Those Left Behind
Only a few warriors moved to intercept the pale creatures that resembled human men in the most mocking sense of the word. Most of them backpedaled to flee, to try and get away from the strange white things and the awful cold and dead magic that exuded from them like a disease. Their clear blades shattered the weapons of the few that tried to fight, cutting down the warriors as easily as if they were fighting uncoordinated children. The Magnar – stupid as he was fearless – charged the closest not-man.
Swinging the massive axe, it met the ice like blade and did not shatter. The black stone axe caught the sword and the Magnar pressed his advantage while the creature blinked in what could be described as confusion, before it sneered at the large man. Its too blue gaze finally left mine in order to turn its attention to the Magnar and I felt the air rush into my lungs – as if I had been pulled underwater since I first caught sight of it and was just now breaching the surface.
The oppressive foul magic was no longer smothering me, and I closed my eyes for a half second to send a small prayer for Severus to hurry the fuck up. Sev, where are you? I could really use his help right now. He was getting closer, I could tell…I could feel it, but without concentrating I couldn't tell how far away he still was. And I couldn't really focus on anything else but the dead unless I wanted to join them.
My reprieve ended when one of the pale creatures took a swing at me, and I found myself once more engaged in combat, Severus' mediocre instructions on stance and when to parry versus block echoing in the back of my mind. I could hear Alfhild and Canute engaging with the third, Ólafur's battle cry so close that I let my attention focus fully on the creature in front of me. I had to trust that the three of them could handle the single white creature, as the one I was engaged with required all of my attention.
Despite not wanting too – and knowing how dangerous it was with how little magic I had left – I flicked my left wrist and cast a blasting hex right into the creature's chest to get some room between us. My lungs were wheezing with each breath, and I didn't know if that was a warning from overusing my magic, or from exhaustion from fighting for so damn long. At this point it could be either…or both.
Come on! Think, what would Hermione do…what would Severus do? Well…not get put into this position to start with, but I was too fucking late to that party. No, I needed to work smart, not hard, just like Hermione always said.
So, let's work smart. I was almost out of magic, but I had enough in me for a few low-level spells, so…what low level spells could I use to gain the upper hand? Anything that I cast in order to directly affect the creature worked just about as well as it did on a dragon, which was to say not much at all. What could I use then?
Think Hari!
"Your mind doesn't need to be your fortress, or a castle. An impenetrable barrier sometimes isn't the best defense," Severus voice rang in my head as if he were whispering in my ear. A long-forgotten memory while he coached me in advanced occlumency brought to the surface. "Sometimes, especially if you don't want your enemy to know that you can defend your mind, it is better to let them in. Set false trails to memories that are not real. Traps and snares to ambush them, make them see what you want, use what you know to your advantage. Nobody should know your mind better than yourself."
"What purpose does that serve?" I had asked, naïve in the art of mind fuckery. Severus set me straight soon after…the things people could do to other people's minds made me sick and terrified of someone ever doing that to me.
"Once you have them where you want them, you can use your mind to give them a false lead, make them think they found what they were looking for and they will leave none the wiser," he had replied. "Or, you can use it to hurt them, to trap them in your mind and turn it into their nightmare." Severus hadn't spoken more about it when I questioned him. Something in his tone told me to leave it alone, and I couldn't help imagining in what situations he had to have been in in order to learn what he had.
When he did speak of it – which was rarely – there was this little slip of a feeling, skating just below the surface that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking for it. It was shame, fear, anger, pain, sadness, and the overwhelming need to protect the one thing I have left! I dropped the little strand, let the emotions sink back into the depths of where we were connected, and said nothing. But when he looked at me, I could swear he knew that I had prodded where I wasn't wanted, but he just couldn't prove it. And to ask would only bring it into light for more questioning.
Severus never asked, and neither did I.
I had tried, for ages and ages I had tried to learn how to make false trails and secret tricks. The fake memories came easily to me, and in no time, I had that part mastered. But the deceptions, the tiny hidden traps to capture and ensnare…that didn't come so easily. Severus had spent months while we traveled explaining how he set up his own little mind village. He even taught me rudimentary legilimens so I could see it for myself, and showed me where he placed his traps, little hidden runes and switches and snares, and then he showed me what they did.
To be honest, I didn't know if I was more horrified by his creativity or the smile on his very human face as he explained it to me. Turns out, Severus took on his old appearance – the human one – when in his own mind. Not that I minded…much. It was just, he was easier to talk to when he looked like a dragon, and not the professor that I had spent four years convinced wanted to chop me up for potions ingredients.
I had tried to do as he showed me, lay little hidden pressure points, tiny runes, and such, but they never really did much. Severus' once told me that my lightning rune meant to shock and incapacitate felt more like static electricity. We figured out later that I really just didn't want to hurt anyone, and I have never really seen anyone subjected to curses like the ones Severus had described.
And that, right there, is where Severus discovered my problem. The one little tiny hurdle, that small bit of wall I just couldn't seem to break through no matter how blue in the face he got when explaining it.
"You have a surprisingly large lack of imagination," were his exact words if I remembered correctly.
Which, of course, he was wrong! I had a great imagination…just not when it came to actually hurting people – or things, I suppose – but I said it once and will say it once again. Fuck him! I'll show him a lack of imagination!
If I couldn't use magic against this thing, then I could use magic against the environment instead. Why create a massive fortress when one or two little traps will do?
Ducking the thing's next swing, I trapped its legs in conjured rope and scurried away, far out of reach of its terrible blade as I gasped in pain. My chest was thrumming with my heartbeat, and beneath it, my magical core throbbed. When it stumbled, looking down in surprise, I darted back in and went with what I knew best; I slapped a heating rune on the chest of its armor and cranked it up to eleven.
Heating runes were so second nature to me that I barely even felt a drain on my magic as it activated. The creature paused in its next swing, bringing a hand up to start tearing at the black chest piece that was actually smoking it burned so hot, and I used the distraction to decapitate the son of a bitch.
There was a cheer around us as more of the dead fell with it, but I didn't have time to think about it at all as Alfhild's cry of pain drew my attention. The other creature had her pinned to the ground, one hand on her throat as Canute lay unmoving next to her. Ólafur charged the pale being, swinging Alfhild's smaller axe. When the thing blocked with its sword, the axe shattering into a million tiny pieces, and it used the momentum to skewer the older man.
"No, father!" Alfhild screamed, clawing at the hand still around her throat as Ólafur dropped to his knees, blood bubbling up from his mouth.
The creature turned its attention back to the struggling woman and it twisted the blade in its hand to point it straight down, towards her, and I launched myself at its back without thought. We tumbled to the side, nearly landing on the still form of Canute and all I could think as I tried to bring my weapon up to bear, was that its skin was surprisingly cold. It felt so cold it burned but had the same give to it as normal human skin, if a little more dry.
One of its hands clawed at my own wrist – burning cold despite the serpent hide that protecting me – as I brought my sword up and tried to press the tip into its chest. It used the other to grab the blade, grasp strong as it forced the ruby encrusted sword further away. I knelt over the thing, both hands on the grip, and put all of my meager weight trying to push it back down. The thing bled, astonishingly, it's blood a red so black I almost couldn't tell the difference until it was smeared thinly over the last three letters of Gryffindor.
Even with gravity and all of my weight behind the blade, somehow the creature was still able to push the sword further and further up. Soon I would be forced to stand or roll away. Desperate, I tried lifting one hand and slamming it into the pommel, hoping it would jar the creature enough to lose its grip, but it didn't do more than move perhaps an inch back down…an inch that I lost a moment later to the thing's freakish strength.
Another set of hands joined mine and I almost started to sob in relief as I glanced up and saw Styr of all people standing above me. His hands wrapped around mine as he tried to force the blade down and we started making progress right as the thing released my wrist to reach for something along its side. The next moment I had to abandon the sword to keep the small ice dagger from plunging into my neck.
Somehow, with one hand on the blade of my sword and the other trying to drive a knife into my throat, it was still fucking winning. The knife was inching closer despite even getting a knee against its arm to stop it, and the sword at his chest was creeping further up even though the much larger Styr was using all of his body weight and gravity to try and force it down.
A knee was driven into my bleeding side and I gasped in pain, almost releasing the hold I had on the thing's wrist but keeping my grip at the last moment. The clear blade was so close now, and I feared at any second I would feel its cold bite into my skin when suddenly Alfhild was right there, her hands wrapped tightly around the wrist of the thing and pulling the dagger away from my delicate throat. She set her boot into the thing's side to get leverage, wrapping one of her legs around its arm, hugging it to her chest with all of her strength, and closing her fingers over the creature's fist to keep the blade from being turned on her.
"Go!" She shouted. "Go, I got this!"
I didn't even hesitate as I released the hold I had on its wrist, trusting Alfhild to keep me from getting stabbed, and getting my hands around the cross guard of the sword of Gryffindor to help Styr. The creature was twisting beneath me, trying to throw me off, but I pressed my knee into its stomach and bore all my weight down on the sword. The creature snarled, thrashed its legs as it tried to hit me again, but the combined weight of a large male Thenn and a small determined witch drove the blade down.
It looked surprised, glowing blue eyes wide as the blade slid in. It fell apart beneath me and the three of us crashed onto the ground. Styr's heavy weight fell onto my back and I gasped into the snow, trying to breathe despite the pressure on my ribs before he rolled off of me. I turned to look at him and already he was pushing himself up to stand once again, though once he was there, he didn't seem able to do much more than try and keep from falling back down. The man was covered in small wounds, blood visible between the gaps of his torn furs, and his face was more pale than usual.
I rolled onto my side to see Alfhild laying next to me. She was sprawled on her back, arms and legs splayed as if she were about to make a snow angel. I wanted to tell her thank you, or smile, or something, but I didn't have the energy to do anything else but just give her an exhausted expression of what might have been gratitude…which was lost on her because her eyes were closed and she looked seconds away from passing out.
I reached out with my left hand, wand having returned to the holster long ago, but not entirely certain when it was that I actually released it. It closed over her shoulder and she lifted her head to look at me. She blinked slowly, blood smearing down one side of her face and obscuring her vision.
Beside us, I saw Styr reach down to grab the axe he had abandoned in order to help me kill the creature. I wondered why he didn't use it to behead the thing while I had it thoroughly distracted when I realized it had a silver axe head, the normal color for regular metal. From my very few interactions thus far, I had been able to conclude that my sword – goblin forged and basilisk venom infused – and the strange black stone they used for weapons, were the only two things capable of killing these blighted things. Well, that and fire.
Styr glanced back down at us before giving me what could have been a smile, but was probably closer to a smirk, or perhaps a leer. "You can thank me later, little witch," he said with a small quirk on his lips and heat in his eyes. "Personally."
I shuddered at the way he rumbled the word, propping myself up onto my elbows so I could send him a withering glare that Severus had helped me perfect. He only laughed in reply before hefting his axe back up and charging straight back into battle.
"Are you alright?" Alfhild asked me as I returned my attention to her and tried to shake the feeling of disgust that that horrid man left me with every time we ran into each other. I really should have been the one asking her that question, as she appeared to be the one with a foot already halfway into the grave.
"Oh, yeah," I replied with a twitch of my lips too tired to be a smile. "You know me, having the time of my life here."
She did smile at that and opened her mouth to say more when suddenly she rolled to the side, barely avoided the blade that was thrust into the ground right where her head had been. I rushed to my feet even as Alfhild grabbed a broken spear with that strange black stone tip and skewered the reanimated corpse with it.
I reached for her, wincing as she reached back and grabbed me. Her grip tightened around my forearm and she used me to steady herself as her legs shook. Mine weren't doing much better, but I let her lean on me as she gathered herself. Her eyes wandered around us and she gasped softly as they alighted on the unmoving body of Ólafur. Moments later she was kneeling back into the snow, tears freezing on her cheeks as she reached for her father.
My heart clenched tightly in my chest as she touched his face softly, tracing the ritual scars across his forehead, along his jaw, down his chin. She made a wetly choked sound, placed both hands on his pale cheeks, and leaned forward to press her forehead to his. She was crying quietly as she whispered soft words in the Old Tongue to Ólafur's lifeless body.
I turned away from her, wiping at my own cheeks angrily as she wept for her father, trying to give her some privacy. The sounds of her quiet sobs were loud despite the fighting still taking place around us on all sides. I wanted to turn back, comfort her, hold her close and tell her it would be alright…but that would have been a lie. Nothing was ever going to be alright ever again.
Instead, I stumbled on shaky legs over to Canute's still form and sat heavily on the ground once I reached him. He was laying on his side, face turned into the ground and he hadn't moved once in all the time it had taken us to kill that awful creature. My hands trembled as I reached for him. "Please," I begged softly to any gods who would listen. "Please don't let him be dead."
My hand found his cheek, and I fought not to flinch at how cold it felt. We were in the middle of a blizzard; it could mean nothing. My fingers trailed down until they could press into the side of his throat. The pounding noise from my heart was so loud that I had to take several calming breaths before I could accurately check for a pulse.
There! He was alive!
I sighed a shaky breath as I gently reached over to roll him onto his back. There was a dark bruise forming on the side of his head, and he was bleeding heavily from his stomach. I ripped his already torn furs open further to get a look at the wound and I did not like what I saw. It looked like he had been run through with a blade.
The wound was leaking sluggishly, the blood thick like it was clotting…or freezing. The skin around the wound had developed blue like veins, and even as I was observing them, they pulsed and spread. Oh, fuck…that couldn't be good.
Flicking my wrist, the black wand snapped into my hand and I transferred it to my dominant one. This was going to take some precise wand work, and I had to be incredibly careful not to overexert what remained of my magic. The last thing I wanted was to pass out in the middle of a battle.
"Vulnera sanentur," I chanted softly as I pointed my wand at the wound. Even as I repeated the chant, I could feel that foul dead magic fighting me, and I was forced to put more and more power into the spell until finally the blue creeping veins began to recede. After the ninth time I repeated the spell that should have only taken three chants, the blue disappeared, and the wound sealed.
I gasped in pain as the spell ended, my core feeling as if it had been pulled and yanked, only to be released and snapped back into place like a rubber band. For a long moment I couldn't breathe, clutching and clawing between my breasts as if I could reach inside of myself to stop the pain. My vision greyed around the edges, and my heart pulsed in my ears like a deafening drum…but I didn't lose consciousness, though I wished I had. Anything was better than this awful feeling inside my chest, as if my magic had grown spikes and were digging trenches into my lungs.
Warmth dripped onto the back of my hand and I glanced down to see blood. Raising my fingers to my lips as I tasted copper, I realized my nose was bleeding. I wiped at it, smearing the red on my white sleeves as I was finally able to breathe more than tiny little gasps. The pain receded to a tolerable level, but it didn't fully disappear.
I had fucked up, I knew that. And recovery would be slow – according to Madam Pomphrey's lectures on magical exhaustion – but if Canute lived, it would have been worth it. Severus wouldn't be happy when he found out, but the once-man never really was anyways.
My gaze returned to the battlefield as I tried to catch my breath. The frontline had truly broken now, the Thenns no longer fighting together as one unit, but instead fighting and fleeing as each saw fit. Styr was not far off, swinging his heavy axe and cleaving the dead in half for others to pick off. A few warriors stayed with him, a small group that I recognized from the village that were usually seen around Styr, but it seemed to all be for not. Even after taking out two of the white creatures, the amount of dead left still far outnumbered the living. If we didn't gain the upper hand soon, all of us would die here.
The sound of a battle cry drew my attention and I turned to see the Magnar struggling with the last of the strange white creatures. I knew that the dead seemed to be tied to those cold beings, and that if the Magnar could kill it, then the last of the dead should fall apart with it.
He had a good chance of winning too, the Magnar that is. And the most terrifying thought crossed my mind as I watched the man I despised push the creature back with a powerful swing that echoed loudly across the clearing, despite all the other sounds of battle trying to drown it out. I didn't want him to win.
If the Magnar won and the dead returned to being…well, dead, then it would only reinforce his belief about staying in the valley. He would claim his victory as an act of the gods, use it to enforce his beliefs and tie the Thenns to their village. And the dead would continue to come until finally there would be no Thenns left.
The words of the Seer still haunted me, chasing me into my dreams and echoing in my mind during the most mundane tasks. "They will come and come and come until all are as They. He knows, girl. This Magnar knows, and this Magnar will never leave the valley." She had laughed as she said the words that plagued me even now in the middle of a battlefield. "Turn and walk away, leave the snow to cover our bones until They come to raise us once more. Or, kill the Magnar of the Thenns and save us all."
I had tried to forget her words, hoping, and praying that they were like Trelawney's, which were almost always nonsense and to be taken with a heavy amount a skepticism. But still the words stuck, and even now they played in my mind as I watched the Magnar slowly start to gain footing against the pale creature that had bound the dead to it.
It was in that moment that I knew. I knew exactly what would happen if the Magnar won, knew that if he were allowed this victory it would doom the Thenns, the people and culture I was slowly learning to love. And suddenly I knew what I had to do.
I don't know if I had intended for it to kill him, but I also couldn't say for certainty that I hadn't intended for it either.
What I did know was that one moment I was watching the Magnar about to make the final killing swing against the pale being, and the next my wand was pointed at him and I cast a tripping jinx at his back. I was doubled over on the ground in pain, cursing myself for that final stupid fucking spell as the Magnar lost his footing at the last moment, his axe swinging wide in what otherwise would have concluded with the creature's decapitation.
Instead of the death blow that should have ended the last of this battle, the Magnar slipped backwards and fell into the hard-packed snow. The thing didn't hesitate, taking advantage of the situation to drive its sword deep into the Magnar's chest, and I was in too much pain to stop it.
The man gurgled something; his words lost in the wind as he tried to grab the blade with both hands to pull it out. The creature sneered down at him and drove the strange weapon in further, glowing blue eyes flicking up to catch mine, smirking at me as it pulled the ice sword slowly out, stepping around the dying man as if it had already forgotten about its opponent.
It stood there, long white hair blowing in the wind, head slightly tilted, and smiling at me. Behind him, the Magnar breathed his last choking wet gasp, eyes on mine as he reached out to me, and died. I don't think I had ever felt so sick.
The creature was approaching, warriors to either side parting, too afraid to engage while still trying to kill the swarming dead. Others started to run in any direction that they could. And I was just kneeling in the snow, hand reaching down to grasp the sword I had dropped, wand limp in the other, as the thing advanced on me.
"Harielle!" Someone was shouting my name, but I couldn't take my eyes off the creature.
It knew, it knew what I had done. Oh, Merlin…what had I done?
"Harielle!" The voice shouted louder, right next to me, and suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder, pulling me to my feet as the rest of the survivors started to retreat in a chaotic mess. It wasn't coordinated like before, now it was everyone-for-themselves. The fastest would live to see tomorrow, the slowest would serve as a distraction. "Harielle! We need to go!" Alfhild was shouting at me, shaking my shoulder as I stood there numb and watched the formation of survivors fully and completely break apart.
She was right, we needed to go. Severus was still flying back, trying to fight the strong winds and whiteout conditions, trying to get back to me. The dragons were all aloft, circling in confusion while they tried to continue to protect the group of warriors too injured to move on their own. Loki continued to strafe the field with fire even though he was too exhausted to do more than kill perhaps one or two of the enemy before he was forced to ascend or be speared.
Solar's sudden shriek in pain drew my attention and I felt fear clawing at my throat as I watched him fall from the sky. His wing was pulled tight to his chest as an arrow was lodged in the meat of his shoulder. He crash landed near the trees, Guinevere diving after in a move not dissimilar to the Wronski Feint. She landed on top of him, exacerbating his injury in order to burn the dead that were closing in.
"We must retreat, Harielle!"
Solar tried to get up, but even from here I could tell he wouldn't be able to even use his wing to walk, let alone fly. He was too big to carry, the largest of the whelps in size – Roan was largest in the sense of being rotund – and there were no more horses. To retreat would mean to leave him behind. And I just couldn't.
I wanted to go to him, try and protect him, or help him in some way…but the thing was between me and the injured dragon.
The creature stopped perhaps only a few meters away, raising his arms to the side as he smirked at me, and the dead we had lost – the warriors that they had killed – all started to twitch. The Magnar stood slowly from behind the white creature, and when he turned his head to look at me, his eyes glowed blue. Alfhild gasped in horror as her father twitched and spasmed like the others, before he too was standing.
As I watched that thing raise the dead – the men and women who had died fighting against everything this creature stood for – what I felt in that moment wasn't fear, or guilt, or even anger. The only thing I could feel when I looked at that pale monster was disgust.
It broke the natural order of things, the balance of nature, raised those that were meant to stay dead and bound them to itself, forcing them to do its bidding. Having actually met Death, stood in that place-of-transition, and conversed with a being older than anything I could imagine, my only thought was 'how dare it'.
How dare it break the balance. How dare it mock me with its wrongness. How dare it force me to kill a man in order to save a village! How dare it pull the poor dead back from the veil and bind them! How dare it!
I shrugged Alfhild's grip from my shoulder, dropping the wand to place both hands once more on the hilt of the sword, and I charged the creature on tired and weak legs. It really wasn't the best of plans…or much of a plan at all, really. But it was what I had in the moment where I had nothing left.
Alfhild called after me, shouting something – perhaps my name – but I wasn't listening. The thing smiled at me, a mocking tilt of its hard bloodless lips, and brought its own sword up to meet mine.
The blades met in the small space between us, ringing so loudly that it felt as if my ears were about to burst. The thing smirked, using its larger frame to bear down on mine and I was forced to push myself away before my legs gave out. Alfhild was still shouting something behind me, the dead swarming closer, and the dragons were barely keeping themselves airborne on exhausted wings, but I didn't see or hear any of that. My eyes, still grey along the edges, only saw the creatures glowing blue ones, saw its terrible smirk; my ears only heard the ringing of our blades as they met again and again.
I saw movement out of my peripheral but couldn't let myself be distracted as I parried a difficult thrust, trying to press close enough to get a killing blow. But the thing seemed determined to use its superior reach to keep me at arm's length. I lost ground with each push it made, my legs shook with each step, and my arms trembled with each block.
I was losing…I was going to lose!
Desperate, I feinted to the left and tried to get my blade in low on the right, but it seemed to know exactly what I had planned. Not only did it meet my thrust, but it continued its swing and I felt a hard blow slice along my side. Despite the magical properties of the sea serpent hide, I still felt the sting of the blade and the ice-cold sensation that followed. Heat cascaded down my waist, flowing over my hip and down my leg and I realized, as if it were an afterthought, that it was my blood that I was feeling.
Fuck me, I really was going to die here, fighting a creature I had no name for, for people who feared me, in a land I didn't even know or want to be in!
Its face never lost that awful smile, but now I could see something else in its alien expression. It looked like triumph. Lips tilted in that awful self-serving smile, smug blue eyes peering down at me as if I was a particular interesting little rodent who had done something curious, and I had never before felt such hate for anything else in my entire life. Not even Voldemort.
It held its icy blade high, my weak and exhausted arms fought to bring my sword up to block, but I was too slow, the pain in my side too much. It brought its weapon down and I knew in that instant that this was it, my life was over. I wondered if I would return to the place-of-transition and get to speak to the facade that was my mother once more, or would I just move on to…wherever it was people moved on too. My ears were ringing with a high pitch whistle and my vision swam with something white as I waited for it to kill me.
Except the killing blow never came.
The white thing in my vision was attached to the monster's face, shrieking and clawing at the pale hard skin as the creature tried to pull it off, and then I realized that that was Severus. Severus had dived straight into it. Severus had saved me.
The creature grabbed the little dragon with one hand, pulling the struggling reptile from its face, and the shriek of anger turned to pain as it squeezed. Severus' head reared back, mouth opening to breathe fire, and the thing dropped its blade to get a hand around Severus' neck and it started to twist.
Distantly, somewhere deep down, I could feel Severus' anger, fear, and agony…it gave me just enough strength to fight through my own pain. My weak hands wrapped around the grip of the sword of Gryffindor, my legs planted for balance, I thrust the tip up and through the gap beneath the creatures chest armor, up and up until it was buried so far into its torso it must have reached its heart.
The thing looked at me, smug and triumphant features now stunned as the weakly struggling dragon slipped through its slack fingers, and it burst into a thousand shards of ice.
I collapsed into the blood covered snow; my sword dropped next to me as my fingers were too numb to keep ahold of it. Wrapping one hand around my bleeding side, I scrabbled in the snow with the other until I was able to pull Severus' limp body to me.
His breath was wheezing and labored, but he was breathing. I would have burst into tears of relief if I hadn't been so tired. Instead, I pulled his feebly struggling form into my chest, cradling him close and pressing trembling kisses into his twitching hide.
A hand on my shoulder pulled me from my reverie and I glanced up through loose strands of hair that had come undone from their braids to see Alfhild kneeling next to me. She was crying, and I couldn't tell if they were tears of joy, relief, or sorrow…at the moment I couldn't care. All that mattered was that we had survived.
I unwrapped the hand around my side, feeling the slick warm blood coating my fingers, and I pulled the young woman into a tight hug. Severus let out several small noises of complaint, but not any that caused me concern for his health, so I ignored him. In the distance I could make out Romulus and Loki landing near Guinevere, the red dragon poking at Solar's wound with his nose. Solar responded by snapping sharp teeth at the smaller dragon, causing Guinevere to fall over backwards to get away.
"We did it," she was whispering into my neck, face tucked close as she repeated the words over and over again. Around us, the rest of the survivors were killing the last few of the dead that didn't fall when I killed their creator – and that was a thought for another day.
It wasn't until that moment that I realize that Alfhild must have rallied the last of the warriors. She had covered my back while I fought the creature, protected me long enough so I could kill the pale thing that commanded them.
"Thank you," I gasped the words into her hair, raising my bloody hand to rest it on her shoulder, pushing her away so I could meet her eyes with mine. "Thank you."
"No," she shook her head, blood covering nearly one entire side of her face from the cut on her brow. "Thank you!"
And just like that, the feeling of victory that had slowly been seeping into my tired and exhausted soul was doused like ice, leaving behind only the feeling of guilt.
"Hari," Severus rumbled, his voice tight and high as he struggled to speak through the pain. I could feel his worry and I fought to get a hold of my own emotions, but it was too late. He had already caught onto the coiling and thick sensation of shame and followed it down into the hole of self-disgust and hate.
"Hari, what did you do?"
