*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
Another rush of wind; Tara dodges, and the third knife, whirling past her, catches Thella in the throat. The woman gurgles, but Tara can't spare time to watch, or help: she must quickly twist and swing her sword up to deflect the next attack.
Freja is but a few lunges ahead, her hair a fiery red glow against the bonfires, her hands glittering with the blades of two small knives. The remaining two women pause, an acknowledgement, before Freja throws and Tara lunges. Tara has time, space, movement to block one knife—the flash of silver that headed toward her face—but not the other, which catches the side of Tara's thigh and burns, ice hot.
It doesn't matter—both knives are now gone from Freja's hands and Tara is on her. The woman is viper-quick, twisting to the side, narrowing the target size of her body as she heaves back, around, trying to circle around Tara. She nearly could, as the knife in Tara's leg has slowed her considerably, but behind Freja a stirring mass wobbles to its feet and swings stupidly with the club in its hand.
The blow connects, cracks Freja's skull, and she falls just as a red-faced, frothing Durai faces Tara.
He's stumbling, spinning, but his swing is still hard, and Tara dodges it, eying the silver hilts embedded in his arm and clavicle. He propels forward again and she slinks down underneath his outstretched arm, looking up above at his gaping, foaming maw before driving her blade up, ramming into the darkness and up through to the top of his skull.
Durai drops and Tara turns in time to see the Bear lose his head too.
One left, Tara thinks and twirls her sword, pacing as the Wolf mirrors her too, moving like a reflection, watching as they begin to circle each other. The wound on her leg burns, spirals, and suddenly it clicks in her primal brain: Durai's lurching, the foam at his mouth.
Freja had laced her blades with something.
Worse and worse, Tara thinks wryly, taking this brief pause to stretch her cramping, shivering limbs. She's walking loose, limber, across from her final opponent as if this is a simple game, as if losing is no great loss.
Something predatory smirks along the curving line of Doromir's mouth. There are no silver hilts on him, and he's got his chin down, his knees bent, his frame hulking over as if waiting for a falter, waiting for a tell.
If Tara waits much longer, the poison will spread too far. If she rushes in, she might make a fatal mistake.
"We are wolves," the cold voice of the Paragon says in her ear, in memory. "Wolves who face the tundra and thrive. Wolves, who survive wild on the bones of our ancestors, our loved ones who fought beside us."
Amidst the cold bite of wind, a blast of sandy heat seems to pass in front of her, to smother, to suffocate, if only for one moment. There are grinning plastic masks behind Doromir, melting in the firelight. And here, in this moment, she understands an essential truth.
Her leg starts to tingle when she dives—but not at him, over instead, darting to the side, toward the bodies of their fallen foes. Even as she does, Doromir charges forward, swipes his sword like a paw though the air. He misses, and even as he straightens, lifts the sword back up again, Tara swipes her own blade at his knees and kicks dirt up at his face.
They both tumble back, off-kilter, and Tara recovers first, resetting her grip, rebalancing her core as she spits blood. The injured leg is going numb.
Doromir, rebounding from the teeter, sees this, smiles, and lunges.
The earth trembles every time his broadsword meets it and she darts back, deflects enough, dances just outside of his reach. He wants to hit her, that much is clear, but after the long battle with Vogil, he's happy to let the poison do its work too and it's this contentment she seizes, this exhaustion she uses.
She falls when he next swings, using all her remaining strength to whack his blade away, back so he will have to expend more precious energy and time to pull it forward, back so when her free hand lands on Thella's body, sinking into all the warm blood, she has time to take what she needs.
Doromir is only just lifting up his broadsword again when the red-soaked dagger flies, a silver flash in the firelight, and sinks, to the hilt, into his eye.
The Wolf of the North falls like thunder, the ground shimmering beneath him. Or maybe that is just a trick of the poison, creeping into her senses. It's hard to tell.
It doesn't matter; there's a strong grip on her shoulders, looping under her armpits, seeking to haul her up, and the gong must have rung again, must have declared it over because Hiran is panting behind her like he was the one who just fought to the death.
Tara can feel the way his hands tremble but she shakes him off; right now she needs to stand on her own.
She does; not gracefully, and she won't last long like this, but she seizes Hiran's spear, holds onto it as if it is a symbol of strength and not a staff upon which she must lean.
The remaining six of the Council crowd around her: to her left are Felix and Emil, ghostly white but looking relieved. Next to them, Hyim, frowning, and Fareil, expression carefully blank but for the twinkle in her eye. On her right, Jarlin is actually grinning, leaning on his own spear, and, just behind him Thendril looks speculatively on, his arms crossed, miraculously there and not lying on the ground around her.
I must not have mucked that up as badly as I thought, she thinks oddly enough, and her grip tightens on the spear as she feels herself begin to sway.
"It is done," Fareil says, turning back to those who wait behind. "Send the hawks. A new chiefainess will be crowned."
In the crowd, she sees Engle making his way toward her; Engle, with a flock of healers behind him.
"That was not your weapon," Hyim says, and he's looking down at the small hilt protruding from Doromir's eye when she turns back. It's a reproach, even in its clinical expression, and she wonders if he means to disqualify her, if he seeks to try.
Tara licks her lips. These too are going numb.
"I made it mine," she answers.
Hyim turns his gaze upon her, but with poison coursing through her veins, Tara has no patience for his disapproval.
"In civilization as much as in the wild, those who don't adapt, die," she says as Engle reaches her, as the healers grab for her. The world is getting dim now, dim in the way that the slow beginnings of a faint incite, and she knows she won't be standing much longer. But this, in her addled, hazy brain, seems important, crucial, and she fights again, for the sixth time, this time simply to stay upright for a moment longer and say: "I adapted to use my environment; Doromir didn't. Doromir died."
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A/N: It is done! Are we surprised at who kneeled?
Chapter Notes: Allayria's speech is from Prodigal's "FeasT for the DeaD" and Tara flashes back to Vatra again soon after.
