But my palm…
My eyes widen and I swallow my scream.
The titanium medallion is no longer sitting against my hand.
Its edges have sunk into my flesh, seamlessly fitted to my skin as if it were always a part of me.
No. This can’t be!
Panic floods me.
Despite the heat I’m sure I’m about to launch myself into, I push myself away from the Vandawolf, the muscles in my right arm screaming as I use it to propel myself backward. In my frantic rush, I knock the stretcher aside. It falls softly into the ash, kicking up a plume of dust as I throw myself clear of the Vandawolf.
I come to a stop at a crouch in the only clear space between the Vandawolf’s feet and the monolith’s front left leg.
Through my panic, I’m still aware of my surroundings.
The explosion has abated, but the air is filled with thick smoke. It’s so opaque that I can’t see farther than a few feet in any direction. It’s so bad that I can no longer see the Vandawolf’s shoulders and head only a few paces away.
In the distance, farther out in the wasteland, there are brighter spots, hazy and amber. I recognize the locations as belonging to skeletal trees. They must still be on fire, their dry trunks continuing to blaze.
The ash beneath me is hot, but not so much that it burns through the soles of my boots.
An eerie silence has fallen around me, but I find no peace in it.
My focus is only on the medallion.
Frantically, I scratch at it, attempting to dig at its edges, trying to gain purchase so I can peel it off.
Get off! Get off me!
It can’t be a part of me now.
I’m digging at my own flesh, drawing blood, gasping for breath as I fail to remove it. I’ve left red welts around the band and now all I can think about is the way I flung my left hand out into the flames, begging for a shield that never came.
My own scream during the explosion echoes back at me.
Be mine.
Amid my anxiety, there is clarity.
The explosion of crimson coal must have created forge-fire. It’s the same fire that was used for centuries by Blacksmiths into which they cast metal, heating and preparing it to be hammered into a new form.
I cast my own hand into the forge-fire. In fact, my whole body was forced into it. And now…
The medallion has become part of me.
Fused to me, even more surely than the streams of metal coursing across the Vandawolf’s chest.
Now I don’t know what has become of me.
A new wave of fear washes through me as I abandon my attempts to remove the medallion and scratch at the tarnish on my forearms instead.
The tarnish doesn’t come off.
I drag at my burnished hair, finding it consistently blackened, as if it’s coated in dust that also doesn’t come off.
My heart is pounding as I swallow the scream rising to my throat.
