The Pact

Death rushed towards me with each beat of my heart. After all, I could see the bloodied pieces of my body spilling out of the ragged wounds through my abdomen. The claws had ripped and torn and my minimal training hadn’t even enabled me to return one strike. Pain had torn the air from my lungs, stunning me long enough for the creature to knock me on my back and begin tearing away. I wasn’t sure what had pulled it away — a sound in the distance, perhaps? But even without it there to finish the job, I was done. I could feel my blood leaving my veins, my heart fluttering with slowing beats, every bit of strength leaving me.

The only thing left to me was rage. Because when the creature had ripped into me, my vision had narrowed around its features. It wasn’t what I was looking for. The gray skin and bald head were there, sure, and it was humanoid in form. But that was where its resemblance to the creature that had taken my sister all those years ago ended. I was bleeding out on the floor of the dank basement for something completely unrelated to my search. The pain of my wounds was nothing compared to the knowledge I’d never be able to find what I sought, now. That I’d never be able to find my sister, or at least learn what had happened to her.

With each fading thud of my heart, memories surged through my blood-starved mind. Flashes of an austere fey face, my father’s, so similar to the one I saw in the mirror. A heart-shaped human face so similar to my grandmother’s. So similar to my sister’s too, which had only just started shifting from the roundness of childhood to the visage of a young woman the last time I’d seen her. We’d been inseparable as children. Until that night. The images and sounds flashed through me, too fast to focus on any one.

*~***~***~***~*

Hammering at the door. Shouted voices through it. Words I remembered but didn’t understand. My father and mother shoved me and my sister upstairs. My sister Alseri took my shoulders and shoved my smaller, waif-thin child’s body beneath a loose floorboard to hide me. Her voice quivered as she told me to stay hidden. Screams, weapons slicing flesh and clanging together. Low thumping — bodies hitting the floor.

Alseri screamed as her hiding place in the bureau was searched and she was dragged downstairs. I’d clambered out from under the floorboard but could do nothing more than look out the window, too terrified to take another step. Dark robed figures surrounded Alseri, whose face was blank as if asleep. They handed her to a monster: something with a large, bumpy blue-grey head, deep-set black eyes, and no nose. A flash of light, then all of them disappeared.

The blood on the floor stuck to my hands and knees, blood coming from my parents’ still bodies. They didn’t wake, no matter how hard I shook them. No matter how I begged or cried. I shouted for my sister to return to me and no one answered. The buzzing of flies and the stink of death filled the room.

The first person to come calling had looked into the room and immediately turned to vomit in the bushes.

Even as the neighbors had taken me to my grandmother’s estate, I’d spoken nothing except my sister’s name. Something deep inside me told me that if they’d intended to kill her, they would have done it in the house, like they did to my parents. They’d wanted her alive for some reason — to give to that creature for some purpose. So I’d sworn with every breath, with every tear down my cheeks, with every fleck of dried blood on my skin and clothes, I’d find her. I’d find where she was and take her back. I’d spill the blood of everyone who had touched her and ripped her from me.

*~***~***~***~*

I had just moments now, and in the wake of the memories I was only left with bitter, bitter rage. At the robed men, at the monster of my past, at the current monster, and at myself. I had ruined my own vengeance, but I forced the despair of it to turn to something that heated my dying heart.

I blinked, my face still turned towards the entrance to the basement where the monster had gone. A figure rippled in my darkened vision, something that sent a chill through my body. It wasn’t the creature that had killed me. A tall male figure wearing dark clothing and armor. It belonged in this place about as much as that creature did, which was to say not at all. His skin was the color of snow, his eyes like chips of ice, his handsome features drawn in a seemingly-perpetual sneer. He looked like the personification of my desired vengeance, of no mercy and suspended morals. His voice was quiet, yet I heard it rumble through my body with a shiver. I felt power, true power, from this figure, and couldn’t fathom why my mind had conjured this.

“Do you want revenge?”

What a stupid question. Revenge was the only thing I wanted anymore — shouldn’t my own mind know that? He seemed to be waiting for an answer I couldn’t give. I couldn’t draw breath into my lungs, couldn’t speak with my diaphragm torn to shreds. I couldn’t even move my arms and legs. But as I stared into that cold fey face, into those eyes burning with power, I summoned everything left in me. If this was my end, I would spit in the faces of the gods of death when I arrived to them. My vision turned darker, my heart stuttering to a stop, and as my last breath left my lips I nodded my head at the figure.

He nodded back.

I felt myself grow cold, then colder and colder. So cold I burned, ice shooting through my body in place of blood, pushed along by a strongly beating heart. Air rushed back into my frigid lungs, but not even that could help as the cold centered on the mortal wounds in my abdomen. I wanted to scream and shout as pain far worse than gaining those wounds rippled through me. I could feel pieces of my body being drawn back inside me, ice bridging gaps between bits of cut muscle and skin. I didn’t know how long it went on until finally that burning cold died down enough for me to realize I could move. I looked at the torn shreds of my clothes and found glowing threads of ice holding me together. The figure said nothing more; he turned and walked up the staircase. Snow drifted from the ends of his hair to the ground, frost surrounding his footprints.

He was gone.

And I was alive.

I felt one step away from death, but somehow strengthened. And as I pulled myself to my knees, then my feet, I realized I was well enough to fight again. Even if I didn’t know how long the ice keeping my broken body together would last. I’d stopped feeling cold, but I didn’t feel particularly warm either. Somewhere in my chest, near my heart, I could sense the tiniest fraction of that figure’s power. Within me. Granted for the sole reason that I’d yearned for revenge with my dying breath.

Frost flickered at my fingertips and traveled down the grip of my sword when I picked it up. It flowed down the blade, ice ready to answer my call.

Rocks scattered in the distance, and footsteps began down the staircase. I turned to face it, lifting my blade.

I wasn’t going to let this creature keep me from destroying those who’d taken my sister from me.

If it was surprised to find me standing when it returned, I couldn’t tell. By its very nature its features were bland and pliable, able to shift and change to take on the faces and forms of other creatures. From what I’d heard, these sorts of things were called Facsimiles. Their shape-changing abilities were why it had been so hard to find initially — not that I was particularly glad I’d found it. I couldn’t even spare a thought towards what had just saved my life. I’d never been into the Prism Wilds, barely even met anyone from there, yet a fey had appeared. Perhaps even an archfey, judging by the fact that his power had taken me right from death’s harsh grip.

The creature rushed in towards me, claws reaching out to slash at me in the same movement that had gotten through my guard before. I had training, of course, but I was used to fighting against other people. Not against things like this that didn’t move as I expected them to.

Without conscious thought, my frost-covered hands shifted the blade to defend me. The facsimile snarled as its hands were shoved to the side, then shrieked in pain as I shoved the pommel of my sword into its nose. Cartilage crunched beneath the metal, thick black blood spurting from its nostrils. I felt its body tense against me, gearing for another strike, and slammed my fist into its chest to push it away. It stumbled, ice spiderwebbing across its torso from where I’d hit. Now that I had enough space, I brought my sword in an upwards sweep. The creature wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge. More frost moved from the blade to its body, crackling across its form and down to its feet. It pounced towards me and jerked back. The ice caught it against the ground.

Which was strange, and completely new.

The ice broke before I expected it to, while I was still taken aback by what was going on, and the facsimile rushed me again. This time it got in under my guard, clawing again at my stomach but unable to breach the coating of magical ice keeping me together. My sword was still up in the air from my previous strike so I brought it down, sweeping across the space between us towards its arms. It pulled away enough, though the edge of my sword bit into the meat of its forearm. Enough for it to snarl again and attack, leaping at me and trying to push me down to the ground. I stumbled back, gritting my teeth as its jaws clamped around my own forearm and bit easily through the layers of cloth there. Bracers, I thought. Bracers would be my next request to the armorer, if I lived long enough to make it.

There wasn’t enough space between us for me to get solid strikes in, and with it latched into my arm I couldn’t create that space. Pommel strikes to its head just made it bite harder, and I had to focus the rest of my energy on keeping its arms from clawing out my neck.

The kernel of power inside me shifted, slightly. It rushed through my veins to the wound and into its mouth, pouring cold into the facsimile until it let go. Its mouth and jaw were wet with my blood, but I could see jagged shards of frozen blood digging into its skin. Once it backed away I struck out again, a side slash it tried to stop with its arm. There was resistance against the blade for a moment, and then it was gone. The now-useless hand fell to the floor with a thump I could barely hear over the screaming. Fury burned in the facsimile’s eyes, an emotion I knew all too well.

When it lashed out again, I was ready.

The creature was faster and stronger while enraged, but also left more openings for me to utilize. Something bridged the gaps between my minimal training with weapons and this fight. Frost and ice still moved through my body and blade, aiding me where my skill and strength could not. When it lunged at me for another bite, I twitched the tip of my blade towards its chest and let it end itself.

There was no time at the end for me to rest and think over the situation. I could feel the ice holding my wounds together beginning to melt, and each second only brought more pain to the forefront of my mind. I gave a single glance down at the gray-skinned monster — but not the right gray-skinned monster — as I sheathed my sword. My steps were as hurried as I could manage, up the staircase and out of the basement. Then through the simple house that had been inhabited by a human man before the facsimile killed him and took his face. Out into the empty, moon-lit streets. That was one blessing at least, because I really didn’t want to answer questions about my state. If the blood coating my clothes and skin wouldn’t create more questions than I wanted to answer, the glowing ice interspersed with ragged edges of skin across my abdomen probably would.

Somehow, somehow, I made my way across the city to the familiar gates of my grandmother’s estate. My feet were dragging, each breath a difficulty, and I pressed my hands to my stomach as the ice kept melting away. I caught sight of the mixed horror and recognition in the gate guards’ eyes as I fell to my knees, then the ground before them.

This darkness felt colder, somehow, than what I’d seen on the edge of death before. By agreeing with that fey, I would never feel truly warm again.

If I could find my sister, it would all be worth it.