Loop Two - Chapter Thirty-Seven - Inglorious End

Amber flung her blades forward, called them back, then threw them again, arms swinging back and forth so quickly that it felt, for a moment, as if her muscles were going to rip themselves apart.

The magical backed away under the onslaught, sword moving to deflect the throwing knives that he could. Some made it through, and Amber felt a visceral satisfaction at seeing his cloak be sliced apart on the edges and hearing him hiss in pain as some of those cuts were made across his flesh.

Then Morgan crashed into his side, and the flurry of motion continued with the magical flying backwards under her heavy assault.

Amber fell to her knees next to Cassy, pushing her attention away from everything that was going on.

Cassy was hurt.

Cassy was hurt in a bad way.

There was blood gurgling out of her chest, a long slit that had ripped itself open just under her breast. When Amber leaned over her, however, Cassy was pushing herself up.

“No, stop,” Amber said.

Cassy opened her mouth to speak, coughed, then pushed herself up hard. “Not dead yet,” she said.

The front of her costume was stained in deep reds, and Amber noticed that the ground behind her was no better. So she grabbed one of her knives, chopped off the lapel of her own costume, then pressed it down over Cassy’s wound to stem the bleeding.

Help would come, it had to, but in the meantime.

“Wait, just, wait,” Amber said.

She reached into her magic. If she could go back to before this happened, to before Cassy was struck.

But no. Her magic was low. Could she go back that far with what she had left? She wasn’t sure, and if she did, would she have the time to react to save Cassy? So she did the next best thing and pressed her hands over the wound, pushing her magic not into itself to strangle back time, but instead to heal and undo the injury.

Blood faded around Cassy’s wound, and she heard the girl gasping as light returned to her eyes and power to her limbs.

But the wound didn’t close.

“Fuck,” Amber said with feeling.

She felt faint, dizzy all of a sudden from the lack of mana. She was tapped out, and was entirely unused to the feeling. Cassy can manage while being out. So can I. The wound wasn’t gone, but Cassy was restored somewhat, and that mattered.

Amber pulled her friend onto her side, and pressed more cloth into her back where the cut was even longer. “Ah, damn, Amber!” Cassy gasped. But it didn’t matter, Amber had to stop the bleeding, even if she could feel Cassy’s ribs clicking out of place as she put pressure on them, even if Cassy screamed, tears streaming out of the corner of her eyes at what was no doubt impossible pain.

Amber’s hands were red, sticky, warm.

“It’ll be okay,” Amber lied.

How far was help? She heard the too-loud retort of gunfire from nearby and glanced up to see Jade laying down fire towards the magical attacking them while Morgan recovered. There was a long cut on Morgan’s arm, but the girl didn’t seem to care. The magical had a fresh cut of his own, and now one of Jade’s bullets struck him in the calf, setting off a round of swearing.

They had time. Jade and Morgan would keep him away.

Amber pressed Cassy back down onto the forest floor and ripped off more of her costume. She had to keep Cassy’s blood inside of Cassy. Nothing else mattered.

“This isn’t good,” Cassy said.

“Shut up, Cassy,” Amber said.

Cassy grinned, teeth red, then she turned her head to the side, legs curling up beneath her a moment before she vomited blood onto the ground and the cloth at her back fell out of place.

“No, don’t move,” Amber said. There was frustration there, at Cassy, at the world, at herself for not having the magic to help.

Why wasn’t she carrying a first aid kit? Why didn’t she spend any time practising healing magic before all of this?

Cassy flopped back onto her back, then started to both laugh and cry at the same time, the motion clearly hurting her more. “Amber,” she said before wiping the back of a hand across her mouth.

“Stop. You’ll be fine,” Amber said.

“Amber,” Cassy said, more insistent.

Amber paused in her fretting, locking eyes with Cassy. There was strength in those eyes, though not much. Even as Amber watched, she could see Cassy’s focus shifting and dimming.

“Cassy, please,” Amber said.

Cassy’s arm shot up, and with surprising strength, she grabbed onto Amber’s coat and pulled her down. Her other arm moved behind her, elbow digging into the ground to push her up.

Amber almost pulled away, but before she could, Cassy was there, and then her lips were on Amber’s.

They were warm and wet and bloody, and as Cassy pressed herself against Amber with plenty of passion and no expertise, she felt Cassy’s blood slipping into her mouth, the taste of it filling her even as her entire body felt a rush of warmth.

“Thanks,” Cassy said.

She let go, then slowly fell back, her strength leaving her all at once.

Amber touched her lips, swallowed, then looked down to Cassy. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

Cassy was staring at something past Amber. The sky, maybe. She wasn’t blinking.

“No, no no no,” Amber said. “Cassy? Cassy!”

She shook Cassy, and the little smile on Cassy’s lips faded away. The girl was boneless now, unmoving, unresisting to Amber’s touch.

“Cassy!” Amber shouted into her friend’s face. “Damnit, Cassy! Come on!”

She heard a thump nearby and glanced up to see Jade, on the forest floor, with a nasty gash across her front. She was holding onto her rifle still, but it looked as if she’d used it to shield herself from a cut and it was likely unusable now.

The smaller girl spun around, tossed the rifle aside, then looked towards Amber and Cassy and froze. “Oh no,” she said.

Somehow, that made it real. The disappointment, the shock in Jade’s own eyes as she realized what had happened.

Amber took in a deep breath, gulping for air even as she forced her chest to stop constricting so much. “Watch, watch over Cassy,” she said.

“Amber?” Jade asked.

But Amber stepped over Cassy and started towards the magical.

He was still fighting with Morgan, swords clashing as they parried each other, chains whipping around and ripping bark off of trees and tearing apart bushes in their passing.

Amber locked eyes with the darkness within his hood. She pulled back lips made red with Cassy’s blood, then threw herself forwards with a scream.

She’d never moved so fast.

At some point, she realised that she hadn’t summoned any knives, but it didn’t matter.

He cut her, but he was unprepared for her speed and all it did was add a drop of pain to an ocean. Then her fist collided with his face and the magical rocketed backwards.

“Amber, you’re cut!” Morgan said.

Amber launched herself after the man again, this time remembering her knives in time to use them to deflect the chains striking out towards her.

She only had so many arms though, and she screamed louder still as one of them stabbed into her thigh. The magical brought his sword up to parry, but she wasn’t playing at sword fighting. He could block one blow, but not her ferocious, uncaring assault, not even with his chains wrapping around her middle and squeezing.

Somehow, Amber had her legs around his waist and was pulling him in closer, hands both working like pistons to stab down and into the magical.

Again, and again, she felt his blood mixing with Cassy’s and more and more of her own.

He fought back, of course, and Amber was ripped away from him with a hard thrust that sent her crashing into a tree hard enough to send a shower of leaves down around her.

She was going to finish him though.

But she couldn’t rise up. Her legs refused to listen, her arms were heavy by her sides. She realized that her vision was black to one side. Was she bleeding from the head?

Amber coughed and pushed past it all.

This was a meat body, and she was a magical girl. It would do what she wanted, and that was kill the bastard.

She rose slowly and carefully, a puppet with half its strings cut.

The magical was gasping across from her, looking like shit with his cloak torn and ripped apart, with several of her knives stuck in his arms and sides, none penetrating deep, but enough to hurt. His sword was in his other hand now, and his chains dripped with blood donated by both of them.

“You’re insane,” he said.

“I’m going to find you,” Amber said. “Now or yesterday or the day before, and I’m going to kill you forever.”

The world went dark, and she saw the ground rushing to meet her even as Morgan and Jade’s screams echoed out behind her.

Amber joined in their scream. She had to stay here. She had to stay now. Just a little longer. Just long enough to kill him for good. To get revenge. To kill the one who’d killed Cassy.

Cassy...

There was a warmth, something cool and familiar, light and airy and tinged with laughter and... and it was Cassy, there but not, welcoming her and pulling her back, giving her more time to...

Time

Time

Time

Time snapped.

Amber woke up with a cough on the floor next to a pile of vomit. There were beans in it, she noted idly. Her vision was… acute. Sharper than it had ever been.

No… that’s not right.

She heard someone running over, then a gasp from the doorway.

A look up revealed a nurse, hand over her mouth. “Oh! Wait! Wait, I need,” the woman said before running off.

Amber climbed to her feet. She felt… not fine. There was a weight to her. Not her body, not her magic, but something else, like a thick, heavy blanket on a cold day, warm and weighty and comforting, but restrictive all the same. It was... Cassy?

Amber looked up, at the bed, at her dad resting on it, at the Seelie staring at her with its head tilted to one side. “How curious!” It said, “We’ve never seen someone gain a soul before.”