Page 28 of The Truth

“I… I tried…” he whispered. “I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t. Please, give him peace. He’s in so much pain.” He shook his head, delirious now, tears streaming from his eyes and mingling with the blood on his cheeks. “Please just help him. Don’t leave him. I tried… I tried, but I…”

Alvira cupped her hands to the elf’s cheeks and stared into his eyes. “Let me see to you first. You’re so close, the camp is only just up the hill. If we⁠—”

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “Please, he’s in pain.”

Alvira nodded, rubbing her thumb through the bloody tears on the elf’s face. “I’ll be back for you. Just hold on.”

Alvira pulled herself to her feet and sprinted downhill in the direction the elf had looked, laboured breathing and choking sounds soon reaching her ears. The boy lay flat, half wrapped in a sheet that was knotted above his head. The father had clearly used it to drag him.

She slowed her steps as she approached, her gut churning, her lip trembling. The young elf was so bloodied and disfigured she had no idea how many summers had passed his gaze.

The Veyak venom had melted the flesh away from both his hands and arms up to the elbows, the bones looking as though they’d been chipped with tiny hammers. She couldn’t see his legs beneath the sheet, but his body seemed abruptly short.

As the leaves cracked beneath her, she drew closer, and saw his face was scarred as though he’d been burned, his eyes a mottled mess of skin and glassy white. His stomach had been opened, torn clean by a claw, his intestines spilled.

The boy just lay there shivering, his breathing heavy and short, blood rising with every breath.

She knelt beside him as the air left her lungs, and her body grew weak. Alvira had seen many things across her years, many dark and horrid things. But there would never be a thing more broken and wrong than a child suffering the agony of war. Because that was what war was: agony and grief, and nothing more.

“Var… Varat… Varathis…” The word dragged itself out of his throat, every breath causing him to convulse. Father.

Alvira bit at her lip and stroked his scarred cheek. “L’aël sin’vala,” she whispered. I am here. She would not have him thinking he died alone. “Varathis er sin’vala.”

Father is here.

Alvira could already feel Vyldrar lift himself upright, feel his bones ache as he cracked his wings.

“Rohûr vaera sâren,” she whispered, her thumb tracing over a patch of pale flesh along his jaw. “Må Heraya tael du ia’sine ael ar beskír du indil vir anarai andin. La’uva niassa du, I denír viël ar altinua.”

It won’t hurt anymore. May Heraya take you into her arms and watch over you until we meet again. I will love you in this life and through all time, always and eternity.

“La… niassa…”

I… love…

The boy choked the words before breaking into a scream as he convulsed.

Alvira pulled a knife from her belt. She placed one hand over the child’s heart, and with the other she pressed the blade to his temple. “Laël sin’vala… du vyin alura anis.”

I’m here. You can rest now.

She drove the blade into his skull down to the hilt as quickly as she could. As the last breath of life left his body, Alvira pulled the blade from his head and dropped it into the brittle grass. She slid her hands beneath him and stood, cradling him in her arms.

As she walked, she felt Vyldrar alight at the edge of the camp, his heart bleeding into hers, sharing the weight, holding the pain.

She pushed herself forwards, her legs threatening to crumble, not from pain or weariness of the body, but exhaustion of the soul.

She stopped as she came to the elven father who had called for help. He was pale and still, his chest unmoving, cold eyes staring into the night.

Alvira lay the child at his father’s side and folded the father’s arms about the boy who had been his only thought.

She knelt there, the dawn rising at her back, its warm light spraying through the trees, and she looked down at the two bodies before her. Thousands more had died that night, tens of thousands. And yet, this was a moment she would remember until Achyron himself called her home. She did not take the blame fully upon her shoulders. She was not that naive. No matter her choices that night, thousands would have died. Had she defied the council and taken her Draleid to wing over the city, many of her kin would lie amidst the rubble, and many souls beneath the fallen bodies. The fighting would have raged on, and the Karvosi would have pushed further into the continent.

No matter which path she walked, pain and suffering would blossom, agony and grief. One of the most difficult lessons in her life had been accepting that simple truth.

Alvira drew a slow breath in and pulled on threads of each element. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Spirit. She gasped as Vyldrar pushed his strength into her and brought their souls together.

As one, they pushed the threads into the earth around the father and son. Deep into the clay, down to the roots. She pulled upwards until those roots broke through the soil and wrapped around the pair of bodies, coiling, twisting, and spreading.