When We Met

CH 40 Logan

My world had been cleaved in two, one half mired in the most visceral hell imaginable, the other half suspended in a surreal, dreamlike unreality. Mateo's anguished features swam into my tunnelled vision as he gently yet firmly pried Rosaline's limp form from my trembling grasp.

Tears streaked the hardened mercenary's hollow cheeks as he cradled her against his chest, her vibrant crimson life's essence rapidly painting macabre patterns across her pallid skin. Alejandro materialised at his side, deftly shrouding Rosaline's ruined body in a heavy canvas cover a mercy, shielding her from my tormented gaze if only for a fleeting moment.

Noah's gruff hands locked like iron manacles around my biceps, hauling me upright with a strength that defied the chaos swirling around us. His mouth moved but the words were unintelligible over the thundering stampede of my pulse echoing through my skull.

"...Logan! Brother, listen to me!" he growled, giving me a vicious shake that almost launched me back into oblivion. "We have to fall back now before they regroup! Can you hear me?!"

Another deafening detonation rocked the floor beneath our feet, acrid smoke stinging my eyes until they streamed with tears. Through the roiling haze, I could just make out the blazing infernos raging across our ancestral lands beacons of destruction glowing in lurid shades of orange and crimson. Gunshots crackled through the air like the lashing of demonic whips as Noah half-carried, half-dragged me in Mateo and Alejandro's wake.

"Where's Maria?!" I choked out in strangled bursts, panic lancing through me like serrated fangs. "Noah...where the hell is our sister?!"

For a moment, he seemed as bewildered as I felt, whipping his head back and forth as we fled the smouldering ruin of the estate. The cacophony threatened to rend the last threads of my sanity as Noah bellowed for his men in guttural roars.

Finally, his face drained of what little colour remained as we staggered out into the courtyard.

"She...the guards were meant to extract her but...I don't see them! Logan, I-I don't know where she is!"

Something deep in the shattered recesses of my soul stretched taut until it sang like a violin string mercilessly cranked past its tensile limits. I opened my mouth to unleash a scream of pure, unadulterated anguish and denial only to be cut off by Mateo.

"There! Noah, Logan - to the transport! Hurry!!"

Alejandro whipped a heavy armoured van around the fiery remains of the gatehouse, the vehicle's high suspension bouncing precariously as it sped towards us. The reinforced side door flew open, allowing Mateo to clamber in first with Rosaline still bundled in his arms.

I moved as if underwater, the world seeming to warp and twist around me in kaleidoscopic fractals. One moment, I was suspended in limbo clinging to Noah with the last vestiges of my strength. The next, we were tumbling into the back of the van in a welter of flailing limbs and shouted orders.

The armoured transport fishtailed in a spray of gravel as Alejandro stomped the accelerator, whipping us around in a dizzying arc that brought us screeching back out through the smashed gates and into the maelstrom beyond.

It was only then, as another barrage of explosions blossomed terrifyingly close in the rearview mirrors, that I truly became cognisant of our dire straits. Through the shattered windows, I glimpsed a nightmare panorama - entire swaths of the estate blotted out by churning plumes of acrid smoke as the fires raged unchecked.

Guardsmen swarmed in clumps, futilely flinging buckets of water against the all-consuming conflagration. Figures twisted and danced in the inferno's hellish light like spirits from the lowest pits - brigands and insurgents sowing wanton destruction across our ancestral demesne.

And Maria...my beautiful baby sister was lost somewhere amidst that godforsaken holocaust of chaos and ruin.

At last, my throat choked out the agonised scream I'd been forestalling as Noah wrapped me in a vice-like embrace. Mateo and Alejandro exchanged grim looks in the rearview, Rosaline's bundled body stretched across the seats beside them. Her aura flickered dimly, guttering like the final, fragile breaths of a dying candle flame.

"We're bound for the western safe house!" Alejandro shouted over the roar of the engine and my fractured, keening wails. "Doc's already en route to meet us! Just hang on, boss!"

My head lolled limply against Noah's shoulder, sheer physical and emotional exhaustion crashing over me in merciless waves. Rational thought seemed to abandon me as starkly as the blood drained from my extremities. All I was left with in those hellish final moments was the ragged, faltering tempo of my heartbeat and two burning sensations...

The throbbing agony of my lacerated torso, steadily spreading numbness and coldness through my limbs.

And the harrowing, endless ache of uncertainty and loss where Rosaline's warm, vibrant presence used to reside deep within my soul...

An emptiness so vast and yawning, I feared I might simply cease to exist at any moment and be swallowed whole by the fathomless void stretching before me.

Tears streamed silently down my bloodied face as I gazed unseeingly at the smoke-hazed night sky racing past the shattered windows. For the first time in my life, I felt utterly adrift - severed from my moorings and set hopelessly adrift on a black ocean with Rosaline as my only remaining anchor.

If those beautiful eyes never opened again...if that honeyed, smoky voice never graced my ears ever again...

"Please..." I whimpered through cracked, bleeding lips. "Please, I beg you...don't leave me, Rosaline. I can't survive in this world without you by my side..."

With a final, shuddering exhalation, my vision dimmed until only the faintest trickle of awareness remained. The blessed escape of oblivion closed in around me, deadening the horrendous sensations of agony and loss until darkness mercifully claimed me at last.

Yet, even in those final, formless instants before unconsciousness swallowed me whole...I could not shake the dread certainty that losing Rosaline would extinguish the very last spark of light and hope left to guide me through the ever night to come.