I let go of the hilt, leaving it suspended there while I gathered my breath.
“So a world upended by war showed you can’t fight with your books?” I said, reflecting on the man I knew from long ago, who always had a fascination for knowledge and arts but never with fighting.
Drystan huffed, a bitter sound. “A hundred books can sharpen a mind to be far deadlier than any steel. But what I learned was that books were often an escape from the rage and pain; fighting was the only way to keep those emotions from killing me by giving the pain back to the world.”
That unexpected, deep truth was a slice far worse than what he could have inflicted on my flesh. I snapped my eyes to him, but he’d already dismissed the vulnerable words by sheathing his sword.
“We should go before the others notice and come after you too,” he said with an icy distance now.
Then it dawned on me. “You didn’t follow me to haul me back?”
His smirk lacked humor. “Of course not. We might have a way to wake Nyte up, and I’m not leaving it solely in your reckless hands.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Drystan suddenly straightened, casting a look through the depthless forest and holding a hand up to silence me. I turned rigid, then scrambled into a defensive position when I heard steps racing toward us.
“Shit,” Drystan swore, raising his sword. “Nightcrawlers. Maybe a soulless or shadowless too.”
“You all but called them to us with your unnecessary violence,” I hissed.
He didn’t get to retort when one of the vampires reached him. Watching Drystan in combat while it wasn’t aimed at me just showed how much had changed. He was good. Great, in fact. He moved with as much elegance and form as I could hope to regain.
My sights fell to my sword, still suspended in the tree, and when I heard the snarls of more vampires approaching I cast my hand out toward it. A flare of violet light engulfed the blade, and I shifted my leg back for balance, crying out with the force it took to cut clean through the trunk with my magick-infused sword.
The tree toppled and several vampires faltered in their approach, trying to scramble from the path of the thick trunk instead. My hand wrapped around the hilt of the sword that flew toward me, my arm drawing back with the force. I barely got the chance to tighten my grip before my blade slashed across the first nightcrawler that narrowly missed being crushed by the tree. A loudboomresounded through the forest from it.
“Was that really necessary?” Drystan called, not faltering in his combat.
“It took out five of them at once!” I shouted back. “You’re welcome.”
“And likely summoned a hundred more.”
Well, he maybe had a point there. Though I hoped we’d finish off the last of those here and be long out of range before any more heard the commotion and came.
All I thought about was killing. There was a certain dark exhilaration toit. I felt the slick tear of flesh and heard their wails as victory. I didn’t see my satisfaction as wrong when it was either kill or be killed. I’d spent most of my short life back, almost six years now, being manipulated by Goldfell—the man who’d found me staggering lost through the woods when I first returned to this land and taken me in. He made me believe I was no better than flesh to keep him warm and a pretty prize to collect.
Now I was a reckoning to all who stood against me.
My magick sliced through the wings of a nightcrawler, and my blade plunged through his throat, cutting off his piercing cry. He was the last body to fall before all became silent save for the harsh breaths of me and Drystan.
“Let’s go,” I said, not waiting for him as I made haste away from the blood-painted snow.
We ran through the woodland, letting the icy air spear down my throat and set fire to my lungs. Soon the pain subsided, though I knew that blessing in the moment would be punishment to my body later.
I didn’t stop until I broke out of the tree line and came to the familiar hill overlooking the glowing central city of Vesitire. It was so beautiful I forgot about the corruption that had spread within.
“What’s your great plan to breach the heavily guarded wall?” Drystan muttered dryly, surveying while we kept to tree shadow cover.
“There’s a blind spot between guards. Small, but if we’re careful…”
His scoff dismissed that idea. “You’re lucky I came.”
He began heading down the hill, and his smug attitude was feeding my ire irrationally. Muttering curses under my breath, I hastily caught up to him, but he was heading away from the opening I’d indicated.
“Are you disregarding my way in because it wasn’t your meticulously crafted plan?” I grumbled.
“Petty arrogance isn’t really my thing.”
“You’ve known of a route in all this time?”
