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embklitzke · 7 years

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Awakenings - Book 6 - Chapter 9

The world ended on an August Sunday. This is the story of some of those who survived the end of everything.

Nine

“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Jacqueline grumbled, standing near the tangled holly and lavender that grew along the edges of the ravine now, planted months ago in the hopes that it would help anchor the wards that Marin had worked so hard to lay, the ones that they’d all tried to help her with—with varying levels of success.

Phelan stayed quiet, kneeling next to one of the plants, idly fingering its branches. There was something calming about the action and calm was something he certainly felt like he needed in the wake of everything going on—from his realization that Vammatar’s sisters were back on his trail to Cameron’s news about Leviathan, he needed something to help him find his center again.

There’s no telling when I’m going to have to pull another trick like what Matt and I did the other day or what I did on the ice to save Thordin—and I don’t know if I’ve got another trick like either of those in me at this point. Maybe not ever again.

“Phelan, are you listening?”

He blinked, looking up. She was staring at him, a strange look on her face. He frowned.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking back down at the stalk of lavender between his fingers. “My mind was wandering.”

“It’s been doing that a lot the past few days,” Jacqueline said, sinking down to sit beside him. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head slightly. The buds were soft against his fingertips. “I’m all right. There’s just a lot on my mind.”

“There’s a lot on all of our minds, Phelan,” she said softly. She put her hand on his arm and squeezed. “Talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”

Phelan shook his head again, shifting to sit instead of kneel. Jacqueline sighed.

“Is this the way it’s going to be?” she asked. “Are you going to clam up every time something’s bothering you just so you don’t upset me by letting me in on what’s going on in your head?”

A choked laugh escaped him. “I hope not.”

“Then talk to me.”

Phelan closed his eyes and leaned toward her. She wrapped both arms around his waist, resting her head against his.

“I love you, Phelan,” she murmured. “Even if you keep secrets and scare the crap out of me. I just don’t want you to shut me out.”

“I won’t,” he promised, wrapping one arm around her. “I promise.”

“Does that mean that you’re going to tell me whatever the hell is eating at you?”

Phelan choked on a laugh, a weak one, but a laugh nonetheless. “When it rains, it pours,” he said, as if that would explain everything. Jacqueline’s exasperated sigh told him that it absolutely hadn’t and Phelan scrubbed a hand over his face.

“I don’t know if I can do it again,” he said simply. Jacqueline frowned, her brows knitting.

“Don’t know if you can do what?”

“I don’t know how much use I’ll be in the next fight, or the one after that, or the one after that,” he said, his stomach hollowing out. Thinking it had been one thing, but putting voice to it was so much worse. “I just—I can’t—”

“I don’t understand,” she said softly. “Phelan, what are you talking about?”

He sighed, closing his eyes. She wrapped both arms around him and squeezed tightly.

“Talk to me,” she whispered. “Please, Phelan.”

“I’m sorry. It’s hard, okay? Articulating it is—” he broke off, frowning and staring out over the ravine. “What Matt and I were able to do at the battle against Olympium. I don’t think I can pull off something like that again, or what I did on the ice that woke Leviathan—not that I’d ever want to do that again.”

“I hope you’re never in a position where you feel like you have to, not again.” Her lips brushed his temple and he shivered. “You’re not the only one who can fight whatever bad guys show up here, Phelan.”

“No,” he murmured. “I’m just the one with the most experience.”

“Something tells me your cousin would dispute that.”

He shivered again. “My cousin was a boogeyman that people used to use to scare their children.”

“Well, at least he’s on our side now.”

Phelan choked on another weak laugh and squeezed her close. “I love you, Jac.”

“I love you, too.” She squeezed him again, then drew back slightly. “Now stop beating yourself up about things you probably can’t help. Whatever happens, happens. We’ll be okay. Somehow, we’ll be okay.”

I hope she’s right about that, Phelan thought, then reached up to scrub a hand over his face. “Of course—we’ve been all right thus far, anyway. Now what were you saying?”

“You mean when you weren’t listening?”

One corner of his mouth lifted in a rueful smile. “Yes, then.”

“Nothing all that important,” she said, then shook her head, giving him one last squeeze before she let go and started to stand up. “I’m going to go back. You coming?”

He shook his head. “I’ll stay out here a little longer. You’re going to go check on Neve, aren’t you?”

Jacqueline nodded. “She’s probably getting closer than any of us realize. I don’t think she was paying attention to when things might have happened.”

Phelan chuckled softly. “Probably not.” There was a lot going on then. “Go on. I’ll catch up later.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Always,” Phelan said, though they both knew it was probably a lie.

Jacqueline leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple before she turned and walked away. Phelan looked out over the ravine again. His fingers sank into the grass as he sat there in front of the hedges. The wards were weaker now, weaker than he remembered them being.

Marin hasn't been out here to tend them for a few days. Probably what it is.

The fact that they relied so heavily on her to take care of the wards should have worried him more than it did, especially in light of what he knew, of what she’d told him in the past.

We need to change that.

Footsteps approached from behind and Phelan opened his eyes, exhaling quietly.

“What is it, Thordin?”

The footsteps stopped. “How did you know it was me?”

“You’re still limping,” Phelan said, turning. “Where’s Sif? I thought she was still attached to you at the hip.”

Thordin shrugged slightly and sank down into the grass next to him. “I told her I was going up to the forge. She said okay.”

“This isn’t the forge.”

“Nope.”

Phelan stared at him for a long moment. “So you lied to her.”

“Eventually, I’ll make it to the forge.” Thordin shrugged with one shoulder. He was still pale after his ordeal and Phelan was more than half certain he’d dropped a dozen pounds—probably of muscle—during his recovery as well. The lindwyrm had very nearly been the end of him. “I did want to talk to Matt about some things and he’s up there, but I also felt like I needed to talk to you.”

“About what?” Phelan mumbled, staring out over the ravine again. A shaft of sunlight through the canopy of trees caught his eye and he tracked it up to a gap between branches and trees before letting his gaze drift away again. “Did I miss something?”

“If you did, it’s less than what I missed.” Thordin shook his head slightly. “They’re coming back for another round, huh?”

“Seems that way.” Phelan chafed his palm against his arm, biting down on the inside of his lip. “Honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Daniel and his pack must have been very good at laying a false trail and bogging them down.”

I hope they didn’t pay a price for it.

“Or they got distracted by something else,” Thordin said, his voice quiet.

"Like what? I don’t know about you, but my experiences with them point to a serious interest in vengeance—to the exclusion of everything else. That’s the only thing that knocked me off their radar. Well. That and distance.”

Thordin shook his head slowly. “They’re more easily distracted than you think, especially if they think they’ve found better targets. But they don’t forget. Sometimes I think they bank on that—their targets forgetting before they do.”

“Except we haven’t forgotten,” Phelan said, squeezing his eyes shut. We’re just not ready for them.

“No, we haven’t,” Thordin agreed. “But I’ll be damned if I know how we’re going to handle them and Leviathan.” He lapsed into silence for a moment, absently rubbing at his injured side, close to healed, but Phelan knew it still bothered him and probably would for the rest of his life. Some wounds were like that—like Cameron’s, where the dirae had gotten a piece of him, like Teague’s where one of Hecate’s daggers had dug deep into his side.

What would he say now if he knew? Phelan wondered, his thoughts drifting. His attention snapped back as Thordin cleared his throat.

“I’m guessing from your silence that you don’t have any really stellar ideas, either.”

“No,” Phelan admitted. “But how the hell do you know so much about them? I thought you didn’t remember everything.”

“I don’t. Sif and I have been talking, though, and they’ve got a reason to hate her, too.” His lips thinned and he swallowed hard. “I’m worried about her.”

“In what way?”

“I’m worried that she’ll try to talk me into cutting and running,” he admitted. “I’m worried that I’ll listen and then you guys won’t have us or worse yet, we’ll go, some of you guys will come after us and you’ll find us dead or worse because we can’t handle those bitches on our own and running isn’t going to help. We can’t run forever. I think that’s the only thing that keeps her from doing everything I’ve just said.”

Phelan winced, rubbing at his jaw. “Are you sure?”

“Never, not anymore.” Thordin leaned back, resting against his elbows and staring at the sky. “If there’s anything that’s become abundantly clear to me in the past year, it’s that there’s a lot of shit I don’t know and even less I understand.” He shot his friend a weak, wry smile. “Honestly, I’m not sure I would want to carry that burden anyway.”

“Trust me, you don’t,” Phelan muttered. “But in some ways, I’m starting to be in the same boat. There are some things I know are supposed to happen and Thom and Marin’s visions have been confirming it, but there’s stuff that I—” he broke off, his jaw tightening for a moment. “It’s starting to get hard to track all of it and keep myself alive at the same time.” And have a life and maybe a future that doesn’t involve me wandering the face of the globe looking for prophecies and shepherding them to their fruition or whatever damned bullshit we were taught to believe a Taliesin was supposed to do. “Maybe I should stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Trying to make sense of all of it,” Phelan said, then sighed. “Stop trying to play the role of the Taliesin in a world where maybe I’m not needed anymore—not in that capacity, anyway.”

“Phelan.”

The tone of his friend’s voice made Phelan grimace. He rubbed at his temple. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Are you going to make me say it?”

“No,” Phelan said, feeling the weight of the world crash down on his shoulders again. “No, you’re going to tell me that I’m needed, that I still have a job to do and the world still needs a Taliesin.”

“Mostly that,” Thordin said. “But I was also going to say that being the Taliesin and being happy aren’t mutually exclusive. Being the Taliesin and mostly staying here, staying with Jac and the others, you can do that. You’re the Taliesin. You make the rules and no one is going to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. The only person who could is Seamus and he’s got his own shit to deal with.”

Phelan smiled crookedly and shook his head. “When the hell did you get so wise about this sort of bullshit, Thordin?”

“I don’t know,” the other man said. “Maybe I always was and I never had to rise to the occasion. Probably that, honestly.”

Phelan chuckled and Thordin grinned.

“You want company up at the forge?” Phelan asked.

“I probably wouldn’t say no to it,” Thordin admitted. “You ready?”

Phelan nodded. “Yeah. Let’s head up. Thanks for pulling me out of my own head.”

“Easier than pulling you out of your own ass,” Thordin said as he got to his feet. “You’re welcome, Phelan.”

The Taliesin threw his arm around his friend’s shoulders and together, the two headed up the hill toward the forge.

Awakenings is a fiction serial written by Erin M. Klitzke. It updates three times a week at http://awakenings.embklitzke.com. Full chapters will be released here on Tumblr once a week.

Like what you see? Consider becoming a patron on Patreon!

#Awakenings #web fiction #erin's writing #webfic #webfiction #mythology in fiction #Thordin #Phelan Conrad #Jacqueline Bell #Taliesin

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embklitzke · 7 years

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Awakenings - Book 6 - Chapter 7

The world ended on an August Sunday. This is the story of some of those who survived the end of everything.

Seven

An hour past sunrise found Thom out at the wall, expression grim, pacing its length, searching for weaknesses, places he could improve on what they’d already worked so hard and spent so much time to build. It was their first line of defense, though, that wall, and if they were going to have to face Leviathan—or something worse—he wanted to be ready.

He had a family to think about, damn it all. He was going to be ready.

Seamus came to him out there, stood watching for a few long moments. Thom knew he was there. The why didn’t matter, though he knew that the older man wouldn’t keep his silence forever. Soon enough, he’d break the silence.

Until then, Thom was content to move up and down the wall with a small sketchpad and pencil in hand, sketching and jotting notes.

Shore up the wall at the north end. Needs repairs at eight meters. Add a blind at the fifteenth meter. Blind at the twenty-fifth meter. Signs of weakness at twenty-seven meters.

“A wall may not stop that bastard,” Seamus said at last. He stood with his hands in his pockets, squinting at Thom in the glare of the morning sun.

Thom grunted, tucking his pencil above his ear and stuffing the pad into his back pocket as he walked over to inspect a gouge in the concrete at thirty-one meters—not too far from the gate, now. “At least we’ll have a first line of defense,” he said.

Seamus made a quiet noise in his throat, lapsing into silence for another few moments as Thom continued down the wall. “What about the defenses on the back side of the village?”

“The ravine-side? We have choke points and rubble to stop him there,” Thom said, then turned. “Why?”

“The ravine and the wardings might not stop him,” Seamus said, his voice grim. “We can’t rely on those forever—or the Wild Hunt.”

A chill washed over Thom. “What do you mean?”

“Something isn’t right.”

Understatement of the century, there. Thom shook his head. “Tell me something I didn’t know.”

“This isn’t a fight we win with defenses or strength of arms, Thom.”

Then I don’t know how the hell we’re going to win it—luck isn’t going to save us this time, either, now is it?

“Defenses are all I’ve got,” Thom said bitterly, turning back to his work.

Seamus fell silent again. If he’d angered the Prince of the Aes Dana, Thom didn’t care.

He kept to his work, moving toward the gate.

Defenses and a stubborn streak—and a gift I can’t master, a gift I don’t fully understand—that’s all I’ve got to protect my family.

I’ll be damned if I can’t find a way to make that be enough. One way or another, it’s going to have to be enough. I don’t have anything else. Not now. Not yet.

Not yet.

Seamus moved down the wall with him, never more than a dozen feet away, a sentinel watching, guarding. Thom tried to ignore it at first after their brief exchange, but the words gnawed at him.

Something isn’t right.

This isn’t a fight we can win with defenses or strength of arms.

His jaw tightened. He was still a dozen yards down from the gate when he turned away from it, toward Seamus. “What aren’t you saying?”

“Jameson wanted to be the one to tell you.”

“J.T.’s not here. You are. What the hell is going on, Seamus?”

“Something happened at the barrow,” Seamus said. “Something was digging there, trying to undermine the wards. Phelan and Matt found it, then Phelan sorted it out. They told me because they thought I might have some insight so I went out to take a look myself. They came close to their purpose there.”

Cold shot through Thom. “Their purpose,” he echoed, his voice dull. “What was that?”

“They want our dead,” Seamus said. “It’s likely they only pulled back because they could sense what was happening on that field when Hecate went up against Pluton. That would scare the bold out of anyone.” His lips thinned. “We both know she doesn’t have another fight like that in her.”

“Do we?”

“I do,” Seamus said. “That was personal, what she did out there. I know what that looks like. Hell, I’d like to have the opportunity to do it to my father-in-law, for what he did to my daughter, me, Leinth. He’d have done it to Leinth’s child, too, if he’d ever known of it.”

Thom winced, saying nothing. He stared at the wall for a long moment before his gaze shifted back to Seamus. “What was out there?”

“It was hamrammr. It seems that they’re not done with the lot of you yet.”

“Are you planning on abandoning us already?” Thom asked, the words bitter on his tongue. “Last I checked, you were part of us.”

Seamus exhaled, closing his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. Poor choice of words—though I’ll point out that I wasn’t here the first few times you dealt with them and so far as I know, they don’t have a real reason to be coming after me.”

“That you know of,” Thom said. He wanted to be angry at Seamus, but he found his ire fading quickly, replaced only by weariness and resignation.

Because we don’t have enough problems already—what’s one more? Why not send Vammatar’s avengers after us, too?

Thom shook his head. “How long ago was it? Do you know?”

“That they were digging? During the fighting out here, I’d imagine. It was the perfect distraction. No one would have noticed until it was too late, had they been successful in their aims.”

“Their aim being to get to our dead,” Thom said.

Seamus nodded. “That’s what appears to be the case, in any event.”

I don’t want to think about what they’d want to do with our dead. Thom’s lips thinned. “But they failed.”

“So it would seem.”

Thom nodded, his gaze drifting back to the wall. Suddenly it seemed like too small a thing, not enough to protect what was most precious to him.

But what else do I have?

Nothing else.

He sighed. Seamus put his hand on his shoulder and Thom closed his eyes.

“How did you manage it?” he asked softly. “Day after day, year after year, finding ways to protect your people against shit like all of this?”

Seamus smiled crookedly. “I didn’t have to. My father did, then I was sent away—it became Teague’s problem for a time, but only after most of the old threats had already retreated, when they came back before all of this hell began. I don’t envy you, Thom, not at all, but I am intending to help—in any way that I can.”

Thom managed a crooked smile. “Fantastic. Figure out a better way to defend the settlement—and tell me what the hell you meant when you said that maybe we couldn’t rely on the Wild Hunt to help.”

Seamus winced and looked away. “I had hoped you wouldn’t ask.”

“If you’d hoped I wouldn’t ask, you shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Too true,” Seamus said with a rueful smile. It faded as he turned away, stared out over the field, the churned and broken earth, the spot where Pluton had died.

“Something feels wrong,” he whispered.

Thom held his breath and waited.

Seamus did not disappoint him, though he stayed quiet for a few seconds more, just staring at the spot.

“I led them for centuries,” he said slowly, as if the weight of the years and the memories had settled on his shoulders again, pressing him down with their magnitude. “They became my family. I knew them as well—better—than I knew myself. The past few weeks—hell, the past few days—something has started to feel off, to feel wrong. I don’t know what it is. I have no explanations. It’s just a gut feeling, one I can’t shake.”

“What do you think it is?” Thom asked.

Seamus considered the question, still not turning away from the broken ground beyond the gates and the walls. “I don’t know. Once upon a time, I would have chalked it up to paranoia, but now I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore, to be honest. I wish I was.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, exhaling a heavy sigh. “I begin to wonder, though, if someone has started to pull on their strings—it’s not impossible. The old ways are breaking down. We—the Hunt, I mean—the Hunt used to be something that stood aloof from the wars even as we rode into them. We were a force of nature, a thing not to be trifled with. If we came, they would quake in fear.”

“They?”

A weak, rueful smile curved Seamus’s lips and he glanced back over his shoulder toward Thom. There was regret in that smile, regret mingling with a sort of sad nostalgia and longing. “Everyone. The Otherlanders. We would ride into their wars on nobody’s side but our own, taking who and what we wanted because we wanted them, because we could. They feared us for that, hated us for that, but they could never quite touch us, never quite manipulate the Hunt in the ways they hoped to. Even selling me to them, that didn’t have the outcome that my wife’s father had hoped. He had hoped for some allegiance, some loyalty, considering the magnitude of the boon he’d gifted them.”

His smile turned into something almost wicked. “Instead, he got what he deserved.”

“You took your revenge on them,” Thom said, looking away. Behind him, Seamus sighed softly.

“I didn’t. My brothers in arms taught him a lesson about respect.”

“Nothing to do with you?”

“Everything to do with me. I just wasn’t involved.” Seamus dried up alongside him and rested his palm against the wall. “They won’t linger here forever as much as some of them want to and the way the world is changing I fear has left them vulnerable to outside forces in ways that we never have been before. It worries me.”

“Does it worry everyone else the way you still talk about yourself like you were still one of them?”

Seamus winced. “I deserved that.”

“It wasn’t an attack. Just an observation.”

Seamus drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “Like I said. It’s hard to separate myself still. It was part of my identity for too long.” He closed his eyes. “The point remains that we have work to do on the defenses at the back side as much as we do here.”

“The way you were talking made it sound like either way would be futile.”

Seamus exhaled. “I hope it wouldn’t be,” he murmured. “Truly, I do.”

Thom grunted, staring at the wall. “This is all I’ve got, Seamus. And if we lose the Wild Hunt, I’ve got no idea what we’ll do. I don’t know if we can turn back whatever shows up without them. Now you’re telling me that I might lose them.”

“Worse, they might turn if the right pressure is applied.” Seamus shook his head. “Don’t ask me what the right pressure is. I don’t know. Nothing’s certain these days, not anymore.”

“Fucking perfect,” Thom muttered. He closed his eyes and sighed.

I’ll just have to keep hoping, I guess.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got.

Awakenings is a fiction serial written by Erin M. Klitzke. It updates three times a week at http://awakenings.embklitzke.com. Full chapters will be released here on Tumblr once a week.

Like what you see? Consider becoming a patron on Patreon!

#Awakenings #original fiction #seamus vaughan #Thom Ambrose #post-apocalyptic #webfic #web fiction #Erin's writing #webfiction #mythology in fiction

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