Bard: Chapter 14

It wasn’t a dragon.

Dragons had a distinctness to their being that could not be denied. The creature that slammed down on top of Trista was fearsome to be sure, but it lacked the scent of dragonfear that would have accompanied even the smallest wyrmling.

It crouched over her, roaring at her friends and pinning her to the frozen ground under its massive paw. Her chest screamed from broken ribs and the force of the impact, but her body was already knitting itself back together. Fear and pain radiated in the clearing. The frozen humans suffered from frostbite and starvation and dying limbs. They were a feast that nourished her and made the roiling force of her mother’s power flare strong and bright.

“Get off of me,” she growled, and the creature removed its paw, backing away without breaking its bluster at the party. Trista pushed herself to her feet, groaning as her ribs popped back into place. Demonic power flowed into her, warming and strengthening her, fed heartily on the terror and agony in the clearing. It felt good to be nourished and powerful again. It made her sick.

The creature swung around, shrieking in her face. Despite the ice it wore all over its body, it didn’t have scales, or any other serpentine features. It looked much more akin to an oversized, gangly bear, with a long, narrow snout, a whipping tail, and narrow, feathered wings that sprang from its back. She met the creature’s frigid gaze defiantly and it shuddered. There was the tiny glimmer of fear that came with recognition. It knew what she was, even if she didn’t know what it was.

It was anguished—panicked and desperate beyond thought. Trista didn’t understand. Its power exceeded any of the humans, and she had not attacked it yet.

Then the captain called out for two of the party to destroy the gemstone, and directed the others to fight the creature. She felt the spike of fear when the humans charged the gem, the sudden rush of rage and fright. It launched itself into the air, slamming down between the humans and the glittering object, screaming and slashing at them. It caught the men in the chest, throwing them across the clearing and into the drifted snow. Backing against the gem, it roared again, making small lunges and other acts of aggression.

Trista reached past the creature with her power, probing the gemstone. It was obviously the source of the winds and the ice. If she destroyed it, the winds would cease, and with her mother’s power running so hot, she could destroy anything she wished.

“Get to that gem!” the captain shouted. “Do whatever you have to do to smash it!”

She felt the humans move forward, Laura and Liam among them. The creature lashed out again and she blocked its claws where they might have hit her friends, glancing off the air. The frantic, clawing fear rose, and Trista moved to crush the gem, but there was nothing there to crush.

It glittered like a gem, but there was something else to it, something eerily familiar.

Trista slipped closer while the creature harried the fighters, keeping an eye on Laura and Liam as she went. After that first slash they at least had the good sense to keep clear of the thing. She probed the edges of the space around the shining…thing, and felt only bitter, biting cold. Wind whipped out of the space like a gale from the coldest reaches of the mountains. Energy writhed around it, like it was struggling to hold a shape.

“It’s not a gem!” she cried out over the wind. The edges of the thing pulsed, and Trista understood its familiar energy now. It led somewhere else entirely, but its form felt the same as the gate her mother kept in her sanctum. The doorway to the hells.

This was a door between worlds.

“It’s a—” she barely stopped short of shouting a word in an inhuman tongue, “—a door!”

“What are you on about?” the captain shouted, but Trista’s mind was racing. If the creature feared them getting too close to the doorway, was it afraid of them closing it? Damaging it? Why did it stay in this plane instead of passing back through?

The gate was so small. How could it have come through in the first place?

Laura caught her around the waist and flung them both into the snow as the creature barreled around the clearing, leaving a path of jagged ice in its wake.

“What are you doing?” Laura hollered over the wind and the creature’s shrieks. “It would have killed you!”

“It’s a door!” Trista shouted back. “I think the creature came through it!”

“Well it needs to go back!”

It did need to go back. It wanted to go back. Trista watched the created scare the humans away, retreat to the doorway. She felt its anguish and its fear. It couldn’t go back, not with the gate so small.

“I need to open the gate more!” Trista shouted, climbing to her feet and helping Laura up.

“You want to open it more!”

“So it can go back!”

Laura stared at her for a moment, looked to the creature, shrieking and slashing at anyone who drew near. She nodded grimly.

“Do you need to get closer?”

“Not terribly,” Trista said. She opened her senses further, drawing in the desperate, screaming despair of the humans trapped in the ice, the sharp terror of the others facing down the creature, the biting pain of the ice in all their frail human bodies. Her mother’s power burst into an inferno, so hot the snow around Trista’s feet began to melt away.

They moved forward slowly, edging closer as the creature directed its attention towards the fighters trying to get to the doorway.

“Hold this,” Trista said, thrusting her violin towards Laura. She could hear the hard, imperious edge to her own voice. She hated it, but it was necessary. Laura took the violin from her hands so she could reach forward towards the gate, pushing her power into the slender gap.

The Matron of House Infernal had been amongst the first to tear an opening between the planes, surely Trista could manage one large enough for the winged beast, especially when it was started for her. Demonic power roiled, engulfing her with warmth and might. The veil between worlds parted as easily as a sheet of paper.

Cutting, vicious wind erupted into the clearing as the gate split wide open, bringing snow and shards of ice with it. The beast let out a shrill cry that sent shivers down her spine. Unlike the shrieks and howls it had been crying, this was more like a song. Over the howling wind, Trista could hear an answering call on the other side of the gate.

In an instant, the creature sprang into the air and darted through the opening, disappearing into the frozen land beyond. Trista heard shouts of triumph over the wind, accompanied by the shrill cries of the humans trapped in the ice. If anything, the winds blew more fiercely than they had before, and after a few moments, even the shouts of triumph turned into cries of pain. She drank them in, relishing the power. Her body healed itself, languishing in the onslaught of torment that sated her.

Next to her, Laura felt a bright lance of pain as ice cut into the exposed flesh around her face, and Trista felt shaken back into the world with a jolt. Liam pained as well, more distantly. Trista fought to push away her mother’s power and found it clinging, wrapping around her like a warm blanket.

“Great!” Laura shouted into the screaming winds. She shoved the violin back into Trista’s hands. “Now close it!”

Trista stared at the violin, trying to remember how to make music. Her mother’s power wasn’t for making things, only destroying them, ripping them apart and feeding off of what remained. She shoved it down, tried to swallow that singing, wondrous strength that pulsed through her like the most natural thing in the world. She denied it, feeling her body weaken even as she tried to pry its claws loose from her insides.

How to close the gate? It was a wound in the world, a tear in the veil. Perhaps she could heal it. She raised the violin, trying to recall the melody that had healed Liam’s hand. The notes that mended and brought things back together. The song that made things whole.

The beauty of it appeared, glimmering at the edges of her perception, and her demonic powers revolted. Pain shot through her body like a jagged lance ripping through her chest. She cried out, doubling over in pain. The power to make and the power to destroy warred in her like an earthquake to shatter mountains. She released the music, tried to shove her mother’s power away again, and righted herself.

“You alright?” Laura shouted. Trista nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her mother’s power continued to surge, but she batted it away, reaching again for the song that could close the gate.

Trista went to her knees, vomiting into the snow. The music clashed against her mother’s power, like her head was stuck in a ringing bell.

The bright, rich terror that surrounded her just wouldn’t stop. Their terror only heightened now that the creature was gone but they still couldn’t move, still felt the cutting needles of the ice, and the horror of their dead limbs. It filled her, nourished her, melted the snow to expose green grass where she knelt. She felt glutted on their terror and she didn’t want it. They were feeding the wrong fire. The heat she could pull from her mother’s power wouldn’t warm and heal them, it would sear them like meat over a fire, cooking them from the inside out, bringing more pain and desperate, clawing terror to feed her.

“What’s wrong?” Laura knelt in front of her, and Trista grabbed her by the arms, pressing her face into Laura’s shoulder and sobbing. “Trista?”

The cries of the frozen humans filled the clearing, even over the winds. They were frantic, shrieking. Trista fought the urge to revel in it, to relish each and every cry. She pushed away from Laura and was sick in the snow again. Fighting her instinct hurt so much, but she didn’t want it. She needed the new magic to close the door, to mend the tear between worlds. Her mother’s power would only make it worse. The rend would widen, the cold would grow wild, and all of the humans would die. Laura and Liam would both die.

“What do you need?” Liam was beside her, one hand in hers and the other on her back. Laura was on her other side, arm over her shoulders, helping and shielding together. They were both in pain, the cold cutting into them. She was worrying them, she was feeding on them, and it made things so much worse.

“I need—” she choked on the words, squeezed her eyes shut, sucked in a breath. “I need them—I need—they need to stop!” she cried. “I can’t—when they’re—they need to stop.”

“Stop what?” Laura asked as Liam stood and dashed away. “Trista, what needs to stop? What are you trying to do?”

“They—it’s because they’re so—I can’t,” Trista wretched, doubling over in the muddy spot the heat from her body had created. She couldn’t stop feeding on them, couldn’t control it. So long as that fire was fed it would grow and tear at her when she fought it.

Slowly though, the panic and terror in the clearing began to diminish. The change was so small at first she didn’t notice it, but a strange calm was spreading. The frozen humans were still afraid, they were still in pain, but the fervor had died out, their cries had quieted. Without such a ready fuel source, the roiling, destructive force in Trista’s mind quieted, and she was able to open her eyes.

Liam was across the clearing, both hands on one of the frozen men’s shoulders, faces close, shouting to be heard over the wind. Even as she watched, the bright pain and fear in the man dimmed. He nodded, shaking and teary, drawing deep breaths, his panic ebbing. Liam waved Travis over to stand with the man and moved onto the next scout, a woman frozen on her side a few paces away.

Trembling, Trista pushed herself up to a sitting position, lifting her violin to her shoulder and steadying her own breath. She could stand it. This lessened terror was enough to push aside, just long enough to do what she needed to do.

The song shivered when she began, shaking with her trembling hands, but she moved through each note, building up the restoring power and steadying herself. It hurt, but she focused first on the gate, setting the healing threads around its edges, knitting the plane back together where it had torn. The draw of the power was intense. If she hadn’t already been on the ground she would have fallen to her knees, but gradually, the edges of the gate drew inward, meeting and sealing in the center, and the winds died, leaving the clearing silent but for her song.

Laura was at her back, holding her up, and Trista continued on, shifting the melody to the lively warmth she’d first discovered, spreading it out to everyone who could hear and restoring them. The scout nearest them, a man frozen on his back in the snow, let out a relieved gasp and wept.

Even in their relief there was pain, the prickling agony of long sleeping and frozen limbs waking up, the horror of finding feet and fingers gone to them. Trista threw her awareness into the music, drowning out everything else. She let it draw everything from her, empty her, until her arms refused to obey any longer and her fingers went clumsy with cold and exhaustion. Dropping her arms, she fell back into Laura.

All around the clearing, the frozen scouts were free of their ice, the snow around their feet melted away. The new excursion team was huddled around each of them, wrapping them in blankets and offering sips from flasks. The heavy snow and ice that coated the trees around the clearing was already beginning to drip and melt away.

Liam hurried back to them, offering a hand to pull she and Laura up out of the snow.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Trista nodded, unable to make herself speak. Standing felt like the most she could possibly do at the moment. She swayed on her feet and Laura’s arm tightened around her waist, holding her up.

“You did it,” she said quietly in Trista’s ear, and Trista wept.