We were going to lose. No one here was a warrior but Kasia, and she was powerless against people able to throw fireballs. I was the only chance, but I could only do so much.
I set my jaw. I had to try. These were my friends. Closer than any family I’d ever had. I wasn’t going to let them die without a fight.
Chapter 35
Sebastian
I was out of breath when I got to the village. Screams filled the air, and over everything, the scent of death lingered. This couldn’t be happening. I could see Rose on the top of a wall that hadn’t been there this morning.
She ducked as lightning struck nearby. Dead assassins littered the ground around the wall she stood on. Two villagers were bleeding on the ground with knife wounds while Cara stood over them. Kasia was stabbing as someone sat on her back with a bow, firing arrow after arrow at assassins as they tried to surround Kasia.
Between the warriors and the center of the village stood three gnomes who glowed like the sun.
I sprinted towards them, and I felt the well of power that resided inside Rose. It was draining. Too quickly. Tapping into it, I shadow walked into a warren that I created, something I’d practiced regularly in the past month.
I flowed out of the shadow next to Rose and immediately threw back my hood. Rose lashed out with her dagger as I’d expected, but I dodged. Her hand came up to use her powers, but she stopped as she noticed that it was me.
“Protect the people in the village,” I commanded, and without waiting for her response, I shadow walked through my personal warren. I touched the stone and reappeared right behind an assassin. My obsidian blade sank into his head, and I was already shadow walking before I’d even had a chance to pull the blade out.
I called the dagger back as I stepped back into the Immortal Realm, and it reappeared as I was stabbing upward into a different assassin’s head. The first body dropped only a moment before the second.
In that moment, I was death like never before. These were some of the greatest duelists in the world, in any of the worlds. Yet, I killed with an ease that made them look like children before a soldier.
Their bodies littered the field, single stab wounds in each of them. Dozens were dead in minutes. It was an impossibility. This was just one more way that Rose had made me better than I could be without her.
Then I heard Rose scream. One of the assassins had realized that there was a warren beneath us. Rose’s body fell from the wall. In an instant, I shadow walked to her side, but it was too late for me to stop the assassin as he leaped from the wall.
I reappeared in the Immortal Realm, sliding into existence a foot away from Rose, and I watched as if everything was in slow motion. Enivyn, glowing like a star stepped over Rose’s body right before the assassin hit her.
The assassin screamed as he looked down on the light, his eyes burning out as he saw the light in its full brilliance. Enivyn looked up at the same time, and the obsidian dagger found the one weak spot in the armor that Rose had created for him, his face, slicing through flesh and bone like butter.
My dagger slid across the assassin’s throat only a moment later, but it was already too late. The half-gnome’s body collapsed on top of Rose who pulled his limp body to her, his light fading out and leaving spots in my vision.
The rest of the village continued the fight, but in that moment, only Rose mattered to me. Tears began to fall from her cheek as she stood up, cradling Enivyn in her arms.
I could feel her emotions. Pure rage mixed with more sadness than I’d ever felt. I could do nothing for her, and for that short moment, I was frozen on a battlefield for the first time.
Her eyes turned black. Not dark. Pure black, the same color as her wings that burned with power.
A sphere of shadows snapped up around her as she walked onto the battlefield, carrying the half-gnome. The shadows seemed stronger somehow, denser. Another assassin used the warren, and he plunged his dagger into the shadow shield. Without even a scream, he died, his eyes seeming to smolder and smoke. His body fell to the ground, but the dagger stayed locked into the shield that surrounded Rose.
She didn’t scream as she should have. She should have been in immense pain from the dagger strike as it pulled her power from her. She was so cold. The only pain that she seemed to recognize was the sadness of her fallen friend.
All of the other assassins approached her and saw their dead companion with burned-out eyes. A group of the surviving fifteen surrounded her, their weapons drawn, but all of them hesitated to use them against this shield they’d never seen before. A shield that could kill.
“Die,” she whispered, and mist rose from the ground, slowly climbing up the assassins’ bodies. They began to scream almost in unison, but none of them moved.
As the mist climbed, slowly covering them, the screams got louder and louder until they just stopped. Slumping sounds filled the air as everyone in the village stood silently watching the woman that we’d all fallen in love with.
Rose’s shield dissipated as she walked back to the center of the village with Enivyn still in her arms. I followed her, and she approached Cara. “Can we do anything? Is there any magic that can bring him back?”
I wanted to reach out and hold her, to comfort her, but I knew that right then, the only person that Rose cared about was Enivyn.
“No. There is nothing that can be done once the body is dead.” Rose blinked back more of the tears
