3 - Sacrifice

Kari didn’t know how long had passed since he had started this fight, it could be minutes or hours.

The chilling fog of rage still burned within him, blocking out the screams and cries and the sight of sickening crimson. He kept lashing out again and again, large geysers of ice in the distance and ice shooting from his hands at close range.

He was blind and deaf to the death around him. But the soldiers kept coming and he was flagging. How long?

How long had he been here?

How much time had he brought?

Not enough. Not yet. More. I need more.

The little pool of power in his mind’s eye was nearly empty and he watched as it visibly drained. He pulled, mentally willing all the moisture, all the power from the slick rocks at the bottom. All the moisture from the blades of grass at the edge of the pond and from the earth all around. He watched as the pool finally ran dry and kept pulling, kept willing the power to continue flowing within him.

Time, I need more time.

A terrible tearing sensation started at his left fingers as he kept throwing his ice around and it began to crawl up his arm while starting in the right hand as well. And it hurt. Painful beyond imagination, it felt like his skin was tearing away from his body. Dimly he was aware of his own screaming but he was numb to the sound. He could see through his tears that his skin remained in place, fingers still able to move and ice still erupting with terrifying force around him.

In fact, if anything, the ice was more violent in the force of its movements now.

He threw an arm out and nearly fainted at the pain. He stayed upright through willpower alone and gaped at the sheer force of destruction his ice was now capable of. Kari had just wiped out countless men with a bare wave of his hand but the tearing feeling was now starting at his toes and moving up towards his torso with alarming speed.

Life force, he realized. This was the effect of using his life essence.

He visualized his little pool of power again and froze in horror at the picture now in his mind.

The liquid power was all gone, even the moisture of the rocks at the bottom was gone. The grass around the edges was shriveled and brown and blackening even further as he watched. The once soft earth was hard and dry with great fissures and smaller cracks patterning the surface.

So dead and desolate compared to the once lush and idyllic vision.

Kari felt like his heart was breaking and choked out a sob even while he still forced out his ice into the bodies surrounding him.

This was his life.

That was the price.

It hadn’t really hit him before, just a vague concept that was too terrifyingly real to think of properly. He dropped to his knees and looked around with eyes clear for the first time since he had let the rage consume him.

Mangled bodies of humans and horses surrounded him. Limbs missing or at odd angles and red.

So much red.

The sickening crimson was a sticky layer over everything. It had seeped into the very earth at his knees and created the thick mud he had sunk into. The sound hit him all at once and was almost more horrifying than sight- screaming, sobbing, begging, yelling, praying.

Tears poured down his face and splattered onto his muddy knees. Kari brought up a hand to wipe them away and it came back smeared with red.

Blood. He now cried tears of blood.

The tearing sensation had stopped its advance when he stopped throwing his ice around but Kari knew it was converging on his heart. Tilting his face to the bright blue sky, he summoned the last of his will and forced out the ice in a devastating arc centered from his seated form.

Suddenly numb to all feeling and sound, he let his eyes slip shut and body slump to the ground. He was grateful that his last vision before he died was the crystalline sky, however selfish that might be.

He only prayed that he had bought enough time for the cost of his life.

*****

Darkness surrounded him.

It was an ebbing and flowing kind of darkness, like mist swirling around him. It caressed him with gentle tendrils and stabbed him with pointed spikes.

Was this dying? The place between life and death?

Snatches of sound made their way to his ears but they were indistinct, too short and too abrupt for Kari to find meaning. He floated by, numb to all but the most painful of feelings. Sparks of light wound their way into his vision but they were too bright and he cried out in pain as they flashed.

He was drifting again.

Kari couldn’t explain how he knew this was a different time from the last, but it was. The mist still swirled around him but it felt almost comforting now, a lone presence beside him at the end of things. The pain would still stab into him occasionally but the feeling became dimmer as time went on.

Perhaps it was punishment? He knew he deserved it but his mind was fog and he could not remember why.

Voices. He could hear voices.

It was like the noise was distorted by water, the sound so warped he couldn’t put it into words. His vision wavered, bright lights stung his eyes with their intensity and he couldn’t make out the colors among the blinding white. He let his eyes slip shut and the darkness engulf him in its comforting numbness once again.

Screams. Terrified screams chased him through his own mind. Cries and pleas for mercy joined the unholy choir of screaming voices. They warped and distorted, becoming inhuman and the comforting darkness began to ooze blood. Red dripped around and onto him, crimson liquid trickling down his pale arms and body while faceless horrors chased him wailing their terror.

Kari fell screaming into oblivion.