Page 60 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

I do,I insisted.

The Weaver did not believe me. I did not believe myself.

But the mist thinned, revealing silhouettes of strange, broken shapes; first as distant flat grey, and then?—

Bodies.

All of them were bodies. Bodies twisted and broken beyond recognition. Bodies impaled on stakes or smashed between ruined buildings. Bodies burnt like the rabbit I had sacrificed for my Threadwalk, eyes running, skin peeled.

I wavered on the thread, nearly falling. The fear beat in my veins like a drum.

Something nudged my foot. My eyes—I had eyes here, I had never known anything else—fell to my feet. They were small, bare, dirty. My sister lay there, blue eyes staring at me wide and unseeing through tendrils of blond hair, clutching at her stomach, blood bubbling between her fingers.

It’s all going to be alright,she whispered.

I snapped my head up.

Not my sister. Just some person another version of me knew a long time ago.

I need the future,I told the Weaver—told myself.Not the past.

The threads intersect,the voice whispered, a teasing caress at the crest of my ear.This is the nature of life.

No. I didn’t accept that. I was a daughter of only the Weaver. I was a Sister of only the Arachessen. I had a task to complete.

I kept walking, chin up.

Show me more.

The silhouettes around me, limp like abandoned puppets, sprang back to life, floundering as if traveling backwards in time. Waves of vampire warriors surrounded me, moving in skips and lurches, fragments of many different moments in time.

The battle was vicious. The vampires were more skilled, obvious even in these shattered flashes—but the Vasaians were numerous, throwing themselves at their aggressors like lemmings over a cliff.

The blood around my ankles rose and rose. More red than black.

My heart pounded rapidly. I kept walking, step by steady step, but at this point, I wasn’t choosing to, nor could I have stopped myself.

Death was everywhere.

The mist rolled in and out. A violent crack of silent lightning, and it all went dark.

When the light returned, it revealed the same broken bodies as before. Broken bodies. Broken homes. Broken souls.

Please,a woman begged, crawling over the wreckage, dead-eyed. Her palms were raw and bloody as she stretched them toward me, but she didn’t react when the wounds were touched. She was lost in a Pythoraseed haze.Please, she begged.

No, I said.No. I can’t. I don’t?—

Someone was speaking at the same time as me, our voices layering over each other. The little girl was small and dirty, with messy dark waves.

Someone grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward.

Familiarity clenched in my chest, a sudden reprieve from the fear that choked me.

I knew that figure. The two of them walked ahead of me. The boy was only a handful of years older than the girl, perhaps thirteen to her nine. He was skinny and lanky with a head of messy copper-chestnut hair.

Don’t look at them,he told the girl.

Alright,I thought, and didn’t.

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