The noise comes seconds later, distant at first and unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
The earth presses the answers into my mind.
Tires.
Engines.
The low snarl of machines built to carry weapons and the humans who operate them.
I push through a tangle of brush just enough to see through the shifting branches. A convoy barrels toward the base, massive armored vehicles kicking up clouds of dust in their wake. Their engines roar loudly enough to mask the screams tearing through the sky.
Humans hang from the edges with their shouldered weapons and helmets.
I freeze as one soldier climbs onto the top of the lead vehicle, movements swift and certain as he hoists something long onto his shoulder.
The earth forces the word into my mind just as it catches the light from the sun.
A missile launcher.
My heart stops as someone shouts, “Fire toward the wolves, now!”
A sharp burst of light fires from the launcher, and I can do nothing but watch.
My lungs seize, body frozen in place from my fearand helplessness. The impact is muted by distance, but I feel its impact through the shockwave that runs through the ground.
I force my eyes shut as a new sound echoes on the breeze, as if it purposefully needs me to hear.
The screams of the wolves are ripped from their throats in broken, splintered howls that scrape against my bones, like they’re trying to bury themselves beneath my skin.
The earth wails and I dig my nails into the ground as the machines in front of me continue to roll toward Torryn’s faction.
A raw, primal shriek pulses from the soil and surges upward through my knees, my spine, and into my skull, until the inside of my mind is nothing but pain.
There are no words or thoughts. Only that grief and agony, reverberating through me.
The forest tilts and swims around me, light bending at the edges of my vision as the scream becomes all-consuming.
Make it stop.
My breath falters, and it feels like the ground splits wide beneath me as I fall into the depths of it.
I’m adrift in the dark of my mind, untethered from the battle, from the forest, from the tremble of the earth beneath my knees. The world slips away as echoing voices rise from somewhere in the dark.
“Place the tether where the tipping point is strongest. Let the continent that stoked the fire be the one to face her judgment.”
“No legacy. No name. No future.”
My mouth opens, but no sound escapes as pain surges through my skull again–this time blinding and raw, enough to split me open from the inside. The scream catches in my throat, thick and burning, while light behind my eyes pulses brighter, flickering like stars in the night sky.
Tears spill down my cheeks, cutting through the cold that seeped into every part of me. I feel their warmth but can’t reach to wipe them away as the voices consume me again.
“She’ll find love, you know. Even without memory. The weaver is meant to seek out light in the darkness, if there is hope to be found.”
“If she does find love, let us hope she can say goodbye to it.”
The pressure rises, sharp and unbearable, until it finally breaks and I’m left gasping like I’ve crested from water determined to drown me.
In the hush that follows, everything I’ve been searching for comes wafting back to me.
