Daughter of the Sword

16 || Him

Cassian

I FEEL IT. A tug to my power. Drawing me toward the mountain, toward the thick of the battle.

I cut down three men with a single stroke, an image of blood and fury, obeying the commands of my sword as it takes and it takes and it takes, devouring lives in the blink of an eye. A flick of my power has a man drowning in in his armour. A glance sends another flying. The adrenaline spirals up and up into its crescendo, a glorious melody, and I leap into the next cluster of soldiers, grinning at the terror in their eyes.

But that pull does not stop. It grows into a rumble, rattling me down to my bones just as the mountaintop explodes. My Gods, they're bringing it down.

"Fall back!" I yell, and my voice booms across the battlefield. Soldiers begin to retreat. Cries of battle turn to cries of terror. I turn to follow--but then I see it.

Taking on soldiers with the fury of the gods, razing them where they stand. Powers like death incarnate. It flows through him as easily as breathing, as natural as time itself. A worthy opponent. As I start towards him, someone knocks his helmet off, and I freeze. 

It's a woman.

Three men descend on me, and I barrel into one, destabilizing him as I ram my sword through the gut of another, straight through his armour. A woman in the Lyrian army? They would not permit it in a thousand years. I wrench my blade out and clash with the third, sending a lightning fast strike to the gap at his neck. She's a mystery almost strong enough to distract me from battle. I whirl and bury my sword in the thigh gap of the last one, immune to the horrible shudder of metal on bone. Free for a single breath of a moment, I search the chaos for her, and find her at the heart of it. 

She razes the men before her with arcing, wild thrusts, bending technique to her will in a miracle of motion. Her hair flies in her face and she swats it away, her face set in a concentration I have only seen in a gifted few--the deep harmony of battle. 

She feels my eyes on her and turns. Wearing the blood of a hundred men, dripping with sweat, shoulders shuddering with exhaustion, her gaze locks with mine, and in that moment, I swear even the Gods pause to watch. Something slams into my chest, and I grab it as she staggers, mere seconds stretching into an eternity as we feel it. The call of the prophecy.

Then the mountain crashes down between us, a wall of rubble and dust and screams, throwing us apart. I barely even register it, my body ringing with that call, those binding threads of fate, a deep, ancient magic older than even our kingdoms. 

I need to know who she is.