I had the nightmare again, but somehow it was even worse than before.

I waited it out. I watched as events unfolded just as they did every single time the dream had occurred in the past. The burning library. The collapsing towers. The dragon rider. Farnus and the children. Each detail had been seared into my memory with chilling clarity. But when Laura drew her sword to face the black-clad knight, Fate decided that She would grant me a glimpse even deeper into my own private hell.

Laura had always been light on her feet, despite her above average height. Without any armor, there wasn’t a soul alive who could outrun her. The knight lifted his axe high, and brought it down with the intention to bury it in her skull, but she parried with her shortsword and stepped to the side. As she did so, she nailed the knight in the shin with her foot, and he stumbled, losing his grip on the axe. It fell to the ground, and I could see that it was smeared with blood, marring its surface like tar.

The knight drew a sword, a slender little thing from his hip, and attacked Laura again with a fencing maneuver. Despite his armor, the knight was quick and merciless; he quickly pressed hard, pushing her back. It wouldn’t be long before he would gain the upper hand. Her shortsword wasn’t built to handle fencers and their techniques, and the knight was slowly backing her towards a stone wall.

I crawled to where Farnus’ staff lay on the ground, where I’d dropped it after being tackled by Laura. I grasped it and pulled it close to me. I rolled onto my back and took aim with the gnarled wooden staff at the knight’s head and, with a heartfelt scream of rage, I pointed it at the black-clad attacker’s head with the intent of unleashing magical hell on him. It was a serious long shot and I knew it. A mage could not simply pick any stick off the ground and use it as a staff. As part of a rite of passage, a mage must carve their own staff, infuse it with magic given freely of their own body, and thus bond with it. For a mage to use another person’s staff was practically unheard of for reasons that were quite clear within the magical community. But I didn’t have my own staff, not even the training staff that was designed to aid an apprentice mage like myself, so I used the only weapon I had available to me.

When I took aim, I could feel the staff “resisting” me. It knew I was not its rightful owner, and thus it attempted to deny me access to its power. But I fed it images, conjured up images of Farnus teaching, raising, and protecting me. I showed the staff that I intended to avenge Farnus. The lingering spirit, the small bit of Farnus’ soul left within the carved wood felt my connection to my old mentor, and relented.

I reached to the dry air, feeling the harried currents buffeted by dragon’s wings, and shot a blast of wind at the black-clad knight.

The force of the gale slammed into the knight with deafening force. I saw him sail through the air and slam into a cart of hay, upending and crumpling it like a piece of parchment. Laura drew in a breath of relief, but it was far too soon to be relieved.

The knight crawled out from the wreckage of the cart. With some effort, he found his feet and twirled his sword. But when he pulled his helm away in anger, I froze.

Or did I? Was it because that was what I had done five years ago during the destruction, or because now, the pieces had finally fallen into place? At last, the fog lifted from my mind. The details I thought I’d locked out of my head, the memory of my supposed “first kill”, became clear, and I saw the whole picture for the first time in five years.

Blonde hair fell from the helm as it was pulled from the knight’s head; it was fitted in a short ponytail at the back of the wielder’s head. Eyes blue as the sky yet narrowed and angry, darted back and forth and glared at us both. Blood trickled from a mouth dead set in a vicious snarl. I saw the face of my enemy. At last, this final epiphany revealed the cruel twist that Fate had concealed from me all these years.

The woman I would eventually come to know as Eliza screamed and charged ahead, her rapier set to thrust. Laura parried, but Eliza brusquely knocked her aside and continued charging at me. I fumbled and fell back on my ass, knowing death was barreling towards me. Eliza leveled her rapier with my head and leaned her right shoulder back for the killing blow.

Again, Laura saved me with inhuman speed. She grabbed onto Eliza’s arm, and the two girls sailed over me and landed in a heap just past me. But before Laura could recover from her mad stunt, Eliza pinned her to the ground and forced her to drop the sword still clutched in her hand. Eliza brought her rapier back, and thrust down.

I knew why I chose not to remember this. No human in my position, no man claiming to be of sound mind would ever want to relive a moment like this. The rapier sank into Laura’s chest, and I could see her look of pain and disbelief as it did so. The look of arrogant triumph and blatant hunger on Eliza’s face chilled me to my very core. I saw Laura grasp at the blade of the rapier with her left hand feebly, as though she were trying to pry it out of her body. Eliza twisted the blade, most likely because she was a psychotic bitch than anything else. Laura jerked violently before her hand fell away.

Eliza pulled the rapier from Laura’s chest. I could see that she was still breathing, but she was bleeding heavily and coughing up blood. Eliza, as was her style, made a great show of licking the blood off her sword. That’s crazy, I thought. Only crazy people do that! She started inching toward me with a bloodthirsty grin on her sadistic face.

Something in me snapped. My dear friend bleeding to death stirred something dark in me. It crawled up from the very depths of my soul, the darkest parts that I would never let see the light of day, and wormed its way into my heart. I reached out to the fire all around me, and it answered. Bales of hay left ablaze answered. Thatched roofs left to burn answered. Flames engulfing the towers answered. All of it swept toward me and gathered at the tip of Farnus’ staff. I aimed it at Eliza, who saw the power gathering and paused.

I saw fear. Her eyes were lit by the flame and I saw fear in them. It fed me as well, and I put even more power into the spell. I wanted her to suffer. As the spell grew, I found my way to my feet and began to advance. Now I was the hunter, the apex predator. No, in a way I had always been that. What I saw before me was some upstart, a mewling, pathetic creature that sought to kill not for survival but for pleasure. I never wanted so badly in that moment to hurt a living being in my entire life. In Eliza I saw a representation of everything wrong with the world. I was afraid, but I wasn’t going to let her wield that against me. Perhaps out of desperation, Eliza finally stopped backing away and stood her ground.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Go to Hell, you filthy little monster!” She brought up her rapier and rushed at me. But I wasn’t afraid. The rage of some puny berserker could not match mine. I took aim at her, and she only became an easier target as she ran straight at me. In slow motion, I watched the staff align with my target. When the energy grew to its climax, before I lost control of it, I spoke the incantation, the shortest I’d ever done, given strength and focus solely by the sheer fury backing it.

“YOU FIRST!”

A spirit answered my call. But it was not benign or righteous. Even as I felt it enfold me in its embrace, as its power flowed into me, I could feel nothing but rage. Whatever spirit I had called upon burned with the same desire as me. It felt as though my very veins were aflame, as if the blood in them had caught fire. For whatever reason, this spirit wanted Eliza dead just as badly as I did. Maybe even more.

The power I had gathered became a typhoon of flame. It lanced forward and carried Eliza off into the night. With the force of a bolt shot from a ballista it launched her into the air. Tongues of fire swept into the spaces between her armor, surging past plating that could stop a steel blade like child’s play, seeking their way to the soft flesh beneath. Her agonized scream was the only noise I could hear over the cacophony, and she disappeared from sight. Soon, the only sound left was the crackling of the embers in the runic circle etched into the ground at my feet.

I sank to my knees, struggling to fight the presence of the spirit in my mind. Like a thick haze, it settled into my mind and refused to lift. For a moment, I was afraid it might try to take over my body. But with a sensation not unlike low, unearthly cackling, the entity released me, dissipating back into the night. Finally, the last of the foreign presence left me, and I knelt there, gasping for breath

I heard Laura cough and sputter, and it brought me back to my senses.

I dropped Farnus’ staff and ran to Laura. I cradled her head ever so gently, and cried. There wasn’t anything I could do with a wound so severe, even if I had any skill as a healer. That she was still alive was a cruel miracle. She didn’t deserve this. I palmed both my hands together and pressed them down onto Laura’s chest in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. As soon as her warm blood began to coat my hands, seeping through my fingers, I felt sick to my stomach.

Laura was obviously in shock; she was starting to spout gibberish in between the blood now flowing from her mouth. In all likelihood, Eliza’s rapier had punctured one of Laura’s lungs, which explained her shallowness of breath. I could feel tears pouring out of my eyes as I watched her struggle to keep breathing.

Her eyes cleared, and focused on me. “Kuro? Is…that you?” I chuckled nervously. Any attempt at humor was all that I seemed to have left.

“Yeah. I’m here. Sorry it took so long. I had to deal with some crazy blonde who was trying to kill me with a sword. What is it with blondes? That’s why I prefer redheads, heh heh heh…” I was jabbering. I was one step from losing it and slipping.

Laura tried to laugh at my little joke. She coughed up another wave of blood and I could feel my composure failing.

“Hey, watch it, Kuro… you think I’m gonna let you get away with manhandling me like this?” I tried to push harder, but the blood kept pouring out through my fingers. “Oh you know, plugging a bleeding stab wound, feeling you up, no reason I can’t do both at the same time, right?”

Laura choked out another chuckle. “I’ll allow it. It wasn’t like… you were ever… going to get… with a girl… anyway.” I barked another laugh, this one a bit more genuine.

“Oh, thanks. Try and keep it above the belt, yeah? You know I’m sensitive about that.” I was in full denial. I was gonna lose her, and there wasn’t a gods-be-damned thing I could do about it.

Laura’s eyes lost focus for a second. “Where’s… Alverd?” I chuckled again, but I could hear the panic in my voice. My hands pressed down on her wound even harder. “What? I’m not good enough for you? That hurts, you know. He’ll be here. I know he will. And you can tan his hide for being late. Hell, I’ll even help you. Useless bastard is never around when you really need him.” I gently started slapping the side of Laura’s face when her head turned away. “Hey! HEY! Where are you looking? He’s not over there! I’ll tell you when he gets here, just please… DON’T LOOK AWAY!”

I’d lost it. No more pretense of control. She was going to die and it was gonna happen soon. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I bawled like a child. I screamed Alverd’s name into the night in every direction. Pure, unfiltered desperation. And with every cry that went unanswered, I fell further into despair. This. This had to be what Hell was like, to feel so helpless, so useless, when it really mattered, especially when that person had given everything to save someone like myself, so utterly without merit. It was a tragedy beyond words. Even more so, knowing that you were the one who didn’t deserve to live.

No parents. No siblings. No friends amongst my fellow mages. And no girl to call a lover. I wasn’t skilled in any kind of magic other than the power to destroy and hurt. I had no right to continue existing. Not when Laura had so much more to offer the world. But she hadn’t hesitated at all. She’d thrown herself into the fire to save my worthless life, and given up her own in the process. I couldn’t stomach the injustice of it all. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But the world didn’t care about any of that.

I don’t know how long it took before Alverd eventually found us. In the dream, in my memory, he came to us covered in the blood of our foes, but unharmed. He knelt with us and picked Laura up in his arms. She cried and tried to call his name but she kept choking on her own blood. We ran. We just kept running, the three of us, not looking back. We didn’t bother with horses. We ran until the castle was a glowing cinder on the horizon.

At some point, Laura had opened her eyes again. She looked up at Alverd, who was making no effort to hide his own tears. She was like a fairy tale princess being carried by her prince. She…smiled. It had been the most obvious sign of affection Alverd had ever shown her, but it was too late. Then, Alverd turned after looking over his shoulder to see if we were being pursued, and I lost sight of her. We ran along the road for what felt like an eternity made all the worse by the knowledge that at any moment, a squad of dragon riders could swoop down from the sky and add us to the destruction.

Along the way, Laura died. Either her heart had just given out or she had lost too much blood. By the time we had reached the lone tree that marked the crossroad to our home and two other towns, she was dead. Once, we had pledged our eternal devotion to each other under this tree, three would-be heroes who were going to fight injustice side by side. Now it was all gone. We buried her at the foot of that tree. We left a crude memorial and some prayers and then we left. There wasn’t a thing we could do. Cold, unfeeling. The only thing that mattered was surviving.

By no right should Laura have lasted as long as she did. The only explanation I could accept was that she was waiting for Alverd. She wasn’t going to leave this world without seeing him one last time. That’s what I told myself. Her love for him was so strong that she’d suffer just a little bit longer if it meant seeing him before the end. It offered no comfort, but I knew it in my heart to be true anyway. That last smile I had seen was probably the exact moment when she stopped fighting the inevitable. And it hurt me to watch one of my best friends die with her greatest dream left unfulfilled.

Just as I watched Alverd lay Laura’s body into the ground, I awoke.