Willow came to lying on her side, her body a symphony of pain. It reminded her of days long past when not even a bare inch of her skin was spared from the pain of existence. Since then she’d had her hands and arms cured to some extent.
It didn’t seem to help now.
Willow moved her head and the world blurred. She was surrounded by rubble; crushed stone blocks larger than a wagon, splinters of wood and bright white metal. There was smoke on the air and the tangy smell of roasting meat. It took effort to remember where she was.
“Leopold,” she whispered, but only heard herself on the left. She’d experienced this before: her right eardrum had blown out. She reached toward a cracked stone block and winced as pain lanced up her arm.
Her arm. The woodsman’s outfit was burned to charcoal and bright red showed through from the wasted bicep beneath. Her hand hadn’t fared much better, scored by flame and shrapnel. Her pinky pointed off in an unnatural direction.
Willow groaned, the pain making her nautious. She retched and what was left of her triple-breakfast of eggs came up on the rubble. She knew what the smell was now, and she wished more than anything that she hadn’t recognized it.
“Leopold,” she grunted again, and pushed herself up with her left arm. Something sticky and hard crackled against the right side of her face and there was a scent of burnt hair. She raised herself up just enough to see over the field of rubble and scanned the bodies.
There were over a hundred bodies, or pieces of bodies, in the mixed rubble. Some had been crushed by stone, others burnt by whatever had exploded. Shrapnel from the gates laid all around her, including lengths of silver chain and shattered bars. She searched for the face she didn’t want to find.
Leopold was there, his legs hidden by a large stone block. He looked like he was sleeping. There was blood seeping down from his hairline and the corner of his mouth.
Willow clenched her teeth and screamed as she pulled herself over the shattered remains of the staging area. Something roared in the distance and she spared a look out of the gaping hole that used to be the reinforced gate.
That thing was there, at the end of the warded tunnel. It crouched low and strained against something invisible above it. As she watched the invisible thing grew red, glowing, then burst. The creature moved forward until it encountered the next invisible obstacle.
It was coming through the warded tunnel.
She had to get to Leopold. Willow gained her knees and crawled until she was at his side. It was only then that she saw just how bad the damage was.
The stone block had fallen on Leopold and his legs disappeared beneath it. There was a small rivulet of blood coming from the seam between the stone and the ground, but there was no space for legs to exist there. He didn’t have them anymore.
Willow moaned in despair and laid her right ear against his chest. She searched for the strong beat of his heart that she’d heard so many nights as they laid together in bed. She listened for the gentle wheeze of his lungs.
There was nothing.
“Willow,” a woman shouted her name. Willow was blinded as the tears flowed freely. She ran her fingers through Leopold’s hair, touched his lips, and wailed.
Someone scrambled over the rocks to her left and strangely she saw Annabelle appear.
“Willow, are you alright?”
“It’s Leopold,” she sobbed. “He…”
Annabelle didn’t even look down. She took Willow’s face between her hands and stared hard into her eyes, then surveyed her burnt arm.
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“Stand. You have to stand.”
“Why,” Willow whispered. “It’s coming. It’s coming.”
“Stop moping, you child,” Annabelle said, and hauled Willow to her feet. Willow screamed at the pain—something cracked on her right arm and she felt a gout of warmth splash from bicep to elbow. But Annabelle wouldn’t let go; she threw Willow’s left arm over her shoulder and made for the gate.
And the crawling thing making its way toward Durum.
“Oh Gods,” Willow gasped, seeing it closer now. It looked almost like a man—a man that had been piteously melted. Its face was like candle wax, one eye drooping down to its chin. It crawled and struggled against the tunnel wards like it was possessed to destroy the city. All the while the purple nimbus crackled and snapped at the air.
“Stand tall Willow,” Annabelle said, and gestured to the creeping doom which still was taking the warded tunnel apart piece by piece. Willow didn’t want to look at the thing; she kept her eyes fixed on Annabelle.
“This is your test.”
“My what?”
“Your test. My mentor, Carl’s mentor, he sent you this… thing. To prove yourself to him. I think Carl knew it was coming, but he never told me. Our master is a harsh instructor who doesn’t suffer mistakes lightly. He has made this creature your test, Willow, and if you do not defeat it, this entire city will burn.”
“W—why me?”
“Don’t you know?”
Willow looked from Annabelle’s stone-serious face back toward the center of the walled city of Durum. Toward the Arcanum at the pinnacle which still shone even though the world was ending down here. Across at the men and women pulling survivors and bodies alike from the rubble of this thing that had blasted apart wood, steel, and silver. Which was now coming for her. For all of them.
“Willow,” Annabelle pleaded, and caught Willow’s gaze. She pointed out at the approaching doom, and Willow reluctantly followed her gesture. It was closer now, barely three hundred feet away, and the air had taken on the tang of an approaching storm. She saw a thin bolt of lightning crackle from its back toward the ground as it burst yet another band of the warded tunnel and made its way forward.
“Because I can,” Willow said, and shifted on the unstable rubble until she faced the broken gateway. The creature paused for a moment, locked eyes with her across the great distance, and there was silence.
It screamed. A high scream like a human’s, but warped as it came through the creature’s throat. It clawed at the earth with too-human hands and tried to pull itself under the warded tunnel, toward her. It was targeting her like the deathworm.
She knew, then, that she had caused this. If some psychopath had sent this thing here because of her, then all of these people were dead because of her. Leopold was dead because of her. Even when she tried to keep him away she couldn’t help but hurt him. And now the city would be doomed.
Willow squared her shoulders and took a breath. Even though her arm was charred and bleeding, she visualized the essence swirling within. Bending her mutilated elbow, she took the stance Carl showed her.
“In, then out,” he said in her memory, her last memory of him, and she filled her lungs to the brim. As she exhaled, she pushed the essence in her arm through her chest and felt the familiar tremolo in her heart.
When the essence reached her left arm, it had doubled in volume. Her arm felt full to bursting with power, but she mingled the essence there with the essence that had come in from her cycle, then took another breath, moving the blob of essence back through her chest.
The pendant around her neck warmed ever so slightly at the passage of the essence, and she felt her heart skip a beat. The essence pooled in her right arm. She blew the air in her lungs out and moved it back to her left.
Every time she cycled, the essence doubled in volume, unlike what Carl had said would happen. Her lungs spasmed at the passage of the essence, but she moved the blob back across again.
There was fear. Yes, there was fear; like there had been in the training room. Fear that she was going to hurt someone, except that there was nobody left to hurt. Carl was dead. Leopold was dead. Annabelle, she could go either way. There was only this city behind her, the Arcanum and everyone supposed to be protected by it who would fall to this crawling terror.
There was nothing left for her to lose.
The creature seemed to realize what she was doing because instead of pushing forward, it anchored itself on the ground and the purple nimbus on its back brightened. Willow could feel the hair on the left side of her scalp raise as the creature did something with its essence. She knew she didn’t have long before it fired.
Willow moved the essence blob back into her right hand and when she raised it to her chest in a spell-form she was surprised to see that her skin was transparent, lit from within. She placed her pointer and middle finger against her chest right below the pendant. It became uncomfortably hot.
She blew out the final breath, swept her fingers forward directly toward the creature, and intoned the concept.
“Scouring flame.”
Fire essence exploded from her fingers in a line through the gate, catching the smoldering wood aflame once again. At the same instant the creature let loose with its attack—a finger-thin bolt of lightning arced from its back through the air, and met Willow’s attack. They warped as they passed each other, then the bolt raced along Willow’s arc of flame and slammed into her full force.
She fell into darkness.