Page 37 of Fly to Fury (War of the Alliance #3)
Chapter
Twenty-One
H e drifted within an ocean of darkness, waves of agony crashing over him, threatening to take him down, down, down until he never woke.
He might have opened his eyes. He thought he might have seen a burning aeroplane taking on three others. But he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anything for what seemed like ages untold.
When Fieran finally peeled his eyes open, it was to a smoke-filled sky above and the rays of a still rising sun. He couldn’t see any aeroplanes directly above him, but he couldn’t work up the strength to turn his head to look around.
Pain filled him, so all-encompassing that the exact points didn’t register. When he sucked in a breath, his chest flared with it. His exhale rattled and gurgled. He tasted blood.
He was partially sunken into the mud, the damp shivering through him in a counterpoint to the burning pain.
He should move, shouldn’t he? But he couldn’t seem to find the will, much less the strength.
Fog still clung to the ground. Or perhaps that was the gray of death closing around him. Distant gunfire cracked while deeper booms echoed from the sky and reverberated through the mud beneath him.
He was going to die here. Alone. Half-buried in the mud of a foreign land.
Squishing sounds squashed closer before a man wearing the gray-blue uniform of a Mongavarian soldier appeared out of the fog and halted beside Fieran, peering down at him.
Fieran blinked up at him.
The Mongavarian turned and waved at someone Fieran couldn’t see. “Found him! I thought this was where he fell.”
More squishing came closer before other Mongavarian soldiers clustered around Fieran, standing over him.
All Fieran could do was stare up at them. He wasn’t sure he could even get his mouth to work enough to speak.
“He’s still alive.” One of them poked Fieran’s arm with a toe of his boot.
Fieran squeezed his eyes shut at the rush of pain, unable to fully quash the moan that bubbled within his chest.
“Not for long, it looks like.” One of the others grimaced and gestured at Fieran. “I doubt he’d survive if we tried to get him back to the general.”
Fieran reached deep within his chest. His grip on his magic felt tenuous. Or perhaps that was his life slipping away. Somehow he called up a few tendrils of magic, and they twined around his fingers, sizzling against the mud.
The Mongavarian soldiers shouted, and several of them stumbled back.
One yanked out his service pistol and racked the slide. “Perhaps we should put him out of his misery before he takes out any more of us.”
“A quick death is too good for him.” Another Mongavarian spat. If his spittle landed on Fieran, he was in too much pain to register it.
The soldier pointed his pistol at Fieran, his finger on the trigger.
Fieran peered at the round, black hole of the pistol’s barrel. This was it. He had survived the fall from the sky only to lose his life to a bullet to the head.
He struggled to gasp in another painful, gurgling breath. Not that it mattered. If he didn’t die by a bullet, he’d die from his injuries.
More gunfire, closer now, erupted in staccato bursts.
“Run!” The shout came from somewhere in the fog, followed by the sounds of many boots tromping through the mud at a sprint. Someone in the distance screamed. Another yell. “Elf monster!”
The Mongavarian soldiers whirled to face in that direction, pulling their own sidearms.
A set of running footsteps squashed closer.
The soldier with the gun leveled at Fieran looked away, his pistol’s barrel swinging to point into the fog. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the elf warrior!” another soldier shouted as he raced by without so much as slowing.
More soldiers dashed past. Seeming a horde, though Fieran only caught glimpses. More shouting filled the air, punctuated by ever closer gunfire.
“Took out half the battalion!”
“Run if you want to live!”
A blue glow lit the fog moments before bolts of sizzling magic carved through the air.
Several of the Mongavarian soldiers surrounding Fieran turned and ran. The one who’d pointed his gun at Fieran emptied his clip into the fog in a wild burst. A bolt of blue magic blasted into the soldier, tossing him backward. Fieran didn’t see where his body landed.
With a slash of his twin blades, Dacha stepped from the fog and smoke. Magic crackled down the lengths of his swords and pooled around his feet with every step. His silver-blond hair drifted on a nonexistent breeze while his armor glinted in the rays of the sun breaking through the fog.
Dacha’s gaze dropped to Fieran, and the hard warrior of a moment before shattered, replaced with a twisting pain. He ran the last few paces and crashed to his knees beside Fieran, dropping his swords into the mud at his side. “Fieran.”
Fieran somehow got his mouth open, though he wasn’t sure if the croak that came out was discernible. “Dacha.”
Dacha reached for Fieran, but he stopped short, his hand hovering inches above him.
His gaze swept over him as if cataloging his injuries, and Dacha’s shoulders slumped.
His expression twisted still further, even as the magic arching above them crackled with an increased intensity that Fieran could taste even past the blood coating his tongue.
Dacha was here. He’d come for Fieran. Like he had for every nightmare, every broken bone, every hurt and scrape and terror Fieran had experienced as a child. Whenever Fieran had called, Dacha had always been there.
Pip had done what he’d asked. Despite her fear, she’d fetched his dacha for him.
Everything would be all right now. Fieran felt himself letting go, his eyes slipping shut, words slurring out. “Didn’t want…die alone.”
“You are not going to die, sason.” Dacha rested a hand on Fieran’s shoulder, squeezing with a comforting grip .
His dacha was here. Perhaps he could let go. Embrace that darkness—that rest—lingering at the edges of his mind.
“You will not die.” Dacha gripped Fieran’s shoulder as if he could physically hold Fieran’s soul within his body, his tone a flinty command.
And yet Fieran was drifting, slipping, the pain dragging him away.
Something sparked against Fieran’s shoulder. Not pain, exactly, but his magic rose within him to meet the threat, and he gasped at the rush of something almost like strength that filled him.
He peeled his eyes open again to peer up at his dacha. Dacha’s hand on his shoulder was wreathed with magic. Had he…shocked Fieran with it?
“No, do not, sason.” Dacha gave Fieran’s shoulder a tighter squeeze. “Sink into your magic. Let it fill you. It will sustain you until the healers arrive.”
With fading senses, Fieran reached within himself. His magic was still there, still a well of power so deep he might just drown if he unleashed it fully.
But today was a day for drowning. He sank into those depths, his magic flooding through his veins, crackling in his chest. His vision cleared, his mind sharpened, and even some of the pain faded. He managed to tip his head into the closest thing to a nod that he could make.
A larger shell exploded against Dacha’s magic, the shrapnel shattering before the bolts of power incinerated them.
Dacha looked away from Fieran, and the shield of magic surrounding them strengthened.
More shells slammed into Dacha’s magic, as if the fleeing Mongavarian Army had managed to turn their big guns at their own former encampment in an effort to stave off the elven warrior coming for them.
Magic poured down Dacha’s body, across the ground, and into the shield over their heads, consuming the artillery shells, machine gun fire, and whatever else the Mongavarians sent at them.
Dacha’s grip remained on Fieran’s shoulder, his magic flowing from his hand and over Fieran in a strangely comforting sensation.
The world reduced to just the two of them in the shelter of Dacha’s magic.
Then the shelling paused, leaving a strange stillness behind. Had the Mongavarians given up?
A whooshing sound whistled through the air before there was an explosion more like a pop. A cloud of yellow-green smoke burst above Dacha and Fieran, spreading across the sky. The cloud drifted downward, only partially incinerated by the bolts of Dacha’s magic.
More pops exploded overhead, filling the sky with that strange yellowish-green smoke. As more of it filtered down into their sheltered spot beneath the magic, Dacha coughed.
A burning filled Fieran’s eyes, his nose, his throat. He struggled to draw in another already labored breath, a fierce scorching filling his chest.
What was this? It burned worse than the lye soapsuds he’d once had to do PT in, and amid the stringent chemical smell was something that reminded him almost of pepper and pineapple.
His eyes streaming, Dacha turned to Fieran.
With magic still lacing his fingers, Dacha drew his dagger and sliced off one of his sleeves.
He tucked the fabric over Fieran’s nose and mouth before he sheathed the dagger and returned to gripping Fieran’s shoulder with one hand.
He coughed again and covered his mouth and nose with his elbow.
Fieran sucked in another searing breath through the fabric, not sure if it did any good. Tears streamed from his eyes, his vision blurring even with his magic coursing through him.
The air clouded with the strange smoke as more and more shells exploded overhead. Dacha’s magic shrank into a smaller dome around them, trying to protect them even though he was fighting a gas instead of something he could easily incinerate.
“You…should go.” Fieran struggled to get the words out, his lungs struggling to suck in enough air for even those three syllables.
Fieran was dying. They both knew it. Dacha should save himself so that he could be there for Mama, Adry, Louise, Ellie, and Tryndar. They were going to lose Fieran; they shouldn’t have to lose Dacha too.
Dacha coughed, the sound wetter than it had been before, and shook his head. “No. Help is coming.”