Kiersten's Arc

Chapter 30 of 33

The ash from the first hunter had barely blown off the flat ground when the next ones came. Kiersten heard them before she saw them. Boots on rock. Then a low hiss, like wet wood on a fire. Five shapes broke over the ridge and dropped toward her in a loose fan. She raised the blue sword. Witness pushed up under her ribs, steady but thin, stretched by the first fight. The pendant at her throat pulsed once and then slowed. The demons hit her together. She cut the first across the arm. The second took her legs. The third and fourth caught her wrists. They drove her flat on her back against the stone. The fifth put a knee on her chest. Smoke poured from its mouth and stung her eyes. "Witness," she said. The word came out small. The blue light in her chest flickered. She felt Witness try. She felt Witness fail to lift her. The spirit was still hers, still there, but tired in a way she had never felt before. A hand pressed her jaw to the ground. She thought, very clearly, that she could stop here. She had done a lot. She had survived Eduardo. She had named her wants. She had killed one hunter. It could be enough. She could let the smoke take her and rest. Then she thought about her teachers. Quantum, in his star-marked robe, saying energy never dies, especially the light. Ananda winking at her over the crystal ring, joking that a stone remembers who you are even when you forget. Mother Angel praying over her at dawn. She thought about the town. The children. The feast hall. Everyone she had left behind the sealed door. "No," she said. She pushed. Not with her arms. With everything under them. She pushed for her teachers, for the town, for the light she had chosen to stand for. The pendant at her throat cracked open with sound. Witness answered her push and surged, bigger than any surge Kiersten had ever felt, bigger than the first hunter, bigger than the sword. Blue light burst out of her chest in a wheel. It caught the five demons at once and blew through them. They did not ash. They came apart in a single clean flash and were gone. The ridge went quiet. Kiersten sat up on the flat stone. Her hands shook. The pendant was warm and whole. Inside her chest, Witness felt different. Closer. Not a spirit she carried. A friend that lived with her. "You held me," she said out loud. *I held with you,* Witness answered, and Kiersten heard the words the way she heard her own thinking. The side door opened. Noble looked at the empty ridge. He did not speak. Kiersten stood on her own feet. For the first time in a long time, she believed she was worth the standing.