Page 19 of The Inheritance
“Magic sword,” I told Bear.
The shepherd eyed the bracer and kept her distance.
I had a weapon now and I was almost ready to go. I glanced around to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I’d made the full circle around the cavern. The pool where Stella died was right in front of me. Her head was still on the bottom, dark hair swaying with the weak current.
I needed to fish Stella’s head out of the water and put it with her body. When the guild eventually came for the corpses, they might miss it, and Stella’s parents would need a whole daughter to bury.
The hair swayed.
I had to do this. It was very simple: wade into the water, pick up the head, put it with her body.
Oh my God. She was twenty years old. She was alive this morning. She was breathing, walking, talking, and now she was dead and her head was in the water, and Tia was only four years younger. Would somebody be taking my daughter’s head out of a pool like this one so I could look at her face one last time? When they got Stella out, they would put her in a box, and then they would bury her, and her mother would never see her again.
How do you survive this? How do you go on after this?
Her parents couldn’t be much older than me. They would have to live the rest of their lives without her. There was nothing anyone could do. This was done. She was dead.
Tears wet my eyes. I splashed through the water, picked up her head, and climbed out, slipping on the rocks. Her body lay on its back. What do I do? Do I put it on her neck? Do I leave it next to her?
I was holding a kid’s head in my hands and trying to figure out how best to leave it with her corpse.
Someone wailed like a hurt animal, and I realized it was me. Tears came, so many I couldn’t even see.
I put the head gently by her side, dropped to the ground next to her, and cried. I cried and screamed for Stella, for her parents, for Sanders and Anja, for their children and loved ones. I cried for Costa who was missing half of his face and for Aaron who lay in pieces.
I sobbed for all of them, all the bodies in this cave. And I cried for myself, trapped here, left to die, and for my children who might never see me again.
Bear padded over to me and lay by my side. I hugged her and cried harder. It was just the two of us, the cave, and the raw pain of my grief.
Gradually, the sobs subsided. I ran out of tears. For a while I sat there, silent, staring at Stella’s body. Slowly, very slowly, self-preservation woke up and took over. Nobody was coming for me. Nobody would help me. It was up to me.
Nothing new. I’d been on my own since I turned eighteen and my mother informed me I had two weeks to move out. Then Roger came along, but he was gone now, and I’d been on my own again for a decade since.
I could do this.
I wiped my face with my sleeve, swapped my socks for the dry pair, put on Anja’s boots, and got up.
Bear stared at me.
“Time to get a move on.”
I swung the heavy backpack onto my back and picked up Bear’s leash.
I was halfway to the tunnels when the generator sputtered and died, plunging the cavern into darkness.
4
2,119 miles away from Elmwood
Right leg hurt, left arm hurt, everything fucking hurt. There was alien slime dripping from his armor, and it stank like yesterday’s vomit.
The gate loomed in front of him. Elias McFeron stepped through it.
Blue sky. Finally.
He took a deep breath and tasted home. That first gulp of Earth’s air. There was nothing like it.
Behind him the rest of the assault team staggered out. He’d force-marched them for the last three days, all the way from the anchor chamber. It was a hard pace even for the top Talents, and it took longer than expected because the markers they had placed to guide their way through the swamp had sunk.
