TRIGGER WARNING: major character injury, permanent injury, near-death, a child driven to kill (the child does take a life), a very big fight (I hope this is clear with the aforementioned warnings but I still wanted to mention it since those warnings are in the context of a battle-type fight)

Chapter 7

Blind Spot

“You don’t understand what?” I ask.

“Why is Freedom here?” Astra’s blue eyes widen and turn glassy with unshed tears. “I thought she was dead.”

I sigh. I wish I could give better answers, but Freedom died when we were in the Field. I don’t know as much as I wish I did, but I also don’t want to know about my friend’s death. When she was dead, I didn’t want to know because if I didn’t acknowledge it, then maybe it wasn’t really real. But now… I don’t know what to think.

“Freedom is here because she loves you, Astra. I know you probably don’t remember her, but she is your birth mother. I’m your stepmother, as you know. Freedom would like to meet you, if you’d like that. You can say no, though, ok? You remember that you can say no to anything, right?”

Astra nods. “You can always say no.”

I smile. “Yes, you can.”

“How did Freedom come back?

“Arcane made a deal with Lucius. That’s what Freedom said. Arcane made a deal with Lucius that he would trade his life for hers, and Lucius would then bring Freedom back to life.”

Astra twists her lips, humming as she furrows her brows into a look of deep thought.

“Why would Lucius make a deal? I thought once Lucius claimed someone, they died forever and ever?”

I take a breath, sighing. “I don’t know, Astra. I cannot answer that question.”

xxxx

We’ve made our way through the Sea, and we’re on the outskirts, more or less near where we’d leave to head out toward the Lava Flats.

I plod along, watching Astra as she trots up ahead. She stops every so often, crouching down to look at flowers, plants, vines that catch her interest. She sniffs them, then bounds off.

I swivel my ears and scent the air, keeping track as the wind changes direction and listening for any unusual sounds.

There’s nothing, until there is.

I hear an all-too familiar sound of stomping boots, and they draw closer. The clink of buckles is accompanied by the thump of sword sheaths against thighs with every step. Panic sparks in my gut, a flickering little flame, hot as it burns a hole through my insides. I blow a sharp breath through my nose, squaring my nostrils as I widen my eyes and flash the whites.

I speed up to reach Astra, neighing as I urge her to go faster. I scan around me, angling my ears in every direction to pinpoint the exact location of the Guard and Soldiers. They’re a little lower than us, still firm within the Sea’s limits, while we are trailing along the territory just outside.

I nudge Astra and we turn to go back toward the Sea. I hope it’s the right decision, but I don’t want to be separated. Much longer, and we’d have no choice but to venture further away from virtually everyone. Perhaps others around might change the outcome this time. I hope so, thinking back to the battle in the Field when Ky felt he had no choice but to summon the Blood Demon.

Would we all have died if he had not made that decision?

I don’t know if there’s any way to really know for sure, but a part of me wonders and remembers just how many Guard and Soldiers there had been.

I start to run as Astra picks up speed and lopes alongside me, body moving easily and spine curving as she bounds beside me. My spine doesn’t move, but I stretch my legs a little longer. I’m not built for speed like Astra is, but I’m strong. I can fight. But right now, I need to be fast.

I don’t know if this will work, but we cannot be alone. It’s too late to go back in time and never leave Jabez and Freedom and the others, and it’s too late to find a way to call out to them.

But the Guard and Soldiers catch up to us before we can truly reach anyone in the Sea. They must’ve heard us and taken a shortcut through the Sea, one of the many that exist with how haphazardly the settlement of tents was built.

An arrow whizzes through my mane, skimming the top of my neck, and I roar, anger searing through my veins alongside icy fear that slides through me, sealing up my throat and locking up my legs and narrowing my vision until it’s little more than pinpricks.

Astra snarls, and I exhale, snorting a warning that should’ve been clear but the Guard and Soldiers didn’t understand. Pinning my ears, I neigh another warning, throwing my head as I rear when a Soldier tries to attack.

I kick out at him with my forelegs, kicking him in the temple with a hoof. Grey blood sprays as he falls back, body convulsing until he lays still.

Fear surges through me, and determination sharpens my vision. I snap my tail as I ready myself.

After that, the Guard and Soldiers fall upon us both. With a bray that pitches into another roar, I scramble to keep Astra close to me and memorize her location so they cannot separate us.

I spin and lash out with my hooves, my teeth, my horn, my muzzle, my legs, everything I have, whirling around and attacking anything in sight. Brown and silver surround me as the Guard and Soldiers draw in closer. Calling upon my portal magic, the twisted gift of the Amethyst Throne that I do not want but will use if it means keeping Astra safe, I bring the now-familiar blistering heat to my horn, ready to portal myself and Astra away to anywhere, just not here.

Just as the heat hit its breaking point, a Guard’s dagger sinks into my shoulder. My squeal of alarm contorts into a scream. Jerking back, I pull away, and hot, sticky blood drips down my fur.

“Don’t hurt my stepmother!” Astra screeches.

She launches herself at the Guard, landing on his back and shoulders. She claws at his neck, chest, anywhere she can reach. Astra sinks her teeth into his scalp, and the Guard howls, reaching back to grab at her.

I drive my horn into the Guard’s abdomen before he can get his fingers wrapped too tightly around Astra’s fur. His own blood gushes and sprays from his body and soaks my forehead, making my forelocks stick to my fur.

Someone tries to attack my hind legs, and I quickly kick back. Both of my hooves connect solidly with bodies.

Again, I ready myself to portal both me and Astra away to anywhere but here. Anywhere will have fewer threats.

Again, someone attacks me. This time a Soldier, who swings his sword at my flank, but I rear up out of the way fast enough that it doesn’t cut as deep as he’d been intending. Gasping for breath as my ribs ache, I bite at the Soldier’s ear, yanking hard enough that it starts to give and the Soldier turns clammy and pale and looks like he’s about to vomit.

I try a third time, except that a Guard fires an arrow into my eye.

I see the arrow as it whizzes through the air. Time seems to slow down, every moment stretching into an ever-longer eternity, until the tip of the arrow sinks through my cornea, pupil, past the lens of my eye, and continues at an angle until it hits bone. Bunching my hind legs beneath me, I leap forward as my vision goes dark in my eye, blurry sand consuming what was once clear images of my surroundings. Flickering light wavers in front of my injured eye. The edges of my vision lose focus, seeing as normal for the last time, before my vision tunnels and everything goes dark as my eye sends the final images of the other side of what my uninjured eye sees to my brain.

I land hard on my forelegs, then throw myself up onto my hind legs, rearing up as I try to escape the arrow, the blindness as raw panic takes hold and controls my movements.

I throw my head, crying out in a scream as panic wraps its talons around my chest and seizes my lungs. I shake my head and try to dislodge the arrow, but I only manage to snap it in half when I lean back and break the end of it off against my shoulder. Doing so jolts the arrowhead still inside my eye, and I roar.

A Soldier’s sword cuts through my side, straight across my ribs, splitting the skin. I feel it all, how the flesh rips apart and tears into two, how my own blood bubbles up like it’s doing in my eye, how the hot, sticky blood oozes down my side in a thick stream that splatters on my feathers as I scramble to hold off the Guard and Soldiers and fail to stay calm like I know I need to but cannot do because if my life is in danger, then so is Astra’s, and I made a promise to Freedom and even if I hadn’t it’s my duty as her stepmother to defend her, and—.

I cut myself off from spiraling any further.

It won’t help.

The pain hurtling across my nerves might be causing my brain to shatter into only the most basic of functions, but Astra needs me and I need me if we’re both going to make it out of this. So, despite no vision in one eye and wounds scattered across my body, I take a breath, even if moving my ribcage sends excruciating pain screaming through me.

I squeal, stomping a hoof and thrashing my tail, hitting it against my hind legs.

“Leave,” I insist.

I buck and kick at a Guard who tries to come up behind me from the side, hiding in my now huge blind spot, far bigger than it ever was before. Instead of just in front of my nose and directly behind me, it’s now half of my field of vision. Anxiety and panic clench within me, seizing around everything within me.

Anxiety curls within me and I don’t stop moving, turning my head every which way, desperate to not miss anything. I don’t know how to deal with this, and I don’t like that. Unease keeps me moving. It’s going to make me clumsy, it’s going to make me sloppy, it’s going to cost me, it’s going to get me killed. I can’t have that happen.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Astra needs me.

Astra stays beneath me, spinning in a slow circle as she watches. She smells of blood, but not of her own. It’s some tiny relief I’ll take.

“You should breathe, Brook. That’s what you told me when I was crying, remember? To take a deep breath and count to five and then breathe out and count to five?”

I almost laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but I also know that she’s trying to help.

“Thank you, Astra. I really appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome. Breathing will help us catch the bad guys, right?”

Astra growls when a Guard gets too close, lunging with her wings flared. I do take a breath, right before I lunge myself and sever his jugular vein with my horn. He collapses, hands clutching his throat as blood gurgles through his fingertips. He chokes, coughs and sputters on blood, before falling still on his side, eyes going distant and glazed.

I carefully nudge Astra’s attention back toward me with a foreleg, taking care not to use too much force or weight with my hoof. She turns around, eyes wide and pupils dilated with fear. Her jaw chatters, and I want to shield her from everything. I want to bring her in close and keep her from it all. I want to make her forget what has happened and keep her from ever having to learn what the world can do.

I can’t, though, and I hate it.

A Guard’s dagger slices through one of my hocks, and buck and kick at him, hoof catching him on his shoulder and collarbone. When I realize that he had been standing in my now half-body-wide blind spot, the panic that had begun to ease into the tension of Guard and Soldiers posing such a threat to myself and Astra flares back to life, filling me up until I feel little else beyond the fear and pain of the arrow still lodged in my eye, scraping bone.

Someone gets in close, pressing up against me and jumping up in my blind spot, one hand on the long hair of my mane just in front of my withers as they vault up a ways, reaching for what I realize far too late is the arrow still lodged in my eye. I’d snapped off half of it in my initial panic, but the rest is still pierced through the flesh of my eyeball.

When their fingers close around the remaining shaft of the arrow, I jerk my head without thought, neigh falling into a scream as fear surges through my veins and I rear up. Their feet scrabble at my body, a foot on my forearm and another somewhere on my shoulder until I fall back down. Sweat foams on my body from the stress, exhaustion, fear, exertion.

The person grabbing at the arrow still in my eye distracts me enough that a Soldier comes up on my other side — the side I should be able to see so well on, so normally— and rakes his sword down my side. I should’ve dodged it, but I didn’t.

Pain shatters through every bit of my body, every piece of my being, cold and icy with daggers razor-sharp and tiny enough to slice the fabric of everything I am into a million threads. I crumble, I’m put back together again, and I crumble again beneath the pulsing waves of screaming pain that’s the only thing I can see, hear, smell, taste, feel. It overloads my senses until there’s nothing left but agony.

Hot blood feels like it’s burning as it drips down my side in thick, oozing globs.

The person gripping the arrow hangs onto it and my mane longer, though I cannot tell how much; beyond the pain there is nothing, not even time. But when they let go, the arrow goes with them, causing even more damage.

I’d had little hope of what Wyatt could do, whenever they returned, to restore vision to my eye. Fighting for myself and Astra left hardly any time to consider the future, but still, I did not think Wyatt could do much. But after the person yanked out the arrow and I felt the damage it does moving backward, going against the way an arrow is supposed to move, I know there is no way Wyatt can give me back the vision in my eye, even with their skills.

I scream as the person falls the distance back to the ground, throwing my head up and rearing to kick out at them as a new wave of blood pours down my face and throat, joining the streams of blood running down my flank from the gash. My fur turns slick with blood and sweat and grime.

Increasingly dizzy, I gasp for air, mouth wide and tongue thick in my mouth.

I spin to drive my horn into a Soldier’s chest when I see him approaching from the side I can still see from. His blonde hair turns splattered with grey as my horn punctures through his armor, his skin, his sternum, then his heart. I hate the feeling of the resistance of metal and bone, then the give of soft organs.

It’s for you and Astra. You can do this.

But spinning that abruptly costs me; my mind whirls, and I lose where I am for a precious few moments.

A sword’s hilt to my temple has me stumbling, legs buckling like I’m a newborn filly again, gangly and off-balance, unable to stay upright. My hooves slam and clatter on the soil, thumping as I try to keep myself standing, but I cannot; a foreleg gives out as stars dance in front of my darkening vision in my uninjured eye. Dizzy and disoriented as I am, I cannot feel the amount of panic I know I should be at losing any amount of vision in the eye that’s supposed to be seeing just fine.

My haunch hits the ground first, then my hip, then my flank, then my shoulder hits hard enough that I cry out. Finally, my cheek hits. I fall on the side of my blinded eye, and with no arrow still in my eye, no further damage is done after the impact, but my teeth still rattle in my head, chattering against each other as I crash to the ground, legs sprawled out and head back.

Flank heaving with breath, I watch as Astra scrambles over to me. She moves so her back is to me, wings flared and her stance wide.

She’s defending me. It’s supposed to be the other way around; I’m supposed to defend her.

Dread coils in my gut, a snake in the grass watching with twinkling eyes. I flare my nostrils as I wheeze and try to stand.

Please, no.

Astra lashes her tail and growls.

“Go away!” Astra spits. “Leave us alone! Go home to your parents. I know you all have them. Go to your families if your parents aren’t nice.” Astra glances over her shoulder. “Brook says sometimes parents aren’t nice. But leave us alone. You hurt Brook. You can’t do that.”

I feel my own blood soaking into the dirt beneath me. It sticks to my eye in muddy clumps. I try to lift my head, but only manage to roll a little ways before strength leaves me and I collapse back down again.

Astra, run. You have to run. I can’t keep you safe like this.

I paw at the dirt, trying to find the ability to roll, because if I can roll, I can get my legs beneath me. After that, I just have to summon the strength to push myself upright, but every beat of my heart saps a little more from me. Strength leaves me with every pulse of blood from my wounds.

“Go, Astra,” I croak. “Run.”

Astra cranes her head back, eyes wild and wide as tears drip down her cheeks.

No, you shouldn’t cry. Feel your emotions, but not like this. Please, you shouldn’t be afraid. You shouldn’t be scared like this. I’m supposed to keep you safe. I have to take it all away, but I can’t.

A Soldier spins his sword in his grip. It turns into a silver arc in my blurry vision as he approaches me and Astra.

“Finally,” he says, “we can get some who oppose My Sovereign, His Excellency, His Honor, His Highest of all Highnesses, King Garonda XIV. We need those who understand the hierarchy to be in leadership. They can show the others how this world works. The two of you, Brook and Astra? The two of you clearly don’t know how the world works. The two of you clearly do not know how to bow before the rightful King of Ragdon, My Sovereign, His Excellency, His Honor, His Highest of all Highnesses, King Garonda XIV.”

I can only watch as fear begins to paralyze me, freezing me cold, as the Soldier draws closer. He’s so casual, body so loose and at ease, so opposite from Astra and I that it makes anger flare within me.

“Stop it!” Astra shouts, voice pitching up into a shrill screech. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”

“No,” a Guard replies. “Neither of you will bow before the King of Ragdon and the Amethyst Throne.”

Astra paces a step in either direction, and I can see the building, bubbling frustration. She shakes, feathers on her wings rustling, and I see the moment everything froths over and explodes.

Astra screams, shrill and loud and filled with such fury that I shudder. There’s such emotion and rage that my skin prickles, fur shifting as unease shivers across my body.

I scrabble with my legs, scraping and carving at the soil in vain attempts to roll myself so I can stand, but I can’t and Astra needs me and she’s going to die and I’m going to die and we’re both going to die and Lucius is going to come for us and I can almost see them walking among us and I’m going to break the promise I made to Freedom and—.

I exhale, raising a cloud of dust in front of me. Pain blurs the vision in my uninjured eye, and I feel my blood seeping from my injured eye and the gash stretching across my ribcage and every little wound littering my body. I feel its sticky warmth. I feel the dirt clumping up and caking around the injuries until mud forms. I feel the heat as my body tries to stop the bleeding. Exhaustion leaves me feeling like I’m moving beneath the thick blankets the Guard and Soldiers used to place over my body when cold snaps moved through— detached, slow, clumsy.

There are far fewer Guard and Soldiers, but they’re not gone.

A Guard taunts Astra, baiting her into attacking. I try to stop her. I try to stand yet again. I try to get up to defend my stepdaughter and stop the Guard whose actions are to blame. I have to stand, but I cannot and I hate it.

Someone moves toward me, and I struggle but still cannot stand. The cold, grey gleam of metal glints in the sunlight like the snake’s fangs that had bitten Jabez

“Let her be,” a Soldier says. “She’s gonna die, anyway. Look at her— she can’t even stand. What’s that about a horse always needing to be standing?”

We can lay down, I think bitterly. We just don’t lay down for long.

I hate that some part of what he said isn’t entirely wrong. There’s some little thread of truth. Horses don’t spend a great deal of time on the ground.

And I can feel my blood dripping from my body into the ground.

“Shouldn’t we just… you know. Send her to Lucius?” Another Soldier speaks. I recognize him. Spyro had said he’s the Dust Devil. Dark hair streaked through with grey that I assume must be red.

“You mean end her right now?” a Guard clarifies.

I watch, heart fluttering in my chest. I swallow, closing my eye tight.

Come on, Brook. We have to stand. We have to get up. We have no other choice. There is no alternative. There is no other choice than to stand and fight.

Come on, Brook. Stand.

Don’t make it easy for them. Astra needs you. You need you.

Stand. Fight. We’re stronger than any of them.

Am I stronger than them like this? Blinded in one eye, losing blood from a myriad of wounds, exhausted beyond measure, terrified past anything I’ve felt before.

Yes, I tell myself.

I won’t stop fighting. I am stronger.

“Send her to Lucius, Dust Devil,” a lead Guard says, face impassive and cold, carved from the same stone as the Judge and Justice as they ruled in the favor of the King and the Amethyst Throne. “Kill her.”

“No!” Astra shrieks.

Bloodied mud streaks on my jaw and throat as I manage to get my knees and hocks beneath me. Hind legs first, I push myself to standing. My muscles scream, and icy sweat pours across my body, foaming on my fur. My vision blurs in my uninjured eye, sending the world tilting and pitching this way and that. I stumble like a newborn foal, and I have to splay my legs wide to stay upright.

“Send the unicorn to Lucius?” the Dust Devil clarifies.

The lead Guard nods, annoyance flaring in his features. “Kill her.”

“Don’t!” Astra lunges forward.

“Astra,” I rasp. “Come here.”

“Still you stand,” the lead Guard murmurs. “You should have stayed down. Perhaps your death would have been easier.”

“I won’t let you kill us.”

“How? You cannot portal. You cannot fight. You can hardly stand.”

I don’t know.

The lead Guard is right.

I turn my head as much as I am able to in my exhausted state. I cannot lift my head higher than level with my withers, but I still remain standing, no matter how much I sway.

Anger flickers in my gut, a wavering flame that burns out of spite and stubbornness.

“This—.”

“Stop it!” Astra screeches as she flares her wings out to the side and lashes her tail.

She growls and snarls and spits and bares her teeth, pinning her ears and stomping her paws. When a Soldier tries to approach her from the side, I glower at him, snorting. Thankfully, he’s spooked enough that he retreats.

However, scaring off the Soldier turned enough of my attention from staying upright and I sway on my hooves. I lose my balance. Scrambling to stay on my hooves costs me, and I scrape a hoof across a fetlock on my foreleg, straight through my feathers and through the thin layer of skin protecting tendons and bone.

Once more, I stumble and fall. This time, I make sure to fall on the side of my injured eye; if I cannot stay upright, I at least need to make sure I can see.

I hate that it’s come to this.

Sides heaving, I struggle for enough air.

Please, but I don’t know who I beg to.

What is begging for? Who will hear? What will pleading do?

The lead Guard is not dissuaded like the Soldier was, and he comes closer.

With a hiss, Astra digs her hind toes into the ground and throws herself at the lead Guard. He smirks when he sees her face scrunched up in anger, but his smug grin falls into shock when he’s falling and hitting the ground as Astra dives through the air, wings spread to angle herself right. He barely has enough time to draw in a wheezed breath before Astra’s sitting on his upper abdomen and tearing at him.

Her claws dig into every part of him she can reach with her forepaws; his chest, shoulders, face, head. She cries out, tears streaming down her face as she shakes so violently that I can see her vibrating. The grey plates on her tail slice through the leather armor on his leg and cut across his thigh and knee, exposing muscle and bone.

Blood sprays when she rips through the Guard’s jugular veins, shredding his neck. Bits of flesh start flying soon after, when there’s little blood left in his body and all the gashes have left the Guard’s skin too broken up to remain intact as Astra continues to slash at him.

I close my eyes for just a moment, too dizzy to make sense of what’s going on and head spinning far too much to truly make sense of what’s going on.

Through a haze, I hear a commotion, then seven words, gruff and irritated and snarled.

“The actual fuck is going on here?”