A tide of darkness

The light in the Fire

Kimmy ran, with a sleeve over her mouth, out of the burning house and farmyard, dragging the barely conscious Archer Wren behind her. She had to leave Louis behind, and her heart dropped into her stomach when she saw him fall to a sword at the front of the house.

She kept on running. There was no other option.

She didn’t know if Celeste or if Rowan still lived, but she hoped against all odds that they did. They were her adopted family—and they meant a lot to her.

She was barely in time to catch a glimpse of a couple of figures fleeing on horseback, leading a group of horses tied behind each other with ropes.

Celeste and Rowan were alive.

She grinned despite it all, and looked down at herself. She didn’t know how long she’d be if she hung around long enough to find out.

She staggered downhill, tripping over a tree root and she fell to her knees, letting go of Archer’s collar. She didn’t know how she could save them both. Or how they would survive the blaze at all.

 Ignoring her stinging grazed knees and hands, she pressed on, taking Archer’s right hand. His left arm was broken badly and his ankle was out of it too, since a roof beam had collapsed on him. She considered him lucky. Louis had died trying to flee the burning cottage.

But there was something down the hill that gave her hope—a glistening shine of a hide ruby red—and she surged forwards, kicking aside a smoldering bramble and dodging a falling blackened branch.

The creature bounded towards her, and she couldn’t help the grin that seized her pretty features. They would live, after all.

Archer collapsed on her, and she paused for a moment, throwing his arm over her shoulder so he could lean his weight on her.

“Thorn! Help me…” she said, and her words dying on her tongue as she heard movement and voices behind her. A tree fell, and Kimmy brought them round to detour around it, and she coughed, as smoke filled her lungs.

“Leave me behind, Kimmy.” Archer gasped, “You won't make it out of here if you wait for me.”

Tears blurred her vision, and she wasn’t too sure if it was just because of the smoke.

“I am not leaving you behind, Archer. We are family, and family sticks together.” He grinned weakly at that, and touched her face lightly. She sucked in her breath, getting another lungful of ash. She gripped his hand reassuringly and kept on moving.

“No one can escape! Kill the both of them!” A man’s voice cried from behind, and she whirled around to see a few soldiers make their way through the burning bushes, hacking the wood out the way with their ugly weapons. They were cornered. No matter which way they turned, be it fire or soldiers, it was certain death.

Kimmy pulled out the dagger Shinnrae had given her, and squeezed it tightly. It was her last line of defense. Gods, if she was going to die, she was at least going to take one of them down with her.

“Get out of here, Archer.” She managed through grit teeth, “I can hold ‘em off for the time being,”

“Go where?”

“To that big shiny dragon out there. Hurry!”

 Limping his way through the brush, stumbling all the way, he made it through the last of the bush, and the soldiers ran in pursuit. She barred the way with her own body.

She lifted the blade. “Surrender, girl, and we’ll be sure to put you down quick.” Someone grabbed her hair and yanked her sandy blond matted hair hard, and she screamed at the pain.

Remembering the dagger in her hand, she cut clean through her locks, watching in horror as her long hair was cut free. She breathed in, clearing her throat. If was for her own good, in the name of her survival.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I plan to bring one of you down with me.” She snarled, and the guards, for a split second, looked doubtful of themselves. She charged.

The man closest to the right that had her hair still clutched in his hand copped it from her first, and she kicked him in the groin and ran up his body, slamming down her blade into his chest. She stepped onto his shoulder as he fell, and she flipped off him and landed on the back of another, grabbing his neck and leaving the throat there smiling ear to ear.

She left them both for dead, flicking her eyes to meet those of the last man.

If he attacked her with his sword, she was a goner.

But he didn’t, and just when she thought her luck had ran short on her, he ran for cover in the burning trees.

She didn’t hesitate. She ran as if the devil himself were at her heels.

She streaked over a fallen oak and swung from branch to branch, covering ground quick with her dagger clenched in her teeth. The taste of the kingdom soldier’s blood sickened her, but she didn’t let herself dwell about that too much.

She valued her life over her disgusted taste buds.

“Fang! I am here! Help me!” she cried, gagging in the thick air. It was even thicker and darker than before, and massive tendrils of flame snaked in the air, leaving the trees below in blackened ruins.

She coughed and stumbled some more, before finally dropping to her knees.

A searing pain shot up her arm as she fell into a pile of ashes, and she screamed.

She wasn’t going to make it. She was going to die there in the blaze, even after all that had happened.

Inhaling her last, smoke-filled breaths, she shut her eyes, letting the flames take her away.

But they didn’t.

Something else did, and she was vaguely aware of something lifting her off the ground before she let herself pass off into the darkness.