I hear the distinctcrunchof bone and tearing flesh, and then the boy slams into the mud. I might havefelthis lung puncture.Something in me uproots, and I charge, roaring as I ram the Moragorion at top speed. I lean to absorb the impact with my shoulder, but it’s like running into a wall.
I crumple with an embarrassing huff. Taking note, the monster emits a guttural croak in a low pitch so awful and ancient, I want to cover my ears. I want tohide. The Moragorion’s jagged teeth snap at me in warning, but it turns back to advance on the boy, who has managed to crawl a short distance away.
This is going to be a massacre.
I fumble in the mud for something,anything. My fingers close on a rock, and I draw back my fist, hurling it toward the Moragorion with all my strength. It hits the beast’s temple with a pitiful crack.
Then it turns its big, ugly head toward me.
I curse and scramble back, skittering like a crawdad.
Run, run, run!I think desperately. But I can’t get my footing. I thrash in the mud as the monster slinks toward me. I can see its face clearly now: dark, gleaming eyes and a great hinged maw covered in muck.
There doesn’t seem to be anything to its face but eyes and jaws.Where the hell is its brain?
I don’t have time to consider before the Moragorion swipes. I soar through the air, smashing face-first into the shallow water so hard my teeth split my lip. I taste blood and foul water. Everything hurts. I roll over and blink at the sky, fighting for air.
That inner voice shouts,Get up and fight!
My legs wobble as I push myself up. My ankle is shot. But the Moragorion has turned back toward his human prey.What next? What can I try?As he winds up for another swipe, I sense a death blow, and I howl uselessly,“DON’T—”
One hit sends the boy careening, and my guts roll along with him. He crashes into the shallow water, and this time, he doesnot rise. Jaws widening, the Moragorion slinks closer, perhaps aiming to swallow him whole. And the realization seizes me once again:I cannot let him die.
So I do something I will inevitably regret.
I reach for my Talent.
The power sits at the base of my spine, white-hot and iridescent, like a coil of lightning spiraling into a bottomless well. Drawing on it feels like tugging on a spool of invisible thread. One sharp pull, and when the bobbin starts spinning…
Magic surges through my skin, pooling at my palms. Every hair stands on end as I train the energy on the hulking figure. Then, with a tug of the thread…
I bid his organs to grow three times their size.
The Moragorion freezes, his shrieks cut off with a gutturalglug. His eyes roll, flashing white, and he wobbles.
I pull harder. I will his guts to grow, to swell, toexplode…
Until he collapses, destroyed from the inside out.
I run straight toward the boy. I don’t want to see what I’ve done. Worse, I don’t want to think about how disgustinglygoodI feel. Unleashing the magic I usually fight to suppress is pure relief. Every limb tingles like I’m suddenly intoxicated. I feel euphoric, teeming with energy, like I could sprint a hundred milesandfight off a dozen mountain lions.
But death is my current enemy. Reaching the boy, I seize him beneath the shoulders and lift him from the water, thanking the Gods for my Elven strength as I carry him to the bank. To my relief, he chokes and gags as swampy water pours out of his mouth. His face is ruined and bloodied, his skull cracked, and he’s gushing blood above his left eye, but he’sbreathing.
Shaking, I anchor my senses. He’s alive, but just barely. His mortality might be measured in minutes or seconds. In our training, Mother taught me the fundamentals of traumamedicine—when and how to react, in theory. But theory isn’t life.
My hands tremble as my will cleaves in two.I’ve done too much already. But I’m overwhelmed with empathy for this human, who I know with mounting certainty is about to bleed out in front of me.
For one willful moment, I reach out and touch his face. My fingers find the line between his jaw and ear, coarse with stubble and warm with blood. The contact lights every fiber of my being, and it’s like the whole world narrows to this moment…this beautiful creature. It’s wrong, touching him like this, but it feelsright, somehow, like my very soul is singing. Everything and nothing. An end before a beginning. I never even got to meet him.
He struggles in my arms, straining for air. I wipe spittle from the edge of his mouth, wondering how many breaths he has left.
If they catch you, they will kill you.
But if I leave him, he will die.
So, with his broken body in my hands, I make a split-second decision.
I throw him over my shoulder and trudge off toward home.
