But Coren was just close enough to strike.
He hesitated, just for a moment, before he turned around and actually swam towards Coren, catching the Council Speaker completely by surprise.
Before the old wolf could even react, Ziem flailed out wildly and managed to latch a hook from his armor in Coren’s rib cage. With that leverage and Coren’s submerged scream of pain, he pulled himself in closer to wrap his arms in a bear hug around the Oceanborn’s torso. His armor flowed off his limbs as his lungs burned for a breath, and the steel wrapped around Coren’s body, binding his arms to his sides and clasping his legs together so tightly he could do nothing but fall to the floor beneath their feet.
There beneath the water, Coren’s eyes looked up at Ziem, wordlessly accusing him of the pointlessness of his actions. The water continued to swirl and push Ziem down, but Ziem wasn’t even fighting against it. He knew he was going to drown, and his strength was fading quickly as his lungs burned for oxygen. But as his hands started shaking with the last of his power, he formed a single spiked knife from the gauntlets he still wore, and drove it straight through Coren’s chest.
Ziem knew he had missed Coren’s heart in his fatigue, but only barely. As the spark went out of his eyes, the hazel of them was clouded over by the red of Coren’s blood filtering up through the water.
Before the rest of the Ironborn realized what had happened, the continued force of water that battered them quickly disappeared around them. With nothing to sustain it, the torrent quickly lowered as it was allowed to sink into the ground, settling into bloody channels running in every direction as the killing field drained.
Lea dropped her chains as soon as the water settled just around her calves and she ran, through the water and over bodies, to where she had last seen Ziem go under.
Coren was lying on his back, completely encased in scrap metal from neck to foot, and with a band of iron keeping his head back at a painful angle, completely exposing his neck. She could see the simple knife that had been stabbed through his chest, and the look of agony on Coren’s face as he struggled to breathe against the pain.
Beside him, she could see Ziem’s body lying still, his lips already blue, his hazel eyes empty and glazed over. His hands were bare for the first time in the fight, and he had one hand in the other, clutching at the gold ring that Aura had given him as his eyes stared skyward through the receding water.
Lea’s eyes burned at the sight of Ziem’s dead body, but she turned back to Coren with a murderous look. She leaned in and spat on his face, knowing that he could live for quite a while the way that he was stabbed, since the knife was actually preventing a lot of blood from being lost.
Good. She wanted him to live so that her Alpha would have the pleasure of making him pay for the lives he had taken.
After a long moment’s glare into Coren’s defeated and pain-stricken blue eyes, Lea reached out with both hands and brought in the sheets of metal that had formerly been Ziem’s body armor, wrapping her friend’s body with it like a blanket so that she could take him back to his home.
As the water receded and the Ironborn began to fight again behind her, Lea caught sight of something else coming towards her from the same direction Coren had, and it was a noise of enough people to make her take cover until she could see who was coming through the wet mud left by the Speaker’s attack.
Through the mists and dust that churned in the air, she could hear a hundred wet footsteps coming closer, some of them on two legs, some on four. When they finally came in sight, she could see that they were dressed, those of them that were dressed at all, in jeans and t-shirts, though they mostly ran barefoot. But it was their eyes that caught her attention, blazing red like the eyes of demons set in human faces.
It didn’t take long for them to get some idea of what was going on, or to tell which side was which even at a distance, with one side throwing stones and the other wearing plate mail armor. The Fireborn gave a cry and leapt into the fight, but it was the Stoneborn they were attacking from behind, trapping the group between a hammer and a hot place. Steam rose from the ground everywhere they stepped, and there were two that stayed behind, a wild-haired man and a woman who stood casually beside him to survey the horror.
He spotted Lea and raised a fire-rimmed hand before he realized her eyes were hazel, not grey, and lowered it again. “Your Alpha sends his regards. We saw him near the gate on our way in. Thought you folks might like a hand over here.” His American accent was alien-sounding even in the midst of all the recent additions of nationalities, and his casual manner as well.
“You’re the other Fireborn pack. Veronica’s cousin.” Or something. She couldn’t exactly remember who was who anymore, especially since she had a dead friend in front of her and many more strewn around.
“Somethin’ like that.” He looked down at Ziem, his eyes still open, and at Coren, writhing in pain nearby, and shook his head. “I’m sorry we’re late. For his sake and everybody else’s. But we’ll do what we can.” He nodded at her and headed off with his mate beside him, as several of his men ran off in other directions to purge the entire compound of the New Council’s enemies.
As much as she wanted to move away from the horrible scene around her, Lea just sat there with Ziem’s body in front of her,
