Chapter 52. Why Not Every Hero Can Save Everybody

Chapter 52: 52. Why Not Every Hero Can Save Everybody

She pulled a handful of slender white stakes out of a pouch at her belt. They were carved from some pale wood, each one etched with tiny silver spirals, and when she pressed one into the frozen ground, the spirals glowed faintly.

She walked a wide circle around the kneeling Wolfkin, sinking a stake every few feet.

When she finished, the threads of violet light that had held the captives rose from her fingers and wound themselves around the stakes instead, settling into the wood with a soft hum.

"Moon-stakes," she said, swaying slightly. "They hold the veil in place without needing me."

"But the light fades... I must renew it every few hours, and I will not be able to sleep much."

"That is... a poor trade," Velora said.

"It is the only one I have."

For a moment, I thought Velora would argue.

But instead, she took off her own coat, a heavy white thing with gold buttons, and draped it over Sylvara’s shoulders without saying a word.

Sylvara blinked at her. A very faint pink touched her cheeks.

"Thank you," she said.

"Do not mention it."

"I will not."

"Good."

There was a problem, and it was the kind of problem that gets bigger the longer you stare at it.

Bryn and Sylvara explained it over a map spread out on a flat rock. The longer someone stayed under a Moonshard, the closer they got to the Breaking.

People who had been under the crystals for less than two days still had a chance to come back, because their minds hadn’t been eaten away yet.

But the ones who had been taken earlier, the ones who’d been standing in that canyon for most of a week, were running out of time.

"The veil slows it," Sylvara said. "It does not stop it..."

"By my reckoning, anyone who has been bound for more than two days has two or three days left before the beast wakes."

"And then?"

"Then they become what Torunn became."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Somewhere to the south, a bird started to sing, and its voice sounded wrong, thin and shrill in all that silence.

We counted.

Thirty had come down the cliffs.

Three had transformed in the pass, one had woken up in my arms, and Torunn made four. The rest, twenty-three in all, were still kneeling in the snow with glowing eyes.

Twenty-three people. Two or three days.

I looked at my hands. They were still shaking.

But still... I’ll try them all anyway.

...

Sylvara and Bryn set up a rotation, with Sylvara loosening the threads on one captive at a time and Bryn standing ready to catch them if they fell.

I knelt in front of each one in turn, held out my hand, palm up, and said the same words I’d said in the canyon. "No pressure... If you want to, you can."

I won’t tell you it got easier. And turns out... It didn’t.

Every one of them looked at me with those cold, glowing eyes, and every time I felt my stomach clench.

I was asking them to do something impossible, to reach through a wall of ice that someone had built around their minds, and I had no idea if they could.

Seven did, though.

The first was a young woman with a round, freckled face and a thick brown braid who was named Eira. She stared at my palm for a very long time, and then her whole body began to shake, and her fingers closed around mine with a crack of breaking glass.

The crystal at her throat went dark. She collapsed forward, wrapped her arms around her own knees, and started to cry without making a sound with her whole body heaving.

I stayed where I was and let her hold my hand until she could breathe.

The second was an older woman named Sigrun, a broad-shouldered archer with a gray streak in her hair.

She grabbed my wrist so hard that I yelped, and the instant her crystal shattered, she started swearing in a fluent, creative stream of Wolfkin curses that made even Velora raise an eyebrow.

"Where is... my sister?" she demanded, in the middle of a curse. "Where is Hild?!"

"Tell me she is alive, you ugly human, or I will..." Then she saw the look on my face, stopped, and covered her mouth with both hands.

One woman reached out, closed her fingers around mine, and then immediately passed out.

We carried her to a blanket, and Bryn sat beside her with a worried look.

Nobody knew if she’d wake up.

...

By the end of the afternoon, the count stood at seven. And sixteen who hadn’t reached back.

Some of them stared at me with blank blue eyes and did nothing at all.

Some of them growled.

One of them, a thick-necked woman with a scarred lip, lunged and tried to bite my hand, and Velora had to wrap an arm around her chest and haul her backward.

She snarled and thrashed, and a thin strand of drool ran down her chin. It wasn’t her fault, I know that already...

It was the crystal. But I still... felt my skin crawl.

Sylvara studied the pattern with a tired, serious expression.

"The ones who succeeded were mostly taken recently," she said. "Less than two days..."

"The ones who have been bound longer are much deeper in... I suspect that is not coincidence."

"So the longer we wait, the harder it gets, huh?" I said.

"Yes."

"And the sixteen are the ones who’ve been in there the longest."

"I am afraid so."

I sat back on my heels and stared at my palm. It was raw and red from the cold, and my fingers had started to cramp.

Somewhere behind me, Bryn knelt down and put a hand on my shoulder.

"I’m sorry that I can’t reach all of them, Bryn..." I said quietly.

"You reached eight." Her voice was hoarse. "And don’t forget to count me."

"That is eight more than anyone else could have done... and what’s even surprising is that... you are the human who saved us."

I didn’t answer because I couldn’t. I just looked at the sixteen kneeling shapes in the snow and tried not to count them.

’Fucking hell... now I get why not every hero can save everybody...’ I clenched my fist. ’Another reality check again... I fucking hate it.’

It was while I was catching my breath on a rock at the edge of the camp that I noticed something strange.

I had been staring at the kneeling Wolfkin for a good ten minutes, trying not to think too hard, and my brain, which hates being idle, started doing what it always does.

It started counting patterns... And somewhere in the middle of it, I realized that five of them were doing something none of the others did.

They weren’t... struggling, and it feels kind of off to me.

The rest of the sixteen shifted and twitched and growled under the veil, like animals pulling against a leash. But these five sat perfectly still.

They had their hands folded in their laps. Their heads were tilted slightly, as if they were listening to music.

And every one of them, I realized... with a cold prickle at the back of my neck, was smiling.

It was a gentle smile... A contented one at that.

It was the kind of expression you’d see on someone drifting off to sleep after a good meal.

I thought back to the canyon, to the chaos of the battle, and a memory floated up.

During the fight, five of the Wolfkin hadn’t charged with the others. They’d stayed near the back, and when the charge came, they had followed more slowly, without that wild, frantic force.

At the time I hadn’t noticed... I’d been too busy getting hit with wrenches.

I’d also been counting the pulses.

Four seconds, over and over, one big heartbeat. But now that I thought about it, a few of the crystals hadn’t flashed in time with the rest.

They’d glowed a different color... it’s a warm, soft gold.

I got to my feet and walked over to Sylvara, who was sitting on a boulder with her head in her hands and a tired little light bobbing over her shoulder.

"Those five..." I said. "The ones who are smiling."

"I’m sorry for saying this, but... can you check them? Just to make sure."

She lifted her head, and her eyes sharpened. She followed my gaze, and her expression changed.

"Okay... that’s the least amount of work I could for for now."

"Thank you so much, Sylvara..."

She got up and crossed the camp to kneel in front of the nearest Wolfkin, a stocky, middle-aged woman with gray in her hair.

She pulled aside the woman’s scarf, and froze.

Under the collar, half hidden by the fur, was a crystal. It wasn’t the cold, pale blue of the Moonshards.

But it’s different... It was gold... like a warm, rich, honey-colored gold, and it pulsed slowly with a soft, steady light that looked almost comforting.

"What...? This is... not the same," Sylvara said quietly.