115th of Gnielm, 336 EA
Ishikar, Athal
Svaljna moved fluidly, because she had to. She took a dancer’s strength with her, from one position to the next, interrupted by staccato reversals. When she turned her motheyed cloak flowed out behind her in a wide arc, and though she was keenly aware of how competently she was acting she still felt utterly out of place in this scrap.
The creatures descending upon them there in the deep musty basement flocked and fluttered, all leathery wing and grasping pincer, a single sharpened proboscis adorning the center of each of their faces.
Snekde’de smashed one limp against the wall with the flat of a pressure-loaded ballistic just as Xochit let out a screaming arc of fire from their outstretched fingers, scorching a section of roughstone ceiling. Snekde’de yelped, tuning wand nearly dropping from his scaly fingers as the brief blast of light across the darkened interior cast visible a half dozen more of the monsters scuttling along the ceiling.
“To arms!” Broneimir called, as though they were not already in the midst of pitched combat. The call drew three of the monsters to dive at him, piercing into his soft flesh to suck at his blood. He threw out a cry, and underlying that yelp echoed a mumbled phrase arcane in a voice that was both his and not. The tattoo dripping down in a line from their left eye glowed brightly with eldritch power, and one of the leeching beasts suddenly began to fill with sunlight in place of blood before bursting in a scorched husk.
Two more of the creatures broke through Svaljna’s guard, attaching themselves flat against her body. She flailed at them, cracking the flat of her sword against her chest and leg, just as one took the moment of vulnerability to strike for her neck.
As pain turned to panic Svaljna suddenly felt something brimming up from within her. Words of power filtering through her thoughts, their power weaving unbidden. It was sveida, magic like a note from the song most beautiful strung through every cell in her body.
The barest hint of aetheric fog began to shimmer around her fingers, begging her to pull their strands into the soft somatic curve of a spell.
There was no feint, no purchase to be had against these parasites that had already invaded her. She felt them killing her, and she knew what she needed to do to save herself.
And then like a wall, her focus drew back outwards. She saw Xochit and Snekde’de and Broneimir, all in their own fights. She knew she was flashing before their eyes just the same, knew that they would know if she dishonored herself. That they would judge her hrin, even if she was the only one among them that knew that word.
She clenched through her affliction, willing away that magic that would show her weakness. She fell to one knee, and rather than thinking of her body drained of blood she could not help but pray that they had not caught that flicker of the power that most shamed her.
Her vision dimmed, her senses falling away.
The first thing she felt again was a tearing at her neck, her leg, her shoulder. There were hands under her armpits, dragging her up to a stumble.
“Come on!” It was Broneimir’s voice, his beautiful terrible face. “We’ve got to get her to a healer!”
Svaljna mumbled back weakly, trying to tell them no, and feeling for all the world that they should have left her.
The Etra Anthology 