FROM HER ASHES³ ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐕𝐈: The True Commander

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THE TRUE COMMANDER

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          THE SKY HAS already begun to crumble by the time that Lyra wakes.

     She leaves her fire-bathed dreams behind. Commanders fading, pain dissolving, gone from the land of the starving dead and thrust back into the one of the insipid living. She feels like she is falling fast now. It cannot be long before she drowns, is swallowing by salt-whirling hurricanes, choked out. Soon she will be nothing but legacy, too, another wet earthen grave. Already she feels like a dead girl walking. Just another ghost.

     Eyelashes shielding a universe, she finds her feet. There is no time to waver. She has to be a concrete hero again.

     One last time.

     "Lyra! You're awake!" Nate rushes towards her, eyes wide and ample with panic. "You need to sit back down. You won't believe what's going on out there, Madi's telling everyone that you have the Flame — "

     "It's true." Lyra swallows, blinks swiftly; her eyes are hard and shattered as frost.

     Nate stares at her, speechless. "But that would — that would — that would make you — "

     "I am heir to Becca Pramheda, with blood black as night coursing through my veins." Lyra is a shivering ricochet. "Lexa Kom Trikru has chosen me as her successor. I am the Commander now."

      "Holy shit," he whispers breathlessly.

     Lyra stares back at him with wild uncertainty. If Nate cannot accept her as the Commander, then she finds it hard to believe that anyone will.

     But then his face cracks into a timid grin. "Long way from Earth Skills, huh?"

     "Yeah." She wrings her hands together.

     "OK," he says, as if still trying to convince himself that this is happening: Lyra is still trying to convince herself that this is happening. "OK. We should probably tell somebody."

     "Probably," Lyra agrees, borderline hysterical.

"OK," he says again. "C'mon."

"What — now?"

He stares back at her. "What're you gonna do? Just wait in here? There's still a war going on!"

"Oh. . . Oh!" Lyra clumsily tries to stand up, then winces. Fuck. Her stomach hurts.

Nate looms over her, reaching down to help her forward. Blinking drowsily, cheeks flushed with exhaustion, fuzzy with lethargy, she shakes him off. It would be a fine sight to whatever's left of Wonkru to see their last hope staggering out of the tent like some sort of helpless idiot.

When they push through the cloth entrance and into the sands, they're met with a smoke-smothered sky and small village of tattered tents. The heavens are protuberant and yellow as a blister. Demolition has came and gone and left destruction in its wake. Clawing out the light pulsing heart and stamped it into ash. Briefly, Lyra wonders if that is what happened to her, too.