The Forsaken Hero
Chapter 394: Judgment

Chapter 394: Judgment

The light dimmed as a looming presence blotted out the sun’s light, casting a dark shadow over our party. A deafening cry split the air, ringing in my delicate ears and making me wince. Fable tensed beneath me and suddenly lunged forward. I squeezed my knees and gripped his fur tightly, clinging to him as the sudden acceleration tried to dislodge me. The cold bite of the wind of our acceleration buffeted my body, clawing at my hair and filling my eyes with moisture, blurring my vision.

"Xiviyah!" Korra’s shout echoed in my ears.

I had no time to heed her warning or see if the others were also running. It was all I could do to cling to Fable as he dipped and wove, evading what I could only sense as a calamitous gathering of mana in the air above. His paws slammed into the ground one final time and launched us forward, and a tremendous explosion of mana and fire detonated where our party had been gathered.

Every nerve in my body tingled as a wave of heat slammed into us from behind, followed by an earth-shattering roar. The ringing in my ears, which had only just begun to fade from the dragon’s roar, returned with full force alongside a splitting headache. The concussive wave followed a second later, and I had just enough time to blindly cast an Aegis before it threw me from Fable’s back.

The world slowed to a crawl, my perception enhanced by the adrenaline surging through my veins. The ground rotated slowly beneath me as I tumbled through the air, my limbs and tail splayed out helplessly. I desperately tried to soulcast a Binding Winds, but my mind and soul were disoriented, scrambled by the shock and fear of the moment.

There, floating in the air, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the coming hell. Landing this hard would leave my body broken and would undoubtedly devastate the sunpurge. It would be lucky if I even survived, much less retained consciousness.

But the impact never came. Time seemed to have slowed, but surely I should have hit the ground by now, right?

Tentatively, I opened my eyes just a crack; then they widened in shock. I was floating in the air, descending toward a frozen, star-filled world at a snail’s pace. A silver streak bore down on me, moving so quickly its afterimages formed a continuous line leading back to Fable. Or rather, where he had been standing. The first after image showed his fur lashing about in the force of the shockwave, a look of fear and worry in his eyes as he looked at something over his shoulder. The next were blurred, but showed him moving toward me one frame at a time.

As the first fable faded away, followed by the others in sequence, something warm and soft lifted into me from below. I couldn’t control myself, or even react, helpless as a doll in his tender care. My head, which had been only a foot or two from the unforgiving stone, lifted as he nudged me with his nose and flipped me over. The next thing I knew, my face was buried in long, silver fur, my arms moving instinctively to wrap around his neck.

Just as suddenly as it froze, the world resumed pace. Fable may be under me again, but my momentum carried on, and my body groaned as I slammed into his back. He was a softer cushion than the ground, but I still cried out as my side and shoulder exploded with fire. Black spots danced through the tears, blurring my vision, and Fable had struggled to keep my writhing body on his back.

A moment later, we landed. Dirt flew as Fable’s paws dug into the ground, bracing against the aftershocks of whatever magic had destroyed the ground we’d been standing on. I blinked away tears and bit my lip, holding back another sob as another wave of pain coursed through the sunpurge. The scene before me was hellish, the land broken for hundreds of feet in all directions. The snow had been evaporated instantly, and great fissures in the ground radiated from the center of the impact. The earth within the crater itself was glassy and red, the softer rocks melting into slag and flowing into the fissures.

I half-expected to see a silhouette standing in the center, another hero, perhaps Alex, but there was nothing. As my vision improved, I began to make out ribbons of mana dancing around the scene, proving that the culprit was a powerful spell, not a magical technique. The mana residue was thicker than most mana required to even cast a fifth-level spell, and I could sense from the lingering presence of the magic circle above us it had been a seventh-circle spell.

My first thought was of my companions, and I strained my recovering eyes to peer through the curling plumes of smoke and ash that smothered the battlefield. My heart dropped as I found no signs of movement or even the distant glow of souls.

"Korra!" I called. My voice was hoarse and strained, filled with a pain I was barely suppressing. Even now, my entire body burned, and my muscles ached, but I resisted the urge to crawl up and cry, calling out for my companions over and over again.

Finally, just when I was growing desperate, Luxxa’s voice came from behind me. "I’m here, my lady. Are you alright?"

I turned with tears in my eyes and smiled in relief. It was a small, tight smile, but she let out a breath at seeing it. However, the ease was gone a moment later, and her expression hardened.

"No, you’re not," she muttered.

With a tender hand, she reached forward and gingerly cupped my cheek. I blinked, startled, as she brushed her thumb over my lips. It came around wet with blood, and her frown deepened.

"How much blood have you lost? Can you still think clearly?"

"I-I’m fine," I said, leaning into her touch. "It just...hurts a bit. Everything does."

"Good. You need to get out of here right now. Run to Bethiv and tell him what happened."

Her words came a little quicker than my hazy mind could comprehend, and before I fully understood her, she took her hand from my cheek and nudged Fable. "Go, get out of here. Hurry, before they–"

"It’s too late to run, traitors," a new voice said. It was feminine but by no means soft, carrying an edge like a blade. "The moment you walked into our trap, your fate was sealed."

"Damn it," Luxxa cursed. She drew her sword and raised her shield, quickly moving on my other side, toward where the voice had come from.

With some effort, I repositioned myself on Fable’s back to get a view of our assailant. It wasn’t just one but an entire party of powerful, sixth-level beings. The dragon hovered above them in the air, its great wings beating hard enough to generate a small cyclone, stirring the hair of the humans facing us down.

There were four in the party. Their faces stirred my memories of the Divine Throne and the festival of the Summer Solstice. But whether by time or my efforts to hide from the pain of my past, I could recall no further than that. The speaker was a young woman a year or two older than me. In fact, they were all young, though they carried themselves with grace and experience, like the veterans of the last Light Company.

"I’m impressed you survived the Judgment spell," the woman said, taking a step forward. "But no matter, it might actually be for the best. We were technically supposed to take you alive, anyway."

Her soul surged with mana, making her eyes glow imperiously. She wore a white cloak and had the symbol of the God of Law emblazoned on her shining breastplate. The others wore similar trappings, marking them as fellow believers in the Law God. Given the circumstances, they could be none other than Victor’s ’missing’ party.

"You said this was a trap," Luxxa said, narrowing her eyes. "How did you know we were here?"

This situation felt more than familiar, and slowly, my memories trickled back. This wasn’t the first time this party had surrounded me; they had also tried to arrest me during the festival. From what dim fragments I could recall, the priest’s name was Sorra.

She grinned smugly in response to Luxxa’s question. "You think you’re so special with that false hero behind you, this ’Oracle of Eternity.’ But we are on the side of justice, and the gods will not permit such treachery to go unanswered. That we are here proves that they haven’t abandoned us and have sent a true Fate Hero to guide us through this war."

"True hero?" I echoed, my tail going rigid. But that wasn’t possible...right?

I thought back to the strange warning I’d received from fate some time ago, but I still couldn’t believe it. How could she possibly have enough control over her powers to set up an ambush like this? And what were the odds it happened at the same time we left most of our forces behind to investigate a demon?

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