28. Chapter 28

28

“ Y ou stop, you die!”

Theodil’s voice—a voice Rebecca hadn’t heard in countless decades—echoed through the chambers of her mind in her dream, as clear and crisp as the day her trainer had said those very same words to her.

Only now, she was back in the Lashir’i Gardens on Xahar’áhsh, reliving it all over again.

Rebecca ran at top speed, dodging a multitude of attacks in varying colors as they hurtled through the air toward her. Green and blue from behind. Fiery red from the left. Shimmering pink from up ahead and to her right. That one only looked enticing, as long as it didn’t touch her flesh.

Plus black roiling into silver that rushed toward her from any direction at any time, and she would never know.

All she knew was that she had to keep moving, because Theodil wasn’t toying with her, and he never lied.

If she stopped, she would die. It was that simple.

As Rebecca ran across the seemingly endless landscape, burst after burst of magical attack careened through the air toward her, most of them launched from half-living constructs erected for this single purpose. A few other attacks came from other living beings—a sentry guard stationed at the old watchtower; an errant corporal hidden in the bushes; Theodil again, wherever he’d decided to show up next.

There was always Theodil, who unleashed his own power on her every chance he got, though he never hid himself behind thick walls or disguised within the surrounding flora. No, he wanted her to see him when he executed his attacks, but only at the last second.

To test her reflexes.

Like he did now, appearing at the far-left edge of her periphery within a burst of that shadowy black light. A violent tremble cracked through the very earth beneath her when Theodil thrust the butt of his staff into the dirt.

Rebecca felt his attack barreling toward her, churning up mounds of dirt, fighting against the energy of the land to make its way toward her. She was up here on the ramparts, running across the elevated path toward her destination, far above the earth Theodil had struck.

But elevation meant nothing against the force of his power.

Rebecca reached the edge of the walkway marking the twelve-foot gap between this bit of the old ruins and the next.

But if she stopped, she died.

Still running at top speed, her legs churning and her feet pounding the old stone while her breath heaved in her lungs, made it impossible to slow. Just as she reached the edge of the stone walkway that had crumbled into ruin eons ago, Rebecca leapt over the chasm, her hands outstretched, one leg extended ahead of her and the other behind to gain all the reach she possibly could.

But halfway across the gap, Theodil’s attack erupted from within the earth.

A spray of hard-packed dirt, small stones, and blinding yellow light exploded beneath her. The thickest bolt of his magic shot straight up into the underside of her thigh, screaming through Rebecca’s lower limbs with blinding agony before she ever reached the other side of her jump.

Her muscles seized, her body betrayed her, and where she’d meant to land, her injured leg buckled. She crashed onto the opposite ledge of crumbling stone with a grunt.

The pain didn’t matter. Her sabotaged jump didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she kept moving.

“You stop, you die!”

She leapt to her feet, biting back another pained cry, pushing her weary muscles into motion again to keep running.

A bitter growl echoed from below, following her along the path.

“How many times must I drill it into you?” Theodil seethed, his voice cracking against the ruins’ stone walls as if she were in a cavern and not outside beneath the open stars. “You will never survive this way! You’re not fast enough!”

A bolt of orange-brown light zipped through the air toward Rebecca’s head, and she weaved in her path along the top of the stone wall to avoid getting blasted in the side of the head.

But her next step came down off balance along a patch of glistening moss, made even slipperier by yesterday’s fresh rainfall. She went down, her arms flailing desperately to help her regain her balance, and tipped two inches too far in the wrong direction.

An especially powerful blast of electrifying blue energy crashed into the center of her chest at full force and sent her flying backward along the top of the wall.

Rebecca scrambled for purchase on the slippery stone lining this part of the ruins, but she just kept sliding. There was too much moss, too much water, too many attacks firing at her at once.

She fell from the highest ramparts of the old Lashir’i ruins, the world spinning around her as she toppled to the first level below her, then glanced off the edge of another building’s crumbling roof.

She rolled to catch herself, missed the ledge, and fell again by another twenty feet. Her hip hit the steep decline of rocky shale catching her fall with an agonizing lack of cushion.

Then she was sliding down the embankment, shards of crumbled rock digging through her clothes and leather armor, dust and bits of dry weeds spilling into her mouth and nostrils, the churning world around her blinding her to everything else.

When she finally slid to a stop at the base of a minor landslide, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was it. If this was the night Theodil finally killed her because she was too inefficient. Too weak. Too slow to withstand his tutelage the way she was meant to. The way everyone believed she could.

Everyone but Rebecca.

Pain flashed through her body in one constant, blinding scream of nerve endings and delayed shock response.

“You stop, you die!”

She tried to push herself up, but the loose shale beneath her gave way again, and she crashed back down on top of it.

She had to hurry. She had to keep moving. But she also had to pay attention.

She had to be smart about it. Keep the panic at bay. Ignore the pain. Acknowledge threats from all sides.

Her pulse pounded in her ears, each beat counting down the remaining seconds until the moment she was sure Theodil would finish her for good.

Finally, somehow, she gained her footing on the unsteady, tumbling slope just in time to see the strobing deep-purple light like an indigo sunset careening toward her through the darkness, crackling and sparking as it hissed its way ever closer.

Rebecca dove to the side, barely avoiding the crash of that magical attack that would have taken her head clean off her shoulders if she hadn’t moved.

But the movement sent her skidding down the rest of the embankment on all the loose stone. She lost her footing again and her balance.

The next thing she saw from where she lay on her back was the terrifying figure looming closer with each panicked heartbeat. Theodil, his eyes wide and glowing with furious light, wild and chaotic beneath the storm of his power.

His limbs hardly moved as he approached, more floating than walking, while the channeler’s staff in his hand burst with multicolored sparks of crippling magic he intended to use.

He was furious with her, and now she would pay the price.

“You stop, you die!”

The first burst of blinding silver light at point-blank range exploded from the end of Theodil’s channeler. The same second, Rebecca forced her pummeled body to roll aside.

The blast crunched into the loose shale on her right as she rolled to the left. Stone cracked and crunched beneath the assault, breaking and splintering to pepper her from head to toe with tiny spears of rock.

Still, she kept rolling.

Again and again, the attacks followed her in an endless onslaught, just missing their target by mere slivers every time. Until Rebecca knew she had to get up, to get back to her feet, or this would all be over.

She moved quickly out of her roll down the loose stones, finding purchase with her hands to push herself up even as she kept rolling to avoid the next blast.

But none of it was fast enough. She was never fast enough.

The second her full weight came down onto both feet, a powerful force crashed into her from behind. The searing agony of Theodil’s next attack rippled through her back and seized all her muscles, bringing a strangled scream ripping from her throat.

Her back arched. She toppled forward endlessly, drowning in the unyielding torment of what felt like being ripped open from the inside out while all the flesh was filleted first off her back, then her shoulders, then down the length of both arms.

It was too much.

Rebecca collapsed out of her run, her scream not yet having died in her throat.

“Do not stop !” Theodil bellowed before his channeler crackled again and blistered the night sky with more of his magic.

This was it. She knew now. It was definitely going to kill her.

Somehow, she forced herself out of the way again, screaming against the pain through gritted teeth and moving, moving, always moving…forever.

“You stop, you die!”

Again and again, his merciless attacks crashed toward her. Rebecca avoided each of them in turn. Every time, she knew it would be the final lethal blow, until it wasn’t.

Scrambling across the embankment at an angle, she tried to turn toward Theodil, to see where he was and take aim at him with her own magic, but he was always faster.

Every time he forced her to abandon the offensive so she could avoid being obliterated by his terrible power, just to stay alive, he enslaved her to the endless task of avoiding his destruction and his wrath.

“Are you going to spend the rest of your life running?” he roared, his voice crashing off the stone centimeters to her left before she veered away from another incoming attack, shielding her face from the volley of fractured rock spraying up at the impact. “Make a choice!”

This time, his voice blasted at her from the right and slightly behind, alerting her to the direction of his next attack.

She’d given up ages ago trying to figure out how he moved like that. The only thing that mattered now was that she had to keep moving, no matter what.

No matter where she went, how many times she dodged more violent explosions of magic and great hurtling orbs—or a volley of conjured spear points, or new magic barreling through the earth beneath her feet—Theodil never let up. He corralled her across the abandoned site of the Lashir’i Clan’s forsaken temples.

She couldn’t get away from him, and she couldn’t buy herself enough time to summon her own magic before his next attack forced her into yet another retreat.

Time ceased to exist. The pain in her body ceased to exist. Every searingly raw breath served as the background to her entire existence until she truly wondered if this was it.

If the Bloodshadow Court’s enemies, or even a proclaimed ally, had finally gotten to the old warlord priest and turned him to their own cause.

If she was now being hunted by the elf who was supposed to turn her into the hunter.

The more time that thought simmered in her scattered mind, the more likely it seemed someone else had finally overpowered Theodil’s resistance, and this was no training session.

This was the night he would betray the Bloodshadow Court in its entirety. The night he would kill her for their enemies. And no one would ever know it had been him.

That thought was so terrifying, the possibility so infuriating, it gave Rebecca the determination she’d needed to finally stop running.

The second his next electrifying bolt of crisp, neon-orange light cracked against the earth inches from her boot, Rebecca skidded to a stop and whirled to face him, already summoning the darkest parts of her own power to face the darkest parts of his.

The parts she could only assume had finally revealed themselves.

An orb of dark, mercurial-silver light erupted into being in her open palm, but she was still too slow.

She hardly saw the ravenous swirl of consuming blackness barreling toward her until it was mere inches away.

Theodil’s final attack cracked into the center of her chest like an enormous fist. The blow lifted her off her feet and tossed her backward across the shale, residual sparks of dark unlight strobing all over her convulsing body even before she hit the ground on her back with bone-crunching force.

She must have hit the ground, because nothing moved around her.

All she could see were the sparks of black unlight whipping across her vision as Theodil’s newest spell seized her in its grip. She bucked and writhed across the ground, seeing nothing but those flashing sparks, hearing nothing but her own choking gasps and the crunch of stone beneath her.

These were her last moments. Her final seconds, in this world or any other. He was going to kill her…

He already had.

Just as suddenly as it had overtaken her, the fit wracking through her body came to an abrupt end.

The world fell deathly silent as Rebecca’s limbs stilled, every muscle going limp. She gasped for breath on her back, dizzy and nauseous beneath the pain and unable to do anything about it.

Slow, ominously heavy footsteps crunched across the loose shale toward her, closer, closer…

A thick shadow loomed over her, blocking what little view she’d had of the stars and the already moonless night, casting Rebecca into complete darkness.

The darkness of the end.

His heavy sigh filled her entire awareness. Then something fell from his gloved hand with a metallic clink.

She felt it topple to the ground beside her before it bounced against her thigh, but she didn’t see it. She could hardly move anymore, her eyelids fluttering madly as she fought to maintain consciousness. Her every nerve on fire. The vague sensation of something wet and warm trickling down the side of her face.

“I don’t want to see you again until you know what you’re doing,” Theodil seethed, his voice dripping with condescension for all its calmness. “Because next time, I won’t go easy on you.”

Then he left her, his footsteps crunching back across the scattered stone and growing farther by the second.

If Rebecca had had anything left, she would have kept going. She would have regained control of her body, pulled herself off the ground, and tried again. She would have shown him she wasn’t so easily defeated.

But she had nothing left.

He’d pushed her harder tonight than he ever had. Rebecca had risen to meet the challenge, and still, she had nothing left.

Tears stung her eyes. The heat of her shame overwhelmed the physical pain in her body. But she’d be damned if she let those tears fall.

Not now. Not when she’d failed. Again.

The Bloodshadow Heir didn’t cry. The Bloodshadow Heir had one purpose and one purpose only.

It wasn’t to be a fucking tear factory.

She had no idea how much longer she lay there even after Theodil had taken his leave of her at the crumbling Lashir’i ruins. It felt like a lifetime.

The effects of his magic had finally stopped, making her muscles twitch and seize at random intervals. She still couldn’t move on her own yet.

Her ribs ached worst of all where the last blast had hit her back and traveled all the way through her core. Not to mention that awkward landing from her first fall.

One of her eyes had already swollen shut. The rich, slightly sweet taste of her own blood filled her mouth and only confirmed what she already knew.

This was bad.

After some time, she gathered enough willpower again to try picking herself up. It didn’t work.

She could no longer see through the shooting pain. A quick, tender exploration with her one good hand told her that the other hand was mangled, fingers splayed at awkward angles. Her knee had given out, most likely ripped from its socket. She couldn’t put any weight on it. She could hardly get her foot to respond.

No part of her body worked the way it was meant to anymore, and the bastard had just left her here in the dirt and pile of scattered shale and the last remnants of rubble from the old ruins Theodil used as his training grounds.

She had to give herself more time. Regather her strength.

After waiting for that to happen, Rebecca’s thoughts changed. Her repeated commands to herself to get up and do something about her injuries dwindled, replaced by a calm, level-headed acceptance of her situation.

She wouldn’t mind so much anymore if she just stayed here forever at the bottom of this embankment, half-buried in the rubble. If she spent the rest of her remaining days right here, without moving, without getting up.

If she just relinquished all control and let the ruins take her however they wanted over time. Just as they’d taken so many others before her.

Compared to what Theodil had just put her through, it would have been a welcome reprieve.

No one would miss her much. As far as the Bloodshadow Court was concerned, Rebecca wasn’t even a person. These days, her family had given up attempting to intercede on her behalf. To prove the Court wrong.

Her family didn’t even involve themselves with her anymore.

Her family were the ones responsible for all of this.

They were the ones who’d recognized her potential, her power. The first of its kind in a hundred generations at least. And they were the ones who meant to use it for themselves.

That only made her daydreams of giving up here and now that much more tempting. If Rebecca stopped fighting, if she stayed here and never got back up again, her family could never use this power inside her they sought for themselves.

No one could ever use it. All her problems would be solved, just like that.

And all Rebecca had to do was absolutely nothing.

For an indeterminate length of time, she lay there where she’d fallen, perfectly still, and wondered how long it would take for her inevitable end to finally come for her. The night was so dark, the stars barely visible from where she lay in the shadow of the mountains.

No, lying here forever wouldn’t be that bad at all.

Within the silence, she heard a new sound disrupting her final moments. Footsteps crunching across the shale and occasionally sliding down with a soft clatter of stones following in the wake of those footsteps.

Someone was coming.

Someone was coming toward her, and soon, they would see her here. Rebecca Bloodshadow, beaten and bloodied and mutilated by her own shameful failure to live up to her potential. To be what everyone was so sure she was meant to be.

And then what?

She didn’t know. It seemed impossible to conceive of anything worse than this.

When the footsteps drew closer, her instincts toward self-preservation kicked in.