The Beast

Part Seven

The Last Battle

It was the living world. Some time had passed, because the Glade was fully blanketed in snow now. Even the statue at its heart was little more than a huge lump of shimmering white.

Was it day or night? Sunfeather couldn’t tell. The storm was still raging just as intensely as it had been before.

She quickly released First Fang’s fur and slipped into a defensive crouch. Where was the Beast? Had she managed to slip into another realm already? Or was she hiding beneath the earth, waiting for her unliving body to repair the damage it had suffered?

“Koska!” Sunfeather yelled. “Come out, you –”

A dark shape hurtled out of the whiteness at her.

Sunfeather had just a fleeting glimpse before the Beast collided with her. It was a horrifying sight.

Koska was still burning.

There was so little left of her now, little more than brittle flakes of scorched skin, grey tendrils of sinew and pockmarked black bones, all withered down to less than a human, less than even a skeleton. All of it was wrapped in an aura of pain and madness that hammered at Sunfeather just as hard as the undead thing’s fists. Snarling and hissing and punching and clawing like a rabid animal – Koska was completely lost. She was nothing but a puppet of Hell.

But she had strength still, despite it all, or perhaps because of it.

Strength enough to tear at Sunfeather’s throat with her fangs and strength enough to rip at Sunfeather’s stomach with her claws. Sunfeather’s position, flat on her back with one arm under her body, meant she could only protect one of the two. She threw her arm up in front of her neck and cried out as Koska’s fangs pierced fabric and flesh alike, and then felt true pain as Koska’s claws ripped into her skin, into it, through it, and sliced apart her innards.

Sunfeather screamed, but she did not surrender to the pain. Instead, with the last of her strength, she wrenched her arm loose from Koska’s fangs and slammed her palm into the Beast’s face. Something between fire and lightning ran down Sunfeather’s arm and burst from her fingers into Koska’s dead flesh. The Beast’s face disappeared in a blazing light.

There was a tremendous roar and a blur of motion as something huge and angry ripped Koska off Sunfeather and began shredding her into small black pieces.

Then Sunfeather’s world went from white to grey, grey to red, and red to black... everything faded away as Sunfeather fell down into the blackness.

Her soul laughed and her last thought this side of the Grey Veil was I just left!

She saw with her soul.

Darkness above and about and below her.

A huge mountain riddled with hidden hallways – she saw them as silver veins, and saw the spirits moving through them in silence, too.

She wasn’t alone, even in this cold, dark place where so few came and fewer lingered long.

The Lady was there. And beyond her, far beyond, halfway in the Shadow World and halfway Somewhere Else, two shapes, one a coiled serpent with black scales, the other a great bird with crimson feathers, but that wasn’t their true form, that was just their outer guise. They were really figures of pure light, one as cold as a mountain spring, the other as hot as a torch, and they had been speaking to her since she was a child pulled out of Orch and taken to the huge mountain with silver veins. They dwelled in a golden tower at the heart of a dream and she could go to them.

Or –

water

cool crystal water and a nearly-full moon above

a pale, slender arm reaching down

Sunfeather didn’t hesitate. She took hold of that small pale hand and pulled herself

was pulled

up into the living world.

The enormous snout of a worried looking bear was right in front of her face and her breath was warm and thunderous on Sunfeather’s face.

“It worked! I did not know it would,” First Fang rumbled as she shifted and shrank into her human form. For a second, she appeared different, though – taller, stouter, with thick, muscular limbs, a jutting brow and a broad nose under thick, reddish-black hair. Then she shrank again into the slender girl that Sunfeather was familiar with.

Who are you really, First Fang? the Immortal asked herself. Then she smiled and sat up straight.

“I wouldn’t have doubted you,” Sunfeather said.

First Fang laughed. Her eyes shone with delight. The girl had no idea of the blessing Bear had bestowed on her. “And you shouldn’t. I’m high in the favor of many powerful spirits.”

“So it seems,” Sunfeather agreed. She looked around. “The vampire?”

First Fang scowled and scratched the snow with one bare foot. “Gone to wherever such things go in the end.”

Sunfeather looked around now that her eyes had adjusted to the return of soul to body. Sure enough, there were signs of the Beast’s final death in the form of black splatters of blood and a few clumps of wet ash, both fast fading away. “Well done. Another debt I owe you.”

First Fang shook her head. “Hrm. That was done together.”

“I was dead when you did it.”

“That’s true.” First Fang laughed heartily and Sunfeather joined in. Her stomach ached, but otherwise there was no sign of the deadly wounds Koska had inflicted on her. There weren’t even scars left to speak of it.

“Listen now,” the Gurahl said after a moment. “I have two more gifts for you. These things should come in threes.” She reached down into the snow and plucked something long and dark off the ground before placing it in Sunfeather’s hand.

A huge claw, broken off at the base but otherwise intact.

Sunfeather’s eyes widened. She looked at First Fang’s hands. Two of the fingers on her right hand were broken and mangled, one missing above the last knuckle.

“Fill it with silver and gold and iron, and you’ll have a mighty weapon.”

“So I will,” Sunfeather said. She closed her hand around the claw and held it close. “And the last?”

“Sunfeather is a child’s name, I think. You’ve earned a better one by your deeds.”

“Have I?”

“More or less,” First Fang said with a feral sort of grin.

Sunfeather grinned back, but she also felt her cheeks redden a little. She knew enough of the ways of the skinchangers, which weren’t unlike those of the Orch in this regard at least, to understand the honor.

First Fang nodded and placed her palm, which was still stained with both blood, some of it her own, and the soot that had once been Koska the Beast, on Sunfeather’s forehead.

“Sunstorm-Among-Shadows.”

Sunstorm trembled a little and then nodded. “Sunstorm-Among-Shadows. It’s a good name.”

“Of course it is.” First Fang laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. Sunstorm stayed on her feet – barely.

“Let me give you two gifts of my own.”

“Just two?”

“I did play my part in the Beast’s death, remember.”

“Hrrmm,” First Fang rumbled, but her eyes glinted with humor.

“The first gift is a weapon in exchange for a weapon,” Sunstorm said. She reached down and picked up a piece of slightly scorched wood about as long as her forearm. It was the sharpened end of her god-staff. It must have broken off just before the Beast plunged them into the Shadow World. “It’s not as mighty as what you gave me, but it does have the blessing of the Ebon and the Crimson upon it.”

First Fang took the staff and held it up. She sniffed it, then smiled. The Immortal wasn’t wrong. It thrummed with power, even now.

“The last gift is my friendship for as long as my life lasts,” Sunstorm said, bowing deeply before First Fang and raising her arms, palms turned up to Heaven as a witness.

First Fang inhaled and exhaled, touched into silence. A mighty gift.

Sunstorm looked up, an expression of delight brightening her face.

“What is it?” First Fang asked.

“The snow stopped.”

“So it did.”

Sunstorm looked at First Fang. “One might imagine you had something to do with that.”

“Do you think I’m that mighty?”

“You’re mightier than you look.”

“Am I?”

Sunstorm looked the slender girl up and down, then nodded. “Easily.”

Their laughter rose through the worlds up to Heaven.

FIN.

Hurray! You made it to the end of the story — I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think. Thank you!