Chapter 45: Found

Unnerved by the dark, rippling shadow slithering around her legs, Nienna scurried out of the water as quick as she could, kicking sprays of droplets everywhere. She fell upon the shore, gasping for breath from the exertion. However, she didn’t wait to calm down before spinning herself around to see if the shadow was following her. She watched the swift waters, her heart beating wildly. She expected the stream to carry the shadow away, but it instead remained floating in the same spot it left her body.

“What’s going on?” Nienna looked around for Nina for an answer, but her ancestor was nowhere to be found. She was completely alone, left to figure out the mystery on her own.

“Stay down!”

Nienna looked upstream and downstream to try to find the source of the familiar voice who barked out the command. It sounded like Quint, but she didn’t see him anywhere. “What’s going on? Where are you?”

“Look out behind you!”

She spun around, but there wasn’t anything there. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t let them near her!”

“Mother? Father?”

Digging her fingers into the damp earth, Nienna scaled the hill up the shore from the stream and peered over the crest. Empty fields spread out before her, but she could still hear the voices calling out. Feeling like she was starting to lose her grip on reality, Nienna plopped down on the damp ground and leaned back against the hill. Her thoughts spun around and around, like a skritt chasing a shiny object on a wheel. She tried to rein them in, trying to rationalize what she had seen and heard with reasonable explanations, but nothing seemed to make sense.

Nienna closed her eyes and tried to shut out the world for a moment. Cutting off her visual sense allowed her ears to hone in on the voices. If she could figure out where they were coming from, maybe she could gather more information for why they were there. The echoes had thrown her off at first, but she was eventually able to pinpoint their location to the water. She opened her eyes and found the pool of shadow still hovering perfectly on the stream’s surface. It slowly rose, spilling over itself as it formed a humanoid shape devoid of any specific characteristics.

She pushed herself up to her feet and wandered over to the water’s edge. Her heart beat wildly in her ears. The strange shadow figure rippled as the voices of Quint and her parents came through once again. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her fear down in the pit of her stomach. The shadow’s smooth surface grew ragged, and it leaned forward at an unnatural angle with its arms extending out and its claw-like fingers reaching for Nienna.

The shadow is not good or bad: it’s only a shadow. Her ancestor’s voice echoed in her mind. We control the shadow. It does not control us.

She took in a deep breath and let it out, trying to calm her racing heart. The shadow had not made any move toward her, nor had it made any threatening gesture, other than reaching out to her. She waded deeper into the waters, moving closer to the shadow. It can’t hurt me, she thought to herself over and over again. Its ragged edge smoothed as Nienna began to calm. Reaching out a shaking hand, she touched the rippling surface as Quint’s and her parents’ pained cries seeped out through the dark and into the light.

“You don’t control me,” she said, conjuring up an air of authority. It might have been more for her than for the shadow. “I’m not afraid of you.”

The shadow form stilled and stared at Nienna with its hollow eyes. She withdrew her hand and let it fall to her side. As she stared into the abyss, she saw nothing there be afraid of. It was just—dark, nothing else. She cocked her head to the side as she considered its presence. The shadow mimicked her head movement, also moving its head to the side. Curious, she tilted her head to the other side, and the shadow did the same. Even though it was outside her body, it seemed Nienna and the shadow still shared a connection.

It appeared she had been presented, either by divine design or by pure coincidence, with a choice.  Nienna could easily walk away, leaving the shadow behind. Or—she looked down at her hands again and flexed her perfectly normal fingers. They had started to tingle. She felt a rush of bitter cold, and something rippled under the skin on the palm of her hand. In her periphery, she saw the shadow looking at its own hand.

A little smile pulled at the corner of Nienna’s lips as she closed her fingers into a fist. She focused her senses, concentrating on the bitter cold chill that had settled in around her. The edges of her vision darkened, and she could feel the familiar strength the shadow had once given her. She uncurled her dark fingers and looked at her shadowed hands. She felt different this time. There was no pain, no exhaustion. Taking a deep breath in and letting it out, Nienna relaxed, and the shadow slowly disappeared from her vision as well as her hands.

“Huh, well look at that.” She looked up from her hands to find the shadowy form gone, swept away by the current.

A cracking sound as loud as thunder erupted all around Nienna and pulled her attention upward. She looked up to find the outer walls of Divinity’s Reach cracking and threatening to crumble. But it wasn’t just the outer wall of the human capitol city that was starting to come apart. The bridge upstream, the nearby farmhouses, everything around her fractured and split. She looked around for a safe place to escape to, and her gaze caught a glimpse of a hooded figure on the shore downstream. It disappeared with her next blink, but she knew it was Him. It seemed he had come to her one last time as the construct she had become so familiar with came apart all around her.

There was no place to go to, except into the water. Every time Nienna was here, something always pulled her into the water before she woke up. She looked down at the swiftly moving current. The voices had grown louder and more desperate at this point. She needed to get out of here; she needed to wake up. Taking in a deep breath, she fell face first, letting the dark waters swallow her up.

***

Thrust into consciousness, Nienna opened her eyes and gasped for air. Her senses immediately overloaded with a cacophony of sounds and chaotic movement. She squeezed her eyes closed and put her hands over her ears, trying to shut it all out. In her moment of need, the peaceful shroud of the shadow fell over her. Her senses calmed, and she opened her eyes just in time to see Quint’s form pass quickly through her field of view as he was thrown against the chamber wall. He hit hard and fell to the floor, clutching his chest as he tried to regain the air that was knocked from his lungs. One of the frozen creatures let out a low growl as it reached down and grabbed the front of Quint’s leather coat. He struggled to break free, kicking and flailing, but the creature was too strong and lifted him into the air just as easily as Nienna could hold up a small, stuffed child’s toy.

Balling her left hand into a fist, she narrowed her focus. Shadow edged into her vision, and she curled her right hand’s fingers around the shadow scythe’s long handle. It was like an instinct she didn’t know she had but had always been there, lurking in the shadow and waiting for the moment it would be needed. She wondered what other sorts of tricks the shadow held. Gripping the handle tight, she used the unique balance of the weapon and swung it, hooking the curved blade under the frozen’s arm just as it raised its fist to strike Quint.

“What are you waiting for?” Nienna cried out impatiently as she held its arm back. She felt herself pulled forward in the creature’s attempt to pull its arm free. It was strong, but she squared her footing and let her upper legs take some of the force.

Quint shook off the shock that had blanketed his senses at seeing her awake and braced his foot up against the frozen’s chest. “Pull!”

Together, he and Nienna sent his attacker stumbling back across the chamber. The weight of the thick layers of ice covering its form pulled it off balance, and it fell to the floor.

“They’re strong son’s of bitches,” Quint said between pained breaths. He rubbed at his chest in a circle.

“I’ve got this one. Help my parents,” Nienna said, nodding toward the entanglement happening adjacent to them.

As he rushed off to assist, Nienna turned her attention to the creature who was already getting to its feet. The edge of her scythe had cut a sheet of ice off of its arm as she helped to pull it off of Quint, revealing unnaturally pale skin. She swung the scythe in a circle in front of her, and it carried her swiftly toward the frozen. Her strike cut into the ice armoring its chest, sending small shards flying off in all directions. It cried out in pain and lashed out, trying to hit her. She blocked its arm with the end of her scythe and struck its head. Its gaze unfocused before dropping to the floor, unconscious. She turned around, ready to jump in to help Quint and her parents, but they had already managed to subdue the other two frozen.

Nienna surveyed the state of the room. Her parents’ frozen companions were all on the floor, not moving but still breathing. She was able to get a better look at them now. The one whom she had knocked out herself had been a male norn before the Byrnes had gotten their hands on him. The others were a male charr and a human female. Her heart sank. They hadn’t deserved what happened to them.

“They’re going to be a problem. We can’t let them…,” Nienna’s words trailed off as she looked up and found her parents and Quint staring at her in disbelief. It took her a moment to realize her return to the conscious world had come as a shock to them. She took a deep breath in and let it out, willing the shadow away until all that was left was her.

“Darling, you’re okay,” her mother murmured as she stumbled over to her daughter, her arms outstretched. A relieved smile grew on her lips, and tears fell from her eyes, freezing on her cheeks. Her father, too stunned to say anything, shared in the embrace as Nienna fell into their arms.

“I am. I’m okay.” Nienna couldn’t think of anything else to say. She craned her head to look over at Quint. “You going to live?”

He flashed her a weak smile. “I think so, but my body begs to differ. I never thought the day would come, but I think I’m getting too old for this.” He then gestured to his head and then over at Nienna. “That’s different.”

Flashing him a puzzled look, Nienna pushed away from her parents and reached for her hair. She pulled a chunk of it in front of her face to look at. Her once deep red locks had paled into a silver-grey, joining the few grey hairs she had already sprouted. “M-my hair,” she stammered. “What happened to it? I had a few greys, but not THIS many.”

An explosion outside shook the sanctuary and disturbed the moment of peace they were all enjoying. Nienna exchanged worried glances with the others. Her heart fell into her stomach as she realized the time was drawing close. “They found us, didn’t they?”

Her father nodded. “The sudden outburst from our friends suggest they are.”