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Where was I?
Another stab. Searing pain radiated from my side. I tried to scream, but my voice didn't work. I forced my eyes open, squinting against the blinding sun. And there it was — its korra twisted and dark. It perched on my stomach, sharp beak digging into a bright red wound in my side.
They'd been wrong.
There was no twisted mage in this region. No violent uprising.
The carnage had been caused by this horrific, untamed relic.
Its silver feathers bristled, and the beast's milk-white eyes rose to meet mine, tilting its blood-stained head as its talons gripped into my stomach through my clothes. Then it opened its beak and —
"Kaiya — Kaiya. Can you hear me?"
Silk. Heat. Tea — the scents of Jaiel flooded my mind, and a familiar fire tugged in my chest, somehow cocooning me from the desert air and permeating scents of death.
"Kaiya, it's okay. You're okay. I need you to wake up. We need you." Jaiel's voice whispered in my mind as a familiar warmth spread through my chest, and the images of Karemi faded away, replaced again with Jaiel's concerned blue eyes.
He lifted his palms from my face. But that comforting heat remained, drowning out the fear, the anger, and everything else.
I drank in that look of confidence and trust in his eyes.
Through the snarls and growls and crashing of battle, a woman's scream sent chills through me.
I looked to my left as the woman in the apron from earlier fell to the ground, her lifeless eyes staring at me. A wolf with blood dripping from its teeth leaped from her side and onto another wolf. In the distance, I could hear more screams.
Stumbling to my feet, I took in the surrounding scene.
Hundreds of shifters, both in wolf and human forms, fought, biting and tearing at each other, oblivious to the corpses of their friends and families at their feet.
It was Karemi all over again.
The same relic was driving these shifters mad, and they would kill each other until no one was left. My gaze lifted to the rafters, and I clenched my fist as my eyes met the milky white eyes from my nightmares.
The Karemi Relic stared down at me, feathers glinting in the light — too far to reach as it relished in the chaos it caused.
My side ached with a phantom pain.
CAAaaaAAAwwwwW!
I clenched my fists and waited for the blinding rage to return, but my mind remained clear.
"Princess! I could use your help over here! I'd prefer not to be your mate's next meal!"
I spun to see Jaiel fighting off Tye's wolf with a single sturdy pole, and my stomach lurched.
"How'd you wake me?" I asked, dodging several fighting wolves as I ran to his side.
"For once, it seems my charisma might be of some use," he said, slamming a long wooden stick into Wolf-Tye's side. "You had some already and it just kind of reached out for mine. Then you were back — awake and normal."
His gaze met mine as I reached his side, blue eyes running over me intently, as though needing to confirm I was alright.
It had worked. The unstoppable relic was not quite so unstoppable ...
Hope filled me as I focused on the group of wolves turning their attention to us.
"Can you do it again?" I broke off a pole from one of the displays, and shot one more glance up at the relic.
It let out a furious cAAAaaaaWWwwWw, and I gritted my teeth.
