Burning and screaming as waves of power beat across me, causing my thoughts to become incoherent. A jumble of impulses are streaming into my mind from the medallion, and all I want is to survive.
Take control, take control, take control…
Be mine, be mine, be mine…
I stop fighting the cruel malice, welcome its icy embrace, and scream into the fire. “Be mine!”
The blaze grows hotter, the syrupy taste in my mouth increases, but then?—
The pressure eases and I’m falling.
Finally, I’m falling.
My body weight takes me down toward the stretcher and I have two choices: throw my weight to the side and roll down the stretcher to the scorching-hot ash, or grab the edge of the stretcher and slip between it and the stone.
My intention is to roll down the outside, but my body has other ideas. My left hand snaps down to the tusk at the side of the stretcher, pushing it outward so that I’m falling toward the Vandawolf.
The air around him is startlingly cold, a different kind of burn that beats upward.
Because he’s lying on his side, I knock into him, pushing him onto his back before I get my right hand down into the narrow space between him and the rock. My left hand releases the upper edge of the stretcher and it falls back toward me, leaning against my left shoulder.
There’s a gap between the stretcher and the stone now—a gap caused by my body in between the two—but that isn’t my greatest concern.
Instinctively, my left hand descends toward the Vandawolf’s chest and it takes everything in me to avoid making contact.
As my fall comes to an abrupt stop, I find myself balancing on my right hand mere inches above him, my body as stiff as a plank, only the barest contact between my right forearm and his side. My left arm is bent and pressed to my chest.
My ears are buzzing, my head is pounding, and my heart is thumping.
I’m aware of the receding explosion above me, the spiraling cyclone of flame and ash that washes up across the monolith and into the sky. I’m conscious of the amber light flickering across the Vandawolf, lighting up all the dark rivulets of metal threaded across his torso.
The light above me is so bright that I don’t cast a shadow over him. No darkness, despite the cold metal I’ve fused to his body.
My only certainty is that the flames never touched him.
But that’s where my relief ends.
As I wait for the explosion to abate, I’m afraid to shift my focus to my arm—to my visible skin. I’m afraid of what I’ll see.
Surely, I’m badly burned.
Certainly, these must be my last moments.
I’m merely experiencing a last burst of energy keeping me alive before I’ll sink to the Vandawolf’s chest and die here. It isn’t the worst place to perish.
He once said to me that creatures like me and him rarely have the chance to grow old.
Above me, the amber light is finally fading, leaving behind a darkness that seems to hang over me, but still, I’m breathing.
I force myself to look at my arm and acknowledge the damage.
My right forearm is gray, my skin tarnished like old silver that hasn’t been cleaned. My muscles are trembling, but I’m not sure if it’s from the effort of keeping myself in this position one-handed or because I’m about to crumble like rust flaking off old iron.
There are no obvious burns and it’s far less damage than I was expecting.
I’m suddenly aware of an intense patch of cold against my chest, which seems to be from my left arm.
When I extend that forearm a little, fighting the wobble in my right arm as I try to stay elevated, I’m startled to see that the veins in my left arm are threaded with black.
