Chapter 13

Umbra saw Damian fall.

Twice fallen, and because of her, he would be twice saved.

She called on her broom to fly to him. Only to have it chopped in half, but the swing of a clan warrior. A traitor.

Her broom snapped, but the axe's edge kept on swinging and bit into her side. She screamed from the pain, but her sorcery enchanted body would not die so easily. She screamed from surprise as much as pain, he must have some innate, unrealised, magical talent to be able to counter Damian's enchantments.

She thrust out her hand and bathed his open mouth in deadly, excruciating poison. The agonising pain hit him in an instant. He lost the strength to pull his axe back out of her side. Instead, he clung to his skin as blood leaked out every possible hole in his body including streaming out of his eyes. In less than a minute he lay dead.

She pulled out the axe and healed her open wound with a flick of her wrist.

She looked at his corpse and knew the clan warrior. She healed him two nights before from mortal wounds. Now he allied with the very Romans who nearly killed him. His loyalty to his clan, and pawn to its politics, had outweighed the moral debt he'd owed her. Damian would never do such an act of cruelty. He was genuinely kind, if a bit of a slut, a manwhore who had yet to say no to any pretty women who'd offered to fuck him. As that included her and mind blowing sex, she let it go barely within a storm of jealousy.

Her broom shattered, she'd have to run to his side.

Then, just as she tensed her muscles to sprint, she saw a flood of horseflesh and glinting steel on the horizon. Barrelling down the wide open roads of the White City, the riders of Elkilbour charged.

At first, Umbra thought they'd come to their aid. She remembered Damian and Morgana talking with them from before they had come to this terrible place. The evil eye, sealed as it was, let her in on the secret. It delighted in her suffering.

Traitors. Cowards who chose life before the War God's mighty presence. All their talk or resistance turned to servile servitude

"Calvary, their traitors!" Umbra shouted.

It was her luck or just the bond they had connected during their shared struggle and shared lover, Morgana heard Umbra.

When the vanguard came close, Morgana leapt in front of them, sailing through the sky as she jumped over the battlefield. She landed, dust rose, she punched the open air, and launched a wave of telekinetic force blasting the horse riders back and knocking them over like saplings in a storm.

Umbra could only see Morgana's back. She saw her behead the one called Erec. In her leadership, magic and might, she trusted. Now, she had to respond to Morgana's effort and save their lover.

Umbra ran. She ran through danger: she ran past those she could save, those she ran away from those she could kill, and stopped for nothing.

She ran to her saviour's dying arms.