Page 27 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

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Punishing bootsteps chase behind me like lightning strikes.

Thump,

strike,

thump,

strike.

The deafening symphony is rising, a crescendo of death that thrums in my bones. The boot-strikes don’t soften, they only louden; they don’t fall away, they advance .

Faster,

Thump, strike.

Louder,

Thump, strike.

Closer,

Thump, strike.

My breath catches on the icy fear. I feel each particle pierce through my lungs like icicles, aching my insides, pleading with me to stop, to rest.

But I can’t.

I can’t afford to so much as lose my footing on this uneven terrain, to trip the toes of my boots on foliage or arched tree roots, I can’t afford to even look back at the litalf right behind me.

Loose strands of chestnut hair whips at my reddened cheeks as harshly as the winds snapping at me. The whistle of the winds is a high-pitched cry in my eardrums, like the air itself wants nothing more than to disorientate me, to waver me just once—because that’ll be enough for the litalf warrior to close the slight distance between us, between my spine and his swiping hand, fingernails grazing over the fabric of my sweater.

And it won’t be just that litalf who catches me if I trip.

More are chasing.

More are in pursuit.

Dare, Samick, Caius, I don’t know if they follow. I don’t know if they are hunting the very ones who hunt me or if they are stuck back at the woods that border the plateau, fighting for their lives in the death trap I ultimately delivered them into.

I just know that I lead the chase, others follow, and my lungs are on fire.

I grit my teeth against the force of the winds. Hands fisted, like punches to the wind, I race through the gaps between the trees.

I head in the only direction the gods offer me.

I make for the crevasse.

The woods end where the crevasse begins, and the incline is almost entirely vertical, formed of rocks and jagged overhangs and icy floors—and each one drops into the gaps of the earth.

Tears are quick to wet my cheeks.

The contrast of the winds whipping me prickles my skin raw. And still, the tears just fall, little streams of horror that thicken my throat.

I have no other way to go.

Can’t turn and go back.

This is straight ahead.

And I have run myself into a ridge—there is no left or right, each of those directions are ice-sheeted inclines, impossible climbs.

A bite of pain nips me.

The nape of my neck burns with hot blood.

Muscles clamp to my spine.

I feel him.

The litalf, he swipes out for me.

Closer, this time.

Whether it was the kiss of a blade that’s cut my flesh, or the reach of his fingernails, I don’t want to find out.

The cries that shudder me are a blend of panicked heaving, grated breaths, chest-pinned sobs, and pitched cries.

If shame should flood me, it doesn’t, it is delayed.

I weep, I cry, I scream, I shout—for all of Comlar to see. For all the nearby litalves to hear.

For the chaser to be encouraged.

He swipes out for me again.

Fingernails.

At least three scrape down my neck, then hook onto my sweater. My pace doesn’t falter, but the tug of loosened, snapped threads pinches at my back.

His grip is unsuccessful, it isn’t firm or solid enough, and I hear the frustrated grunt from him, just an arm’s reach behind me.

If I hadn’t re-braided my hair, a single slender braid that’s wound into a bun, then he would manage a fistful of it—and that would have snapped my neck back.

That little thing saved my life.

For how long, I don’t know.

It feels very much like I’m on the precipice of death.

It feels very much like my luck has run out.

The sound that rips through me as my boots slam on flattened, cracked rock, the beginning of the crevasse, is a shout. It draws out of me with a panicked determination, then firms into a scream as my knees bend—then I lunge.

I jump for the wall of the incline.

A cliffside of death.

My bare hands smack down on a rock ledge. Just some inches of protrusion from the cliffside, it isn’t enough to stand on—but I hold on tight, my legs dangling above the straight drop down the crevasse.

A shout rips from the litalf.

It’s close, too close, and he takes the jump right after me.

But I am already on the move.

Agility.

Speed.

These are my strengths.

He has jumped right into my skill area.

Swinging my legs, I flip my body aside—and release my grip on the ledge. I fall, swung through the air, and away from the litalf’s landing spot.

His hands smack down on the same ledge I was holding onto just a heartbeat ago. But I land on the sturdy boulders metres away.

I spare him a mere panicked glance before I start to climb.

More rocks protrude from this wall, more boulders for steady footing. I manoeuvre myself around them, slowly, carefully.

I make it two boulders up before a sudden roar thunders through the mountain, the entire fucking mountain , and it rumbles like a beast, disturbed.

The rumble steals every rock and grain of dirt on this godly mountain—and it rattles with the force a fucking earthquake.

The hope is too quick to rise through me.

Is this Mother?

Is she throwing us away?

Are the iilra coming, reaching out through space and time to steal us back, because they just can’t hold on another moment?

No, it isn’t the iilra. I am not taken through a portal. I am firm on this rattling rock as the earth shudders all around me.

Debris rains down on me. Grains of dirt and ice are sprinkled all over my face, getting into my strained, squinting eyes. I clench them shut and turn my cheek, pressing it against the cold burn of the cliffside.

Earthquake…

It must be.

The panic heaves my chest with weighted breaths. My nails dig so hard into the rocks that some snap clean off.

I don’t feel the pain that should sear my fingers—I’m too numb, too frozen by the rumblings of the mountain.

I’m so tucked in on myself that my chin presses to my shoulder and I turn my wide, wet eyes on the litalf…

But he is nowhere in sight.

Not anymore.

I look down to the trembling crevasse. Rocks and gravel bounce off of it.

And I see that the litalf didn’t fall through the cracks to the underground caves and rivers. He landed on the hard rock itself, and now, his limbs are bent and crooked and splayed around his bloody body.

The hum of the mountain threw him off.

Like it’s trying to throw me off.

Still, that debris crumbles from the wall and rains down on me. A knock catches me at the temple, enough to draw blood.

I wince and cringe into the rocks.

“ What the fuck is going on ?” My screech should be carried away in the sharp winds, a whistle that passes too quickly. “ Heeeellp !”

Dare hears my shriek, some distance back, still on the ground. He hasn’t reached the crevasse yet, and his voice is wrought with tension, with supressed grunts and the clash of metal as he shouts back at me—

“ Just fucking go, Nari !”

That’s what I do.

I move.

Every muscle in my body bolts to my bones, an instinct to go rigid against this mountainside, to cling to the stone and rock with all my might. But I fight the urge and, with a guttural groan, reach my hand up to the next trembling boulder—

I climb.

And climb.

And climb.

Some distance down, the song of blades whirs through the frost.

I clench my teeth as the zing grows nearer.

I don’t need to look down to know that it’s another litalf, gaining on me, using blades to scale the crevasse.

The shouts of battle draw closer, and I am certain that the warriors have started to climb.

I throw the thoughts of them from my mind.

It’s me I have to worry about.

It’s my life I aim to protect above all others.

So I slap my hand onto the crusty corner of a glacier ledge. Frost slips against the raw flesh of my hands, but the nails I have left dig into the crevices.

Drawing on every ounce of upper body strength I have left, I lift my weight up onto the ledge and stretch out my leg—I dig my heel into the slippery ice.

And hold.

Arms hugged onto the edge, one leg hooked in place, the other dangles…

One wrong move and I am gone.

If I fall…

The thought burns my insides with sick.

It thickens my throat, because one wrong move … and I fall.

There is no surviving that drop.

Not if I landed on the rocks, not if I went through the gaps and landed in the underground caves and streams and rivers. All of it is a certain death.

I find no scraps of strength in me to move.

Fear has me frozen on the side of the ledge.

My face twists with the onslaught of tears washing over me. And still, that menacing slam and zing of the litalf advancing on me hasn’t faded. He hasn’t fallen away.

I wish him death.

I wish him wrong footing.

Then a burst of panic erupts in my chest.

But it isn’t mine.

My panic screams, it chills my chest, slingshots my heart through my body, thrums my bones, spills my tears—

This panic is an echo, a boom that cascades over me.

My breath hitches.

I tense against the ice, my lashes shut on the shutter of my heart.

Daxeel…

Is it really you?

Gritting my teeth, I angle my chin to graze along the icy ledge. Neck twisted and arched, I manage a glance down the cliff. The crevasse is littered with bloody warriors and the gleams of metal.

The cliff is dotted by contenders scaling after me.

And it’s so far down.

Nausea burns my throat at the sheer heights I cling to— barely .

Five rocks down, the closest litalf slams his blades into the cracks, then propels himself up higher.

Below him, on the overhang, is another light one. This one doesn’t climb.

She crouches.

Her sight is locked onto me, a bow in her hands, an arrow notched and ready to fly.

Panic flares my eyes.

A shuddering breath cuts through me.

But just behind, two stones down, Caius scales the mountainside. Twin ateralum daggers are fisted in his hands, and a smaller blade bitten between his bared teeth.

I watch him for a heartbeat, watch how he uses his own blades, but his limbs spread out wider than the litalf’s, and he moves like a giant spider up the rocks.

The climbing litalf is gaining on me.

But Caius is gaining on him.

But the light female with the bow and arrow…

She releases it.

A gravelled sound crawls up my throat.

I cling to the ice and heave my weight over the edge. I manage just a turn before the arrow spears—

And it strikes me.

My grunts twist into a harrowed cry.

The flesh of my back is shredded, torn.

The arrow pierces clean through my shoulder, speared at an angle, one that spurts and spills dark crimson blood all over the ice I grip onto.

I let my cries choke in my throat. The sobs quiver my chest, but I need to move, I can’t waste seconds on them.

The blood is slicking the ice, it’s warming the glacier surface—and if I let it warm, let it become even a little bit more slippery, I will fall.

I wrap my mouth around my heaving breaths. I pull the reins on them, and with each passing second, that pounding panic in my dizzied head starts to fade.

I ground myself.

I need to, if I want to trust my movements up the cliffside, if I want to trust that my grip won’t slip, my steps won’t slip, and I won’t fall to my death.

That’s what will happen if I slip now. I will plummet to my death—and no one can save me from that.

No one is close enough.

Just as I let the thought pass through my mind, that swell of booming, echoing panic suffocates my chest again like a bad cold.

I cringe against the sensation.

Daxeel’s panic, not mine. I’m certain of it.

I didn’t see him when I dared look just moments ago. And I’m not certain how brave I am to chance another look.

I must keep moving.

That litalf is advancing on me, those blades singing ever closer. I’m certain the female litalf will be notching the next arrow.

I climb up the ice.

My boot slips over the surface. My face twists with pain and fear and tears, and I now decide I loathe every piece, every scrap of my sad and miserable life.

Would it be so bad if I do fall?

Yes.

I do not let the thought consume me or settle longer than a heartbeat. I am worth more than these killers.

I kill only to save myself.

And that makes me better than them.

The guttural cry shudders me as I wrench myself all the way up onto the ledge and scoot closer to the wall of the cliff.

Just in time, too.

The second arrow whistles by—and it lodges into the rock above.

“ Nari !”

My heart catches in my throat.

Back pressed into the cliffside, I stare at the ledge of the ice, at the trails and pool of my blood.

I have lost blood. A lot of it.

And yet I am certain I did not imagine it. His voice. The shout of my name from his tongue.

Daxeel.

“Nari, hang on!”

I don’t get the chance to lean closer to the edge and look.

I don’t get the chance to see Daxeel down there, somewhere, staring up at me, the horror in his face that I can feel in my chest, horror laced with strings of nausea.

That is how I know how ill my fate is… How much blood must be spilling over the side of this ice ledge, how slumped I must be, how fast the litalf is gaining on me.

Still, I cannot move.

I know I must.

But I am just… slumping.

Melting into the frost.

My lashes flutter around blood and ice.

Still, I hear it—an eruption of shouts exploding from the air beneath me, all around me, louder than the trembles of the mountain that still shudder me.

“Caius!”

“Behind you!”

“ Nariiii —”

Dazed, I can only watch as a gloved hand reaches up out of nowhere, then it’s coming down on my neck.

The air is slapped out of me.

A strangled grunt catches in my throat, the foreign hand with a grip tight enough to silence me—

Then I am dragged off the ledge.

My limp body follows the weight of the grip.

And I fall…