To Save a World Ch. 03

Silver twisted her body, and in one motion was throwing a wide kick with the momentum of her movement. Lydia didn't know bodies could move like that, much less bodies as injured as her friend's, but her kick hit something above her that was thrown into the bushes. Lydia did not have time to feel celebratory, because yet another gray blur was charging at Silver, this time going low, and she cried out as it very distinctly ravaged her leg.

But it looked as though Silver didn't even feel it. The wolf was already bounding away by the time the woman looked, but it was no escape for her powers. The next instant the wolf landed would be its last, as the ground erupted in a monstrous tangle of thorny vines that cruelly trapped the animal.

Lydia realized that she was still holding herself above Aaron, so transfixed with the scene before her that she did not notice her arms begin to tremble from the exertion. She considered going out to help Silver, but her instincts kicked in. She had no way to help. She would just be a burden, and she would most likely cause a lot more grief than she could help.

So she nervously settled back into her nook, dragging Aaron's limp body to hold it tighter against her. A deep feeling of powerlessness overcome her as she watched Silver dodged another assault. She almost looked like she was dancing, her movements sure and precise. She sidestepped, twisting her body at the same movement to avoid an attack aimed once again at her legs. They mostly missed, but the attacks are taking surely a toll on Silver. There was only one of her, but the wolves were numerous, and the simple arithmetic of it would end up with all three of them dead.

Lydia gripped Aaron harder against her body. Wasn't there something she could do? Lydia paused, an idea growing in her head.

Sershe sensed Lydia stir awake, and thanked the spirits that she did not rush out in a panic. That would have made things more impossible than they already are. Suddenly, she had the urge to laugh, even as she once again brushed within inches of death. The wolves seemed to be getting faster, more adept at reading her defense, never letting up. They were patient, too -- there weren't any more rushed attacks like the ones that bought her as twice as much injuries as kills.

Not that they needed to. She knew what the pack was thinking. It was only a matter of time, for her. Why risk it?

Sershe took a sure step, and felt something else instead of even ground. It was the carcass of the wolf she had killed before, and it was her first fatal misstep. Probably her last, too.

So Sershe was falling down. She had tried to regain her footing and withdrew her foot at the last instant to step on solid land, but her weight had already shifted, and it was too late. No way to call up the spirits, not in a split second. And she was in pain. Everywhere. So she was falling, and she knew that three of them were closing in on her fast.

Sershe heard an anguished cry, somewhere behind her. So the female human was watching. Pity her last moments were of getting tripped by a dead wolf and dying. Would've been fun to show her something heroic.

She didn't know if she hit the ground first, or if the wolves got to her first. All she knew was that it was a chaos of fangs and claws and pain, engulfing her like a whirlwind. Fear gripped her heart in a damning, final way, and the most she could do was curl in a fetal position even as the wolves tore her apart.

Suddenly her fear stilled.

It was a purely unnatural calm. Time seemed to slow down, and she watched the crazed faces of the wolves as they attack her. She felt their claws against her skin, felt their teeth rend her flesh. She watched drool as they pooled on the curious black mouth of one wolf, wrap around its bared fangs, even as it ever so slowly went nearer and nearer. She felt the pain -- or at least, it felt like her brain told her that there was pain, but calmly, like it simply didn't matter anymore.

But just as suddenly, a determination flared, deep inside. Resonating with her unbending core. No, not yet, she thought.

"No, not yet, " She growled.

Sershe dug inside her, to the deepest reserves of her magic, and did not beg the spirits. She ordered, the immense force of her dying will behind it, and the spirits had no other choice but to obey.

The ground she was lying on ruptured with the explosion of sudden greenery. Seeds long sleeping given life by the potent magic at her command, growing and growing around her so that her attackers were entangled in the mad, magical growth. They were carried up as vines gave way to shrubs, and shrubs became veritable trees, strangled by the thickening until bones snapped and muscles rend.

The growth stopped with a spray of blood and gore from above.

A circular opening has been unconsciously shaped right in front Sershe, and she stepped right through it, bloody and torn, but alive. She stood at her previous position.

"Is that all?" She snarled at the forest.

The forest stilled, utterly shocked, the absence of noise palpable as her attackers seemingly reeled from her cruel display of other-wise life giving magic. She waited, breaths coming in huge gulps, pain making her limited vision darken. Sershe was about to fall apart, and there was no way her attackers didn't know that.

After a little bit, she heard the forest's response. The vegetation parted to give way to a huge, monstrous wolf.

It was truly epic in size. It was about as tall as Sershe herself, standing on all fours, so tall as to dwarf the other large wolves that gathered around it. It was patterned with black and gray and silver, like streaks of iridescent flames all across its wide body. Its eyes held nothing of the thoughtless aggression that the lower wolves displayed, instead only a calculative, intelligent and arrogant glean.

Even without using her magical sight, Sershe felt great wolf's radiant energy. The energy radiating out of the being was palpable, touching her skin like the touch of the rays of the sun -- but harshly, like the sun was purposely trying to melt her down. She felt the wolf's cold anger radiate towards her.

Sershe has never been more afraid in her life, but she tried not to show it.

Lydia was scared, and she was showing it. She watched as the wolves ravaged her only remaining friend. Even when she used her last remaining magic to help the woman, she knew Silver was barely holding on, bloodied and torn as she was. Gods, Lydia didn't know how she was standing upright.

And now this. Lydia was confused to feel such oppressive magical energy radiating from the wolf, and that confusion contributed to a raging fear inside of her. She trembled as she held the unconscious Aaron close.

"Trespasser."

Lydia gasped as the word boomed in her mind, and she shivered from the sheer strangeness of it. Words seemed to blaze directly in her thoughts without need for hearing, without consideration to her own consciousness and will.

"Trespasser must leave."

Lydia was scrambling out of her cave before she knew it. "Silver!" she screamed mindlessly, "Silver, we have to go away! We'll live if we just go away!" She was clutching Silver's arm, the blood sticking to her hand like paste, making Silver's fur slippery. "They'll let us live if we went away!" she pleaded.

Sershe was caught off guard when the woman began shaking her and screaming at her, but she really wasn't surprised. She wanted to scream, too, but she could barely stand up and the shaking didn't help.

It seems like Lydia was becoming hysterical -- it was probably due to the effect of the creature's message, which she also received. Trespassers, it called them, and her anger was instantly awakened. She waved the woman off limply, and took a step with the little energy that she could muster.

"The forest does not only belong to you, you arrogant dog!" Sershe shouted back.

Lydia was almost beside herself. Something about the way Silver was shouting at the wolf felt like she was asking for more trouble. Didn't she see? It just wanted them out of its turf! The concept of territories has been firmly engrained in her mind from her time in the slums, and violating another's boundaries always led to bad things.

And of course, Silver took another step. Lydia yelled in fear and tugged back at her. Wetness in her face registered somewhere in her brain that she was crying, but all she could think about was putting a stop to Silver's foolishness, and dragging them all away to safety.

Because something very bad was about to happen.

Thoughts of all the times she has almost died in the forgotten places of Searle flashed in her mind. Lying in a heap of garbage, dying from starvation while local bullies ate her store. Bleeding in a ditch from a wound she got from a careless fall. Beaten black and blue by the brownjackets when she was caught stealing her day's fare.

She had been in death's door more times than she could count, but strangely none felt as frightening as this.

Lydia had to get away. Because something bad was about to happen.

Sershe was shocked when Lydia began screaming hysterically, pulling at her almost violently. She barely managed to stand her ground, the pain from her wounds heightened by the careless movements of her companion. Has she finally reached her limit? Was she breaking down?

She certainly looked like it. The woman's eyes were wild, and unfocused. She wasn't even looking at the giant wolf in front of them anymore, nor really at anything. Her eyes were glazed, and she was almost continually shouting madly.

And then Sershe felt it too.

Something bad was about to happen.

Dread filled her heart like the black night enveloping her entire being. It snuffed out her rage, snuffed out her determination to fight. It felt like the lights of the world were engulfed and everything was darkness, it felt like everything was meaningless and the meaninglessness wore sharp fangs, and it would come to get her and tear her apart, ate out her guts while she screamed.

Her legs trembled, her insides dropping away into oblivion. A shocking, warm wetness spread from her groin.

Space warped. That was the only way she could describe it. The air itself was torn asunder in the space between her and the wolf, like it was some pesky cloth that had to be ripped apart.

And then -- hands. A multitude of hands tore at the opening, appearing out of thin air, pale as death, the fingers appearing in stark clarity to her paralyzed mind. It was grotesque. The torn space was straight gash about as long as a person, and the hands that appeared out of it were innumerable, writhing and clawing and seemingly trying to wrench the portal open wider, while some just twitching as if in pain. It reminded her of a rotten deer corpse, filled with wriggling maggots.

Sershe didn't even realize she was on the ground, kneeling in a puddle of her own piss. Lydia, too, was trembling. Her shouting had given way to mindless fear, burying herself in her friend's bloody neck. It was hard to tell who was clutching who.

Out from the writhing mass of meaningless hands, a pale, white leg stepped out. The body that came out after it was impossible to behold, its size alone could not have possibly fit in the small gash in the air. It emerged fully, and it was almost twice the height of small Lydia, towering over everyone and everything. It was clad in what looked like coarse black cloth, accentuating its emaciated state like cloth wrapped on thin branches.

The moment it stepped into the ground everything quieted.

Silence radiated from the being like something that could be touched. Sounds muted, the air -- once charged with the mighty energy of the magical wolf -- now became syrup, like everything was heavier than they should be. Colors dulled, and the vibrancy of the lush forest in the pre-dawn light was sucked into the black cloth of the even darker, unknown creature.

The gash closed behind it, the disturbing mass of hands swallowed back into the unknown void.

But Sershe's heart stopped when she looked at its eyes. Red, glowing eyes, embedded on the emaciated, scarred waste of flesh that was its face. It looked at her.

"Found you."

Its voice was -- still. If the wolf's words were an imposition on an unwilling mind, this one was like an absence. Like it took the meaning from her thoughts and sucked it dry and used it against her. Like its words were the opposite of what words were supposed to do.

Sershe was certain that she was about to die.

A rumble announced the forest's displeasure. The wolf was baring its mighty fangs at the newcomer, its rumbling growls seeming as the grinding of rocks.

"Why are you here?" It demanded.

Dawn had broken a little while ago, and light had hesitantly poured out from the heavens into the gloom of the forest. But the force of the blessed wolf's displeasure radiated energy that felt like the high noon, pushing back the awful stagnancy of the dark creature's aura.

Sershe could feel the ancient, primal energies permeating the air. One was a buzz of hostility, the height of life, feeling as if invisible arcs of lightning danced in the air, between the plants -- like the entire, mighty forest itself was coming alive in wrath. The other was a vast, primeval stillness. An ancient emptiness, poised to devour and consume and erase.

"P.. please." Sershe whispered uselessly. She did not know how she could have landed right in the middle of two ancient powers, but she knew that only their mercy could save her now. These were gods.

"I am come to pay a debt." That awful stillness replied. "I mean no harm. Right conduct. Safe passage."

The wolf seemed to hesitate, its posture still poised for attack. "Trespasser must be gone."

"The Queen forbids. The Queen calls for this one. I am to point the way."

The Queen's name changed the wolf's attitude. It cringed as it if it was struck, and for once it seemed cautious. "The Queen cannot order the Forest."

"It is a request."

"Favors must be repaid."

"It will be done."

There was a long pause, and Sershe barely breathed. She clutched the human girl tight to her chest, a helpless spectator of a stand-off of two legendary beings. She did not even have the mind to retreat to safety, as afraid as she was. But she had heard some rather interesting things -- but the beastman did not dare hope. Sershe breathed a shaky sigh. At least she wasn't going to die immediately.

"So be it."

A miracle. The great wolf, on the verge of ending her where she stood, now retreated into the depths of the forest. It backpedalled slowly, never taking its eyes off the creature that appeared out of a living tear in the air. The forest seemed to swallow up the large animal, leaves and vines and bushes claiming its champion in its mysterious embrace.

But then it meant that there was only Sershe, and the dreadful creature out of a nightmare. It looked at the place where the wolf went for a time, but then it turned and regarded her.

Morning light had bathed the forest with its warm rays, and it was shocking how everything felt normal as the wolf vanished. One could almost get used to the unchanging deadness that the being emitted, like the end of it was something inevitable, urging you to lay down your burdens and rest.

But her body was basically covered in a mantle of blood, her fur matted in dark clumps and torn in some places. The brilliant red of blood splashed some of the green around her, the remains of the challenges she'd had to overcome to survive lay prone where she had left them. A pair of young humans are unconscious under her protection, with one's fate undecided and the other most certainly about to die.

And an unknown creature of insanity stood barely a stone's throw away, staring at her.

It was definitely not a day to rest.

"I come to do three things." The creature suddenly said. The refreshing morning light cannot be kind to its features -- its body was still as distortedly long, and its face, especially, looked utterly repulsive. Like all kinds of human torture had been inflicted upon it, only to be healed and then done again. It would be fairer to say that it was a huge mound of angry scars atop a body.

And those eyes.

It wasn't even that it was malicious. It was the calmness. The indifference she found in it rejected any sort of warmth, or life, or understanding. It filled her heart with dread, and even though the wolves were gone she had never for one moment felt any safer.

"First to point the way."

In the blink of an eye the hideous creature was right in front of her. It was kneeling, its great height bending down lower to place something on the ground in front of where Sershe and Lydia sat.

"Second is to ensure your journey."

As soon as it finished speaking it stood up, and made a ripping motion with its hands. The air tore open, Sershe feeling an angry hum of chaos under her skin, as if nature itself protested the casual rejection of its laws.

The creature did not seem to feel anything, for it even stuck its hands inside the gash in space. It pulled, and a body impossibly emerged. She was not given a chance to process the situation before the body was thrown her way. On instinct, she picked up the object laid in front of her hastily. She cringed as the body landed with a thud -- and then gasped.

She knew who it was.

"Third is to ensure your life. For the immediate future."

The portal had closed, and the creature was instantly in front of her, moving so fast that her sharp eyes could not hope to keep up. She was face to face with the livid countenance of this powerful monster, and there was nothing she could do but stare at its blood red eyes.

It raised a finger and touched her forehead.

Sershe... stilled. She was caught in an instant of a falling droplet, floating in space, dripping down into a vast, unfathomable ocean of nothing and everything. She felt the slow descent -- she was the slow descent, the infinitesimal pull of the unknown, slowly, slowly dragging her being into the void. And it was all that she is, and all that she was, and all that she will ever be.

And then she was back. And she felt... nothing. Her aches were gone, the wounds vanished, the pain that had almost crippled her nowhere to be found. She looked at the gash in her arm and found -- nothing. Not even blood. Her fur shone silver in the morning light.

She looked at her companion in astonishment. Even the young human girl looked normal, her chest rising and falling in a deep sleep of exhaustion. Sershe looked at the creature -- but it was gone. A sinking feeling rose in her gut, and she looked back in a panic.

It was approaching Aaron.

Sershe was up in an instant, shrugging off the sleeping girl, sprinting after the monster of unfathomable power and purpose. It could very well result in her death, but what was a blood debt if not just exactly that?

But she was too late. It had already knelt down beside the sleeping boy, and made a small motion that she knew was touching his forehead.

"Touch." It said, but not to her.

And suddenly it was gone. Lydia stopped in her tracks, looked back. Sure enough, it was behind her again, but this time a portal was already open right beside it.

"The debt is paid. The Queen awaits." It said, and stepped into the grasping hands of the unknowable.

Then Aaron was screaming.

* * *

It was a pretty loud scream.

He was in his little cave, with the boy he conjured up with his crazy mind and the insanely glowing puddle of water. Peacefully sitting, doing nothing, thinking nothing, and slowly dying.