Awakening (Born From Shadows #1)
Chapter Forty-One

“Tatianna,” Riley gently spoke to her kneeling down beside her on the ground. She did not know how long it had been. Her arms stayed wrapped onto Nikolas never letting him go. At one point she thought she had noticed the sun rise and fall but if it had actually done so she wasn’t sure. “We need to keep moving,” Riley told her. “We are going to run out of food and water.”

Tatianna said nothing in response, she could barely even hear Riley’s words. Everything around her had faded into a blur. At some point Nylif had rested beside her but when she did not know. She had thought the wolf would be surely dead after the wound Nylif suffered. She had even felt the injury, yet here the wolf laid and for that she was thankful. It did amplitudes in helping her shattered heart.

“Tatianna…please,” Riley begged. The complete desperation in his tone caused Tatianna to notice him, even if it was only slightly. She still did not move an inch, but her senses started to open up, away from his scent, his body, and onto her surroundings.

“I don’t want to abandon you here but if you don’t move I’ll have no other choice,” Riley pleaded. She almost was about to say, ‘then leave me here’ but she couldn’t get any sound out of her mouth. It hurt too much to do so. Moving was something that was too much effort. Her grief was pinning her down like tenfold gravity, crushing her bones into the ground.

Then something else registered into her mind, what Riley had previously said. They would die if they didn’t keep moving. She would be the reason for their deaths as well, until she would just be a lonely stupid teenage girl surrounded by a pile of bodies.

She placed her palm against the ground and pushed. Pushed against the pain, the sorrow the grief. She pushed against the string that locked her body onto Nik’s faded soul and forced herself to rise. She couldn’t cope with anyone else dying. She was barely alive as it was. Eventually she managed to get onto her feet, she moved slowly as if she were intoxicated.

“He…he didn’t deserve what he got…but he wouldn’t have wanted you to stop moving forward,” Riley tried to comfort her, but no number of words would ease the agony. They couldn’t bring back the dead, they couldn’t tell her what he would have really wanted. They were only assumptions.

Tatianna looked at Ida noticing the arrow that had struck her was removed and the bleeding was no longer apparent. She must have been lying there for a lot longer than she thought.

“She will make it, we can’t ride her though,” Freya said looking also at Ida. “Nylif though…she shouldn’t be alive.” That’s when she looked down at Freya who was still on the floor. She remembered how the girls’ leg had been broken. How were they supposed to travel like this? Riley still couldn’t walk properly, Freya had a broken leg, Ida could only support her own weight. Everything was starting to look up and then those men came and ruined it all. Her grief was turning into something else, anger started to manifest within her.

For the first time in days, she spoke. “Where are the men?” she demanded. Her voice was rough but her words clearer than ice.

“Dead,” Riley replied to Tatianna’s surprise. Dead, how? She wanted to ask but didn’t see the point in it. They were dead and that’s what mattered. She took in once last glance at Nik’s body, his scent was slowly faded being masked by the smell of decay, he was long gone, and she hoped that there was some sort of afterlife. A chance they would meet each other again. They had no means to bury him but perhaps, perhaps she could still give him some sort of burial. He deserved one. She couldn’t bear to think of his face slowly rotting away out here alone until he was just a pile of dust. No, she couldn’t leave him there alone, no one should have to be alone.

“Your battle has been fought, now you may rest,” she repeated the words she had said to so many others throughout her years with a heavy heart and closed his eyes. Gathering some grass from around the body she cleared out the land and placed it all onto him. She grabbed his sword from his waist and handed it to Riley, not saying anything to the confused man. Making sure the fire could not spread she placed her hands on Nik’s body for the last time. She focused on every bit of pain and broken piece within her until her hands lit up his clothes.

Taking a step back she watched the fire dance along his skin until his ashes were floating into the sky. He had returned back to nature; she prayed his soul was at peace wherever it was. She never wanted to see this place again. Touching the pendent on her necklace that he gave her she turned around from the blaze.

Helping both Freya and Riley walk they all stumbled slowly away from the painful memories. A part of her would be forever bound to this soil, floating away with his ashes drifting lost withing the currents of the wind.

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Not a single word had been spoken by any of them. They walked for hours until Tatianna could no longer hold up her companions weight. Riley’s’ ankle for some reason still hadn’t healed since his injury in Faithorn and Freya’s leg was in desperate need of medical attention. Had she not been an Elf they would have been screwed. As soon as she had pulled the arrow out of her shoulder the wound completely healed allowing her to be able to pull both Freya and Riley along acting as their crutches.

Ida was struggling and to her surprise Nylif looked fully healed, it was as if the wolf was never hurt in the first place. As far as she knew the wolf had no magical abilities but perhaps, she was too quick to assume Nylif was in fact a normal wolf. Would that explain why she had felt Nylif’s pain momentarily? Why the wolf seemed to understand what she said? She decided to ponder over that during her walk. Try to answer the millions of questions going through her mind instead of focus on the events that just transpired.

They took small breaks every now and again but kept striving forward. Tatianna knew they were in dire need of medical attention, and she hoped the Elven kingdom had experts doctors that could help. If not, then they were not going to make it to the Queen and she had made a promise. She had to save those villages in the Hollow Plains. No one should have to go through the sorrow that was weakening her body. Nik had been so much to her, and she couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a child. Would it be worse than this or similar? She wondered, either way she did not wish it upon anyone else.

Physical pain she could handle, but emotional? The sort that you can never heal from, never forget no matter how hard you tried? She didn’t know if she would ever feel right again but she had to try. She had to try for Riley, Freya and Nylif. The wolf was just as peculiar as her and she directed her thoughts to it.

Something large could be faintly seen in the distant, a silhouette of a large tree. Taller than anything she had ever set her unusual, coloured eyes upon. It was Lyracris. It had to be. The smell was so pungent, and it was calling strongly towards her. Telling her this was where she truly belonged. This could be her home or at least the closest thing to home she had ever had.

More trees started to gradually appear. A forest full of them, even from this distance she could see the grain line of the vast oak trees. “We’re almost there,” Freya said. The silence was fractured by her hopeful words. Hope, the only thing that could overcome her pain and anguish. To save her from the darkness she could feel herself falling down into. She wished Nik was by her side, able to admire the foreign trees after seeing the grasslands for so long and growing up with Haveenté’s pine is was satisfying to view something completely different.

Closer and closer they got until she removed her arm from Riley’s side, reached out and placed her pain on the tree. Caressing the feel of wood and inhaling its scent. She felt something flow through her at the contact, a surge of energy and power fuelling her veins. It was huge, taller than most of the mansions in Avalla it was like a person on steroids. The tree marked the entrance into Lyracris. They had made it, they had finally reached the Elven kingdom.