Chapter 28

  The forvalaca came to the big green forest, wreathed in blue and purple fires. It came in the night, by comet-light. It thrashed and it smashed, and its roar shook the trees, and its dread cold flames froze the branches and leaves.

  Then it ran like a leopard, rushed through the woods like a silent wind, its footfalls heavy but quiet, its taught muscles bunching like spring-wound fiber cables. Like a torpedo under the waters, it flowed silent and swift beneath the rustling canopy. It left no trace but frosty grass where its feet fell, and a cold shiver in the air. It moved unseen among the shadows save for flickers of sapphire flame trailing like frigid exhaust fumes and the comet-lit glint of star-toothed violet eyes.

  And the forvalaca was focused, maniacally focused, yet she was in pain. There was on her neck a collar that no fire could freeze nor strength tear asunder. She had been caged in a prison without bars—the only kind of prison from which she could not free herself.

  Hatred burned in the icy veins of the forvalaca, but for now she had but one target: a frog. White, like all the rest. Nearly indestructible, like all the rest. Nimble and quick, clever and unstuck in space, the frog would be difficult to hunt. Like all the rest. And the thought of hunting that creature gave the forvalaca pleasure, for she lived to hunt. She could hunt a snowflake in a blizzard, a dream on the night breeze, a dragon in flight. She could hunt the stars themselves.

  She was coming.

  Fiora awoke with a gasp, reflexively leaping out of bed, off the ceiling, off the wall, and into her pile of stuffed animals. Thunder grumbled in the distance; rain pattered on the rooftop and made a soft staticky drone on the forest outside. She found a brace of real ferrets snuggled together in the pile, and she hugged them close. They were warm, and after her dream she felt cold, cold, cold.

  She was out there in her forest, coming fast. Fiora had seen through her eyes, had felt her pain and her desire.

  Heavy hooves thunked on the branches outside. Catch stood there heroically, the only way he knew how to stand, his antlers glittering in the dark. He knew about her nightmare. He knew about the beast that was coming. Fiora tried to think, to remember. What were you supposed to do if the forvalaca hunted you? Give up. That was your only chance. If you stopped running, then maybe that would make her bored and she would lose interest. But Fiora didn’t think she was going to lose interest this time. She felt her own neck, where she had felt the hateful collar on the forvalaca.

  Only one place to go. Only one thing to do.

  She jumped to the computer, clicked it on, wrote a single line:

  FI: rasmus help

  The white frog was there, watching. It croaked at her. “Come on!” Fiora shouted at it. She sprang to the back of Catch, clutched him tight, shouted “the mountain!” And then they flew through the cold, wet darkness. Catch dropped from the tree branches to the earth and galloped through the mud, fast as a speeder bike. Shafts of comet-light stabbing through the canopy illuminated the raindrops as they flickered past.

  Fiora didn’t look at the rain, the shadows, the glittering antlers of the vesta in the night. She shut her eyes tight and thought about the forvalaca. It wanted her angel! But why?

  She did not know how long Catch ran. It could not have been very long, because they were still in the forest when he skidded to a halt. His chest heaved, lifting Fiora up and down. She felt the blood throbbing through his body like liquid sunlight. She opened her eyes and peeked out at the dark forest, seeing nothing but the beams of comet light, as bright as a dozen moons, piercing down from above in pale shafts, seeming as solid as the trees around them. She heard nothing but the panting of Catch and the sounds of the rain. She felt only the soft touch of the raindrops, and a cold draft of air, so cold that frost crusted on the wetness of her coat.

  A growl, deep and soft, like the purring of a huge cat, fluttered out from the darkness.

  Catch shook his neck slightly. He wanted Fiora to get off. She slid down from his back and made herself small against a nearby tree.

  A new light in the rain: blue-purple fires in the dark, reflecting off the glistening leaves, the trees, the grass. Catch lowered his head toward the fires as the forvalaca emerged, silent and with terrifying speed, from the shadows.

  Her fur was black, limned with icy flame. Her body was long and lean with sharp white teeth, six strong legs with fierce claws, and a long nimble tail that thrashed and flung violet flames that froze raindrops into beads of glittering ice. She was as tall as Rasmus, but long and musteline. And something glittered around her neck.

  The vesta answered the beast’s charge. Crystalline antlers met wide icy jaws. There was a vicious snarl and a crash that shook shining raindrops down all around.

  Fiora wanted to run, but she was too afraid to move. She huddled against the tree and barely looked at the fight even when it uprooted trees, when a torrent of water rushed down and soaked her, when waves of cold crisped the grass at her feet and she scampered for cover, when Catch bellowed or the forvalaca snarled.

  It was over too soon. She heard Catch gasp in pain—a horrible, terrible sound she had never heard before—and when she looked, she saw the forvalaca with her jaws around Catch’s back. The beast clung to Catch with her icy claws. The forvalaca heaved her long muscular body and crunched down her awful jaws.

  The light flickered out inside of Catch. His antlers stopped sparkling. He twitched, spasmed, and then went limp.

  Fiora knew she should run, but she could not move. And besides, run to where? She could not run from the forvalaca. No one could, not even a vesta. The vesta of legend named I Will Run Forever had not run forever after all, for it was said that the forvalaca heard her name and put it to the test.

  The forvalaca’s eyes turned to Fiora, who shivered against the tree. Fiora clutched the white frog tight. This was what the beast wanted. But Fiora needed her angel! Zayana said so. But she had also said that someone might try to take it from her. The Ephathic Remnant. Fiora had thought she was safe. She had thought Catch would protect her.

  The forvalaca stepped closer, her powerful body tense, her purple-blue light shining on all the icy trees and hail of crystallized rain around her. Fiora now saw the scars, the bald patches in the fur, the marks of recent injury. The forvalaca turned her head, listened to something far away, and Fiora saw moonlight glinting off the metal collar around her neck. She saw the blood dripping down, freezing. She knew the work of the Remnant when she saw it. Anger crept in amidst her fear.

  The forvalaca struck like a serpent. Fiora hardly saw it coming. But there was a flash of light, and she fell into a puddle, in the dark, somewhere else. It felt warm here after leaving the presence of the forvalaca. The white frog was jumping around her, frantically trying to get her attention. She needed to run. To flee. Maybe she could, with the angel. Maybe—

  The forvalaca surged out of the darkness, and there was another flash of light. Fiora dropped again into the wet darkness of the forest. She looked about fearfully. She couldn’t see. The comet backlit the rainclouds overhead, creating a weird almost-daytime ambience up at the tops of the trees, but this light scarcely penetrated to the shadows below. She was lost, alone.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Fiora closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, to see everything alive. The first thing she saw was the febrile light of the forvalaca. She was already here.

  Something struck Fiora while her eyes were closed. She cried out as she skidded into a patch of young pines. Lights flashed, the dark beast growled, and then all was quiet.

  She rose fearfully, shivering with cold, and the first thing she saw was the teeth of the forvalaca, spread into a huge, hideous grin. Brilliant light strobed behind those teeth, flashing again and again. Her angel, caught within the forvalaca’s jaws. It could not escape.

  Their eyes met. Fiora shuddered at what she saw there in those star-toothed eyes. The forvalaca was so angry. She was like Akkama, who had been hurt and was angry at everything. She was going to kill Fiora.

  The beast contracted the great muscular length of her body, preparing to pounce.

  But she did not pounce. She froze in place, twitching her tufted catlike ears. Rain froze into a thin sheet of ice over her body. She turned her head, breaking the ice, to peer at something in the darkness to Fiora’s left.

  Then Fiora heard it too, or felt it: a pounding in the earth, a thundering overhead, and now she saw the brilliant glare of crackling yellow light that rushed through the trees, making a parade of vertical shadows that parted and parted as the light source raced through the woods.

  Rasmus had come. The thought sent new vigor through Fiora, counteracting the horror and apathy of Catch’s death. It snapped her back to her senses and gave her the grit to take advantage of the forvalaca’s distraction. She summoned her strength and sprang as hard as she could up into the trees.

  The forvalaca’s tail whipped through the space she had been, crystallizing everything and then shattering it in a moment, but it was too late. Fiora was in the trees, and the forvalaca did not have time to chase her down because Rasmus had arrived.

  The cold beast met Rasmus just as she had the vesta, though she kept her mouth shut to trap the frog. She knew about vestas, but she did not know about Rasmus.

  He had come like lightning, brilliant and swift, and such was the blow he dealt the beast when it charged him. He planted his feet, swung a fist wrapped in adamant, and his blow crashed upon the jaw of the forvalaca. She flew sideways into a tree, splintering it into frozen fragments, and Rasmus sank past his ankles into the soil from the force of the strike.

  The forvalaca snarled, writhed, and returned in a frenzy. Shining claws sliced at the air, the deadly tail whipped about, but the jaws of that beast did not unclench. She held the angel trapped.

  Fiora watched as icy flame burned the trees and stones. The rain pattered down in solid droplets, the leaves shattered, the trees were torn asunder in the combat. The forvalaca was mighty, mightier even than a vesta, for while the vesta were powerful, there had only ever been one forvalaca. She flung Rasmus to and fro, and her claws bit deep.

  But Rasmus held a storm in his fists, and the godshatter of the Thunder God shone on his arms. His every blow was a battering ram charged with lightning, and his fists hammered the cold beast until she learned to keep her distance.

  Then the frovalaca tried to grapple Rasmus, to immobilize him, to crush and freeze him in the coil of her powerful body. But Rasmus was too strong, too strong, and he was angry, and his anger made the storm boil overhead, and no beast in all the world could crush him, and Fiora was thrilled and frightened all at once because she had never seen Rasmus like this before, but she knew that Rasmus was angry for her, and he would tear apart any monster to protect her because he was her storm and her shield.

  The forvalaca was all around Rasmus, enraged and baffled that her might was to no avail. Electricity coursed through Rasmus and out through the forvalaca, and it found that metal collar. The collar sparked and made a strange screaming, buzzing noise; the forvalaca hissed a terrible freezing hiss in pain and rage. Her grip loosened on Rasmus, who seized a limb of the beast, a leg as large as himself, and crushed it in his arms until it broke. Fiora winced as she heard the thick, gristly crack.

  The forvalaca writhed in agony. Rasmus leapt atop her, gripped the frigid sable fur, and climbed purposefully toward the forvalaca’s head, unmoved though she rolled and bucked and tried to crush him against the ground, the trees.

  Fiora’s mouth was open. She watched from high up in the branches, amazed and afraid. She knew he was strong, so terribly strong, but still she could hardly believe that Rasmus was winning against one of the ten great beasts. He was going to kill the forvalaca. She had to stop him.

  “Rasmus!” she shouted down, using every ounce of her vocal power. “Don’t kill her, Rasmus!”

  He could not hear. She was far, and he was deaf, and both he and forvalaca were roaring at each other as they tore up everything around them with their combined destructive might.

  Fiora gritted her teeth and dropped down, lower, lower, until she was in the splash range of the lavender flames. “Rasmus!”

  He still could not hear.

  She took a deep breath, hesitated for only a moment, and sang with her voice. She sang as loud as she could, and she augmented her song with the ringing of her arda. Bright glowing green, she made herself an easy target in the pale night. But her music rang out, and it cut through the noise, as music will do.

  Both Rasmus and the forvalaca paused in their struggle and turned their gazes up at her. She improvised a very simple lyric: “Do not kill her, Rasmus!” She had never been very good at improvising lyrics.

  Rasmus kept staring up at her, his face lit with blue, with yellow, now with green. The forvalaca flung him away one last time and then vanished into the night. The flaming tail was the last thing to go, slipping into the darkness between the trees.

  Fiora stopped singing at once. She and Rasmus stared at each other until Rasmus sank to one knee on the frozen mud.

  Fiora dropped down in front of him. He looked tired—tired and cold. He was covered in sweat and frostbite, and his amber blood trickled from a dozen deep claw marks on his arms, chest, and back. But he would live. He had survived much worse. She had seen it.

  “Your angel…” said Rasmus.

  Fiora shook her head. It didn’t matter. She shivered in the residual cold. Her throat hurt; her voice trembled. “C-Catch…”

  Rasmus only nodded. “I saw. I am sorry.”

  She sniffed, shivered, blinked back tears.

  Rasmus opened an arm. An invitation. She ran to him and hugged his arm tight. His arm was bigger around than she was, and it was cold on one side and warm on the other, and there was staticky blood on it. She didn’t care; she needed to hug something. She allowed herself to think, to really think, about Catch being dead. She began to cry.

  Rasmus stood again, grunting with the effort. He scooped her up and carried her somewhere. She didn’t know where; she didn’t care. She cried in his warm, strong arms. It reminded her of another time when he had carried her, in the night, in the sadness and pain. It reminded her of the lightning burn scars on her back, of his pledge to be her storm and shield.

  “Thank you, Rasmus,” she said, remembering to speak loudly. “For coming.”

  He shook his head. He was crying, too. “I came too late. I had dreamed of battling alongside him at the end of things. Yet he died in valor, as a vesta ought, and we all are in his debt.”

  He took her to Catch. Fiora mourned Catch in song for the rest of the night. She sang with both her voice and her arda. Rasmus joined in after she had healed him of his most serious wounds. The forest sang with them, and so did the thunder in the darkness above.