Page 34 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

My body smacks onto the hard snow with a thud.

I would roll if it wasn’t for the pair of legs that my spine strikes against, legs so solid that it’s not unlike being thrown into a pair of marble pillars.

Those pillars are knocked out of place.

The black of leather topples over me, then crashes into the snow at my side. Aled grunts a word of sheathed curses, then throws me a wicked glare.

I blink on that feral look he gives me.

Stunned, I peel my body from his, our arms untangling, and I roll onto my side.

I glance up at the grey mist swirling above us, like rolling thunder clouds, snow disturbed.

All around me, ahead of me, dark fae rise from their falls. Some are crouched in the debris of tree bark and exploded brushwood, arms are crossed over heads, braced against the pistoning branches that hail down on us as furiously as a storm’s rain.

But this is no storm.

This is a planned attack. An offense. A symphony of explosives erupting all over the snowfield at once.

The litalves planted explosives, concoctions of blasts and flames, all around the clearing. Buried under the snow, hidden in the burrows of the treelines, and the dark fae at the front of the line triggered them.

Smart. Smart to plant the bombs down the treelines bordering the glade—because now, those splintered trees and spearing branches rain down on us with more brutality than any arrow attack could ever.

I watch heads decapitate from their bodies, lances of nature spear into legs and pin down their victims, I watch dokkalves smeared with tarry blood rip out jagged stones from their limbs.

For too long, I do that… just watch the destruction.

I’m knocked out of my daze abruptly.

Beside me, Aled shoves up from the snow. His shoulder knocks into my shoulder blade, hard enough that I’m shoved out of his way.

I flop onto my front.

My glare follows him as he runs into the mist of smoke and snow. Then my teeth bare in a grimace as a sword of a blasted tree—thicker than my fucking thigh—lances straight through his chest.

His legs buckle.

Impaled by a splintered, coarse spike.

My mouth twists at the sight of it. At the sound of the hollow moans I hear all around me as more and more dark fae are struck.

An inky spray of blood spatters all over the crisp snow.

The smoke is a thunderous rolling cloud that consumes the snowfield now. Visibility is snuffed out, swallowed by this smoky beast that’s thick with debris and fragments of flesh and bones, the wreckage of dark fae too close to the explosives.

Too close for them.

Perfectly close for me.

I was at the rear of the unit. Their bodies blocked the explosions from mine.

Discounting the promise of a bruise swelling over my ribs, I remain unharmed. And that will stay true as long as I stay down.

Floored, I stay flattened on my front, wrists crossed at the back of my head.

I ride it out.

My chin is lifted from the snow, my gaze angled to swerve the chaos, hearing the ragged moans and vicious snarls pummel through the smoke.

The others were close to me, surrounding me, when the attack struck. So I am fast to find Daxeel through the smoke.

His knees are dug into the snow, his body crouched, as though he’s about to push up—but he stays where he is. Same thoughts as mine. Stay down, ride it out.

Behind him, Mika is curled into a ball of steel, arms crossed over her head.

But I can’t see the others. Whether the air is too thick, the visibility too thin, or it’s that they have been blown to pieces and are now scattered around the summit in lumps of flesh and bone and blood, I don’t know. But I see no sign of Dare, of Rune, of Samick.

Through the thrumming echo in my head, dizzying me, I hear the distant booming song of war shouts. They rise up like the calls of the dead, coming from all over.

The dizziness sways me.

I push up onto all fours.

I see them.

Light fae, warriors of the sun, of Licht, unearthing themselves. Literally unearthing from the deep snow bordering the Mother Stone.

They buried themselves—and waited for the explosives to go off.

Now, they are rising, rising, until they become a smear in the distance, like brown wisps of violent brushstrokes over the snow.

They stand between us and the Mother Stone.

I can’t wrap my mind around it.

For a moment, I fix my stunned stare ahead, through the clearing smoke and ash, and I go over it again and again. It wasn’t the treelines they hid in. They did not bide their time in the branches, the dead leaves, in the frosty bark. Didn’t even hide behind the Mother Stone.

My folk buried themselves in the fucking snow.

That is commitment.

That is… desperation.

That word hums through me, deep enough to burn my eyes with tears.

My folk are desperate.

Metal winks at me from far across the snowfield. Silver and chalk and steel—lifted swords, daggers and knives… from both sides, the litalves and the surviving dokkalves.

The final, harrowing shout of war reverberates through the mountain like the quake that struck on the crevasse, the last call before the smear of brown leathered warriors breaks free from the horizon.

They come at us.

They bring us the final battle.

And I decide, now, on my knees in the snow, that there is no us . Not now, not anymore.

I do not stand with the dokkalves.

I do not stand with the litalves, either.

But I do not stand for only myself.

I am for the light, because I am of the light.

My folk are desperate.

And now, so am I.

I push up to stand. My legs are uneasy beneath me, but they hold firm enough that I stagger to a stand.

The ash, the smoke, the disturbed snow—it has settled. Not dispersed, it is now a smog draped over the snowfield.

Denser by the moment, darker with each explosion that shuddered the summit, I can hardly make out Mika and Daxeel anymore, and Aled’s impaled body is vanished to my eye.

I can use this.

Invisibility.

I don’t run straight ahead, into Daxeel’s line of sight.

I stumble to the left. I take cover in the smog.

“Nari!” Daxeel’s voice strikes me like a sword. “ Nari ?!”

The panic lacing his call is enough to thicken my throat. There’s sincerity in it. Concern for my life. A fear bubbling to the surface.

Again, his shout splinters through the smog. “Nari, where are you?”

My face twists with a pained grimace, and my mouth thins shut. Still, I stagger onwards, I trek through the torn snowfield—away from his call. Because it is only evate, not love that fuels his panic.

It is dedication to his mission that has him seeking me.

Distant, I hear the faint calls of another. “Heartbreaker!”

Dare is far. His shout comes from the right, beyond Daxeel’s.

I trip over a torn limb, a leg without a body. My boots are quick to stumble, to catch my balance before I can fall, but they fail—and I crash down on my knees with a thump.

Again and again, Dare and Daxeel call out for me. It will not be long before they come looking for me.

Knees pushing into the thick snow, I keep low to the ground and feel along the meat of my thigh, up to my hip.

Some weapons are gone from their place on my belt. Grooved and leathered handles of knives and daggers, that is what should press against the palm of my hand. Instead, mostly I feel the contour of my hip, the dip of my waist, and the tear of my trousers right where the arrowhead sank into me.

Sheathed in the belt, I have one throwing star nicking into the flesh of my palm and the hilt of a short knife grooving over my thumb.

The breath that slumps me is somewhere between a dismayed sigh and prepared huff. Two weapons aren’t enough.

And yet, they have to be.

I push into a crawl.

Head down, I keep myself on all fours. My movements are slow and creeping through the smog. The raw skin of my hands slips over pools of tar—pools of black blood, freshly spilled, warm to the touch.

I don’t stop, not for the bodies of fallen dark ones, the ones motionless, or the ones that stir and moan.

Ahead, deep into the smog, maybe beyond to where the air is clear and crisp, with only the mountain’s mist to distort sight, gravelled, hollowed war cries lift up.

A different war cry. A call that comes from the chest, not the throat. A harrowing sound—that I know to be of the dark warriors, the ones that survived.

I cringe against it, that booming song scraping and clawing all around me.

I hunch into myself—and hear the thundering bootfalls stampede the snowfield.

The dokkalves charge.

The punishing vibrations of their boots shudder the snow. The earth rumbles under their siege—and the litalves rush to meet them in battle.

I pause at the slump of a body.

A quick scan of his face, and I see that he has found his life in the beyond. Slack, eyes glazed and staring above at nothing. I do not know this face, he is unfamiliar to me.

But I know how he died.

The gaping hole in his middle.

Too much blood pours out of him.

I turn my cheek to the sickening tar pooling on the ground, melting away the snow.

I clamber over his corpse.

I crawl for the battle.

For the first time since I came falling down to this mountain, I head towards the light warriors.

Each one of them will attempt to stop me.

My own kind will cut me down before I can reach the Mother Stone and fall to my knees.

Because every single litalf here on this snowfield, on the mountain’s summit, knows that it is too great a risk to let me pass, no matter my intentions.

“ Narcissa —”

My insides bolt.

Hands buried in the snow, numb, I loosen a shuddered breath.

“Narcissa.” The whisper is close. Too close, as though a hand might reach out of the smoke any second now and snatch me up whole.

I freeze.

Eyes swerving around the wisps of grey, the flickering dark spots like shadows moving in the distance, I am pinned in place.

“Narcissa, I can smell you.” The hushed impatience teeters on annoyance. But the voice whispers .

It does not shout as the others do, Daxeel and Dare still calling my name across the snowfield, some distance behind. They will start hunting me now. Realise that I do not answer, that I ignore, and Dare will be quick to find me in the smoke.

The whisper returns, closer now, just a reach away, “Nari, I won’t harm you.”

The relief of the promise is a raspy breath from my cold, blue-tinted lips. “Rune… I’m here.”

Not a heartbeat passes before I feel the air shift at my side. I swerve my frozen gaze to the leather-wrapped warrior, too muscular, too large, towering over me.

I blink on him once before he drops to a knee.

Rune’s familiar cat eyes gleam like yellow fireflies in the dust. He hisses with such hushed urgency that I almost think it a trick of the ears. “Take this.”

The beige hue of his hand flicks through the air. He tosses something at me, and I can hardly see it through the smoke clouding me, but I swipe at it all the same.

It knocks against my fingertips, flesh and stone colliding—and topples onto the snow. I slap my flattened hands on the snow and smear them around, until…

Cool stone, cold enough to bite through the rawness of my flesh, but a different cold to the snow. It’s the sort to prickle my skin with pimples and curl my shoulders. It’s otherworldly.

I scoop it up and bring it closer to my squinting eyes.

Hard to make out much of anything in the smog, but this is the exception. In my palm, it’s not just easy to see, but to feel as well.

The gloss of a small stone glimmers in my splayed hand, a stone with an oval gap in its centre.

Dragon eye.

An anchor.

The strike of it is a sensation humming down my bones—then a drop in the pit of my stomach, an anchor hitting the bottom of an ocean.

I stare down at the dragon eye for another beat before I close my fingers around it.

The message is clear.

Without the dragon eye, Mother can suck me into her abyss, consume my soul in the depths of the mountain. And since I am the sacrifice, the dark ones have no need for an anchor in my hand.

Rune giving his anchor to me means something. It means he still has hope that Daxeel won’t go through with it, that he will falter—change his mind. It means Rune suspects I have my own agenda, and he cares enough about me to ensure I won’t fall into the abyss while I chase it.

And if Daxeel does sacrifice me… but I have an anchor… then maybe, just maybe Mother won’t pull me into her abyss.

I lift my gaze to Rune.

Hand outstretched, he flexes his fingers, an impatience in the gesture. “I’ll get you there.”

Instinct draws me to him.

I throw out my free hand, and he grips my wrist, tight.

Rune stays crouched in the smoke.

I push onto my boots and crouch with him.

Keeping low, we move, fast, through the smog. His instincts guide us.

He ducks, I duck.

He stops, I stagger.

He pauses, I falter.

Hand still fisted around the stone, I stuff the anchor into the collar of my sweater as I run.

The cool touch of its gloss slides down to my breastbone, an instantly uncomfortable sensation. The distraction slows my run down, but I need the dragon eye secure on my person—one wrong step and Mother can suck me into the abyss, the place of her forever rest, and all that will keep me on this plane is the anchor.

And I’m getting closer.

I mimic Rune through the thickness of the smoke—until it starts to clear. It doesn’t disperse entirely, but it lessens into wisps and shadows that, with each step, are peeled away layer by layer.

Rune throws a wild glare at me.

The look freezes me on the spot, crouched to the snow.

There’s instinct in it, the look, the flare of his eyes.

Then—

“ Run .”

That is all he says before he whirls around in a blur.

In a heartbeat, his back faces me, and he is blocking an incoming strike from a suddenly appearing litalf and his descending sword.

Rune throws up his own sword just before he can be struck. The clash of metal is a force violent enough to push the pair apart with staggering steps.

That’s the moment I make a run for it.

The litalf is distracted by Rune.

And Rune gives me passage.

I bolt out of the smoke—and into the clear, motionless air of the battle.

A blend of black and brown leathers clash over the crisp snowfield. Blood of crimson and ink blend into streams and trails, tangled.

The last stand of the litalves, the last fight of the dokkalves, and it costs heads, decapitated and rolling over blood pools, limbs that whack into my side, thrown from their bodies. A stray sword spins through the air.

I throw myself to the ground before it can hit me.

It whirls above my head a mere heartbeat after I’ve landed on the snow. I cringe with a hollow sound escaping from between my frosted, chapped lips.

The sword strikes the leg of a litalf—and I jerk back with a cry. The litalf must have advanced on me from behind, out of the smog, and I didn’t see him coming.

The sword is my saviour.

It sinks into his thigh—and gives me enough of a moment to roll onto my boots, then rush through the battle.

It’s not a straight line ahead.

The short distance between me and the Mother Stone is blocked by littered battles. I duck the cuts of weapons, dodge strikes and blows, stagger around raised kicks and falling bodies.

I scamper around the fights—until a fist collides with my spine and I’m thrown to the ground.

Facedown, I choke on a wheeze. My legs squirm on the snow, frail, a strangled ache in my chest.

I shouldn’t hear the steady crunching of the snow beneath the advancing fae, the one who struck me, floored me, now advances on me with casual steps. A methodical pace.

This fae knows he has me.

His arrogance will be the death of him.

I have something left in my arsenal.

Lifting my chin from the snow, I suck in a deep, swelling breath—then release it in a rattling cry, “ Heeeelllp !”

Ice and gold are fast to whirl around me.

Like a gust of air striking me, then swirling around in a clashing combination of warmth and cold, I feel them join me. Surround me.

I flip onto my back.

And I see them.

Dare moves in a twist around me, and the golden flaked ateralum dagger cuts through the air. His blade takes the throat of the advancing litalf with it. I hear it slap to the snow a heartbeat before the body crumples.

I sit up… and see Samick shuddering through space, a movement like nothing I have ever seen. His movements are fast, they are disjointed, here one second, gone over there the next.

Mika is slower, but still hot on his heels, barrelling out of the smog.

My cry for help drew them in. Located me. And like good hounds, they came.

More follow.

Dark fae from all over bleed closer to me, boots sliding over snow, backstepping, until at least a half-dozen surround me. Protect me…

Protect me, protect the sacrifice, protect Daxeel.

All to bring victory to the darkness.

I use it to my advantage.

Slowly, the circle of protection grows in numbers, the circle of warriors that have their backs to me, staring down the advancing litalves.

Movements are slow around me now, methodical and cautious. Eyes swerve, sizing up their opponents.

But I look over at the Mother Stone.

So close.

But with all these warriors around me, it’s never seemed farther away.

I need the fights to break out, now.

I need them all distracted, light and dark, so I can make my move.

But before anything happens, anything at all, the lift of a sword, the shout of war, Daxeel finds me.

“ Nari !” His voice booms through the snowfield—so loud and thunderous that it should strike the earth with a quake.

But then the whispers of the shout are echoes in my chest, a flurry… and I realise, Daxeel did not shout my name at all.

It came through the bond.

My breath falters.

Frenzied, I spin around and fall onto my bum.

My glare finds him—ocean eyes in pools of blood, honeyed skin in white, dead earth.

Daxeel stands at the edge of the smog.

His shadows lash around him, peeled back like spider legs that threaten to spear anyone who gets close.

But his gaze is pinned on me.