The War (All Chapters + Synopsis)

Chapter 11.2 - Katlyn

The gleaming metal sword is covered in bright red blood, that darkens in the air. The light starts to brighten, and like a bird shot out of the sky, Ilena falls.

Her wings and hair flap around her as she rushes towards the ground. Lues screams as she lands with a loud thud. Her wings vanish and for a moment the world is still. Then the murderous bastard who hurt my beloved lands on the ground, his blade pinning her sword arm to the ground.

She doesn't twitch when the blade makes contact, but the shadows move like lightning, slicing the head off of her opponent. His headless body tumbles to the ground as I run to Ilena. Her eyes are closed and blood is pooling around her. Using every last bit of magic in me, I manage to temporarily stop the bleeding.

Lues falls to his knees next to me, his hands reaching out to her. He pulls back, and looks away, the sight must be painful for him to see. Amalia wakes up from her pain induced sleep, and looks bleary eyed to Ilena. I look back down to Ilena. Her chest rises and falls in uneven and unsteady breaths. A wicked red cut slices down from her forehead to her cheek, slicing her right eyelid and eyebrow in half. It looks new.

The Brein directs some medics to carefully lift Ilena onto a wooden stretcher to keep her spine aligned in case something is broken. It hurts me in a way I can't describe to see her weak like this. She was sick and hurt the last time I saw her, but now, now she's halfway through Death's door.

Another medic looks after Amalia's burns, covering them in ointment and then wrapping them tightly. Rhyfelwr offers her an arm and she takes it as we limp back into the castle. We pass one of the fallen attackers, the one that Ilena took down for Amalia. He's still alive, groaning in pain. Guards pick him up none to gently, and lead him away to what I assume are the dungeons.

Three soldiers were buried in the rubble of the tunnel, two died immediately, the one who screamed is gone as well. He first passed out from the pain, then slid into a deep sleep. Too late rescuers realized he had a piece of rubble in his stomach. The poor man bled to death under a mountain of stone, and nobody even realized he was dying.

I follow the medics holding my friend aloft on the stretcher into the castle. They skip our guest chambers, going directly to a new part of the castle that I hadn't seen before in any of the tours. I soon realize why when I see the large bronze crest of the Frenhinol family. A unicorn in the shape of a fancy cursive "F" made of plate metal hanging from the wall. Uniformed royal guards stand besides all the doors.

This is the true royal wing, the place where Rhyfelwr, Tyrnon, and the elusive Ilena Frenhinol live. We enter one of the large chambers, it's on a corner of the palace, so two of the walls are sloped. This room is absolutely lovely. It's all one room, no extra walls. There are steps leading down to a lowered area that holds the bed. On the landing where we are, there are cushions, a brazier, and a large bookcase full of all sorts of books, scrolls, and other items. Two medics hold the stretcher besides the comfortable looking bed. Three others quickly shift Ilena onto the bed, then they kick us out of the room.

We sit down on a bench in the courtyard nearest to the royal wing. Seeing as we aren't Frenhinols we aren't allowed to loiter there without the express permission of Brein Tyrnon. Amalia looks like she's in severe pain, but I honestly don't care. Lues does though, he feels conflicted, but I know he is starting to care about Amalia. I can't see them ever being more than friends, their history is too complicated for that, but maybe friendship between the two is possible. If that is, then maybe ending the war without too much bloodshed is possible. Maybe Ilena's dream can come true.

***

A servant comes to bring us to supper hours after Ilena's arrival. We enter the small dinning hall, the Brein and his nephew are already seated, their expressions are serious. I think I know why.

"Sit," the Brein invites us all, and we do. Lues watches Tyrnon carefully.

"How is my sister?" He asks, and I listen in.

"She's severely injured. We're lucky the stab wound wasn't a little higher or she would have died. As it is, she's just lost a lot of blood, but her wounds are infected, and... her limiter is missing," Tyrnon watches Lues's reaction carefully.

"Limiter? My sister had a limiter? But why... how did you know?" Lues asks, Amalia looks alarmed by this new knowledge. I guess it is a little scary, knowing that Ilena's never been at full power but was still that strong.

"Katlyn, I have no doubt you understand the reasoning behind it far better than I do," Brein Tyrnon says, and I nod, still perplexed as to how he knows.

"When Ilena was born, all the lights in Moor winked out. All at once. Nobody really connected it to Ilena being born though, it was just a fluke everyone thought. A few days later, a nursemaid found her in her crib, her heart rate was slow and she was barely breathing. A healer discovered that her magic was expending all her energy, that it was choking her to death. To save her life, they created a magical limiter to help her control the power," I explain, Lues looks shocked, he probably had never heard the story in his life. "In case you were wondering, her limiter was the golden necklace with the ruby and the Varieturan glyphs on it."

"You mean, if we'd taken her necklace off we could've won the whole war?" Amalia laughs to herself.

"And killed all the soldiers in the immediate vicinity," I respond quickly, she irks me with that haughty manner.

"Correct. Now, my enchanters can create a temporary limiter until a better one can be made, but until then we have to keep Ilena asleep."

Lues looks saddened by this news. I have no doubt he'd wanted to talk to Ilena. She is his sister, and she did just almost die. Amalia looks even more conflicted than Lues. Ilena is her enemy, she wants Ilena to die and the war to end, but she also is starting to realize that makraz are just like everyone else. We aren't all bad and not all of us are good. She's starting to learn that the world isn't all black and white.

"Can we see her?" Lues asks, and the Brein thinks it over for a moment. I don't understand his hesitation, and why does he know so much about Ilena.

Did she really tell him that much in her short time here, or does it have something to do with his relationship with Queen Amaryllis. Why would Queen Amaryllis tell so much to someone who could become an enemy in the future?

"Why don't you wait until the morning, the medics are still caring for her wounds, and everything will seem brighter in the morning sun," Tyrnon advises, and the king reluctantly nods.

The rest of supper is silent, our energy is lost. When the meal ends, I walk back to my room and sit on the bed. Why is Ilena in the royal wing, not in the guest wing, did she really make such a big impression on these ambros?

Then my mind turns suddenly to the eling, the heir to the throne of Mawrhydi, where is she, and who? What kind of person is Ilena Frenhinol, and why is her name so similar to that of my friend, unconscious in the royal wing on a comfortable bed.

I've thought things like this before, when Ilena was playing the part of Aiyla Nova, an assassin trying to escape from her life of crime. I thought this sort of thing when facts started falling into place, when the puzzle finally solved itself. The moment I realized that Aiyla was Ilena, I thought exactly what I'm thinking now.

Is it possible that Queen Amaryllis had an affair with Brein Tyrnon? Is Ilena the daughter of this foreign leader, the heir to the throne of not one but two thrones for most of her life? It's not possible, but it makes sense. If Ilena is a meigma then all of a sudden her magical ability makes sense.

I always wondered, if Ilena is the combination of earth and fire, then why aren't her abilities more like Lues's. If she's a meigma, then her power would be a mixture of spell casting and elemental which it is.

If this is all true, then why doesn't Lues know? Did King Norman know?

Alone in my thoughts, I drift off to sleep. In the dark realm of dreams, I don't notice as the dawn breaks, and the new day comes.