Through Flame and Blade

Ch. 52 Final Sacrifice

*Chiara

Chiara drowned in the black sludge of her subconscious, held under by the cruel darkness of the Tenebrist. She choked, she thrashed.

Then the sludge became clear water, and as she swam through it, she realized a thousand cuts pierced her skin. Every wound on her body filled with freezing cold water, turning the water red as blood flowed into it.

She kicked and flailed, needing air, but her limbs were heavy, hard to move.

She couldn't see and didn't know which way was up. She couldn't breathe.

A hand caught hers, large and rough, strong enough to kill a thousand enemies. This was the path. This was the way up.

She kicked wooden legs and burst through the surface of the freezing water. Shards of ice scraped her, but she shot up, and sucked in air.

Her back was a scorched desert plain, burned by the sun and sanded down to expose every nerve. Her wings—

There was nothing. Her wings had been cut.

No, not her wings!

Doubling over in agony, she reached for where they should be attached to her shoulder blades, but at the same moment a rushing sensation flowed through her. It was like being caught in an electric storm.

She was the electric storm.

She arched back, arms flung wide as a lightning bolt of pure energy rode up her spine. Vibrant life surged through muscle and bone, nerve and tissue. She became a primal blaze—the fire and spark that began all things. Rapture cascaded upwards from her legs and torso in the Fountain water.

She was mountains pushing out the earth. She was the raging river. She was the springtime that rushed and hummed and thrummed, warm and growing new from the ground.

The energy—that life—coalesced on her back, on either side of her spine at her shoulder blades. The electric storm that held her centered on the raw, open wounds where her wings should have been and she curled forward, face almost in the water.

Like petals on the flower bud, bone and feather lifted from her skin. Those wing petals unfurled and grew outwards. Out and out until her full wings formed.

She felt every shiver of wind and drop of water that moved in her new feathers. Her wings pulsed with joyful delight, warmed by the sun, ready to lift her into the wind.

Chiara inhaled the clean, fresh air, perfumed by Heaven itself and the Fountain water.

She was alive.

She was free.

She didn't know how, but she was whole and made new. Her memory of how she got to the Fountain was missing. Of where Logan was—

"Logan!" she cried. She spun in the water. Only broken blocks of marble littered the destroyed temple's floor. And in the water—

"No!" A demon's body with great saphire and black wings bobbed deep in the water below her.

Lifting her wings into the air first, she reached for him. She could see him, but she couldn't quite catch—there!

She grabbed ahold of one wing and pulled hard, beating hers to lift her from the water. Somehow, she dragged him up and to the rocky side of the Fountain. She clambered out, cold water streaming from her skin and scant clothing. She hauled him out and flipped him to his back.

He wasn't breathing.

No.

She pounded his chest, pumping, forcing his heart to beat. Nothing. She leaned onto him, pressing in, letting up, pressing in, letting up. Nothing.