Firebrand

She was quick, quicker than they, and when the avatar rode by, she was able to pause and look, and see that the great stallion carrying the avatar was so much more than a horse, and immediately she recognized the Galadheon as the vessel of the death god. She’d seen the dark wings about her when they met, and now she knew what they represented.

The avatar went on to draw away or destroy the dark ones as she passed. Nari had lost track of the slee while she fought, and so looked for Zachary, and found him as bright as ever, once again fighting human foes. She watched and waited, knowing Slee would come for him.

She found Enver nearby, who also appeared to be keeping watch, but not for Zachary or Slee, she guessed.

“Nari,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“I have followed Slee,” she replied.

Soon the avatar reappeared, her armor damaged and bleeding silver-green moonlight. It pleased Nari that her sister’s gift, and her own, helped shield the Galadheon even as the armor of the gods failed.

The stallion vanished, and the Galadheon was once more herself, and when the hook-handed man threatened her, Enver was already in motion, his arrow sailing with a whisper just over the Galadheon’s shoulder and into its mark.

When Zachary and the Galadheon knelt in the snow in one another’s arms, Enver started to move forward, but she stopped him.

“Let them be,” she murmured. “Remember your discipline, control.”

He stiffened beside her and she sensed his unhappiness, but she could once again see Zachary’s aura meshing harmoniously with the Galadheon’s.

Why do they not kiss? she wondered, but then she remembered Zachary was married and the barriers mortals put between themselves, the artificial walls that kept them apart. Of all the strange rules of mortals was the one that dictated with whom they could bond despite what their inner natures craved. So occupied with their bloodlines were the mortals, she thought with distaste. As Zachary and the Galadheon leaned into one another, their feelings clear, she mourned for them, but not for long, for Slee had arrived.

It grew out of snow and ice and loomed over Zachary and the Galadheon. Zachary placed himself in front of her as a shield.

“Both of you together,” Slee said. “You will know true pain.”

“I’ve spent all my arrows,” Enver told Nari.

Zachary’s guard emerged from the shadows and rushed forward brandishing his sword, but Slee just knocked him aside. Other fighters in the area backed away, unsure of this new threat in their midst. A giant hand formed out of the snow behind the Galadheon and grasped her, lifted her high.

“No!” Zachary cried, battering at the base of the hand.

“First you watch this one die,” the slee said. Its own hand grew into a sword of ice.

Enver ran toward it, unsheathing his sword as he did so, but he, too, was flung aside.

The ice sword started sliding toward the Galadheon, and Zachary attempted to wrestle it away from the slee, but the slee just knocked him down.

“Slee!” Nari cried. She was of an elder time, which gave her voice authority.

Slee paused, turned to look upon her. “Narivanine.”

“I have been following and watching you,” she said.

“I know.”

“You have gone too far. It is not yours to take lives in this manner.”

“You cannot tell me what I can or cannot do. I AM SLEE!”

A tremendous wind thrashed through the trees. Snow and ice pelted Nari, but she did not waver.

“You are an elemental,” she said, “that is all. No god to take life.”

“No? Then watch.” He turned his attention back to the Galadheon, still held in the fist of snow.

Nari flew across the snow and put herself before the blade’s tip. “Slee! You have overstepped. When I was freed, I made some friends, such as the Galadheon and Zachary. Others are less corporeal.”

“You will die first,” Slee said.

“I think not.” She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes. She imagined one friend in particular. When she looked upon Slee once more, an icy swordtip was pressed against her throat, sharp and painful when she swallowed. Slee gazed at her with eyes like hailstones. “You are out of season,” she told it.

Slee cocked its head as if trying to comprehend her statement.

“I call upon the ventos strallis!” she cried.

Slee looked incredulous, then threw its head back and laughed. “You cannot—”

But she could. The winds reversed the slee’s, coming from the south, pushing back the cold that the slee emanated. Slee stopped laughing, turned to face the oncoming mild wind even as snowflakes turned into raindrops, and raindrops turned into a downpour.

The giant hand gripping the Galadheon crumbled and she fell to the ground. Zachary helped her to her feet and they scrambled from the center of the maelstrom.

Slee whipped back to Nari, fighting to retain its shape as its snowstorm failed and became a gale of rain and wind. “How did you do this?” it demanded. The more it attempted to push back with the north wind, the more it failed.

“I told you,” Nari said, “I made friends. One such is the ventos strallis.”

Slee wailed as water gushed off it in freshets. Ventos strallis, the south wind, dominated the season they were entering. Slee had no power over it.

Slee shrank, began to lose definition as any snowdrift in a spring rain. Its arms fell off and Nari stepped right up to it, stared into its melting face. “You will never harm another,” she said. “You will never steal someone away from their loved ones again. Not ever.”