Alternate Realities

On the Ramparts

The rain ices into sleet, they're trying new challenges to gain an upper hand. I slip. Then she slips. We bump back to back, her head cracking between my shoulder blades. Despite the ache, it's a small comfort to know she's right behind me, shielded by me on at least one side. In all my years at the front lines, with my entire legion, I've never faced a barrage like this with a partner like her. It's exhilarating. It's the only time war has felt thrilling.

We are strong apart but stronger together. Her inexperience forces me to think further ahead, to make choices that aren't just about my own skin or my own lines, but about her as well. We hold our line well, easily even. But it's my experience that keeps me focused and her lack of it that concerns me.

The wall crumbles and my back feel the cold of her fall but not the absence of her electricity. She is down but lightning still zings through the air flickering shadow monsters out of chaotic shoots of foliage. Then the water falls harder, faster, sucked up from under us and dumped right back down. I focus on what little I can do in the deluge, burning stem and trunk and wet, green, organic matter into billowing clouds of black smoke. The ice catches some of the particulates but they still cloud my view with tears. I'm not immune to smoke.

The splits open. I can't spark. I feel like I'm one gulping breath away from drowning which already has me in a panic. But I can't remember when I last heard the static of her ability, or saw the flash bounce off bricks and clouds. I can't remember and it can't matter, not yet. I can't think about her lost in the rubble.

I can only think of the finality of my life. The lives I stop with each burst and blow are no less important, but they aren't mine and I can't think about that. I have ended thousands of lives and I will continue to heap body on body just so I can see the next dawn. I can't focus. I must focus. Mare is on her own. I will find her when this is over. But I can't help but also count the seconds. I know it's been too long for hope.

Then it's a choice: fight for me, or fight for her.

This is not my fight. These people are not my enemy by my choice. They are my friends and my warriors and my own goddamed brother. Which leaves only one choice, if I cannot fight for me, I must fight for her.

I pull on the heat of the smoldering piles that bake beneath bodies and I gather it all together into my palms. I start again. One stem. One trunk. One silver. Then another and another and another. I fight on.