An Apocalypse Rising Ch. 07

She turned to see Maylin standing in her slip, something clenched in her hand, her face inscrutable just then. "Certainly, Mother."

"I have not had a chance to tell you how sorry I am that Bryana chose to leave as she did." The next came with finality. "I'm sorry that she is gone."

Neral swallowed hard, and took some of her annoyance with it. "She is not gone."

Maylin kept her tone gentle yet parental. "I realize that it is difficult for you both to accept, but you know we will only find her gone. We will find her body or we will find her, but, either way we will find her gone. If she has survived, Drexa has claimed her and she is not the woman you knew. She is your enemy as she was the night you met her."

There was derision in her tone as she met Maylin's eye. "I thought she could never be that person again. That is, after all, what I was told over and over."

Maylin's tone remained level. As delicate as the subject was with as much emotional upheaval that she knew Neral was going through, she had to be the voice of reason no matter what. "Bryana's case is a unique one, but it's foolhardy to believe that she is immune to corruption. She was changed, yes, but her fallibility wasn't stripped from her. The skill to do that doesn't exist anywhere."

"I can certainly understand that. I am faced with my own every day, but if the people that love me gave up on me every time my path might have turned dark I would have had no one and that path would have been dark indeed. I cannot snuff out my love for her just because you say I must. If I could, I never loved her in the first place."

"If she is dead," Neral began, struggling with the very thought, "then I can make peace with that. She will have died the person that she became. She will have died trying to help."

"But I am responsible for who she became, Mother. It was my choice that made it so." Her voice wavered. "Even if I did not love her with my whole heart I would not mark her as gone until I had tried to reach her. I would owe her that the same as I would to anyone who fights with me." She leaned against a tree, arm extended, eyes on the ground calming herself before she asked, "What does Deres have to say?"

She suddenly felt emotionally drained, "Much the same as you." She thought back with a smile. "When we communed he would speak of her as much as he would you. He thrilled at her vibrancy and love of learning. He adored her."

Neral expected that to be his position, but it pleased her to hear it all the same.

"Please don't think me cold. "A family built has just as much value as one you were born a part of, but, how important is it to you?" Silence filled the air in a way that cast a pall over everything. "Would you go through her to end Drexa? If she is not dead, then they are together. Could you do that?"

She felt the knife in her chest at the thought twist. "If there is no choice, I will do what must be done. My ache to save countless families the same? I would do it."

"To that end..." She handed Neral a spell-slip. The glass in the palm of her hand was a swirling mass of violet and black gas. "This may disrupt her corruption...for a few moments, but not long."

She puzzled. "I thought you said it couldn't be undone."

She nodded even as she wished it were different. "Not for those without the gift of magic. Once corrupted in this way, I know of nothing to undo it. But, for those with magic...it may have a chance. Or it may do nothing, I don't know. Touch it to her body and if it does meld with the magic within and disrupt the filth, it will give you a few seconds to...do what must be done."

***

As she crept in a wide arc around the camp, adhering to shadow so as not to be seen, Pel rationalized that General Jaye had to die.

It was as clear in her mind as if she were staring out at a pristine landscape. Who cared about these people? It was a terrible thing to befall them, yes, but we had to take care of ourselves first. Pel and her comrades were just a handful against all of this to begin with; fewer now with Major Kress and the others gone, essentially raped by that thing into being the undead. What hope did they have? But the general marched forward to her doom, dragging all of them with her. If she no longer had care for the soldiers with her, Pel did. She was saving them all.

Besides, she'd been laying with mages for years. Maybe she was already owned by them and this was all some sort of wheels-within-wheels plot to hand the witch Erette. Laying with them at all made her a criminal. She didn't deserve her position anymore anyway. They would see that she was right in the end.

She kept her sword in her hand before her flat against her chest so she could measure each pace and what sound might come from it before she took it. Neral and the elder mage were deep in conversation. If they stayed so that would be wonderful. A single strike and there would be damage that no mage could fix.

She froze when she heard the soft pop of a twig snapping behind her with a whisper that she couldn't quite make out, but that sounded like her name. They couldn't stop her. She was doing it for all of them. She was doing it so they could all live and go home and not be used up by that thing in the mountains or the general.

She turned and started for the general, bushes rustling, leaning slightly forward to maintain her balance so she could swing the blade in one smooth, powerful strike. She knew she would only get the one chance.

"General, your right!"

Her brain responded to the warning and its tone in a way that was outside of her control. She ducked and rolled away, feeling the air and hearing the rush of it as the blade cut just above her head. She pulled her mother's dagger from its place at her thigh and came up, ready to move again even as the sounds were already bringing others to them.

Maylin had been shocked by the cry. In the mere seconds it took her to process what it meant she saw the blade swing and Neral clear it. Seeing it was Pel, she knew the what and why enough to react. In a quick, angry stretch of her arm, her magic lifted Pel from the ground and tore through her thrashing form, her armor offering no protection. When the deed was done, she lowered the body to the ground to see wide eyes that stared at nothing.

Deres was the first to them with the others not far behind. Kestral emerged from the woods along the path Pel took, looking at her with regret before, "Are you all right, General?"

She nodded to both her and Deres before focusing on Pel's form. "Thank you for the warning, Kes."

"Of course, sir." She stiffened. "This is my fault, sir. I..when we were bathing she...talked about what happened. She spoke as though she missed it. I didn't realize that she..." She straightened her spine expecting discipline. "I should have reported it. I did not because I had hoped it was not so. I'd hoped it would pass, but I kept watch."

Neral knelt, touching Pel's face, already thinking of what she would say at dawn. "We'll discuss the lapse later." She spoke to Maylin without looking at her. "You detected nothing."

"I'm sorry," She didn't pretend to hide her embarrassment. "She...has skills we lack."

"So there's no way to know who she might have touched, if anyone, before now." Dion spoke the unspoken truth that had already been uttered via furtive glances to one another.

Deres spoke. "As you say, Captain. Theoretically, everyone or no one."

Neral rose and looked ahead to the mountains. In the dark, and from the distance remaining they just seemed a formless, malevolent wall that blocked even the moonlight from leaving its mark She was sick of losses. She was sick of her friends and the people who trusted her to keep them safe being taken away from her.

Not to mention someone that she loved.

But she took fair satisfaction in the fact that, to play on Abren's wisdom; live or die, it was about to be over.

To be Continued...