The Final Strife

They reached the crop of trees that led to the tower and moved through the foliage carefully. Sylah held her breath until she saw Kwame, then it burst out of her in a sigh. Anoor was safe.

“Sylah, all okay?” Kwame was sitting straight-backed against the door, and she nodded to him.

Sylah took an inventory of the surrounding area. The Ghostings didn’t meet Sylah’s eyes, but they still stood their vigil. Sylah found Gorn scouting around the tower.

“No trouble?” Sylah asked.

“Nothing.”

Sylah looked up at the window in the tower. She had locked Anoor in the top room that they had renovated for their training, leaving the other floors in the disrepair they had found them in.

“Wait.” Something was different.

Gorn looked in the direction where Sylah was pointing.

There was a crack in the wall that hadn’t been there before, Sylah was sure of it. She leaned forward, squinted. Was that blue blood on the edge of it?

Sylah lurched forward, ran back the way she had come.

“No, no, no.” The word blurred into a low moan.

“What’s wrong?” Kwame asked, and Sylah dragged him away from the door and burst through it.

She loped up the tower steps, tripping when her muscles began to seize, but still she continued. She went to the second floor where she saw the crack in the wall, big enough for a person.

Blue blood marred the whitestone, dust from a hole in the ceiling above smudged the footsteps of those who had taken her. Sylah fell to her knees.

Anoor was gone.

Sylah couldn’t cry; she had been drained dry of any feeling. All that filled her was a darkness so empty and desolate she barely felt the arms holding her, shaking her, screaming in her ear.

“Look, Sylah, look at the floor.”

Sylah couldn’t look, didn’t want to see the remains of the woman she had loved. Hassa appeared in front of her.

Look, Sylah.Her face was earnest, pleading.

Sylah let her eyes slide to the floor. Let the blood come into focus.

The blood. It was shaped in the form of bloodwerk runes. Sylah was propelled out of her state of shock with clarity. She spun her head left and right.

Kwame and Gorn were chatting loudly at her, but she didn’t want to hear them, not yet.

Sylah pushed past them and ran up to the final floor. The door opened at her touch. Blood recognizes blood.

There, in the middle of the room was a circle of runes with a blasted hole in the middle. Kwame waved as Sylah looked down through it.

The sound started in the darkness in her stomach, banishing it with hope. It gurgled its way up her throat and out into the empty room. Great big guffaws that had her eyes streaming, because she wasn’t drained after all.

No one had entered. Anoor had escaped using her own blood.

“I can’t fucking believe it.” Sylah laughed.