Shadowkill

SHADOW. ROHANT. IF YOU’RE OUT THERE, SHIFT ASS OVER HERE. THIS IS AUTUMN ROSE. KIKUN’S WITH ME. MIRALYS SENT US TO COLLECT YOU.

After a tense eternity when all she could see were trees and all she could hear was silence, two small figures broke from the shadows and ran for the skimmer.

Autumn Rose/Rohant/Shadith

“Get me through to Miralys. Fast. Then get the hell out of here.”

Autumn Rose raised her brows. “Well, hello, the two of you,”

Rohant growled.

Subdued, weary, Shadith ignored both of them and went to inspect Kikun in his support cocoon of foam and bandage.

“All right, all right, keep your hair on.” Autumn Rose got through to the Cillasheg. “Anyagyn, Rose here. Give me Miralys. Quick, huh? Got something to show her.”

Miralys bloomed in the mid-cell of the screen; when she saw Rohant, her ears snapped up, her eyes shone, she sang without being aware of it a wordless croon of joy and yearning.

Rohant leaned toward the image, his ache matching hers; he reached toward her-then he shook himself all over, wrenched himself back to more pressing needs. “Toerfeles, get ours out of there. That thing’s going to blow any minute and it’ll take them with it.”

Light shimmers fled about the cabin, power thrummed through it, a deep subsonic CH’M that poured into Shadith.

“Go, go, go,” she cried, her singer’s voice driven by the immediacy of the threat, filling the space. “Go.”

Autumn Rose felt the gods come back, Grandmother Ghost was pinching her and pinching her and the antelope/ deer was belling terror in her ear. She booted the skimmer up and went racing along the mountainside, rising at a steep angle, going for distance rather than altitude; she crossed the mountains, dropped again, putting those tons of stone and earth between her and the Compound, then she fled out out over the sea…

Miralys/Cillasheg

“Get out now, get out, get out, going to blow, get out,” Anyagyn sang into the speaker, her voice rising and falling in Dyslaer Warn.

Miralys watched the skimmer dart away, her Ciocan inside; as it vanished below the mountaintops, she brushed the back of her hand across her mouth, turned her attention to the Compound.

It rested on the ground like a gray clenched fist.

The fist cracked-leaked a blinding blue-white light-opened wide-spilled light like molten milkglass-filled the bay and flats-rolled up the mountainsides-boiled up and up into the clouds…

Specks of light lost in the great glow, the ganders fled from the expanding explosion.