I could feel the strain in him now, the tension in the muscles beneath my hands, the controlled fury that powered each blow.
He was an incredible fighter.
But the terrifying truth remained, there were too many of them and we…
We were trapped.
“Aster!” I shouted above their terrifying snarls as I jostled in his arms once again. There were too many of them, and they were coming faster than even he could cut them down.
“Put me down.”
With one swift movement, he placed me on the ground, feet first. I threw my knife into my other hand, and I drew the dagger that held Bronte’s lightning with my left hand.
“No!” Aster shouted, pushing me away from a zombie’s grasp. “Don’t use it. We need it.” He arched his sword through the air, slicing through the zombies that reached for us, and I screamed out again. Long, cold fingers grabbed my hair, and I drove my knife upward. The blade hit home, making the zombie disappear in an instant and coating me in dust. No, not dust…ash.
“Alex, on your left!” Aster yelled.
I spun around, ducking as another reached for me, and I slashed like a woman possessed. My knife bit into its neck and cut through two more zombies that closed in straight after it disintegrated into ash.
I couldn’t keep this up for much longer, my heart felt like it was going to explode from my chest. I was living a nightmare, surrounded by my worst fear. A fear I was being forced to face.
Forced to fight.
We worked our way through them, moving painfully slowly along the path, clearing it one body at a time. I avoided looking at their faces, focusing on other parts of their body because it only took one hit from a weapon before they were gone.
Aster stepped in front of me, sword flashing. He moved like they didn’t scare him at all, and they probably didn’t. But they certainly had reason to fear him, especially as he was cleaving through two at a time, sometimes three. They vanished mid-fall, ashes scattering across the path.
I hated how close they got to me. One latched on to my arm, and I lost it. I stabbed, again and again, even when it had disintegrated, so I was left stabbing air. Freaking out like I woke up finding a spider crawling on my skin.
I was back-to-back with Aster now, the path choked with bodies. My knife moved fast, like my body was on autopilot while I hid away in my mind, far away where the zombies couldn’t reach. The floor trembled under us. I stumbled, catching myself against the wall, and for a split second, I saw carvings flare to life beneath my hand. Symbols glowing faintly, the same spiral horns we saw on the entrance. The ground shifted again, and the path split.
“Your fear… keep going!” he shouted.
“What do you mean?” I shouted back, pulling away from a zombie as Aster’s blade turned it to dust.
“It’s changing the path. Blocking some of the creatures!” he bellowed back at me over the snarling creatures.
I looked ahead. He was right. The hordes that were coming to us had been blocked, and though some continued to crawl through the wall, it was slowing them down significantly. Who would have thought that the one emotion we were trying not to show was the one helping us now?
We came to another junction, but before I could take the right, Aster yelled, “Stop, it’s changing the way.”
I didn’t know how he knew this, but he was right. A wall shot out at speed, blocking the path. If Aster hadn’t told me to stop, I likely would have been pancaked between the two walls and I didn't exactly feel like dying doing a Wile E. Coyote impression.
Before I could thank him, the zombies that had been chasing us caught up, blocking us in once more. I raised my knife, ready to face them again, and Aster raised his sword. But before our weapons came into contact with them, they stopped. Their heads turned as if they could hear something that I couldn’t, something that had them scrambling over each other and back through the cracks they had come from.
I stood there shaking, trying to comprehend what had happened. Why had they stopped attacking us? What had they run away from?
I turned to Aster, and he lowered his sword.
“What happened… why would they just leave like that?” I asked in disbelief, as if it was too good to be true.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up and down the path where we had been fighting for our lives. “But we should get moving.”
Then his eyes met mine. Tears clouded my vision, and the look on his face made them fall as he reached for me and pulled me in.
“You’re alright, kid. You’re alright.” His voice soothed me, and he patted my back as I shook against him. I eventually pulled away, wiping the tears that remained on my face with my arm and the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at him as I wiped under my eyes, glad that only a couple of tears had fallen. “They’re myworstfear.”
