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ONE
Asha
How do you pick which day is the worst one of your life when there are so many strong contenders?
Until now, I assumed it was the day my village was overrun by enemies and my pack members were either slaughtered or taken by the Blood Mages. The day I witnessed the brutal death of my mother and heard the screams from my sister as she took her last breath. Yet, as I stand in a blood-drenched street surrounded by shadows as dark as night, I consider today the worst day.
The day my brother said, “Like everything else that’s weak, you must die.”
An unnatural wind stirs, lifting the scents of coppery-blood and death to my sensitive nose. I stand, frozen, my mind racing as every hair on my body stands on end. In the wake of the massacre, one thing has kept me going. It was the hope that I might reunite with the remnants of my pack. A hope that we might reassemble the pieces of our shattered lives and fit them back together again. A hope that we could heal together and rebuild.
A hope that I would find my brother, the last member of my family, and save him.
Simon.
But never could I have imagined that I’d see him again, and that it’d be likethis. That he would lose himself to the dark magic and become… something so far from human he’s almost unrecognizable. Something so powerful that he used his magic to swallow an entire town in shadows and has been, apparently, using his magic to kill people to fuel himself.
My older brother. Simon. Like this…
He stands in the middle of the street ahead of me, hand outstretched, gathering magic with which to kill me. I canfeelthat dark magic radiating from his spell deep within my soul, including the deadly nature of it. My brother isn’t messing around. If that strikes me, I’m gone.
I watch tendrils of purple light, drawn from the air, feeding the orb held in his palm. The orb crackles, promising a slow and painful death. In that moment, the thought comes again that today is, in fact, the worst day of my life. And as it so happens, probably also the last. The hope, the glue that held my heart together, has been torn apart by Simon’s venomous words. “Like everything else that’s weak, you must die.”
I hold up my hand, preparing an attack of my own, but a veil of tears blurs my target.He’s your brother,a little voice repeats. And despite what he’s become, that fact hasn’t changed. Just like the fact that I know I could never kill him.
Even if not doing so means the death of me.
Simon tilts his forehead towards me, his brow nearly eclipsing his eyes while a vicious grin carves across his face. “Weak,” he repeats in a sonorous voice.
If not wanting to kill the last person I love makes me weak, then he’s right.
My arm drops to my side, the magic disseminating back into the air. The orb in his fist grows darker, amethyst to plum as the strength builds. He’s going to kill me, but I can’t stop him. Not because my magic is truly that weak, but because I can’t be responsible for the loss of another person I love.
Another person. A hundred faces flash through my mind. All dead. Because of me.
Simon has been the light in my dark life that’s kept me going. And now? Without any hope of saving him? I’m done for, either way. Killing him would be killing myself anyway, so I’m not only not going to kill him. I’m not going to stop him from what he’s doing.
There’s nothing left in me to fight this, and nothing left for me to fight for.
I can feel the energy gathered in his hand like the pull of a black hole. Simon pivots one leg back, then joins his hands together in preparation to launch his assault.This is it, it’s all over. Relief and terror and sadness swirl together in a confusing mix that envelops me.
But then a dark form lunges from my periphery, a furry blur that pounces on Simon and sends him to the ground, the violet orb misfiring in the chaos. I hear its deafening hum as it zooms past on a collision course with the corner store behind me. An explosion sounds, shaking the ground, and I leap from the avalanche, rolling towards safety, as debris showers the road with chunks of brick and mortar.
Lying on the ground, shocked and confused about the change of events, a familiar scent pierces the smell of death and decay pervading the town. It transports me to a cedar forest, fresh with morning dew.
Max.
I’d forgotten he was here in this cursed town with me. But now, the idea of him here with my brother makes my head spin. Max wants him dead. Simon wants all of us dead.
I need to do something.
Rising back onto my feet, I look over and realize what I’d already suspected. Simon’s attacker is Max in wolf form. The brown wolf’s jaw snaps at Simon’s face, but Simon holds him back. I watch, frozen on the sidelines, as slick, black tentacles slither out from Simon’s stomach to garrotte Max.
Just as one reaches for Max’s throat, a second wolf, a black one, leaps from the foggy city, sinking its teeth into the oily appendage.Braxton. Two wolves battle against the writhing limbs of Simon’s pitch-like extension, a powerful goo that seems unaffected by their claws and teeth.
Help them, cries a voice within, but my legs are bolted to the sidewalk for some reason. I can’t move, no matter how loud the call to save them. It feels like a night terror, pinning me down while the horror unfolds.
Wake up, Asha, wake up!
