The Icon Unbound

Chapter Thirteen, Part A - The Icon

More action scenes. This one has been cleaned up and hopefully will feel more readable now. :) Many thanks to those of you that took the time to point out the disjointed bits so that I can improve. Here, the Icon uses her power for battle. There is another clue here to the real forces at work in this world if you think about what is happening in the context of her office. Tell me what you think! Leave me a vote too if you think about it. --Elizabeth, UPDATED 05/31/2017

Well, she had asked. Now she had her answer.

Another drakys. There were no words for her shock. She could not seem to fill her lungs with air.

Nadir growled, unsheathing his claws, leaping from his ledge to join her. She stared at him, wondering if he had...could he have possibly...lied to her all this time?

As for Saiph, he looked like he had been punched in the gut. Later, if she lived beyond today, she would have to tell him what she felt there in the water. How she knew the slimy, oily presence far away was the dark water, seeping into their home, infecting the creatures under her protection.

For years she had felt nothing but crawling despair and cold. To her, all emotions were distant. When she did feel, it was more like remembering than experiencing. Now, it was all close.

Fear.

Her hands shook. She couldn't make her mind focus on a single thought.

Saiph was turning around, calling to the others. She couldn't understand what he said, but she knew what must come next.

Battle.

She was their best and truest weapon, and as the War Master, he had commanded her to throw herself, and her heart, at the hazard.

She looked at him, hating the veils that separated them.

The words would be there for him to read in her eyes, but her eyes were veiled. She could speak them, but they would only make what she had to do more difficult. So instead, she hauled herself out of the water and stuck to protocol. "They are looking for something. They went first to your house, the old garrison. Then they went to the quarry. I don't know what they're looking for, but I know they will eventually realize they need to come here too. Unless they stop at the village. We can try to intercept them, or stay here. I will go where you say, War Master."

"What about Meissa?" Rigel gasped.

"I felt her, too. She has gone under the mountain, for what reasons I cannot guess. May all the saints protect her."

"Under the mountain? Blind me."

"We will face them here. Together. It will be easier to draw them away from the village, easier to attack from the hill."

That was it; that was the order. The Icon nodded and obeyed.

Pulling her knife from its sheath, the Icon bared her palm and sliced a familiar two inch gash for Nadir.

A few miles away, she could feel it in the little box on her windowsill. Her heart lay ready to give her the power that she needed. An invisible line connected her to it. She drew on it now, and it seemed to fill her with the warmth she lacked, almost as though it was beating in her chest again, as though she were still a little girl playing on the hills.