The Creators: Book Three

Chapter Eight

Collision

Part One: Mountains

ASTRID

"Is that all of it?" Willowbud asked Nona.

"All that I could carry," Nona replied, dumping her volume of obsidian shards into a pile.

Willowbud selected a wide flat piece, and nodded. "I can work with this. Has anyone seen Bianca?"

I peered out into the darkening skies, but couldn't see anything moving. Bianca would keep a low profile to avoid the Breytan's watchful gaze, so if I couldn't see her, she was either doing a very good job, or she was dead. Five minutes later, she emerged from the top of the cave's mouth.

"I had to go around," she said breathily. "Fucking Breytans have a radius of five miles. Luckily, the pyres to the west are still burning beneath their crosses." She lowered her arm from above the cave's mouth, and produced an obsidian torch carrying a persistent black flame.

"Careful with that shit!" Willowbud hissed, and beckoned her over urgently.

Bianca held the flame outward before her, trying to keep it as far from her body as she could while still bearing it. I didn't know how she'd flown with it. From twenty paces away, I could feel its warmth. The black fire cast a bright white light on the cave's walls, illuminating everyone in monochromatic hues. When it approached Willowbud, she cringed horribly, though given our experiences with Julia's fire, it was admirable that she didn't run away. I wasn't getting any closer to it. Bianca secured the torch between two rocks. Willowbud turned one of the obsidian shards into a long pair of tongs, then she pinched the wide flat piece of plate, and hovered it over the fire. The obsidian didn't glow with heat, but darkened with it, absorbing the energy until it was smoldering black. Willowbud pulled it away, then nodded to Bianca. Bianca rushed to the back of the cave, then came sprinting back with Arya in her arms. The bandage below her severed shoulder was dripping with black blood, and in the monochrome of the firelight, her face was even whiter than mine. Bianca set her daughter down, and hurriedly peeled away the bandage. The stump was swollen and weeping with puss, and the smell was horrific. Arya moaned weakly, her eyes blurry and ignorant of what was around her. Bianca planted a kiss on her brow, then pulled out her belt, and stuck the leather between her teeth. Willowbud pulled the plate from the fire and pressed the searing metal to Arya's arm. Meat sizzled, the smell of burning pork fat filled the air, and Arya's eyes bulged with clarity. Her muffled shriek echoed in the cave, and her mother whispered sweet comfort and planted kisses upon her feverish brow. Willowbud pulled the metal back, leaving a clean and closed stump on Arya's shoulder. Arya's wails turned to sobbing moans, and Bianca wept in relief.

The same procedure was done to fifteen of the other amputees, but those who had sustained wounds to the abdomen or pelvis could not be healed in this way. They were provided with whatever comforts could be given to them and kept in the darkness where their dimming vision would not have to feel the pain of the bright light. After the last of the salvageable soldiers were burned, I presented my own wounds to Willowbud. She looked up at me with a woeful expression, and I smiled reassuringly down at her and bit into the belt. It was funny; I remembered very little of what had happened to me in that hole beneath Drastin after I'd slashed Julia's back. All I recalled was the flash of blue light, and then the red eyes of my blood-mother sometime later. But in that moment, when I felt the incredible heat eating right into my flesh, the memory of that searing agony came surging back into me, and I shrieked around my gritted teeth. Willowbud hastily pulled the iron away and began apologizing profusely, and I had to snatch her by the wrist and force her to press the iron to the rest of my wounds. By the time I was done, I was suffused with adrenaline, clammy and cold, and the sweat that dripped off of me was red with blood. I dunked my burns into an awaiting tub of water and whimpered with relief as the steam rose around me. Willowbud carefully placed the small black flame into the bottom of an obsidian caldron and beckoned the awaiting bucket-brigade to extinguish the evil. It took fifty buckets before it finally died.