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Watching his scarred arm dripping blood takes my soul into a death grip. I open my mouth to encourage him, to assure him, but I’m out of options, and we all know it.
“Retreat to that trench!” I shout, pointing to a narrow valley that’s evenly cloaked by surrounding hills.
And as Warrose looks at me with raised eyebrows, I silently communicate to him that we have no other plays here. We have to stay and fight. We can’t keep running.
His Adam’s apple stretches over the length of his throat as he bows his head to me. Understanding that…this is it. This is where we die. Together.
My only regret is that I don’t get to know Skylenna the way I am supposed to. I don’t get to hear her laugh the way I can almost hear an echo of it in my memory. I don’t get to hold her one last time. I don’t get to remember what it was like to love her.
Diving into the muddy, slimy trench, Marilynn breaks off the arrow logged in Niles’s shoulder. He holds his brave face intact, fighting the urge to wince and cry out.
We fight them trickling in one by one. A Blood Mammoth rakes its unnaturally long, yellowed nails across my chest before I open its chest. Warrose bashes in the skulls of two more soldiers, Marilynn takes a knife to the cheek, withstanding fresh blood seeping down the side of her face before breaking the man’s neck.
And Niles shields Ruth’s body with his own, shivering against the trickling rain and flood of entrails being dumped around us with each kill.
I lose my ring sword after throwing it across the trench to behead a Blood Mammoth that makes a beeline for Niles. He nods his thanks, and I reach into my belt for another weapon. My fingers brush something jagged, like a dusty rock.
My stomach does a flip as I speculate if it’s what I think it is…
I pull it out of the pocket it rests in, examining the ash-colored stone in my palm.
Shades were once fae or elves. They turned into dark, vengeful spirits that haunt these lands.
My conversation with Qilan, one of the elders from the Nightamous Horde.
That is a shade stone. The only object that can call to them. So, if you should ever find yourself in dire need of help, rub the stone until flecks of ash and dust float into the wind.
He gave this stone to Skylenna and me.
And help will come.
Whether I believe in that mythology or not, I witness my family being cornered by an entire army. Warrose is soaking with sweat, rain, and gashes pouring out blood. Marilynn fights more soldiers than she can handle.
Skylenna, if you can hear me…I need help. I need you.
And I rub the stone.
65. The Shade Storm
Warrose
“What are you doing?” I yell to Dessin after stabbing a soldier in the eye.
He’s just standing there. Marilynn and I are holding up the line alone. And Dessin is standing among the bodies holding something small in his hands. He rubs his fingers over it.
“Help us!” I shout again.
Dessin finally looks up at me with a cloud of black dust traveling in a vortex around him.
“I am,” he says.
That ominous cloud travels high, cutting through the hail and rain, polluting the atmosphere overhead. There are whispering words of vengeance that spiral through the entity, carrying a weight of hatred and venom.
The fighting slows down as the soldiers look up to the sky, afraid to breathe in the thick substance flying through the air. And the attack isn’t normal, it isn’t human. It’s supernatural as shadowy figures shoot out from the funnel of smoke, scampering toward our enemies in a feral attack. They slice through soldiers and swamp dawpers alike, moving the fight away from us as we scramble to understand what the fuck Dessin has done.
“I called for help,” Dessin explains, which doesn’t actually explain anything at all.
I hook my weapon on my belt as I lift Ruth from Niles’s arms to further retreat back. She quivers against my slippery skin, gripping the back of my neck as she kisses my cheek.
