Awakening (Born From Shadows #1)
Chapter Forty

The blue bird was telling her friend they were close, that the truth would be known soon enough. Everything had to be set in place, they had to be prepared for the strange Elf’s arrival. Make sure that everyone knew what was to happen when the group arrived as the blue birds Lady’s plan. The tree line of Lyracris could almost be seen from the groups place in the Hollow plains.

Less than a day now till they reach the boarder, she had told her sworn friend. Although from her place in the sky she could see something else, a complication or a blessing she had yet to figure out. Although she did no the group would be delayed.

Forget that they may be another day, she dismissed her previous message.

Perfect, that gives us more time. Tell me everything that happens. I don’t want to miss a moment of it, her friend replied back through the string in their minds. The blue bird continued its path behind the group of weary travellers.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

Tatianna raised her nose to the air inhaling all the scents that surrounded her focusing on one in particular. “I can almost smell Lyracris.”

“What would a kingdom smell like?” Freya wondered.

“Um…its fresh, slightly minty. Look I’m not a poet it just smells nice,” Tatianna replied. She closed her eyes and breathed it all in, they were definitely getting close. As she stared southward a sense of anxiety threaded into her. They were close yet she was worried that she wouldn’t make it. Doubts started to go through her mind. What if they rejected them because some of them were human? What if the rejected her because she was so different.

“Nice description,” Freya chuckled. “I think you would be a great poet. Up there beside Greta Frothern.”

“I have no idea who that is,” she replied, having not read a single book in her life.

“Only the best writer ever,” Freya said with such enthusiasm it shocked Tatianna.

“Here we go again,” Riley grumbled.

“Hey just because you found her work too ‘lengthy’ doesn’t mean I have to.” Riley rolled his eyes at Freya’s words.

“Personally, I like her work,” Nik joined into the conversation. “Although I do understand where Riley is coming from.”

Freya frowned at the comment of her ideals work. “See, I’m not delusional,” Riley told Freya. Tatianna realised this must have been an argument the two had often come across.

“Well, I think-,” Freya’s voice is cut off by the gasp that eluded her throat. Both horses reared up in fright, had Nik’s arm not been firmly wrapped around her waist she would’ve surely fallen off.

Riley did not have such luck, with his injury he couldn’t stay within the confinements of the saddle and toppled off the back of the panicked horse. Tatianna looked at the arrow stuck deep within the soil, the fletching standing proud in the air as it invoked fear into her. She looked around the plains seeing nothing for miles.

The arrow appeared to be made from normal metal. Whoever shot it was not a part of the Hunt but merely looking for someone to kill. Scavengers she assumed, those who kill for things instead of earning them the proper way. She then looked down at Riley as he shouted out from the ground. A warning. Looking up she saw an assemble of arrows heading straight towards them.

She watched helplessly as they soared through the sky. She couldn’t do anything. Her speed was just making her perceive everything slower. They couldn’t go anywhere; they couldn’t move out of its range without leaving Riley.

“Get down!” She called but she knew it was hopeless. The first one struck into Ida’s back side sending the horse to collapse onto the ground takin both Nik and Tatianna with her.

She moved her legs quickly to avoid Ida’s crushing weight. The arrows came cascading down from the sky raining horror upon them. She glanced frantically at Freya who cried out in pain. Her horse had fallen as well, except the arrow went straight through its neck. Freya was pinned down by the mammals weight unable to move.

There was a howl echoing through the air and she swore she felt Nylif’s pain as the wolf was struck on her side. It only took one glance at the wound to know it was fatal. Tears ungracefully fell from her eyes, and she focused on those who she could save. She had to save them.

Tatianna desperately scrambled towards Freya, able to dodge the arrows just in time before the landed onto her body. She pulled Freya out from under the horse ignoring Freya’s screams of pain. She looked down at Freya’s broken legs bent in ways that shouldn’t be physically possible.

The arrows were falling less frequently now, and she looked at a distant hill. A small group of maybe five toxophilites’ could be made out each nocking their next arrow. They had no long distant weapons, no horses to get them away in time. They were sitting ducks out in the open waiting for their massacre like lambs in a slaughterhouse.

Tatianna felt panic go straight to her bones as she watched them. She silently begged them for mercy as their dominant hands released the arrows they held. This time their target was them and not their horses. She moved, faster than she ever had. Pushing Freya close to the dead horse, hoping it would offer Freya some protection. Hope and prayers were what she was running on because there was inevitably nothing she could do. Riley was then the next closest to her and as the arrows fell she pushed him out of the way but she wasn’t fast enough. She cried out in pain from the arrow that pierced straight through her left shoulder.

It burned. It was absolutely agonising. It was almost unbearable, but it was nothing compared to the emotional pain that ripped through her. She saw it out of the corner of her eye, and arrow that pierced straight into his heart. Her head slowly turned towards Nik looking with explication. Her footing staggered and she struggled to remain upright. Her heart hurt more than anything she had ever experienced. Worse than the arrow in her shoulder, worse than when she was betrayed, worse than the pain of being left by her parents. She felt like she was suffocating unable to gasp for air.

She stared absolutely heart broken, her body frozen in shock and denial. This was not happening, she repeated over and over in her head. Her vision became clouded by tears, and she stumbled towards him. His body had fallen almost immediately to the ground when the arrow stuck his chest. There was no room for goodbyes, but she would try anyway. She had to fix him.

Her knees gave up on her and she fell beside the body, watching the blood drain out. Those green eyes staring purposeless into the sky. She couldn’t keep it in, she couldn’t comprehend it, she couldn’t take it. It was torture. She realised a blood curling scream into the Hollow Plains trying to have some sort of relief so she could breathe but nothing worked.

Everything seemed to darken but she did not realise it. She didn’t realise that the darkness had stuck their assailants. She didn’t realise that the attackers bodies were no more then a pile of ashes as she cried into his body unable to comprehend anything in her mind that was caught in denial. She had to fix this, she had to save him.

“No. No you’re not dying,” She whispered out in defiance. Her hands pressed against his wound, covering her palms in his blood. “Stay with me please,” she begged from him. Her tears fell onto his lifeless body, she could no longer feel his heart beating in rhythm with her own.

Tatianna kept applying pressure as if it would heal him, as if it would bring him back yet his body remained still.

“Please don’t leave me, you promised. I love you,” she begged the exanimate body. “I love you,” she repeated pouring out every emotion she had hoping he could somehow hear her, but the dead heard no more than what they spoke. Utter silence. His green eyes were hollow, no longer glittering with amusement.

Images flashed through her mind, memories attacking her one by one as she tried to pulse his heart back to life. The first time they met at the dance, seeing him there and caught in the marvel of his face. The face she now saw covered in dirt and pale.

When he was first injured and risked his life for her, now he laid there after she could not return the favour. After she failed him. Their first kiss, the moment in the Inn, the time he said he loved her.

Everything was crashing down on her and she realised death was a wave. It didn’t care who it took, both good and evil and left nothing but suffering in its wake. She could try and prevent it from crashing down on everyone’s head but in the end the destruction is inevitable.

He told her he would go wherever she went. “You promised,” she whispered and removed her hands from his wound finally coming to terms that he was never going to walk away from this place on the ground. He was never going to do a lot of things because he was dead.

Tatianna closed her eyes just to make sure this wasn’t all some horrible nightmare but when she opened them, he remained there. The blood had stopped running out of his wound, yet she did not leave his side. If he couldn’t follow her, she would stay with him.

“I love you,” she told him knowing not once would he hear her whisper those words to him. She rested her head on his chest, her tears had run out, but the ache never left her. She gave him everything, her trust her love, and now because of that she was left broken.