Chapter 45: The Crimson Shore

  Jessie rushed towards her fallen loved ones. Grace had given her life to try to protect Erik in that last attack by the beast. She had succeeded, but only barely. Her body had still been smashed into his by the powerful monster, collapsing a lung and breaking several ribs in Erik’s body.

  Had it been anyone else, their body would’ve been pulverised. Grace’s death was tough on Jessie, but she could summon her familiar back in a week. It was horrible, but it was the better outcome.

  Erik didn’t have any third chances in life, and Jessie confessed that she wouldn’t do this without Erik. She couldn’t. What she and Erik had grown in the last months was more than love. It was a familial bond. It was not unlike that of her sister or her father, but it was also very much different.

  Erik gave her purpose. He was her partner. She’d never admit it to his face, but he was the love of her life. It wasn’t a romantic love, but something more. Him dying would be the end of her, and she would let the rest of the world go down with him.

  “How is he?” shouted Emma, waking Jessie up from her stupor. She was already healing Erik and had disappeared for a few minutes. She focused back on the healing spell, taking in what it told her about his wounds.

  “He’ll live,” Jessie stated, not taking her eyes away from him for a second. Emma supposed she didn’t need to, all her senses combining into a giant mess of senses. Still, Jessie had to know that she wasn’t the only one who cared for him.

  Emma turned away, looking at her own body covered in guts, blood, and dirt. This was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. She’d seen fighting before, though there hadn’t been a war of any kind during her lifetime. There had been real skirmishes between nations, though, and she had been there.

  There were still rules each nation had to follow, unless they wanted the entire world to rain down on them. It was usually as humane as could be. This? Nothing human about it. She’d lost count of the beasts she’d killed, and knew she was far from the one who killed the most, no matter who that was.

  And that massively oversized monster Erik had fought? What was the world coming to? Who was she to think she’d be able to keep up with all this? Magic? Monsters? Easy. All this blood? Her friends dying? It wasn’t right!

  Emma fell to the ground, having walked in a daze. She wasn’t sure how far she’d walked away from Jessie, Erik, and Grace, but it was far enough. Her strength disappeared in a moment, her shaking, yet rigid knees giving in completely. She fell face first into the reddened sand, the sea just beginning to the blood away.

  Gentle, salty waves caressed her crying face every so often. She screamed. She screamed. The amount of air she gathered in her lungs between each scream grew smaller and smaller as she cried harder and harder, her sobs and gasps louder and louder. She was alone.

  Angela had collapsed to the ground in front of the giant beast that had been the last to fall. Her vision was spinning and her lungs resisted taking in air. She had blood, viscera, and scratches all over her.

  She was reminded of reminded of Peter, who had been wounded at the start of the battle. She hoped he was alright. Jessie’s deadpan response to Emma made it clear she wouldn’t listen to anything, even if Erik was stable for now.

  Seeing Emma stumble away in her own thoughts as Jessie scared her off, Angela rose from ground, heading towards camp. As the de facto leader, she had to do at least something right after a battle as intense as this. Her body was trembling, her teeth clenching; she’d never felt anything like the hot-cold ball twisting inside her stomach. Still, she didn’t have it worst.

  It didn’t take much to see Emma’s entire body shaking as she walked the beach, falling forwards some twenty metres away from Jessie, starting to scream and cry. Her fists pounded the wet sand beneath her. She would see her later. Emma had emotions she needed to work through alone. Angela knew she’d be impossible to reach, just like Jessie was right now.

  Angela stumbled to the ground as she reached their camp, Amir heading straight for her, helping the tired woman from the ground. The sun was rising in the east above the ocean, though its light only just reached them.

  “Are you okay?” Amir asked. As if that question was so easy to answer. She ignored the question. Amir wavered, but supported her towards her destination.

  “Talk to me, Angela,” he tried again, and the blonde leaning on him sighed, as if releasing a year’s worth of stress and tension. He felt just as encumbered by the whole thing, but he hadn’t fought against them long. The shots he had fired was to wake the others up, if nothing else.

  “I’ll be fine,” Angela said, and kept walking. Amir didn’t miss the ‘will be’. His only regret at that moment was the fact that he didn’t find it in his heart to tell her…

  “Angela is coming in. Please, check to see if she’s fine,” Amir warned the two inside the tent as he opened the veil for her. Amir helped her inside, but left again in a haste, his weapon armed and ready.

  “How is h—” she started, seeing Sophie wrapped in two thick blankets, her bloodied hands pressing against Peter’s body. Her knuckles were white as snow, her face only no better. Although there were no tears on her face, her eyes were glazed over. She’d seen similar symptoms before, on victims and bystanders both.

  Dunham was rubbing his hands up and down the shocked girl’s arms on the outside of the two blankets he’d covered her with. He waved Angela over to see her wounds and the blood covering her.

  “How are you? Anywhere you hurt more?” Dunham asked.

  “I, uh… N-no, I’m fine. Bruised and a few cuts, but I don’t think I took any big hits. I, umm… How long..?” she answered, hesitating on her next few words.

  “Only a few minutes after he was brought here. There was nothing we could do. In my panic I didn’t even realise I let that poor girl in here to see this—uh, him.” Dunham responded, unable to hold his own tears back.

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

  Angela hadn’t talked with them much about their pasts, but she knew they’d been working together for a long time, and were truly friends, not just colleagues. She knew this must be hurting him the most.

  “Sorry,” he sighed, wiping a tear from his cheek. “How are the rest? Is the fighting over?” he continued in a more hopeful tone.

  “They’re… Grace didn’t make it,” Angela said.

  The little rascal had been the life of the party both during everyone’s exhaustive training and during downtime. The small dinosaur was like a puppy, except the size of a full-grown adult large dog. Her yelps, her tiny cries and the pure happiness positively beaming from her eyes at everything around her… She’d made a place for herself in everyone’s hearts in just a week.

  “I’m sorry,” Dunham said, knowing fully well it would neither help nor make things worse. Angela continued.

  “Emma is… I don’t know. Erik is badly hurt, and Jessie is doing everything she can.”

  Beside the two of them, both heard an audible inhale from Sophie, though she still seemed to be out of it.

  “Sophie?” Angela attempted, placing her arms around the girl’s shoulders. “Are you there, Sophie?”

  No reply. Dunham looked on as Angela attempted to shake Sophie out of it.

  “Sophie, sweetie? Your sister needs you. Erik needs you,” she tried. Sophie exhaled, her eyes as dead as earlier. Still, the girl spoke:

  “I’m needed here. I’m saving Peter.” Her deadpan and monotone voice sounding raspy.

  “I think you’ve done all you can,” Angela whispered with a gentle voice, moving her hands down to Sophie’s bloodied ones, grasping them and forcing Sophie to stop pressing.

  The girl relented a few seconds later, pulling her hands towards herself, forcing Angela to let go of her. “Your sister needs you right now, okay? Let’s go to her,” Angela attempted again, but was still shut down by the deadened voice:

  “I’ll stay. I was told to stay,” Sophie said. Angela turned to Dunham, who shook his head in the negative.

  “I’ll take care of her. You go,” he said, and started rubbing Sophie’s arms and shoulders again. Angela nodded as she looked at the poor girl, then left the tent. She shared a meaningful nod with Amir and went back towards the beach. It was time to do her job.

  When Angela returned to the beach, Emma had stopped screaming, though she still sobbed into the sand. The ocean was rising, but it wouldn’t catch up with the girl soon. Angela turned to Jessie who shared her younger sister’s dead stare.

  “Jessie. Jessie!” Angela said, then shouted as the Remnant girl didn’t react the first few times. A pair of moist, blue and green eyes met Angela’s with a promise of pain if she tried to take her away from Erik. Angela sat down on her tired knees beside Jessie.

  “Don’t be selfish, Jessie. Erik will be fine, you said so yourself earlier. Where’s your head at? You chased Emma away, and now she’s crying all alone over there,” Angela said, pointing backwards towards Emma’s location.

  Jessie looked over Angela’s shoulder and saw the sobbing form of her friend.

  “Have you forgotten that Peter was wounded? Have you spent a quick thought about the rest of them inside the camp? I know you love Erik, but I also know you love your sister. I know you care for all of us, but I need you to start acting like it. Erik is fine, and there are more people who need you, do you understand?”

  “I… I’m sorry…” Jessie creaked.

  The dam opened, and tears rushed down her cheeks, mixing with blood and dirt. She released her tight grip on Erik’s body and the healing spell, both. She embraced Angela, squeezing her. Angela brushed the woman’s hair for a little while as she calmed down.

  “Shh, I know, I know. None of us saw any of this coming. We’re all scared,” Angela whispered.

  A few minutes later, Jessie pulled back from her tight and much-needed embrace.

  “I’ll apologise to Emma. How’s everyone else?” Jessie asked, having calmed her crying enough to speak in complete sentences.

  Angela wasn’t certain how to respond to that, even after all this time. Her hesitation raised Jessie’s pulse.

  “Peter’s d—… He didn’t make it,” Angela said. Jessie’s beautiful ocean eyes with emerald islands opened wide in surprise before they both closed shut, more water trickling down the woman’s face.

  Jessie’s self-blame was obvious. If she had fought harder or let Erik be when he was stable, she’d have time to heal Peter as well. In the chaos of the battle, she had completely forgotten about it. Angela saw all these thoughts rushing through Jessie’s mind from just a quick glance of her face.

  “He died just a few minutes after being pulled back. There was nothing anyone could do. Not even you,” Angela explained, though did that even matter in the end?

  It had been close a few times, but they hadn’t lost anyone before. It was hard not to blame herself as well. She had seen him wounded, but let it go when Peter said it was just a cut on his arm. Still, because of Peter…

  Would Angela have gone to fight at the beach if she knew how wounded Peter had been? She didn’t know. If she had, Emma, Jessie, and Grace could have been overrun. She chose to see it as Peter’s lie being what saved all the rest of them. She had to. It was the truth.

  “Sophie? Amir and Dunham?” Jessie asked, having let her guilt over Peter’s death sink in.

  “Sophie went to help Peter when he was carried inside. She… She’s in shock. She won’t leave his side. I couldn’t get through to her,”

  Jessie was silent after that for a few more moments.

  “Did you tell her…?” she asked, nodding down at Erik’s bloodied body, breathing, but only just.

  “Yeah… She… She said she was told to stay. She isn’t capable of clear thoughts—”

  “That’s good. I can’t have her see me like this. Not him. I’m afraid she’ll blame everything on me,” Jessie said, her voice cracking up and a new tear falling from her eye.

  “She won’t, and you know that. She’s in shock, and she’ll have nightmares about tonight… I think all of us will…” Angela said, looking behind her at Emma. “But we’ll all make it, somehow.”

  Jessie nodded, not sure if she believed the woman herself. She got up, Angela rising after her.

  They headed towards Emma’s wallowing body, the ocean waves getting more insistent. The pair touched her back with a hand each, feeling the girl shake her entire body. Whether she was cold, scared or sick they couldn’t tell, but they could guess. After a few gentle strokes and words, Emma agreed to move further inland, and the trio sat down where the sandy beach met the rocky ground.

  It was nothing but a bloody mess as far as the eye could see in the day’s first light. Corpses by the dozens were littered everywhere like debris after a car crash. The three sat there in the lukewarm morning, each in their messy nightclothes, watching the sun rise over the horizon, not saying another word to each other until the sunlight blinded them. Angela and Jessie each held one of Emma’s hands in their own, letting the girl cry on and off for as long as she needed.

  “Morning, girls…” Amir attempted, approaching the three women from behind. “Dunham is getting somewhere with Sophie. She wants to see you,” he continued, looking at Jessie. Jessie kissed Emma’s cheek, drying it with a gentle wipe of her hand afterward, and got up.

  “Sophie?” Jessie asked, getting the attention of her younger sister. The developing lake in her eyes caused Jessie to hug her sister rather than saying anything else. Seeing Peter behind her as they hugged, Jessie inched both herself and her sister out of the tent.

  Amir went inside, talking with Dunham about a burial for their friend. Outside, Jessie hugged her sister all the tighter, not letting the pressure drop until the blonde made high-pitched whines in response. Jessie then kissed her sister several times on her cheek, a slight smile growing on her tired face.

  “Let’s go lie down. We both need some rest.”

  “But what about—”

  “Come on,” Jessie lured, holding their tent open for her sister.

  Sophie’s clouded mind couldn’t figure out what she had been trying to say, and a craving to find her mattress rose within her. That thin, rough mattress she had grown so used to. She was safe there. Her sister would protect her, no matter what.