I looked over my shoulder, the wind making my eyes water, and saw the ground coming up fast, way too fucking fast.
I kept hitting her, and drew upon my reserve of desperation to manifest roots, growing them from the burning well of pain in my back, and stabbed at her. I didn’t know if any hit her, but her body jerked several times and her screaming echoed in the rushing air around us. I grew a vine out of my hand, reaching for her brutalized wing to wrap around it, wrenching it from her body with a mighty tug that left me dazed. Dots were dancing in my vision, my lungs on fire.
She screamed in anguish, the sound pressing against my ears like a physical touch, and her crushing hold on me loosened. I sucked in a ragged breath and redoubled my weakening efforts of tearing her apart with my roots and vines when the brush of feathers and the flap of great wings shattered my concentration.
Brown wings shot past us, and then four hands were tearing at the arms holding me.
“I’ve got you! I’ve got you, Patty! Let go!Let her go!” Rema bellowed into my ear. I let my roots and vines fall from her, felt their tearing separation from me, and then I was being gathered in a bruising grip, and the world abruptly came to a bonejarring stop. The swirling dots won out, and the pain faded into blackness.
Chapter 27
Patty
“Fuck!”
I came to swinging, connecting with a solid chest, before four hands grabbed my arms and shoulders.
“Patty, be calm. It’s me.”
I opened my eyes to see Rema’s concerned face leaning over me, his hair falling over us.
I blinked a few times, and then the pain made itself known, the hot throb in my sides setting nausea churning in my stomach.
“Oh god!” I cried, jerking to the side and vomiting. The burn in my sides intensified into an electric, stabbing agony with each heave of my stomach, until I was throwing up and crying, reduced to dry heaving by the end.
“Here, here, this will help,” Rema’s shaky voice said, right before a sharp sting hit my neck, followed by a cold that seeped from the point of the prick, cascading down my body until I shook with it, but the pain receded as the cold spread.
“What the fuck was that?” I breathed, rolling to my back with my teeth chattering.
Rema grunted, shifting to kneel at my side so he could wave a metal wand over my body, starting at my head. “Triage pain killer.” He sighed in relief at whatever readouts were being transferred to his link when the wand flashed white. “You have two broken ribs, but they are not shattered. And a concussion that we will have to monitor, but no life threatening injuries.”
My head still throbbed, but my ribs were only a tender ache, instead of the shattered glass stabbing me from inside they’d been before.
An explosion boomed from somewhere, followed by rapid gunfire and the rumbling whoosh of a ship flying by. I jerked and Rema bent over me, covering me with his body until it passed.
“What the hell? Where are we?” I twisted my head around to see out from under Rema. My eyes widened as I got my first look at the area.
We were inside a half destroyed building, the windows were all blown out, glass littering the ground all around us, with chunks of stones and blacked pieces of furniture. Beyond the windows, was fire and destruction. Burning spires and trees, fallen buildings, and husks of torched out ships, their blackened skeletal frames still smoking. There were bodies scattered on the ground. I could see more ships flying in the distance, and more smoke rising.
“Are we in Imyathume?” I asked, my voice was hoarse, and my throat and mouth were dry enough to hurt.
Rema lifted off of me. “Yes. I caught you, but it was fucking close, Patty. Too fucking close.”
His voice was a hollow rasp, and when I looked up into his face, it was bone pale, his eyes haunted.
I reached a hand up to touch his face, ignoring the way it shook.
“What happened?”
He took a deep breath, his body shuddering. “Sythia…” He closed his eyes, his throat working to swallow hard against whatever he was trying to say. When he opened his eyes again, they appeared calmer. “She hit me with her wings when I approached to check for life, it knocked me across the room, and she hit you, flying out of the Great Hall and over the cliff. I went after you immediately, but if you couldn’t have gotten her to let go of you…” He sucked in a shaky breath, “Your combined weight would have dragged us all down to our deaths. I’m very proud of you, and I’m so sorry I didn’t get to you before she did.”
I dropped my hand from his face to grab his hand and squeezed it. “It wasn’t your fault, Rema. I wasn’t paying attention when I should have been. Can you help me up?”
He frowned at me, but got to his feet and helped me stand.
The room spun when I got to my feet, and I leaned heavily on Rema until it passed.
I looked around, and saw that we weren’t alone in the room. We were in a lobby of some kind, and there were maybe a dozen or so other injured Neldre being treated by Neldre soldiers in glistening black armor.
