. She twisted the blade in the bear, pressing that pressure off herself into blade and into the animal, which turned it to a swirling plume of ash and cinders.

She felt the magic within her trying to get her to drop her blade, but she kept ahold of it. She could feel and hear her own heart pounding, reacting to the stress and pain she felt as she looked at Rhainnon. Her resolve faltered as she saw Lio screaming with tears streaking down her red face, splatters of Rhainnon’s blood on her dress. Rhainnon was moaning, barely alive. I am the only healer, Rosalea thought, trying to take a step toward her.

Trying to, but her body turned, pivoting without her permission toward Kaylar.

Kaylar wasn’t even looking at her, he was trying to keep everyone else safe, to find a way to help Rhainnon. When Rosalea angled her death knife at him, the long blade slid right through his natural magical defenses like they did not exist. There was too much power behind her. More than she could grasp and master.

***

“No!” she heard herself shout. “No! NO!” Anger flared. “No,” she growled forcefully. You cannot make me hurt him. I am myself before I am anyone else! She located the power burning through her and gripped it, bending it to her will. Rigidly, she turned away from the frozen form of Kaylar and back toward Rhainnon.

She saw Rhainnon's body through hazy vision. Somehow, this is my fault, she realized as she took in the extent of the blood pouring into the grass. Her desire just to protect those close to her in this context against… whatever this was… turned to just plain wrath. Give me all this power? Let us find out if I can heal death, she defied the magic within her. She stumbled forward, blade still in one hand because she could not let go, and she put her left hand on Rhainnon and dumped what felt like bottomless amounts of healing magic into her.

But, even though Rhainnon’s body became whole, Rhainnon seemed to still fade. Rosalea stared intensely, and she saw something she had never seen before on anyone, but she had sensed it when Lio was born. There was tendril of some sort of force or magic or energy that twined around Rhainnon’s magic and heart, and it was draining her of life, stopping her from recovering.

Rosalea raised her blade and cut it.

Rhainnon spasmed back to life. The reaction of the voice that sounded like many voice was instant, “How dare you defy us? How dare change the course of what we have decreed?”

You are Gods, Rosalea finally recognized. She dropped her mind-magic sword; there were a lot of fiery sensations in her skull that made it feel like her vision was sparking. She let go of the power she had taken. She could not control it when she felt so much pain. She doubled over as every nerve within her body lit on fire. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound could come out; she couldn't stop herself from writhing. Blood welled up from her tongue where she had bitten into it by accident.

Suddenly, it all stopped. Rosalea fell forward, putting out her hand, feeling it slide against the still warm blood on the grass before she blacked out.

***

Kaylar had, for a critical moment, found himself completely unable to move. Mind magic had slid through his body and was pricking at his core, a tiny flex away from killing him. He did not even know, for a moment, who had attacked him. He had been entirely focused on the arrival of the ravening animal, and he did not have his guard up. He had not even made sense of who had seemed to incinerate it in the middle of its attack on Rhainnon.

Rosalea? He saw from the corner of his eye that she had a rainbow like aura over her. Her face was blank, her eyes were empty, her lips were parted. Myajacs have possessed her? Why?

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She would die from this, and he could not do anything. He was going to die. He could only watch her face, it was flushed a deep red, and wait to die.

But he did not die. Instead, she closed her mouth and clenched her teeth and the rainbow-aura pulsing through her flickered as she turned and staggered to Rhainnon, grabbing her by the shoulder.

Kaylar could move and breathe, as he saw Rhainnon go from definitely among the dying to coughing and clutching at her throat - where not even a scar detailed the gruesome injury she had just had. The weird glow on Rosalea hovered over Rhainnon before fading off.

The glow went out on Rosalea, and she fell forward. Kaylar rushed to her, expecting her to be dead… and shocked she was not. But humans cannot hold the will of the Gods, he could not help but think.

“Help get them both to the nearest beds,” he commanded the people around. “Yelena, please take Lio. Genya, help her.” The child was screaming and crying with the shock of it all.

“Mom! Mama!” she was pushing at Rosalea’s shoulder. There was blood coming from Rosalea’s hands, eyes, nose, ears, and lips.

Genya scooped up Lio, “Sorry, we gotta give her a lil space. C’mere, Granny Genya’s got ya.” She cuddled Lio, hiding her face against her shoulder as Yelena rubbed Lio’s back and also made soothing noises.

“Even Fen’s down,” Briar said as he summoned plants to help make a stretcher to move Rosalea onto. “She’s still breathing though, I can hear it.”

“Get them inside. Rhainnon?”

Rhainnon had blood smeared all over her where injuries had been just a second ago. She gave Kaylar a look that was almost vacant, as if she was really out of it. “Everyone else, we need to find out if that bear got a hold of anyone on its way here. If there are injured animals, corral them immediately away form the rest, we cannot have this spreading through anything. Someone run and get Oralee. I want every person not helping me with Rosalea on top of this immediately.”

People scattered. Briar loaded Rosalea on the first stretcher. Kaylar stared at her hands. Had she burned them saving Rhainnon? Or him? Was she going to live through standing up to Gods?

He put his nose against Rhainnon as people scattered to do what he asked. She very slowly wrapped her arms around his nose, but she was empty inside. She was not thinking or feeling anything. He hoped it was shock and not something else.

“Rhainnon,” he tried again, speaking gently, softly.

She moved her hand against his nose, looking at the blood that was drying on it. Slowly, he felt her start to come out of her shock. She started talking, trying to rationalize what she was feeling. “I remember when you first brought Rosalea here, I was really sick. No one knew why. Then you brought her, and all the sudden I was better. It was like I had never really been sick, except my body felt really worn down like I had been. I know you felt she saved my life then, and I felt that way too…” she trailed off. Kaylar was silent, waiting for where this would inevitably go. “So, I know I was attacked. I … feel sure I was dead.”

She looked at him over his nose, starting to shiver. But Kaylar did not say anything. She started speaking again. “It hurt, but it didn’t really hurt. It is hard to explain, it just happened so fast it was like I couldn’t come to terms with it. It was like I was aware I was being ripped apart, and I was powerless to stop it. I knew I was going out, that in a moment, I would be gone, but I couldn’t do anything about it because I was already broken. And suddenly, I felt like I could feel Rosalea pulling on me, and I was so glad. I thought, I don’t care how it is, I don’t want to die. Don’t let me go, I don’t care if you can’t make me perfect, but please don’t let me die.”

Her mountain lion wobbled over to her. She had been whacked out of the way by a big bear paw when she had tried to intercept the bear, but she was not too hurt beyond a small cut on her shoulder. She curled around Rhainnon’s back.

She trembled, her lower lip trembled a lot. “I felt something break…” She looked helplessly. “Like in my head. It broke. It’s not there. I don’t know how, but now I am different. Something is missing. One moment I was connected, and now…?”

Kaylar had nothing to offer. She looked away. “Maybe I just imagined it. It’s not just my head that feels funny. It’s like being aware of every part of my body. Everything feels smooth, full, and yet frozen. I can feel my heart pumping, I can feel the blood inside me, but nothing is happening…”

Kaylar nuzzled her, she seemed to want comfort. She pressed herself closer to accept it. “I will ask Rosalea when she wakes up what she thought happened. All right?”

Rhainnon nodded silently. “I think… she’s hurt, right? It’s my turn to help her?”

“Do you think you can? You do not have to try if you do not feel able. You… maybe really did come close to dying there. I was sure we had lost you.”

“Please let me try to help her.”

“Okay. Let me carry you and Kona to her. Maybe Kona knows what happened?”

Rhainnon looked to Kona. The cat whined. “She says my death was thwarted by Gods’ magic… and I’ve become… lost?”

Kaylar stopped himself from frowning since Rhainnon was already so worried. It was exactly the way Mysteera had once described herself to him.

“She does not say what it means.”

Kaylar breathed out. I suppose it is good that no liana can lie, but sometimes the refusal to provide information feels more than a little frustrating.

Rhainnon pushed herself up on his nose. “I think I am ready. Then I want to wash up… and see Lio, so she can see me.”

“All right,” Kaylar said. He used his magic to scoop both Rhainnon and her liana from the ground, and he took them inside.

Briar was using a rag to wash the blood off of Rosalea, there wasn’t any areas actively bleeding still, just a burned look left behind on her hands.

Rhainnon got to work on Rosalea, healing her of the harm done to her by handling God’s magic. She was sleeping surprisingly peacefully when Rhainnon finished, and Kaylar felt optimistic she would wake up sometime soon. Maybe sharing all the elements of magic like the Gods gave her the ability to handle that?

Kaylar felt uncertain.

Oralee was hovering. Kaylar nodded to her. “There were no other casualties. We do not know where it came from. Yelena is going to have animals look for anyone else in the forests that might be infected.”

Kaylar breathed a sigh of relief. “Please have Genya bring Lio.”

Rhainnon wobbled a little when she let go of Rosalea, and Briar caught her by the elbow. “How’s she?”

Rhainnon leaned on him. “Most the hurt was in her brain. I was able to pour a lot of healing magic and help her, I think.”

I wonder if she will be the same person when she wakes up.

There was several moments of quiet until Genya arrived with Lio. “Rhainnon!” she squealed as she held her arms out from Genya to Rhainnon.

Rhainnon pulled Lio to herself and hugged her close. “I am all right, see?”

Kaylar was glad Lio was cleaned up and changed. “My mom saved you?” snuffled the little girl.

“Of course she did,” Rhainnon said as she squeezed Lio close.

“Is she all right?”

“Of course! She is very tough.”

“See, Lio? It’ll be all right. C’mere. We should let Rhainnon get cleaned up and rest.” Genya held out her arms. Rhainnon passed Lio back.

“Can we stay here?”

Kaylar nodded. “I think that it would be good of us to watch over her, don’t you?”

Lio nodded and pushed her face against Genya’s neck. Genya took up a chair in the corner.

Briar fidgeted. “I’ll get us some drinks. Rhainnon, let me walk you to your room.”

“Galena is setting up a bath for you,” Oralee said.

Rhainnon nodded.

“Now we wait,” Kaylar sighed.