barely move her right arm at all.
Something was very wrong indeed.
Time appeared to be slowing, in some impossible way. She could feel her heart beating, but it was an eternity between the beats. She watched a boot step near her out-stretched hand. The dusty leather crinkled as the boot's owner put weight onto it.
Godsdamnit! Raven tried again to stand, her fingers clawing at the dirt now. The place where she had been shoved was at the base of her neck, just above her right shoulder. When she tried to flex that shoulder it wouldn't move right. There was no pain, but she was beginning to think there ought to be. It felt like something was lodged there.
In the distance, voices were rising in an agitated clamor. She saw more booted feet going by, but no one stopped for her. Everything remained eerily slow. She had heard that time could warp itself like this in moments of mortal jeopardy.
Where was General Weisel?
The commotion grew but Raven realized it wasn't in the distance at all. It was going on all around her. She felt cold suddenly, very cold. The light seemed to be fading, as if dusk had come all at once. She strained to make out individual voices from the babble around her.
'Crossbow bolt!'
'An assassin!'
Her struggling limbs were even weaker now than they'd been just an instant ago. She could barely lift her head to keep her face out of the dirt.
'The girl, the young magician—she stepped in front of it!'
'She saved the general!'
Her dimming thoughts were becoming a jumble, and she knew she was ebbing toward something that might be unconsciousness, or might be something more drastic. Even so, she heard and understood that last shouted comment, and it provided the last warmth she would probably ever know.
She found, in the strange stretching of time, that she had the time to reflect on her life. She saw herself as a frightened and awkward child, a disappointment to her mother. She saw herself at the Academy, determined to become the best wizard she could be.
It had all led to this. She liked herself much more as she was now, an adult, with important responsibilities.
She had saved the general. She had stepped in front of the bolt of a crossbow, fired either by accident or intentionally. He would continue to expand the boundaries of the Felk Empire, until all the Isthmus was under one rule. It was an admirable cause. It was the grand vision of Lord Matokin, her father. She wondered if he had ever suspected, for even an instant, that she was his daughter. Maybe her mother would get word to him some day. Maybe he would know, and be proud of her sacrifice.
She had saved Weisel, who had helped to make her own life worthwhile. That made her sacrifice truly meaningful.
Still, she wondered why someone didn't help her. Why didn't... why didn't Weisel pick her up from the ground, hold her, comfort her? She was so cold now.
She found the time for one last coherent thought. Raven wondered if Weisel had given the signal to open the portals and let the dead loose into this world.
