Prologue
When I was younger, I had immersed myself in books and movies of heroic battles. The tales were always gorgeous in a way-heart-pumping and engaging, filled with quick moves and dancing blows.
Heroes dashed between villains with ease, always golden, always immortal. Always confident and brave and beautiful.
The Strike Force taught me that all those stories were full of s**t.
Real battle wasn't pretty. You trained to block and parry and dodge, yes, but you didn't think about it, didn't focus on long dancing combinations.
You swung. You screamed a lot. You killed as fast as you could and didn't think about anything but the feel of flesh giving way under your hands. And if you were even a hairbreadth too slow, if today just wasn't your day, you were never, ever going to stand up again.
I gritted my teeth and prayed today wasn't that day.
I lunged forward, meeting the monster midleap, slicing its body right through the gut. Cold, black blood sprayed out, but I was already finished firing my gun which is in my left hand, to another monster before the first corpse fell.
The field was thick with beasts, the air alive and hellish with their screams. A shadow darted behind me. I turned just in time to parry the s***h of a cleaver.
I barely registered my opponent-male, shirtless, whiter than snow and drenched in blood-before counterattacking. I nocked my gun on his head then pull the trigger. The monster fell to the ground with a wet smack.
"In coming!" I yelled, but even though I screamed at the top of my lungs, I knew the others hadn't heard.
The world was a living, grinding thing of scarred flesh and teeth and talons, and everywhere I turned I was slashing, dodging, trying to stay alive as the gray tide overtook me.
My breath was on fire as I fought, as I hacked and shoot and screamed my way through the melee. Seconds felt like an eternity, and the damage done to me and my enemies was immense.
A thousand cuts burned across my skin. A thousand moments I was too slow. A thousand instances I could have died, and a thousand reasons I still might.
A yell broke through the din-masculine, enraged and in pain. Then I faltered on my step when I heard Knight's curse not far away from me. I spared a glance over, but I couldn't see anything through the monsters scrambling over corpses. I wanted to go, but being attacked left and right rendered me immobile. My brother screamed as well, but whether from rage or pain, I'm not certain.
That's when I realized, in the far-off corner of my mind, that I am going to die. We all were. God, after years of fighting for survival, today might be the last time I would fight.
That's so unfair!
I just found Knight. I'm still trying to be together with him.
How could this happen now?
My arm went numb from a monster's bite. My hands were drenched red. And still, the monsters came.
My brother's voice drifted through my mind as I fell to my knees. Don't use magic, not under any circumstances. Don't give yourselves away.
Water and blood seeped through my pants, numb arm limp. I could only stare at the blood and wonder how quickly this had come to this end. At how easy it was to die.
Pain seared across my back when a monster ripped through my flesh. Blood was everywhere-black blood, red blood, and red rain. My magic screamed inside of me as my own life spilled forth. Memories rode the current flashes of my mother and father, the few friends I'd made and lost. My eyes fluttered.
This is how it feels to die, and I will be eaten before they find my corpse.
As another monster lunged for the kill, mouth wide and broken teeth bared, my magic opened up unbidden, uncontrollably.
Power flooded me, rushing through in a whirlpool of memory and pain, a roar that filled me with a thousand freezing agonies, dragging me down into the pits of my every despair. Down into the deepest depth of my power.
My magic connected me to the rain hammering from the sky and the blood pooling on the ground and the pulse in every vein of every creature within a mile. I could feel it. All of it. I felt the monsters, their pulses thick and jagged and starved.
Most of all, I felt power. More than I had ever tapped before. The rage, the fear, the anger, the thirst. It made my limbs vibrate, made my breath catch, and made the rain around me seethe and hum. And in that split second before my magic whirl out, I wrapped my fingers deep into the torrent and screamed.
The rain shivered. Changed. I twisted the power and twisted the elements and raindrops became ice, became shards sharper than glass, became hammers that lashed from the sky with sickening velocity.
My magic raged in joy and agony as its power unleashed, as the bloodlust filled my darkening vision and screams filled the air.
Their screams.
Blades of ice met flesh, sliced through skin and bone. Ice spilled forth blood, and my magic rejoiced as the world drenched itself in crimson.
Power ran through my veins, and this power craved revenge.
It was over in seconds.
I felt the monsters die. Felt their blood leave their bodies and pool against the sodden earth. Felt their pain. Felt their final heartbeats. And when every heart had stilled, the power in my chest winked out. And then everything turned black...
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