Charybdis Looms

A Hundred Million Castaways

With her heart in her throat, Kanda watched Donal and the other two shields go under the dark wave of surging bodies.

"Please, get up."  She whispered even as she sent a blast of fire roiling forward to push back an element of the mob that darted towards her and a handful of her fellow shaman.

"Please, Donal.  Get,....up."  Kanda felt her heart thud leadenly in her chest when the surge kept coming with no sign of her skeito.

A hand grabbed at her arm.  Twisting, Kanda looked into the tired and dirty face of one of her fellow shaman.

"We have to withdraw, Kanda."  The woman said, voice heavy with fatigue.  "The approach has been lost."

"No, I can't."  Kanda twisted back to stare at the surging mob even as a second line of skeito fell to their flailing weapons and irresistible force.

"Donal is in there."

"So is my Colm."  The shaman said, her voice suddenly colored with emotional pain.  "They bought us time to withdraw, so we can defend the upper pass.  We must go!"

A muscle rippled in Kanda's jaw as the possibility of Donal being dead ripped through her, bringing tears to her eyes.  She had been a girl when he became her shield, the powerful warrior already a man.  Yet he had treated her tenderly, with respect, like a crocus that announces the first thaws of spring.  And she had gone from fearing him to loving him fiercely. 

And now,...did he lay broken beneath those filthy boots?  Were his braids, woven by her loving hand just this morning, undone by their cruelty?  Would that face, chiseled from cold stone, yet as handsome as the sun's first touch on a highland lake in the morning, be forever stilled, crushed beneath the mob's rush?

"No."  She said hoarsely, a shudder going through her.  "I will not leave him."  She pulled out of the other shaman's grip to take a step towards the mob as the third and final line of skeito engaged them, their weapons swinging in deadly rhythm to slow the rush.

"Get up, Donal."  Kanda hoarsely repeated as her eyes filled with hot and bitter tears.  'You are my reason for going on in this dying world, my strength, my passion.  Without you, even the spirits will not keep me from despair.'

The spirits gathered in her as she unconsciously summoned them: earth, air, fire and water.  Together they carefully blended together, moving and shifting in response to her mind's twisting in upon itself as Kanda thought about life without her skeito, her brave and powerful Donal.  Then it was all rushing forward.

"Get UUUUUUUUUUP!"  She screamed and the ground heaved with the might of the spirits unleashed.

It was a seething wall of motion and magic that folded around the astonished shields, who held their breath in amazement as it passed.  Then it was slamming with killing force into the mob.

Instantly a handful disappeared in bloody explosions, air and fire combining to rip them apart.  Others were ground into dust, earth and fire combining there to destroy them.  And yet others vanished in turbines of steam as fire, water and earth worked together to deadly effect.

The wall swept forward, stretching from one end of the battle field to the other, sweeping everything before it and leaving nothing behind it other than the fallen shields that had been overcome before.  Then it was sweeping down the approach and out onto the Ice Plain, cleansing the land of the mob's darkness.

Kanda blinked as the might of the spirits finally left her, feeling hollowed out and empty.  Then she was being held from collapsing by a dozen hands, the other shaman rushing forward to hold her from falling.