Rise of the Warrior of Everfen

Chapter 106: Sacrifice

Within the blink of an eye, Erinne's world became different. Darkness. She wasn't looking out at the sea, but it wrapped around her tightly, and a form rose up before her. She saw no one else, nothing else, but this thing. It looked like an orc and a human, an elf and a dwarf, a centaur and a mermaid and every creature she knew that walked the earth. It was a gross morbidity of everything and nothing. It felt like nothing and chaos. It felt like the end of all.

She instinctively knew this presence was the thing that would claim her sacrifice. She didn't know why or how, but the thought stuck in her brain. It made tears flood her eyes as the thing moved closer and farther at the same time. She knew in that moment, whatever she gave this thing, it would be gone. The sacrifice would be true.

"What will you give me?"

Its voice burned like a thousand sons, but was softer than the whisper of a moonless night. She'd already given up everything. Her family, her love, her family again, her children. She didn't think she had anything left to give except her life.

The moment she thought it, the presence answered, "No."

She searched her mind, it searched with her. It wanted something that laid deep inside her soul. She could offer it her sword. There were few things more important than her ability to be a warrior. It was what had saved her, kept her alive, protected her family. Without that security and safety, she could lose everything again. The very thought of losing her family again nearly put her on her knees. Her family was everything. She'd fought for them. She could still hear her father's voice in her mind telling her to run when she was a child, the day they were all slaughtered. She still felt Cold Hammer's kiss on her lips. She'd fought terribly hard to bring Andol into this world and Anyse's birth had been no simpler. Her family was her source of happiness and strength.

She felt the being sift through her thoughts before speaking, "I'll take...your womb."

Erinne frowned at the blackness around her. "My womb?" The thing her aunt lost, the reason she created the curse. She was supposed to marry Wren's father, a king, have a life of privilege and instead had been married to a cruel lord and lost her ability to have children. She felt the sting of that hit her heart. Tears pricked her eyes. She had not expected this.

Both of her children had been born in trauma, but to never again bare her husband's children...her family was everything to her. It was all she ever truly wanted. As though she could make up for the loss of her first family.

The presence seemed to fill her. She had not agreed, but it filled her anyways and she felt her control slipping away. "There is no life without death, no death without life. The life in you will replace the balance."

Erinne looked up though there was nothing to look at but blackness. "The life...in me?" Memories danced in her mind. Her reunion with Cold Hammer, making love to him. I'm with child. "I don't understand."

"This son will be your last child, your sacrifice is accepted, your child will restore the balance of the lives the curse has taken, as your life was borne to break the curse, this life shall amend the damage done."

"How can one life restore the balance?"

"By bringing peace..."

She gasped as those words filled her. The Ancestors had told her once she would have peace but it would not last, that her children would know the battles of their parents but that her children's children would know peace.

Tears pricked her eyes. She wasn't sure this felt like sacrifice. This...strangeness was telling her that this child would bring peace. Images flashed in her mind. This magic was as strange as any she'd ever come across. In her mind she saw it all. She saw a future she craved but would never have.