My eyes snapped open, and I shot from my bed, stumbling to a halt at the front door. As it had been in the Dream, it stood open, the first wisps of smoke from below wafting into the house.

  A sudden fear gripped my heart in icy fingers. “Mother? Mother!” I shouted, retreating into the hall. The door to her room was open, her bed unmade and empty. No doubt, the cries for help and the howl of the beast had roused her into action.

  She needed me.

  With no further time wasted on guilt and shame, I stopped at the storage cabinet in the kitchen. The doors stood open, near half our stock missing. Snatching my satchel from the table, I filled it with the last remaining healing tonics before hurrying down the hill and into the heart of the chaos.

  As I descended into the smoke and flames, I ran headlong into a wall of pain before I’d made it more than ten steps toward the square. Aches that screamed from splintered bones and rent flesh; burns that coated my arms, legs, and back in a curtain of agony that stole the strength from my knees and sent me to the ground.

  One hand, moving on instinct, clutched my satchel to my breast to protect it. The other broke my fall just long enough that I might roll onto my side and spare my precious cargo. Eyes wide, mouth trembling, throat squeezed shut by a cacophony of screams that all tried to surface at once, I stared unseeing into the smoke-blotted sky.

  Suffering. More than the Guardian encampment from years ago. More than I ever thought possible in my darkest nightmares.

  Over the piercing ringing in my ears, I heard them calling out. Voices I knew by heart, their texture and tone etched into my being. Not mere neighbors, but family. Though I drowned in the reflection of their pain, my heart and body knew that was not enough — could not be enough — to keep me from acting.

  Every fiber of my being cried out in anguish, yet I still heard them calling out.

  My fists clenched. My jaw set and my brow furrowed. With all the strength my frail body could summon, I beat my fists against the ground and rose on shaking legs. Smoke choked my lungs, flames licked my flesh, and broken stone skewered my bare feet as I forced myself to move. Though pain — theirs and my own — raged against me as a tempest to a flower, my soul could hear them calling out.

  The scene that awaited me when next my vision came into focus stopped me dead.

  Flames cast a hellish glow upon once the verdant hilltop, Serpent oaks ablaze, filling the air with the bitter-burned scent of charred Snakebite plums. The cobblestone pathway was splintered and ruined, a sea of shards and pitfalls. Shop stands lie in twisted piles of wood and nails, corroding with a venomous hiss beneath a spray of black blood. All around me, pain radiated from every direction, in every form I’d ever felt.

  An unearthly wail, echoed by a booming thunderclap, shook the ground beneath my feet and dulled my senses momentarily. I turned in a daze toward its source and felt my heart freeze in my breast.

  It was a gargantuan Fellbeast, more horrifying and grotesque than the one I watched die. Twice, if not thrice, the size, its wide, hulking frame large enough to topple aged oaks with a single swing of its head. Four curved tusks protruded from its lips, pulled back into a furious snarl to show off the rows of teeth — each the size of a broadsword — that lined its maw. When it moved, every step of its tree trunk thick legs came down like an earthquake that threatened to topple Spring Hill beneath its cloven hooves.

  A tail whipped behind it, armored in black scales and tipped with a stinger spewing rot with its every swipe. Blackened scars lined its frame, the greatest of them down the length of its face, leaking pools of its fellblood to create a choking miasma as they scorched the earth. But what terrified me the most were not its imposing physicality or its thunderous cries. No, what left me paralyzed were the six, slitted eyes buried within the coarse mane covering its face.

  They burned as blighted stars, full of hatred and malice for all they surveyed. And at the moment our gaze met, I felt the weight of its fury upon me.

  As the beast reared back its head and screeched again, a voice snatched me from its spell. “Celeste!” Firm hands grabbed my shoulders and turned me away from the beast.

  Mother’s eyes were sharper than I’d seen in years; her once delicate features twisted into a look of raw determination. There was blood on her face; her hands were burned.

  “Mother? Y-Your hands, I should —”

  She shook her head, cutting me off. “Never you mind! I’ve need of you, Celeste. There’s too many for me to treat alone. You leave that thing to your brother. We’ve a job to do.”

  “Brother? Vasco?” I gasped and looked around, my eyes wide and fearful. “Where is he? Is he hurt?” Again, she shook my shoulders and brought my gaze back to hers.

  “I need you, Celeste! Let the Heroes do their duty, while you do yours!” Her gaze softened in the slightest and her voice lowered. “Please. I can’t save everyone myself.”

  Swallowing my fears, I nodded silently.

  It was that moment the Fellbeast chose to charge at us. The ground quaked beneath its heavy footfalls, carrying it with speed such a beast should never have possessed. I turned to face our end, drawing close to Mother that I might shield her.

  But the end never came, for in the next moment, a great and heavy fist hit its head with unrelenting force. The beast, sent staggering, turned and lashed out at its attacker with a swipe of its great, thorned tail.

  It was Vasco.

  Dressed in his only sleep tunic, body already battle-worn with cuts and bruises, he was none the less intimidating for it. Though he bore no weapon, his bloodied fists were clenched in defiance of the beast. In the instant before its tail would have run him through, his arm raised, coated in cobalt glow.

  When the thorn struck the light, it set off a spark, batting it aside as if it were weightless. Power surged through his body in a wink, muscles alight with that which once engulfed his arm. In the next breath, his other fist shot forward in a thrust mirroring the tail’s strike, crashing into the Fellbeast’s snout and sending it reeling.

  His Soulspark. I’d not seen it in years, and never so perfected.

  “Celeste! We must move! Please, girl!” Mother’s voice at last reached me.

  Trusting that he’d return safely, as he always had, I nodded and followed.

  Most of the wounded had been pulled from the fight, gathered where the smoke was thinnest and the rot had yet to reach. Seeing their faces and feeling their pain reflected in my body, I let instinct take over and set to work, blocking out the fight raging just behind. I followed the ache to its greatest source, Eldwin, nursing a gash on his side that seeped scarlet into the grass.

  When I approached, he shook his head and tried to turn my attention to someone else, but I’d no patience to spare for his selfless nonsense. Taking a salve and a roll of linen bandage from my satchel, I shushed him and cleaned the wound with deft hands.

  “Please, Celeste. Worry about the children. Poor Elisabeth, she’s badly burned. She needs you more, girl —”

  “And you’ve one foot in the grave, you softhearted old fool. A moment longer and we’d be mourning your return to Oblivion.” I tore off the end of the bandage and wrapped it tight. Then, to his continued protest, I uncorked a healing tonic and forced it to his lips. “Speak no more and drink, Eldwin.”

  Once he downed the tonic and said his reluctant thanks, I hurried over to Elisabeth. She was a tough one, used to strangers and the occasional drunken spat at her parents’ tavern, but on that night she was a child as any other. Nestled in her mother’s arms, she wept and screamed, holding her charred-red leg.

  “Be strong, Lisa. You’ll be fine. You’ll see. Take this and I’ll see to your leg. There we go, that’s a brave girl.” The tonic dripping down her chin as she drank with her mother’s help, I tore the singed remnants of her nightgown away and cleaned the burn. “Make sure she drinks it all, Sara. For the pain and to aid the healing. This ointment should do the trick, but she’ll need plenty of rest.”

  “Thank you, Celeste, but you must help Leon! He was trapped inside getting the two of us to safety!”

  I raised my head and turned to look toward the Emerald Sundrop. Situated right at the entrance to the hamlet, it had surely been the beast’s first target. Once a modest two-story building with a fresh coat of paint on its aged wooden frame, it was now a collapsing pile of wreckage and splinters, set ablaze and quickly crumbling.

  Within the flames, I could feel a heart still beating, growing slower as his smoke-filled lungs burned and the weight on his broken leg pressed heavier with each creak and groan of the crackling debris.

  “I will.” I said, turning back to Sara and Elisabeth. “I swear it.” Gathering my strength, I climbed to my feet, my vision focused entirely on the beacon of suffering that lay across the square. Between us stood the Fellbeast in all its malevolent fury. Small as the hilltop was, there was no hope that I might slip past without being spotted.

  No. I cast such thoughts from my mind and raced forward. My lips moved on their own, calling out into the dark, “To me, Lucien!” And though I’d yet to see him, when the rampaging shadow turned its attention on me, my faith was rewarded by a shining bolt of silver streaking through the night.

  Broken, battered, undeterred, Lucien held the Fellbeast back with a crooked grin on his blood-splattered face. In his hands, he clutched an ethereal spear of brilliant silver light, a weapon forged from his willpower — his unbending determination made manifest.

  “I am ever your faithful servant, Little Star!” Even through gritted teeth, there was not a hint of doubt in his voice. “On your way, then! And away with you, beast!” A twist of his body pushed the Fellbeast’s charge aside just enough for him to draw his spear back and throw it with all his heroic might. It burst in a flash of light against the monster, driving it back, wailing and snarling, into the path of my brother’s iron fists.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He spared a glance and a grin back at me, before summoning another spear and charging into the fray. I allowed myself one last, fleeting smile and turned my attention forward.

  The flames and smoke were at their thickest near the wreckage of the Sundrop, choking my breath and sapping my strength. Merely approaching was enough to cause my skin to dry and the hem of my sweat-stricken nightgown to hiss. But I, having had my fill of weakness, soldiered on, chasing the radiant pain to its source. At the back entrance of the tavern, I spotted a break in the rubble, a thin slit between slats that had yet to buckle.

  “Leon! Leon, are you still awake? Please, answer me!” I ducked beneath the smoke and hobbled my way to the opening. Within the darkness, lit by encroaching embers, I could see a pair of bloodshot eyes, glistening with tears, distant and unfocused, staring back at me.

  “Celeste…” He spoke in a rasping voice barely audible over the roaring flames. The pain that consumed him thrummed with every short, laborious breath he drew. “Get out…girl…”

  “I will not.” I said, shaking my head and plunging my fingers into the space between the slats. “Not without you by my side. Come, your wife and daughter await your return.” And while my words were spoken true, my arms lacked the strength to see them through. From where I sat, hunched between burning columns and a blanket of smoke, I hadn’t the leverage, nor the muscle to move the wreckage, even with the searing splinters digging into my palms and fingers to grant me encouragement.

  My rage boiled in the pit of my stomach, disgusted with the frailty of my frame. It filled my eyes with bitter tears that turned to steam as they spilled down my cheeks.

  A thunderclap and a roar reached my ears. I sucked in a breath of ash and smoke and shouted once more into the night. “Vasco! Brother, come quickly! Vasco!” Voice cracking to be heard over the carnage.

  For three dreadful seconds that stretched on for minutes, I waited and sobbed furious tears, gnashing my teeth and scarring my hands and feet to try to pry the slats free. Then, a body appeared beside me. Hands, far stronger than my own, broke through the burning timber as though it were tissue and pried it open.

  “Not you…too, boy…Th-the beast…it —”

  “You’ll not die tonight, Leon.” Vasco stepped forward, lifting what was surely the bulk of the Emerald Sundrop above his head. “Quickly, Celeste. Before it collapses!”

  My vision still blurred by smoldering tears, I nodded and climbed into the space. Splintered wood and strewn nails dug into my feet, the sting of my pain serving only to push me forward. I kneeled down by Leon, plucking a phial from my satchel, uncorking it with my teeth, and then forced it to his lips.

  “Drink, sir. It’ll give you the strength to help me carry you to safety!” I waited until most of the bitter green elixir was gone before draping his arm onto my shoulders and lifting him. To my great relief, his working leg pressed firmly into the dirt. Together, we crawled out from his prison.

  As soon as we were clear of the wreckage, Vasco scooped Leon into his arms and waited for mine to wrap around his neck so that he could carry us both out of the flames. He deposited us a short distance away, in a patch of dirt spared the beast’s rotted blood.

  “Good work, Celeste.” He rose to his feet.

  I caught his wrist before he could go. “Wait!” With scorched, broken fingers, I dug around in my satchel and produced two phials. I uncorked the one and held it out.

  He downed it in a gulp, then he took the other and nodded his head. With a bend of his knees and a rush of wind, he was gone, and we were alone.

  My gaze fell on the tavern keep’s leg, twisted at an unnatural angle, the bleeding stemmed only by the burns. Once more, I blocked out the rest of the world by putting my battered hands to work.

  “I’ve no splint, I fear. But, I’ll not surrender you into Oblivion’s wings tonight.” I dug into my satchel and leaned over to place a strip of leather between Leon’s teeth. “Lest the beast be drawn our way.”

  His protests spent, he nodded and bit down. His head rolled back, howling a muffled, haunting scream as I untangled his leg and set the bone as best I could.

  Head down. Hands moving. Teeth grinding.

  I did all that I could to ignore the dread creeping down my spine, hearing the fight drag on without end despite my efforts to block it out. With every traded blow, I felt my brother’s injuries worsen; I felt Lucien slowing bit-by-agonizing-bit. After one devastating blow, I turned my head to glimpse the carnage.

  Lucien charged the beast, striking it with an upward swing that drove it back.

  An arrow whistled through the air, catching it in the throat. Off to the side, crouched because she could not stand, was Hannah, bow in her trembling grasp. She spit out mouthful of blood, her curse unheard as the wound in the Fellbeast’s throat healed, snapping the arrow in half.

  It reared back to charge at her, just to be met by Vasco. His timing — the most necessary part of his Soulspark — was off, forcing him to take the beast’s charge head on. With a visible snarl, he brought his fist down with thunderous force.

  The beast wailed; another arrow struck one of its eyes. Lucien followed with a thrust like lightning, piercing its side. But no matter the damage our Heroes and huntswoman employed, the Fellbeast was undaunted, wounds vanishing in an instant.

  The fellblood, I thought as I spied the hissing, blackened grass. As it had for the witherlily, so, too, did it mend the Fellbeast’s injuries. Why, then, had Lucien’s blow laid low the beast I saw in the woods that day, but failed against this one? Was it merely the size, or something darker?

  “The way it spills blood freely, surely it must mean this one is gorged on its dark power?” I muttered, tying off the last of Leon’s injuries. He’d blacked out, at last, and though he yet ached, I felt the chill of death leave him. “There must be something! But what? Think! What was the point of all this if not to find the answer?”

  I knew the ingredients that could neutralize it, to turn it into a purified source of power, but I hadn’t the chance to bring it into the waking world. I fell forward onto my hands, staring at the dirt and watching my tears trickle to the ground.

  Another miss-timed parry; a brutal gash to Vasco’s arm.

  Pain surged through Hannah’s arm as she struggled to draw another arrow.

  The beast roared; Lucien shouted, his chest burning.

  The Fellbeast, fueled by unheavenly power, could fight until dawn, when the sun’s rays would send it cowering for the shade. But daybreak was yet hours away, and as our Heroes’ strength wavered — their attention divided between fighting their opponent and protecting their home — I knew in my heart they would not make it to sunrise.

  And it was there, in the depths of my despair, that I caught a glimmer of something from the corner of my eye. Brushing aside my tears, I turned toward the disturbance. Just outside the wreckage of the Sundrop, lit by the light of the fire, was a dark green bottle.

  A bottle of Snakebite ale. It must have been spared in the Fellbeast’s initial attack, flung from the building before it could catch fire.

  My eyes widened; my fingers dug into the dirt. Moving with swiftness I scarcely recognized as my own, I rushed through the silence and stillness that surrounded me to snatch up the discarded bottle. My heart raced upon seeing it still corked. Within it, I felt the bitter brew swishing about.

  When I turned toward the fight, the sights and sounds of mayhem came crashing back into me. The world came into crystal clear focus. My feet moved, plunging me headfirst into the flames.

  As the Fellbeast swatted Lucien aside, I ducked past him, ignoring his cries of concern. When it reared back on its hind legs and brought its hooves down on Vasco, burying him in the earth, I shouted, “This way!”

  My voice reached its ears. It turned its fury on me. Mouth agape with an ear-splitting cry, it charged.

  Though I hadn’t a plan for what followed, I trusted the others would capitalize on whatever came next. My grip on the bottle’s neck tightened, my feet sliding in the dirt as I reared back to strike the great scar between its eyes. My body knew that I wouldn’t be able to swing before it gored me on its horrid tusks. I only hoped that I could cling to life just long enough to finish my duty.

  And though I’d accepted this would be my end, I was denied the dignity of a noble sacrifice in the pages of Willowhaven’s history. For just as the Fellbeast drew close enough for me to feel the sting of its corroded breath, a shadow passed between us.

  “Vasco!”

  The Fellbeast’s tusks ran my brother through, just under his right armpit. But, as if it had run headlong into a mountain, its charge came to an abrupt halt before me. My brother’s fingers tore into its face. His shoulders shook and knees buckled, yet no matter how the beast raged and thrashed, he neither bent nor broke. As strong and unmoving as the Mother Willow herself, Vasco held the nightmare at bay with his own two hands.

  The pain that racked his body was such that its mere reflection struck me as though I’d been run through instead. Denied my end, yet given my chance, I’d not let my brother’s courage be in vain. With a scream, I brought the bottle down on the beast’s scar.

  The green glass shattered, the shards glittering as they filled the air. Violet ale sprayed the Fellbeast’s face, melting its eyes and spilling into its scar, where its blood hissed and boiled. The cuts left by the shards of glass remained open, the fresh blood they spewed blistering its skin.

  In the throes of a pain it could not shake off, the Fellbeast reared back and thrashed with all its might. But a cobalt glow lit up the night, followed by a spark and a flash.

  With a roar, Vasco, still impaled by its tusk, turned the beast’s thrashing against it, lifting it from the ground and slamming it down with force enough to leave it stunned.

  “Lucien!”

  But his shout was unneeded, as at the other end of the square, Lucien had already taken notice of his opportunity. He bent his knees, taking the same stance he had when telling his story the other day. Now, though, he clutched not a stick, but a blinding silver spear in both hands.

  I blinked. The light was suddenly at the beast’s side, and a moment later a tempest struck, knocking me from my feet. I landed with a gasp, scrambling to sit up.

  The Fellbeast’s head had been cleaved from what remained of its body. Both halves fell to the ground with a great crash and then lay silent. With just one perfect, final strike, the beast was slain.

  "Vasco!” My voice cracked, the joy of victory long forgotten as I rushed to my brother’s side. He’d pulled himself free from the Fellbeast’s tusks, but the wound was grave. His eyes were already distant, their light fading, staring into the night sky. Blood formed a hot, sticky ocean beneath him, one I sank into as I fell to my knees by his side, cradling his head in my lap. “Vasco! No! No, no, no…” The word repeated, my speech failing me as nothing but that same desperate word overtook my every thought.

  He turned his head to look at me with glassy, unseeing eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched, but he hadn’t the strength left to smile. His fingers clenched in the dirt near me, longing to reach out, but lacking the means.

  It was not pain that flooded his body now, but profound, suffocating cold. Winter’s breath stealing his own, her haunting song calling him to the other side. I sat, unthinking, unfeeling, as Oblivion’s wings embraced my brother.

  No.

  Not a cry of desperation, but a stern refutation.

  No, I would not surrender; no, I would not let him die.

  No. I would not accept this end to his story.

  Clutching that resolution to my heart, screaming it out with my very soul, my voice echoing into the shadows and into the face of Oblivion, I reached out my hands and pressed them into his wound.

  No.

  With hands unwavering, their purpose clear, I took hold of his pain — seized his death with my hands — and unmade it. Light poured from the tips of my fingers, illuminating the pitch black night with dazzling starlight.

  And when it faded, Vasco’s vision cleared. He sat up, bewildered and staring wide-eyed at me. “Celeste?” He murmured, grasping my hands with his.

  I gazed back, unblinking, unseeing, frozen in time and unaware of anything save the relief I felt in seeing him rise. My lips screwed shut, as joyful tears ran down my cheeks. Wanting to speak, but not knowing how, I settled for embracing him.

  “Celeste! It’s — Elysium’s grace, I knew it!” A wild, breathless voice drew me out of my reverie. I sat up to see Lucien beside me, a grin splitting his face. Not the crooked, confident one he used to dazzle and charm, but one overflowing with emotion, overwhelming in its intensity.

  His hands clasped mine, one rising to touch my cheek. He brushed aside my tears and pushed my hair back behind my thin, uncovered, pointed ear. Laughing, crying, he brought my hand to his cheek, where a gash ran from his chin to the corner of his eye.

  When my fingers touched him, I acted on instinct and touched his pain. A lilac and golden glow caressed his skin. It drew the blood back into the wound, knit the flesh, and left behind not even a bruise in remembrance.

  At last his words made sense to me, and my eyes went wide.

  Lucien turned his grin toward Vasco, then back to me. “It’s you.”

  Thank you so much for reading!

  Tumblr. It's still a brand new blog, so not much yet, but concept art for Celeste is up as of today.

  Feedback of all kinds is appreciated to help make the story better, improve my writing, and keep me motivated!