Pure

The wyrm snapped at Finten. He sprang forward, thrusting his spear at its gaping maw and the wyrm jolted backwards.

Aichear let out an ear splitting shriek. Finten jerked his head towards him. Aichear crumpled to his knees, a blank look on his face.

“Aichear!” Finten called running towards him. He couldn’t see a wound, but Aichear wasn’t getting up. He was kneeling on the ground, his arms limp at his sides, his eyes vacant. The Wyrm’s tail flashed through Finten’s peripheral vision. He barely had time to raise his arm and duck his head.

The tail smashed into him, knocking him twenty feet across the field. He screamed as agony splintered through him. His arm was probably shattered and he definitely had a few cracked ribs. He pushed himself up to his knees, trying to catch his breath as his arm and ribs began rapidly knitting back together, and stumbled towards Aichear again.

He could see several of the others running towards Aichear too, A few of FInten’s men were picking themselves up from wherever the wyrm had flung them and were charging back towards the conflict. Conall and Ehir were facing the wyrm, their spears at the ready as he darted at them like lightening.

Then the wyrm spun around to face Aichear. It sped towards him. Finten screamed in rage. He wouldn’t reach Aichear in time. None of them would. “Aichear, get up!” He bellowed, trying to push his legs to move faster. Aichear didn’t even twitch as the wyrm bore down on him.

Finten heard Gusan scream, saw him crumpling to the ground in his peripheral vision. The wyrm hadn’t even touched him. What is happening?

The wyrm reared up, trumpeting out its terrible scream, then it plunged down, engulfing the top half of Aichear in its mouth, it bit down, jerked Aichear’s limp body up in the air and wrenched his head in a brutally fast arch. Aichear’s dangling lower half separated from the rest of him with an awful crack and splurch, gore spilled down the wyrm’s sparkling white front, Aichear’s lower body flew through the air, then thumped down in the grass, blood splattering up into the air, then raining back down on the greenery. But Finten was no longer paying attention.

It was his turn to crumple to his knees like a puppet cut from its strings. It felt like someone had plunged their hand into his chest, grabbed his heart and wrenched it out of his body. He could’t breath, he couldn’t see, nothing existed except the soul crushing emptiness that flooded into him as his powers drained out his body.

Caevah! Caevah! His mind screamed over and over and over again.

The wyrm was bearing down on him now.

He didn’t want to get up. He wanted to let the emptiness consume him. There was no point in living if his love was gone.

But Caevah had made him promise.

He pushed his uncooperative body back to its feet and raised his spear again. The spear felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. The wyrm’s gaping maw began to descend on him, but then the distance between him and the wyrm suddenly lengthened. Figures popped into existence between him and the wyrm. People from home.

Terror raked through Finten. He had promised Caevah he would protect their people and land if anything happened to her. He put all his effort into running towards the Wyrm, but his body felt heavy and uncoordinated, he was moving at a snail’s pace, watching the wyrm scoop person after person up in its mouth. The earth blackened in the shower of viscera and gore dripping from its jaws.

Finten came awake very suddenly, gasping for breath, still feeling the urgent need to tear through the wyrm. There was a strong hand on each of his shoulders pressing him back into his thin mattress.

Finten’s sense of where he was quickly righted. He was in his bed. He’d had another nightmare. Luaren was above him, keeping him from hurting himself, or anyone else. Finten stopped struggling. “I’m awake.”

Luaren released him, then dropped onto the mattress beside Finten, breathing hard. “Was it the bad one?”

“No.” Finten answered, grateful his mind hadn’t gone to that dream tonight. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

Luaren chuckled softly. “Finten, sometimes you’re such an idiot.” He raised up on his elbow, gave Finten’s short hair a rough, affectionate tousle, then lowered himself off the top bunk and went back to his own bed.

Finten stared up into the darkness, his mind replaying scenes from that last battle they’d had with Hadeaon and everything that had followed.

He thought about last night. The impossible hum he thought he had felt from Maigred when she touched him. Maigred towering over him, rage in her eyes, demanding that he join her charade in an attempt to bring hearth magic, and safety back to their people. He rolled onto his side and curled into himself. I won’t let this happen again.