Page 102 of Forged in Fading

One. Two. Three rapid rasps, and Alvara rolled through mud and dirt to her feet. She crafted an ice shield and plunged deep into her magic. A wave of frozen shards soared toward her attacker. A gurgle. A thud.

Alvara averted her gaze from the twitching body paces away and snatched her spear from the wet ground. Fire flickered at the edges of her view—a Valonian wielder hurling fireballs at a familiar wooden structure.

The chiefs.

She ran, hurling snow and ice to suppress the flames endangering those still inside. A Nyrian elf stood near the building, arms crossed and face full of joy as if the Valonian’s roaring blaze was his definition of beauty. Alvara chained his feet to the ground with ice, but he shifted into a brown and white owl, slipping free of her magic and flying away.

It was him. The owl she had seen in the town day in and day out, the one that had witnessed every meeting. He had brought every bit of information back to King Einar⁠—

An invisible weight slammed into her, and she crashed to her hands and knees. Her spear was too far to reach, and another shield only evaporated under the weight of a searing blaze. She stabbed her dagger over her shoulder.

Vitharen be with me.

Metal sank into soft flesh. A warm body collapsed on top of her, soaking her back with hot blood and pinning her to the ground. Gods damn it. She dragged herself forward, fingernails sinking into the earth, and climbed out from under her latest victim. She staggered, grabbed her spear, and gulped the putrid air.

Corpses littered the street like garbage, most of them human.

Not so long ago, Alvara had prided herself on forging weapons. Now, she forged fadings. Time dissolved into nothing but blood and bone as she moved through the town. Boden was nowhere to be seen, and she mouthed a prayer for his safety and that of her friends as she drove her spear into the heart of yet another elf.

She wished she could say she remembered every life she took, but that would be a blatant lie. The faces, the pain—it all blurred into a meaningless jumble of sight and sound she couldn’t comprehend. Rage gutted her from the inside out with every innocent, faded soul she stumbled upon. It helped fuel her even as her magic threatened to give out.

After hours or days, the guttural yells of battle morphed into the keening wails of loss.

Alvara slumped to the ground and let her spear slip from her grasp. Her hands had bathed in burgundy blood, caked in the drying evidence of the elves she had killed.

So many faded, and for what? Those in the battle of Ilmanir had chosen to fight, but here, this, it was slaughter of the ugliest kind.

Every wound and bruise started to pulse, the tide of numbness ebbing away in the face of pain. Wings flapped in the distance, but Alvara couldn’t even bring herself to look toward the animal or shifter responsible. She had nothing left.

A soft hand settled on her shoulder, a drop of kindness in a desert of carnage.

“Alvara.” Kat’s voice shook, and Alvara buried herself in her embrace. Violent shudders racked her body, but her friend held on, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her back.

Oh gods, her friends.

She ripped herself free and searched Kat’s face for any sign of grief. All she found was a pair of hazel eyes as hollow as her insides. “The others?”

“They’re all alive, somehow. The blacksmith took Pyry to safety. Aurilena held up pretty well, and so did Rav. But Boden, well, he protected the chief and was badly injured⁠—”

No. “Where is he?” Alvara’s chest tightened. She forced her palms into the dirt to steady herself. He had to be all right.

“The chief’s meeting hall, but⁠—”

Alvara shot to her feet, stumbling on unsteady legs. Boden. What if the injuries were too much? What if he…

She choked on a sob. The charred exterior of the chief’s hall was the only thing she could see as she pushed past anything and anyone in her way.

Alvara arrived in the hall and scoured every face for the one that might remind her to breathe. Where was he? If she was too late⁠—

“Alvara?”

Tears welled in her eyes. She sagged, gripping a nearby table to keep her knees from buckling. Alive. He was alive.

Boden sat, propped up against a wall, surrounded by Lilja and his mother while a healer tended to the gruesome claw mark marring his skin from neck to navel. Blood seeped from the jagged wound that had ripped his tan skin apart, drenching it in a heart-stopping crimson.

They only had a handful of Elan elves gifted with healing. If they had chosen to help him, he had to have been in danger of fading.

Tremors started in her fingers and spread through her limbs, shaking every part of her body. She backed into the nearest wall and drove her hands into the coarse wood. Tiny slivers poked through her skin, and the light prickle of pain grounded her.