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His chuckle is cut off, stopped too early with a loud popping sound. An egg cracks against concrete. The dark river of blood that spills from his scalp down the side of his face leaves us both momentarily immobile.
What?
Aurick’s radiant aqua eyes seem to short-circuit, losing focus, then return back to me with nothing but foggy confusion.
“Was I hit?” he asks absently.
“I-Aurick…I…” Shooting my startled glare over his shoulder, the general drops back to the ground with his war hammer coated in a few strands of black hair and blood. He got one last hit. Aurick…he shouldn’t have turned his back on him.
From here, there is only one sound that punctures the symphony of howling, feral animals, and the gory sloshing of war at its peak. Marilynn screams, and it’s a hacksaw to my chest. That singular cry stretches like hot lava through my trembling frame, blackening my insides. It wakes me up from a brief paralyzing shock, and I reach for Aurick’s shoulders as I stand before him.
“W-was I hit?” he asks again. And the confusion in his rapid blinking gaze twists my face at the start of an ugly cry.
I nod slowly. “Yeah, man.”
“Charles didn’t deserve it.” Aurick trains his eyes on me with a moment of lucidity. “I’m sorry, Niles.”
A lump forms in my throat as Marilynn sprints with high knees through the gooey swamp, grabbing Aurick’s midsection as he slowly loses his ability to stand. I help take on his weight, never breaking eye contact as the shock tightens its claws around his mind.
“I-I can’t feel anything,” he stammers.
That blood just keeps gushing, forking paths into his left eye, along the bridge of his nose, drizzling into his parted mouth. And I don’t know why, but I try to wipe it away for him. I try to clear his vision and make him clean again.
Marilynn presses her fist to her mouth to stifle her sobs.
“Don’t be sad.” His eyelids drift down, then snap back open. “I’m sorry.”
The red-headed beauty doesn’t ask what he’s sorry for. It seems she already knows.
Aurick is quiet for a long moment, shivering in the chunky water coming to my thighs as we sit among the ash that floats down like tears, and the screaming of dying souls that spreads through the barren land.
His clammy, pallid hand reaches for mine in a rushed movement. And his lips tremble as he pins me with a stare that captures every ounce of my attention.
“Take care of them.”
Those wintery eyes, bloodshot and glossy, go lax in their sockets. They don’t blink as they stare into the rain. Because there is no longer a spirit behind them.
Aurick Demechnef is gone.
67. That Old Serpent Called The Devil
Skylenna
The Stormsages make up for the fact that Dessin and I have stopped fighting.
Marilynn’s cries break our concentration and send us pivoting in her direction. She’s kneeling in front of Niles, hunched over and trembling. Why would she be crying? Did someone…
“Dessin,” I blurt out in terror, praying we haven’t just lost one of our own. “Niles! Is it Niles?”
Dessin is tall enough to stare into the distance over the war and fire and pools of blood around us. His war-stricken eyes quickly flick back to me, and he shakes his head. Although his reaction isn’t severe enough for it to be someone in our family, it still holds a certain crushing weight. I push through the massive cluster of men and women, bumping into thrusting elbows, dropping bodies, and moving carriages. Finally standing in a clearing close to the bald cypress tree, it’s clear who Marilynn is hunched over. I lose my breath at the sight of him.
Aurick Demechnef lies against her lap, not moving, not breathing, not blinking. His silky ebony hair is sopping wet with blood, and Niles is reaching over his limp frame to close Aurick’s eyes. I feel hollow and in disbelief at the thought of his chest no longer moving.
Though there are many disastrous memories of this man, he was still my friend in that blizzard. He brought me closer to the love of my life by getting me a job at Emerald Lake Asylum. He was there when I had no one else, regardless of his ulterior motives.
I feel my lungs sag into my chest as I look through the fog at the leader of Demechnef, now fallen. Dessin appears at my side, silent and staring, too, like he also needed that moment to process the gravity of who we have lost.
“Dessin!” Warrose runs to us, using his bladed whip to cut through the crowd ambushing him. He’s pointing to a location off in the distance. “Dessin, look!”
