Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

“Ha!” Slobad said, trying to clap Glissa and the new arrival on the shoulders but succeeding only in smacking both on the small of the back. “Told you you could do it, huh? Slobad have faith! Strength in numbers, huh? Ha!”

Bruenna had survived the crash of her stolen flyer with only a few scratches and bruises marring her bluish skin. Glissa had been relieved to see the mage, about whose fate she’d feared the worst. The small group was now gathered amid the smoking aerophin wreckage.

Glissa stood on unsteady legs and gazed at the new hell she’d brought to the Tangle. Slobad offered her an arm, but she waved him away.

The rain of burning constructs had crashed with thousands of fiery impacts into the Tangle, knocking some trees down and causing them to burst into oily flame, turning others to glowing slag in explosive collisions. The ground was covered in twisted hunks of vedalken artifacts and a viscous, sticky substance that leaked from the wrecked artifact creatures and burned with thick black smoke.

Of Yulyn or any of the other Viridian elves, there was no sign. “I hope those all cleared the village,” Glissa said softly when her jaw would work again. “The Tangle can’t take much more of this.”

“What happened, huh?” Slobad asked.

“Memnarch’s not dead,” Bruenna said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Glissa replied.

“All right, something you don’t know. My people are,” Bruenna said. “My village, at least. I can only guess what might have happened to the workers in Lumengrid.”

“Your people are what?” Glissa asked.

“Dead.”

“Oh, Bruenna,” Glissa whispered, raising her claws to her lips. “I’m …”

“Sorry?” Bruenna shot back. “Don’t be. They died fighting. Fighting those.” The mage waved a hand at the mess of wreckage and shattered forest. “Too bad I didn’t ask you to come back with me. You could have stopped them at any time, couldn’t you? You could have stopped them all with that green fire.”

“I don’t-I don’t know,” Glissa said. “I don’t understand this power I’ve got, Bruenna, and I don’t know where it comes from.” Not the entire truth, but it was as much as Glissa wanted to share right now.

“You see, lady,” Lyese said, “She doesn’t understand anything. Death just follows wherever she goes, and the rest of us have to follow or get out of the way.”

“Seven hells, Lyese!” Glissa exploded “I didn’t ask for this!”

“Yeah?” Lyese barked back, stepping close enough to get into her sister’s face. “No one did. No one ever expects anything, and no one’s at fault, right? You’re just a hunter. You don’t want to defend our home, you just wanted to run through the woods playing games with Kane.”

Glissa drew a sharp intake of breath at the mention of her dead friend.

“Oh, sorry, he’s dead too, isn’t he?” Lyese asked innocuously. “Well, I didn’t ask to lose an eye, Glissa. I didn’t ask to see half the village disappear into thin air when you called up that damned moon. And I didn’t ask to find pieces of Mother and Father in the garden. But at least you’re alive. So why don’t you crawl back inside the world and stop bringing death down on everyone around you?”

Glissa opened her mouth to speak, but she’d forgotten how.

“Child, shut up,” Bruenna interrupted. “You’re not the only one who’s suffering. And she’s right. She’s not the cause of this, she’s the focal-”

Lyese’s sword was in her hand and within an inch of Bruenna’s windpipe in the blink of an eye. “Call me a child again, human. You’re not much better than Glissa. I never saw you before today. How do I know you’re not as guilty as she is?”

“EVERYBODY QUIET!” Slobad screamed at the top of his lungs. The three women froze, staring at the furious goblin. “You,” he said, pointing at Lyese, “Don’t know what Glissa’s been through, huh? Glissa, sister was scared. Now she suspicious. Got every right to be, huh? But sister will learn she’s wrong.” Slobad’s eyes narrowed. “You both family. Slobad got no family, huh? Get over it, elves are both alive. That’s family. Be happy for that, huh?”

“Goblin, I couldn’t have said it better-”

“And you!” Slobad said, cutting Bruenna off and jabbing a stubby claw up at her chin. “Uh … actually, you okay,” The goblin said once Bruenna’s words had made the perilous journey through his ears and into his brain. “Uh, thanks. For support, huh? Sorry about your tribe. That’s rotten, huh?”

“That’s a good word for it,” Bruenna agreed. She turned to the one-eyed elf girl and bowed slightly. “You are Glissa’s sister? It’s an honor to meet you.”

Lyese, surprised, took the Neurok woman’s offered hand.

“Bruenna, meet my sister Lyese. Lyese, meet Bruenna of the Neurok,” Glissa said.

Bruenna appraised Lyese. “The family resemblance is uncanny.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Lyese said with a scowl.

“We’re-uh, it’s a long story,” Glissa said. “Lyese, Bruenna is not your enemy. Any more than I am. If you’d really earned that armor, you’d speak with more respect.”

“Don’t tell me what I earned, Glissa!” Lyese snapped, “I’ll make my own judgments.”

“Bruenna, what happened?” Glissa asked with a sigh. “I need details.”

“They attacked us, intentionally,” the Neurok woman replied. “Hunted down every last one of us.”

“Except you, huh?” Slobad said.

“It started with levelers,” Bruenna said.

“Levelers?” Glissa, Slobad, and Lyese asked at once.

“They came ashore from Lumengrid. The vedalken said they wanted peace, but … We fought back, but it was late. Most of the villagers were cut down in their beds.” Bruenna coughed awkwardly, and Glissa could tell she was on the verge of breaking down. “I fought them, with everything I had. But then the ’phin swarm came across the sea from that cursed vedalken city, and they hit a tower I was using for cover. It toppled and pinned me underneath.”

“Lucky,” Lyese remarked. Her good eye was still examining the human with suspicion.

“Yes,” Bruenna nodded. “Very lucky. I was standing over an underground food storage area. The tower fell and knocked out the roof of the warehouse cave the same time it came down on me.”

“You fall through ground and land in a cave, huh?” Slobad said. “That happens to Slobad all the time.”

“We’ll have to swap cave-in survival tips sometime, goblin,” Bruenna said. “When I came to, everyone was … it was a slaughter. I can only imagine what happened to the poor folk that lived in Lumengrid itself. So I borrowed a flyer from a vedalken.”

“Didn’t see you coming, huh?” Slobad asked.

“No, he didn’t,” Bruenna said with a grim smile. “Bastard was picking through the bodies, checking for wounded, I guess, but wasn’t finding any. Caught him with a bolt of lightning right in the fishbowl. Then I hopped on the flyer, which must have woken up the ’phins and levelers, because took off after me.” Bruenna shrugged wearily.

“What’s a fishbowl?” Slobad asked.

“Later,” Glissa interrupted, and swung Bruenna around by the shoulders. “There are levelers coming too?” Even as she asked the question, Glissa’s sharp ears picked up the clacking of the leveler hordes, still many miles away but closing. And between the elf girl and the sounds of metallic death was her home.

“Flare,” Glissa swore. “This is not good.”

“Can you stop them?” Lyese demanded. “Can you do to them what you did to these?” She waved an arm to indicate the shattered aerophins.