As The World Catches Fire

Chapter 11: Ashes

Screaming horses pieced the night. Irina and I stumbled out of her tent and into a battlefield. Two of our Eons lay in pools of blood at our feet, arrows in their necks. Their bonded lay beside them, their skin already crumbling away to ash as their magic dissolved. Tents burned. Trees burned. Everything burned. The wood was a massacre of sparks, smoke, and roaring orange. Commander Hadrion's massive bear-like bonded stood in the centre of the camp, a severed hand crushed in its jaw.

Irina pressed herself against my back, as she would her normal Eon guard. But I was paralyzed. Because I had been here before, and I could not be here again. My limbs wouldn't budge.

From the trees, arrows ringed in pale magic shot through our tents. Where they struck, fire exploded from their tips. One dug into the dirt feet away. Striped fletching, red painted shaft in the style of the hill clans. People that recognized no allegiance to the Canavar.

A hand pounded my back. Irina screamed at me from miles away. But I wasn't with her anymore.

I was in Barje Vos. Heat pricked my skin. My nose filled with smoke. And all around me, while I was powerless to stop it, my friends and family were cut down with black blades.

And it was all my fault.

A rider plunged out of the woods. Their coat was a mass of black feathers, a white beaked mask obscuring their features. They loosed a savage war cry and shot an arrow through one of the assistants' necks as she ran.

Crows. The most ruthless of all clans. They rarely, if ever, left survivors.

A grey shape followed the rider from the trees. It slunk on all fours with the crookedness of a hyena, but it was grey and scaled like a reptile. Finger-long fangs protruded from its jaw, dripping saliva. It passed and slowed.

The daemon looked at me. Its spots glowed yellow in a wave like a shiver running down its back. Second eyelids slicked open and shut. With a step closer, it passed the firelight. On the daemon's neck was the black collar tattoo of a bonded.

A small voice reminded me of something. You have a bonded too, Rozin. And it doesn't feel as though she's woken up.

I seized Irina's arm and dragged her into the darkness of the woods, where we might not be spotted. I sprinted for my tent. We passed the second assistant cowering under a shrub. Irina snatched the assistant's knife.

We ducked behind a burning tent as more Crow riders screamed through the camp. They numbered at least six, by the chaos. Once in the trees, their coats made them all but invisible.

"Kain, behind—!"

Pain tore up my arm as the lizard-like daemon burst from the bushes and slammed into me. Its jaws had clamped on my sleeve, tearing through the thick leather. Blood stained its salt-white teeth. With a cry of agony, I hit the earth. The daemon pressed a massive paw on my chest. Claws raked my coat. Pressure stole my breath, strangling my scream.

Irina's knife sank into its neck. Black tar oozed onto my face, and the daemon dropped.

I dragged myself free. The daemon was still breathing, twitching on the forest floor. The knife protruded at a sloppy angle.

Shaking, I yanked it free. Iron. The only reason we were still alive.

But maybe I wouldn't be for much longer. A steady stream of blood pulsed from a gash in my forearm as wide as my palm. It had hit something important.

We staggered through the dark trees behind the tents, Irina close behind me. I started coughing. In horror, I saw that my tent was burning. Andiya was suffocating.