5 1/2.
The Battle
No doubt this was the right place; a wide chasm and rocky cliffs and a sea of bodies. The side rushing forward was our forces pressing forward, and I saw Cameron up ahead, helping someone up, her mouth open and moving and noiseless from the clanging around me, the clash of sword on shield and blade striking blood.
I turned my gaze to see the sky clouded over with black and purple bodies, but a dry crackle beneath my boots caused me to look instead at how the ground lay spread with skulls and ribs. And it wasn't just under me, either. Ten thousand warriors rushing ten thousand strides forward made the same noise as their boots struck the terrain, raising sharp pops like everyone was going through hedges set between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
Flames shot over my head. The person just behind me had blocked it with a shield. Where's mine, I thought, where's my shield. The volley changed directions, and I saw they weren't arrows, not exactly, but more of the living nightmares, as I called them, with the sharp spines and armored stomachs, the pointed teeth and the tails like scorpions. But they didn't kill you when their barbs went into you. They just made you feel as though you deserved to.
And they changed direction again, and I heard the hum, and nothing else mattered. Looming larger and larger they were now near enough that I could see their faces.
Much can be said about what I was thinking before I ran. For one thing, their eyes or what I supposed were their eyes had a reflective quality by which I could see my own distorted face and the half-armored figure of boots and breastplate and the cinching belt around my gut. Rows and columns and globs of soldiers at my back grew bigger the closer they were to the black mirrors and the father they were from the shafts of light that had carried them here, to the place they were called in tens, hundreds, and thousands. I was even aware of the lightning flashes of the battles in the skies above, and of Cameron running towards me, and of someone calling my name. Not urgently. Just simply, calmly, my name and nothing else.
They were too close now and I feared for my life, although my heart burned with fascinating clearness as my feet spun on their heels and it seemed as though my heels were chasing my toes faster and faster over the vast plain, finding narrow places between the advancing lines and using others' shields as cover to block the onslaught.
I had gotten to the base of a tree: long, slender and ugly, its top all unbladed twigs and think branches. My heart burned, my chest heaved, and my legs also filled with acidic adrenaline afterburn. It was all I could do at the end of my human strength to throw myself behind the trunk and hope the wood would be thick enough to screen me.
My toes made a springboard that my calves launched the rest of me from and into the air between earth and sky. I soared a horizontal line almost perfectly parallel to the ground that was layered in bone fragments.
I had almost begun to fall when the back of my neck stung. Despair surged into me, overpowering the other, natural pain as I realized they had gotten me.
I hit the ground stomach-first. If I hadn't I might have hit the back of my head on the tree trunk and not felt the deep jab into my thigh.
My body curled into a ball that rolled over bony fragments not mt own. I found myself on my back, the tree seen between my legs.
And they were still approaching, still giving chase after their fallen mark. Their barbed tails burned in unnatural flame. Their mouths, wide and toothed, opened and I could see their tongues waggling. I didn't hear what they were saying, yet, but almost. My hands scrabbled and caught against bone and dust. And then my left hand caught something else, a cracked leather binding.
My name was said, small and with exceptional authority. I looked and saw by my hand the book that had been in my possession inside of my armor. It must have fallen out when I took a tumble.
And now I took it in my hands as I was supposed to, as it was good for me to do. I opened it up and my heart burned joyous and bright and there was hope. There was my hope.
A glisten in the corner of my eye caught and held my explicit attention. I sat up. At my feet was the bright object - my helmet, shining as though it were brand new. That wasn't all. Beside it, flat and dimmer but still reflecting daylight was the shield first given to me, still bearing the same four-part unbroken heraldry.
When I dropped the book it fell onto a third object. A shadow fell over the plains as I took the handle of this object. My thigh panged as I reached for it, but I couldn't help noticing that the nightmares had withdrawn a stone's throw. They hovered, watching.
The sword. In the shadow it divided the light and the darkness. Even looking at it I felt its edge press my mind as if was inside me, the same idea I always had when I looked at it. One of many ideas. My heart roared and I knew it was time to get up. "Lord," I said.
My free hand found the shield handle in time to block the incoming darts. Since I essentially thrown myself my thigh ached and I was still grounded, but I could pull my head behind the shield. I felt the weight of each strike, but it didn't go through, they didn't get in.
Time is given for a reason. With enough time I could drop the sword beside the hurt thigh and scoop up the helmet, placing and securing it on my head. I easily found the sword again and then raised my head so that my eyes peered over the shield.
About three enemies approached. I couldn't see enough to count how many barbs or teeth each carried, but that didn't matter. I stayed grounded, but pulled myself up to a kneeling position, and waited for them to get closer, meanwhile keeping the shield close to my body, keeping it all tight and wound.
One got close enough and my sword snapped over the shield, stinging its eye, cracking its lightless mirror and terminating its barbed strike.
The two others approached more cautiously. They separated and tried to get me at opposite angles.
I didn't know Cameron was near until she shouted, "No you don't!", and slashed through one body in her way. The other shot a flaming dart that richocheted off my shield and came to stick in its own wing joint. It cried and started falling. I inched forward on my knees and caught it with the tip of the sword, cutting off the sound.
The shadow had pulled back to another part of the battlefield. As I followed its trajectory I saw Cameron grinning.
"Found them, huh?" she said.
It wasn't mocking.
"Yeah. In good condition." I tried to get up , but my thigh burned and a sudden sharp intake of breath fueled the flames.
Cameron's face changed to a look of concern. She dropped to my level and checked my leg. "Here?" she asked. I shook my head. I couldn't speak. "Here?"
At my cry she said, "Uh-huh. This is going to hurt." She picked up the book by her, still facedown where it had fallen over the sword.
I thought she was going to quote something. Speak poetical stuff. "There's a time to live and a time to die..." Instead, she wrapped her fingers around the book binding and engulfed my wound with the pages.
Yeah, it hurt, but she pulled the thorn out. Cameron then helped me up on her shoulder. I was almost too heavy for her."Thanks," I could say.
And we turned and our fighters were walking this way. "Battle's over," Cameron told me. "We won."
"Won?" I said.
"Of course."
I knew it couldn't be any other outcome. And from my heart I was thankful we would live to fight another day.
And He was there, walking towards us, as the head of everyone.
I tried to leave Cameron's hold. I struggled enough so that she had to let go of me, and I tried hopping on my one good leg. I tripped, but my friend caught me and helped me over.
He smiled. I fell weeping to his feet, weeping. I knocked off my helmet so the tears would run onto the ground, so it wouldn't pile up and choke me. He touched my hair.
"Dear one," he said. "Do you know your hope?"
"Yes," I said. I looked up into the full shining sun past the streams running down my face.
"Do you believe?" he said.
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