Red Debt - A Crimson Rising Short Story

Chapter 21

     Darkness doesn't last nearly long enough. Rude awakenings have been common since joining the rebels, but I never get used to screaming being one of them. Things are being thrown, items broken, a barbarous cackle as someone out in the hall shrieks, their cries stopping very abruptly a moment later.

     I know that laugh. It's the laugh of a sadist and her friends.

     I leap away from the table as quietly as I can, not sure what enhanced senses these people even have. Maybe if I hide in the corner like the coward I can be they'll pass me over.

     But Wendin...

     I let out a breath of defeat and bring my palms up to my eyes. There is no way I am going to be able to face Mayra Laursen out in the hall, survive, and find my nephew still alive. All that I've worked for to keep him safe will have been a waste.

     But the laughing stops, and I can hear Mayra mutter under her breath on the other side of the wall, not five feet from the door to this room, about a killjoy who came back with a screw loose. Her footsteps, stalking down the corridor, vanish. Screaming starts from the hallway adjacent. No one here is going to last against her, but I thank whatever god decided my life was worth sparing.

     File cabinets to my left block my view of the door, and I know I'm hidden enough in the corner to get a first shot at whoever might come in next. I take a moment to appreciate this compound compared to all the other ones. With the secrecy surrounding it, the rebels bothered to fill it with furniture and supplies that actually make it pleasant enough to live here. They even built platform bridges between the series of buildings so that we wouldn't have to trudge through the swamp water in order to call on someone or report to a meeting with another unit. At least when I die, I'll know I've died somewhat comfortably.

     The door opens and without looking, I throw an arm out, standing up, to make stone from the walls fly at the attacker. I keep throwing what I can, without ever seeing their face. Every boulder breaks apart from spindly streaks of telekinesis like fireworks. Disintegrated into dust with ease.

     Purple streaks.

     I see Wendin first, hiding behind a woman's body when the dust begins to settle as though he wishes to remain unseen by the two other figures in this room. His hands are tightly wound together, his normally smug expression wiped off his face so thoroughly I forget it ever existed. Wendin's hair, a golden brown like his mother's but nothing like the chocolate of my sister's, glows with fire from the hall. He comes up to the woman's shoulder, and I see her hand pushing Wendin slightly behind her before I bother to see her face.

     To see a dead woman.

     And Seraphina Harley looks like shit. Death has not treated her kindly.

     "That was rude," She says, gesturing to the rubble. I don't know what to say. I don't even know if I am breathing. Four months I've been guilt-ridden over the graceless murder of the Princess and she stands in front of me again, looking just as snarky as last I saw her in another black suit, a cape added for show this time. Well, acting snarky, at least. I can tell from her visible skin that she underwent her fair share of torment. Sallow skin and plum half-circles under her eyes, bones under the surface able to be seen from across the room. She is a corpse walking. It only adds to her heart stopping effect, in spite of the severity.

     I am not prepared to see whatever else has been done to her in the last four months, knowing that the rebels would not stop with her until she was begging for mercy, but even then they would not care. That people like Cress and the other commanders, they would exact revenge for every awful thing done by Asgard. That they would take it all out on her.