DarkFyre
Chapter Fifteen

***

All content of this story is copyright {2014} by Returning_Writer_Guy and is my intellectual property. This is purely a work of fiction and fantasy and not based on any truthful events. No individuals were harmed as none of the individuals in these stories exist. This story is not to be redistributed under any circumstances without my express written permission.

***

The next day was lost to the blizzard. They spent the better part of it huddled together in their blankets, pressed in close, as near to their small fire as they dared. The stone cliff was a forbidding face of rock and ice, and even with the nearby fire, the ice held strong, glittering with stubborn beauty in the firelight.
	The blizzard outside was a wild, angry thing. The winds were a deep, soulful wail echoing through the canyons of the mountains. Very briefly, Rael had stepped out of their shelter to see if he could ascertain anything in their snowed over surroundings. By the time he had given up just moments later, the ice and snow had already formed a brittle, frozen crust on his clothes and in his beard. The sky was blotted out by swollen clouds hanging low. They pressing in around the peaks of the FrostFall Mountains like a glorious and hostile cloak in a constant state of decay and renewal, expanding and ebbing as they hemorrhaged snow in great white bleeding gouts.
	“It’s frightening,” Silmaria told Rael, speaking of the storms. They sat, hip to hip, eating a meager breakfast and doing their best to ignore the incessant gnaw of hunger the slim meal did nothing to abate. “My whole life lived in the dale, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
	It was true; blizzards and harsh winter storms were a regular occurrence in DarkFyre Dale, but the storms in the pass were different. Even with their shelter and fire and bundling up so heavily in thick winter clothes and cloaks and furs and blankets, not to mention sharing body heat, the cold crept through, insidious and patient and unstoppable. The temperature made their blood sluggish in their veins, and the gale blew violent enough that had they been walking the pass, exposed, it probably could have ripped them right off the side of the mountain.
	Well, ripped her off, anyway.
	“They say the storms in IceMarch Pass are an old god,” Rael said to her.
 His arms were around her, holding her close to the heat of his body as he sat behind her, with the Gnari girl’s head on his chest, practically sitting in his lap. Silmaria drank in the warmth of his body as much as the warmth of the fire. She stared into the fire, studying the shift and flicker of the flames, and listened.
“Legend says several hundred years ago there was a holy place, a monastery whose monks followed the old gods. The focus of their faith and contemplation was the guardian spirit-god of the FrostFall Mountains. They praised and worshipped the god, and the monastery prospered and grew.
“It didn’t last,” Rael went on. “One year, during an especially mild and gentle summer, a tribe of raiders who wandered the flatlands came up into the mountains after hearing of the monastery’s prosperity. The monks welcomed the wild, half-starved men into their sanctuary, bid them be comfortable and at home, and help themselves to whatever food and sustenance they required. The raiders returned their hospitality with bloodshed, and cut the monks down to the man. They raided the holy temple, stole all the supplies and goods they could carry from the monastery, and set it ablaze.
“Upon discovering the travesty at the monastery, the god became enraged. Once, the god had been the gentle serenity of the Mountains the monks had enjoyed. After the monks were slain, he became a spirit of vengeance, taking the guise of a terrible, powerful storm, and smiting the Mountains with his wrath. In a blizzard of unheard of intensity and suddenness, the flames of the monastery were extinguished and the raiders were swallowed up and slain, all in the span of moments.”
“If that’s true, why is the old god still an angry storm?” Silmaria asked.
“Who can say what motivates a god? Assuming it’s a god at all, and not simply a very nasty, very un-divine storm. Because his followers are lost, I suppose,” Rael shrugged. “No one ever returned to the monastery. No one has taken the monks place and worshiped the old god of the mountain again. Even now, the storms rage in the Pass so frequently that hardly anyone uses IceMarch Pass except during the summer months when the blizzards aren’t so deadly. Maybe the old god is angry that no one looks to him with praise anymore. Maybe he is lonely. Or maybe he just cannot forgive what was done.”
“I don’t understand the gods, really,” Silmaria said, and stifled a yawn before curling in closer to Rael’s warmth, sitting on his lap in full now, and feeling rather content about it. 
“My mother didn’t believe in the new gods. She said they were vain, and that gods didn’t wear faces. And The Highest Holy is too pious and self-righteous. She said The Devout would sooner spit on us than give a care, and that said nothing good about their Holy One. The old gods… well. Mother said that father died for the old gods. So she had nothing good to say about them.”
“Died for the old gods how?” Rael asked gently. 
His hands rubbed slowly along her arms. Silmaria wondered if he was aware he was even doing it. She doubted it. 
“She wouldn’t say. She never talked about how he died. I have no idea how he would have died for the old gods. Part of me is curious. And part of me thinks I’d rather never know something like that.”
“There’s something to be said for closure,” Rael said. 
His hands rested on her shoulders. They were so distracting, those hands; the feel of them touching her flesh even in such a casual way nearly derailed her train of thought. She thought about telling him as much, but then he might take them away, and she didn’t want to so much as chance that.
“Yes. But closure with a ghost is probably not quite so satisfying,” she returned. “All I have of him is stories and half-imagined memories. That’s not so much to need a lot of closure with. He died before I knew him enough to care.”
“Perhaps,” Rael said doubtfully. But he let any argument on the matter go, and that was the end of that.
Silmaria let out a quiet sigh, shut her eyes, and relaxed against his solid form. She’d spilled her guts last night in a vast outpouring of grief and shame and pain. She told him about the Stirring, and how she was helpless in the face of it. She told him about giving in to it, again and again, unable to endure the agony of the cravings and demands of the flesh burning at her insides until she satisfied her need. Silmaria confessed her passionate love affair with Master Edwin. She felt oddly comfortable sharing that with the man’s son, and knew on some level that he would understand. 
She was much more ashamed to admit to her nights of depravity and senseless rutting with men she cared nothing for. She told him everything, the most horrid, hurtful details, feeling in turns embarrassed, vindicated, and worthless, and she wanted so badly to just stop, knowing he would surely be disgusted now that he knew what a wicked little whore she was, but the words flowed out of her as unstoppable as her tears.
Only, Lord Rael wasn’t disgusted with her at all. He listened to her as the sin poured out of her, and he never swayed, never flinched. He listened silent and unjudging, and his hands rested at the small of her back. He never let her out of the comfort and security of his arms. Not when he learned of her relationship with his father. Not when she told him the times she’d gone to the guard barracks in utter desperation, and stayed until they were satisfied to the man. Not when she sobbingly confessed her quiet and quite real fear, that if the Stirring grew strong enough, she didn’t think there was anything she wouldn’t do to satisfy the unyielding need. Rael held her through it all, and his beautiful eyes held no judgment, only compassion, as she told him everything.
Well. Not quite everything. One thing, one tiny little nuance of detail among the outpour of her scarred and frightened soul, Silmaria kept for herself. She was too confused, too lost, and too scared to tell him how deeply she was coming to care for him. She’d already been rejected once. Even if Rael had done it out of concern instead of cruelty, Silmaria didn’t think her heart could take another just now.
	At last, it was all out, the great jumble of words and emotion and rawness Silmaria had kept buried deep inside, and once it was out, she was at a loss. Rael reached up and wiped the tears from her cheeks, not for the first time, before cupping her chin and lifting her glossy green eyes up to his. 
Silmaria stared into those intense silver eyes.
Lost.
“You are beautiful, Silmaria. Truly. As you are. What you are. Who you are. You don’t see it. Other people do. They see your beauty, and they try to shame it and sully it, because your beauty is from within as well as without. You have a good, kind, giving heart that has been bruised and mistreated, and is still good in spite of that. 
“Most people go through less,” Rael continued, in that low, smooth, soft voice that made Silmaria shiver. “And they’re still ugly for it. Because they aren’t as strong as you. People cannot stand to see that. It’s like a mirror, showing them all that they are not and can never be. So they judge you, and shame you, and hurt you, because it’s easier than having to look at that mirror and see their lack staring back at them.
“I see you, Silmaria,” he said, and the sincerity of his words and his eyes made her heart quiver. “And I see nothing shameful or ugly. I see your passion, your kindness, your tenacious spirit, and all the carnal lusts and needs and deeds in the world won’t change those things about you. I see you. Not what you’ve done. Or what you will do. Just you.”
	She wept, again. Hot tears soaking his already soaked shirt. Tears of relief, this time. She wanted to tell him. She wanted him to understand the healing he’d just offered, if only she were brave enough to take it. She wanted to tell him, but she’d run out of words.
	Rael knew. His hands were in her hair, pale, strong hands running through the soft and yielding blackness of her curls, and his touch spoke understanding in ways words never could. 
He knew.

***

	The next day the storm was gone suddenly and completely, like the dark vengeance of an old god’s fury, spent and restive until it gathered itself once more. As soon as the pair found the storm had waned they hastily broke camp, gathered their supplies, and set out onto the path once more to cover as much ground as possible before the storm began anew. 
	Dawn broke over the mountains sluggish and weak, as if the sun hadn’t fully mustered its strength after the thrashing of the storm. The Pass was wrapped in clouds and clumps and reaching tendrils of an eerie and beautiful fog in shades of indigo and azure. The sun was obscured behind and backlighting the mist and vapors hanging in great blue veils all around them, fitting to the mountainsides like filmy gauze. The valleys and canyons were covered by a blanket of sapphire fog, and little ribbons of murky cobalt shifted on the snow caking the path ahead, swirling into airy nothingness around their trodding feet.
	It was cold, but not the unbearable deathly cold it had been. Rael and Silmaria moved briskly along, bundled heavily, and allowed themselves to enjoy what now felt, compared to just last night, like entirely mild and fair weather. 
	Or Silmaria enjoyed it, at least. Rael appreciated the gentleness of the day, but the Nobleman was too preoccupied to truly enjoy it. He was worried. Chiefly, about their supplies; they still had some dried goods and smoked meat left, and the last of the nuts they’d gathered before heading into the pass, but it was a meager supply and rapidly dwindling. It would last them three, perhaps four days tops, and that only if they stretched the food so thin that it would barely keep them on their feet. He’d been hoping to spot some game, a mountain goat or squirrel or hare or hawk or, well, anything, but the storm had driven whatever hunting was to be had deep into hiding. 
	Rael feared the very real possibility that by the time anything became brave enough to venture into the open, the storms would be on them again.
	Which was yet another concern. They’d been very lucky to find shelter under that rocky overhang. He hadn’t even recalled it from his previous trip through the Pass years ago. If they were unable to find another such spot before the storms overtook them… It was only about three days before they came out the south side of the Pass. But if the storms caught them, they could end up losing who knows how many days waiting it out. Their food was likely to run out, but truly that would be the least of their problems. If they were exposed out in the open when another blizzard found them, every scrap of clothing and body heat and firewood wouldn’t save them from freezing to death. 
“Something bad is going to happen,” Silmaria said softly, startling him from his thoughts.
Rael glanced down at her. Her shorter legs had to work twice as hard to keep up with him and walk at his side, but the Gnari girl didn’t complain. 
“Why do you think that?” He asked slowly. 
Silmaria craned her head back to look at him, her hood falling away to show the darkness of her hair. There was a smudge of dirt across one of her cheeks, drawing attention to the dark slash of the black stripe set against her orange and white coloring, accentuating her cheekbone. 
Not for the first time, Rael was caught unexpectedly by her unique, exotic beauty.
“I see it in your face,” was her simple reply.
That, he hadn’t expected. He swore silently; he’d been trying to hide how grim their situation was. Now that she’d seen it, though, there was no point in lying to her.
“I was thinking about the days ahead. If we don’t find some food, or some shelter, we’re going to be in some very serious trouble.”
	The girl shrugged and kept step with him, stepping around an especially thick drift of snow up against the cliff face. “We’ve been in trouble a long time. This whole journey is about us being in trouble. We’ve managed so far. We’ll manage again.”
	She made it seem so simple. It wasn’t. But then again, it was. Rael took heart from her brave toughness; there was nothing he could do about the future now, in this moment. “Save your energy for the things you can control by letting go of the things you can’t,” he mused, reciting words his father spoke often.
	“He was fond of saying that,” Silmaria said, then gave self-depreciating smile. “Good thing, I guess. I needed to hear it an awful lot.”
	Rael chuckled softly to himself as they came around a bend where the path curved around the mountain. “I tried to control and order things too much when I was a lad. I felt like I had to. That was what a Lord did, what a man who would one day lead did. I wanted to fit everything into little boxes that were neat and orderly and sensible. It’s a nice thought. But not practical at all. And makes for a horribly unadaptable leader. Hell, a horribly unadaptable person in general.”
“I wanted to control people,” Silmaria told him. “I wanted to make everyone stop hating me and judging me. I wanted everyone to stop staring at me with that look. The one that says I’m less than I should be, just because I’m…me. Didn’t work, obviously. Definitely a waste of good energy.”
	Rael stopped, his bright eyes scanning the fog out across the empty space to their right where the Pass opened into great, gaping emptiness. He squinted briefly, then nodded as he pointed, “There.”
	The Gnari girl followed his gaze and stared out into the fog. She probably saw through the haze better than he with her acute vision, but it took her a moment because she didn’t know what she was looking for. Then it became all too obvious.
	It was massive. A great, sprawling structure hewn into the rocky mountainside across the gorge. It was a wonder of craftsmanship, engineering, and bravery. The compound boasted a great central hub, rounded in shape and rising into a proud roof of fine, sturdy clay tiles. Their once vibrantly painted red was now flecking and peeling, the color of fresh rust. The walls were a faded old green and the huge timbers were rotted and warping from the toll of the elements. 
The central temple, for there was no mistaking it as otherwise, was set in the mountain face itself, on a cliff that had seemingly been carved out specifically to cradle the house of worship. The temple branched off to both sides with walkways leading to towers flanking the temple on either end, above and below. The towers were likewise settled into the side of the mountain, and they rose high and slender into the air in spindly points, except the topmost tower in the east, where the top was sheared off and crumbling.
“The monastery in the stories,” Silmaria breathed, taking in the sad splendor.
“So many believe,” Rael nodded. “Some people think there was once a way to reach it from this side of the Pass. A bridge or crossing of some kind. It’s long gone now, if it ever was. The Monastery has stood isolated for as long as any can remember. Hundreds of years, certainly.”
“I can understand why the old god is angry still,” Silmaria said softly. “Something so special shouldn’t have to be so lonely.”
Rael nodded, and for a brief time, the pair stood there on the lip of the Pass, staring through the slowly dissipating haze of blue fog at the decaying monastery. The ruins were dying a slow but unavoidable death. Each winter, each storm, each outburst of an angry god tore away just a bit more of the temple, made one of the towers that much weaker. What the fire had not accomplished all at once, the storms would, in time. One day, the compound would crumble to rock and rubble and broken timber. Isolated. Alone. Then it would be nothing but a tale. A legend.
Lost to the ages.
Silmaria leaned against Rael’s solid form so she woudn’t feel quite so tragically alone.
***

	The break in the storm didn’t last, just as they’d known it wouldn’t. By midafternoon the next day it was upon them, the gentle snowfall of the morning shattered by a fierce and punishing storm that bore down on them from seemingly nowhere. A fierce gale wind blasted them against the mountainside and threatened to send them tumbling out into the abyss ever-looming beside the path, and the snow and ice whisked around so thick that they could hardly see two feet in front of them.
	“Keep going!” Rael screamed over the harsh, jagged whistle of the wind. He gripped Silmaria’s upper arm and practically dragged her along. His fingers dug into her with bruising strength. She hardly noticed at all, so intent was she on keeping one foot in front of the other while she endured the battering of the elements. She had to bow her head against the cruel wind, and simply followed the tracks of Rael’s huge boots, letting his grip guide her and trusting in his strength and wisdom.
	One foot and then the other. That was all she could manage, then.
	It was close. Rael knew it. It had to be close. It had to be! He’d thought they would have reached it by now, before the storm even began. But his memory was hazy, and it was difficult to judge their exact position on the mountain when the weather or the condition of the trail slowed them so often. They had to find it, or they were lost. Much longer and they’d start to lose fingers and toes, ears and nose to frostbite. 
Soon after that, it wouldn’t matter, because they’d be dead.
Rael plowed forward, refusing to give in to panic or despair. Even as the blizzard sapped his strength he drove on, gripping Silmaria’s arm with one hand and raising the other to shield his eyes from the whipping wind and stinging ice and snow. His gloved hand was crusted over with a thick film of frozen white. His fingers were numb. He didn’t care; he would press on, dragging or carrying the Gnari if he had to until they were safe, or until the cold drained every last bit of strength and life from his body, and he laid down to sleep one last time. He had to get Silmaria out of this, if nothing else. That she should die this way for following him, was unthinkable. Worse, because he’d allowed it, was intolerable. He couldn’t let it happen.
	There. Thank all known gods, named and unnamed. Rael stumbled toward it with a surge of renewed energy and hope. Silmaria could do naught but follow or be dragged. 
	Long knives of ice hung down like translucent, frigid teeth at the mouth of the cave. It yawned open in the darkness, invitingly gluttonous. The snow blew right in, littering the floor at the cave entrance in big pillowing piles of freezing white fluff, deceptively innocent. Rael scrabbled his way into the cave, his hand guiding them in deeper until they were past the spray of snow. 
	Finding a spot that was almost dry, in a rather soggy and slick sort of way, Rael sagged to the stone floor with a deep, shuddering sigh. 
	Silmaria was so frozen and numb that it took her some time to even register they weren’t marching out in the snow anymore. At last she realized she was a miserable and wretched kind of cold, as opposed to near death kind of cold. Rael had gathered her up in his arms, sitting her in his lap to press as close as possible while his hands rubbed briskly up and down her arms and back to try and rub something resembling circulation back into her frozen veins.
	“I didn’t think we’d make it,” Rael said hoarsely into her ear. “I remembered seeing this cave, but that was during the summer months years ago, and I couldn’t be sure how far out it was. Or if it would even be here. Cave-ins are known to happen from time to time. We’re lucky. Another hour and we would be done.”
	“Th-Thank you,” Silmaria said through chattering teeth as she pressed up against him hard. “For d-dragging me.”
	“I only dragged you a little,” Rael chuckled. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to carry you. You don’t weight much of a thing, but I feel like my boots are made of stone as it is.”
	“I never want to do that again,” she sighed, burying her face into the Nobleman’s shoulder.
	Once she was recovered somewhat, Silmaria glanced around the cave. They’d stepped in deep enough to get away from the snow and ice blowing through the cave’s mouth. It was a spacious, vast cavern of a cave, an impressive hollow in the mountain leading deep into the core of the peak the Pass was winding around. It was still cold within; the rocky walls glinted with a thin layer of frost from where water ran in drip-drops and rivulets and sheets down the rock face to freeze into dazzling glittering formations. Huge stalactites hung from the high cave ceiling. They were beautiful and strange rocky spires. The wet, drippy fingertips of the mountain, ever searching, always reaching. Smoothly iridescent icicles hung between and alongside their bigger, denser stone cousins. Further back, the cave floor sloped down and away, leading deeper into the heart of the mountain where it was undoubtedly warmer, yet even the thought of moving down, down and deep made Silmaria uncomfortably claustrophobic.
	Some places, she instinctively knew, were not meant to be tread.
	Rael released her after a while and unslung his packs from his strong shoulders to rummage around inside.
	“I can’t see a damn thing,” he muttered, and pulled out a mostly dry length of wood. He tore a small strip off one of his heavy cloaks and wrapped it around the wood to make a torch. Silmaria made herself comfortable as well, unbundling her things and letting out a tired sigh as the Knight brought out flint and tinder.
	“Our food will be gone soon,” she said.
	“I know,” Rael replied.
	“What are we going to do?”
	A spark caught, and a soft glow came up from the torch. Rael nurtured the budding flame, blowing on it gently, shielding it with his hands and coaxing it into greater life. The flames flickered, swayed, nearly gutted, then at last found a grip on the cloth and wood of the torch, finding enough of a hold to live and then, slowly, grow. 
There was a metaphor there, some poetic analogy to their situation, she was sure. But she was too exhausted to grasp at the fleeting thought.
“I don’t know,” Rael replied. “Not yet. We’re safe from the storm for now. That’s better than we were half an hour ago. The rest of the answers and way forward will follow as they may. We just have to keep our eyes open and keep pressing forward when the opportunity presents itself.”
Despite the wisdom of his words, his relaxed position in such dire circumstances was beginning to grate on Silmaria’s nerves. “That’s all well and good,” she said crossly, “But what if no opportunity comes up before we really do run out of food and starve? A plan would be nice. Some sort of…”
“Shh!” Rael hissed, cutting her off with a sharp motion of his hand. Silmaria obeyed without even thinking. Rael sat stock still, tightness and apprehension writ in every line of his posture. He stared into the gloom of the cave, holding up his torch, the only movement the play of shadows cast by his torch undulating across his strained face.
For the whisper of a moment, a flitter of thought, she had no idea what caused him to go so tense. 
Then came the deep, primal, animal rumbling from the back of a cave, all gruff and sleepy and irate. The sound of two handfuls of gravel being scrubbed together. The sort of sound that could freeze anything with a pulse in its tracks, paralyzed and instinctively hopeful that whatever happened, they would escape notice. Let me be lucky, was the prayer in minds small and big alike. Let me be unseen. Pass me over, don’t notice me.
Go away. Go away. Please go away.
She said that prayer, too, and she was certain Rael was silently saying it right along with her. 
Too late, it seemed. Out from the back of the cavern it loped on lumbering, padded paws, fearsome, rending claws clicking on the wet stones underfoot. Silmaria had never seen one, of course, save once, an old drawing in one of Master Edwin’s dusty old encyclopedias. It was bigger than the tome had hinted. A thing more substantial and complete than any book or turn of phrase could do justice. 
It took up the whole cave. It took up the entire world. Its head alone seemed bigger than her whole body, surely. Thick, shaggy fur bristled, making it seem even larger if that were conceivably possible. The thick belt covered more raw muscle and mass than any creature ought to have possessed. Claws and teeth like nature’s most cunning and cruel swords were arrayed with more deadly promise than any battle-ready battalion. 
	The bear snuffed at their scent, and that terrifying maw opened, slavering.
“Get back,” Rael told her in a voice of calm deathly and desperation. He was moving slowly, ever so gradually, doing everything not to spook the monstrous beast before them as it shuffled back and forth and trying to decide just what it wanted to do about these two annoyances. The Knight held the torch extended between the bear and themselves, and his free hand slowly edged toward his greatsword.
	Silmaria couldn’t even begin to dare to think of moving, so great was her fear.
	The bear’s eyes were not happy. It was very obviously irate over having its den disturbed. Worse, it had the look of an apex predator in need of a good mid-winter meal. It exuded hunger in the way only a wild, unstoppable force could, that palpable sense that at any moment, the precarious balance would tip and it would decide that yes indeed, they were worth the effort of breaking in half to be its next meal. 
The moment came. The balance tipped.
With a roar that shook the roots of the mountain, the bear charged. 
	Rael and Silmaria scattered. Rael let out a shout of his own, a battle cry of challenge as he rolled to the side and out of the bear’s path. He circled frantically, waving the torch before him with one hand as the other clutched his greatsword, trying to wrest it from its sheath. The flames danced, weaving back and forth. 
The mountain bear roared and growled and huffed, slapping at the fire with a bruiser of a paw. Rael jabbed the torch into the huge paw. The bear let out a scream from a wide, vicious maw, teeth bared in a rictus of death. It swiped again, knocking the torch from Rael’s hand and sending it spinning along the floor.
Silmaria huddled against the wall, horrified, as Rael squared off with the bear. He leaped back, circling as he went, always facing the angry mass of killing flesh that was the bear. At last the Nobleman got his greatsword free, and the steel flashed in the flickering light of the torch. The bear came forward again, a charging mountain of claw and teeth and predatory muscle. Rael lunged to the side and brought his greatsword up in a cut across the bear’s shoulder. The animal bellowed out a cry of pain and rage and followed, swatting at the Knight. Rael rolled beneath the enormous paw, claws raking through the air just above his head, and came to his feet at a run, the bear already circling and chasing.
The Nobleman spun, his greatsword whipping out in a slash that would have cut a man in two. The blade caught the bear across its chest as it reared on its hind legs, and though it bit deep, the blow didn’t stop the beast. Rael leaped aside as the bear came crashing down to crush him beneath its fearsome weight.
So it went, back and forth, Rael straining desperately to stay one step ahead of the beast as it charged and reared and did its best to eviscerate him. He cut the bear, again and again, and each cut seemed to only make the beast more determined to kill. Blood lust and rage and madness danced in those small black eyes, and blood flecked the foam dripping from its toothsome maw.
	Rael lunged in to rake a cut across the bear’s leg, and before he could leap aside, the bear struck, smashing a glancing blow into his right hip. The Nobleman was lucky; the bear’s claws found no purchase in him, but the swat was powerful enough to send him tumbling back hard. The back of his head cracked resoundingly on the stone ground. 
Rael’s vision went hazy, blurring violently. The world gave a sickening sideways lurch as his equilibrium struggled to adjust. He tried to scramble to his feet, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He was moving slowly, far too slowly. He was struggled up to shaky feet, trying to shake the cobwebs, but the bear was already closing for the kill. 
Rael saw his death, and breathed despair.
The twang of the bow. The firm, meaty thunk of an arrow burying deep.
Silmaria stared the bear down. Rael gazed at her, stunned. She wasn’t stupid, or foolish; fear was naked and screaming unashamedly in her wide green eyes. The bear reared on its hind legs, and let out that mountain-shaking roar. Silmaria didn’t flinch. She armored her fear in desperate, stubborn courage and stood her ground. She drew back another arrow, the fletched feathers brushing the short velvet pelt of her cheek, and loosed it. It blasted into the bear’s ribs, the shot as clean and sure as the first that scored its shoulder. The monstrous animal went mad with pain and killing rage.
Before it could charge her, Rael exploded into motion, slashing again and again then rolling under the bear’s deadly swiping paw. His hip and right leg were numb. He didn’t let it slow him. The Nobleman’s face was drawn into a snarl, his teeth clenched and bared, and his silvered eyes reflected the feral, wild bloodlust in the bear’s. He was frightening to behold as he lashed out, his greatsword working fiercely and tirelessly.
The bear was slowing. Rael had cut it in a dozen places. None of them were deep enough to bring the beast down, but its blood was flowing and seeping away, taking its terrible strength with the warm red rivers spattering the chilled cave floor.
Silmaria put another arrow into the huge predator, catching it in one of its rear legs this time. 
The bear had enough.
	With a great huff it turned away from Rael to charge the small, determined Gnari. Rael saw the bear’s focus shift. He screamed a curse and lunged into the bear’s path with his blade leading the way.
	Rael’s greatsword plunged deep into the bear’s chest, sliding through meat and muscle with all the warrior’s strength and the momentum of the bear’s charge behind it. The terrible animal’s roar was a wet gurgle and blood spilled from its gaping maw. The steel had at last punctured one immense lung. The blow was mortal.
	But not immediate.
	Even with its strength fading by the moment, such was the bear’s power that when it struck out and caught Rael in his left side, it still sent him tumbling back. This was no glancing blow as it had been before; the brutal hit caught Rael full in the side. The force was immense, and the claws raked him full, slashing across his side and ribs and gouging him down his belly. With a strangled cry, Rael went bouncing along the ground. His sword slipped from unfeeling fingers.
	“No,” Silmaria breathed. The bear shuffled forward on heavy paws toward the bleeding and broken man. The Gnari pulled the bow taut, and held it for the barest moment. Her breath release, and she let the arrow follow. 
The shaft snapped through the air. It slammed into the beast’s left eye, buried deep into its brain, and the bear at last slumped to the floor, quite dead. The pile it collapsed into was no less intimidating than it had been in life.
Silmaria dropped the bow and quiver and scrambled to Rael’s side. The Knight was sprawled in a heap, face down and unmoving. Silmaria felt sick. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking as she struggled to turn him over. Gods, he was so heavy, how could he have gone flying, weightless and airy, cartwheeling and spinning like a doll with its strings cut, when he was so damnably heavy?
At last she got him rolled onto his back. Silmaria was surprised to find him still conscious, barely. He stared up at her as she cradled his head in her lap. His silver eyes were hazy and hollowed. Blood smeared his face from an impressive cut at his hairline. She wiped the blood away as best she could and pushed the tangle of his burnished copper hair where it stuck to his face. Though he was fair skinned to begin with, now his skin looked drained of all color entirely, taking on a sallow and sickly appearance. 
“Gods…oh gods, no,” Silmaria whimpered. Blood was already spreading, soaking into the thick layers of his heavy tunic, an ever expanding stain of life and death, one and the same and so very different. His breathing was labored and he was sweating profusely. 
She put her trembling hands to his chest, trying to stem the tide of his blood. “No, no no no! Don’t go Rael. Please don’t go! Don’t leave me alone in this awful place! You promised!”
“Know…promised,” Rael gasped softly. “Meant…promise.”
“Don’t talk. Don’t talk, it’s okay. It’s okay! Just hush now, hush, you’re going to be okay,” Silmaria told him, trying to convince him, praying she could convince herself.
“Sick soon,” Rael murmured, his words a thin whisper now as his strength faded. Every word was a struggle, but try as she might to quiet him, he wouldn’t stop stubbornly getting them out. “After… hurt… sick. Crazed. Not… self. Hurt. Don’t… let… hurt.”
“I won’t. I won’t let you hurt,” Silmaria said through her tears. They ran down her face unchecked, falling warm on his upturned face and mixing with the blood there. For once, she didn’t care that he saw her cry.
Rael’s head shook, barely.
Silmaria cradled his head and rocked him softly. She repeated a litany of comfort, telling them both that he was going to be okay, over and over, again and again, an empty, shaky promise and prayer made of weakness and strength and bleakest hope.
Rael’s strange, ethereal silver eyes fluttered, sagged shut, and he was gone.

***
So a brief little note. I’ve received some feedback in the past that my chapters are shorter than some readers would enjoy. I’m sure this will be the case for this chapter, for those particular readers. I hear you. I understand. I read each and every piece of feedback I receive, and reply to most of it. I sympathize with your frustration on that issue, and when possible, do give an honest try toward putting out lengthier chapters.
 That being said? I post shorter chapters at times, for various reasons. Sometimes because I want to release a chapter in a semi-timely manner, and I’m already stretching the definition of that with the length of chapter I have. Sometimes, it’s because if I were to not end a chapter where I choose to, the chapter would end up being crazy long by the time I reach a stopping point I deem acceptable.
And then there’s times like this chapter (which actually happens to also fall into the above categories as well), where I end it at a certain point because it’s just too deliciously evil not to.
	If you think my chapters are too short, then I understand that. I value your opinion, and your readership, I really do. But sometimes, it’s just not feasible for whatever reason for me to write out a longer one this time. 
If it truly brothers you, I suggest letting two, perhaps even three chapters accumulate before you read further. This may take two or three weeks, I realize. But the truth is, if I write out a single chapter of that length, that’s going to be about how long it takes me to release that single beefed up chapter. So in the end, it’s about the same.
	Thank you, sincerely, to everyone who has continued to read my work and support it. Please continue to send me feedback! It motivates me. It makes me better. It shows me that there’s enough interest in this yarn to make it worth spinning the whole thing out. And it keeps me honest.
	As always, all comments, critiques, and feedback, good and bad, are welcome in the comments section or at familiarstranger86@gmail.com. I read it all.
	On to the next!