The Stone-Hide, that mountain of rocky scales which once radiated an unshakeable magnificence, was now reduced to a trembling mass, a shell about to shatter.
It no longer roared. The sound escaping its agape maw was an asthmatic wheeze, the sound of "ice crystals" forming in lungs that should burn with the predator's hot blood.
Falazahr observed, with a strangeness that numbed her senses, the monster's paws. They were faltering. The beast attempted an advance, a final spasm of hunger, but its joints seemed to seize.
The creature thrashed — a rhythmic, deep tremor, as if the essence of its life was wasting away in an abyssal cold.
The blue fire that does not burn... it steals the heat, she thought, her fingertips still tingling with blue electricity.
What did I do? What did Khulag deposit in my veins?
— Heridor... — His name came out as a stumble.
She diverted her gaze from the beast and the world bled anew.
Heridor lay stretched out on the carpet of ferns, which were no longer green, but a dark, sticky purple. The pain of the absent arm cried out silently in the landscape. Blood squirted in jets, each one weaker than the last, like a biological clock counting the few remaining minutes of his life.
— Wake up, guide! We need to return! — she whispered, walking toward him.
She draped Heridor's intact arm over her shoulders. He weighed like a fallen tree; a mass of flesh and bone draining away. Behind them, the Stone-Hide let out a final groan and collapsed under its own body, its yellow eyes extinguishing in a cold mist.
It would not follow them. Not today. Perhaps never again.
- - -
They returned to the place where most humans stayed — a still-nameless grove. Falazahr did not possess the physical strength of the great predators, but she had enough stubbornness to carry her friend.
Each step was a negotiation with gravity.
— Why do you insist on leaving? — she scolded his blood, treating the liquid as if it were a traitor. — You cannot take him before he has even used his own name!
Heridor mumbled something. His eyes were rolled back, searching for something on the horizon; the paleness of his face was the same as the floating clouds in the sky.
— The cold... — he managed to say, in a weak whisper that seemed to echo from a distant darkness.
— The cold will pass, Heridor. The world is new, remember? The sun is out there. — She affirmed with the sweetness of a mother, as she felt his warmth abandon the skin in contact with hers.
They reached the edge of the grove where the other humans were gathering. No one saw them immediately.
Dusk was beginning to claim the treetops, and the shadows stretched, as if to reach Falazahr. She laid him down on a bed of dry moss, under the arch of an immense root. The bleeding would not stop.
Then, she closed her eyes:
Think, Falazahr. What could save him?
Panic was a high tide. Some humans felt distressed seeing Heridor's bleeding, while others showed concern and alarm in their expressions, approaching only as observers.
She did not think about the people around or how they could help. She only had the memory of Khulag's dream and the smell of iron emanating from the body of her only friend.
Khulag... if you gave me this burden, give me also the hand to carry it!
She pleaded and said:
— Heridor, stay with me! Don't give up yet! — His eyes were merely white slits.
The dilemma was a blade at her neck: if she did nothing, he would bleed out until his last breath; if she used the flame, she might "extinguish" his life as she had apparently done with the Stone-Hide.
What if I freeze him inside? What if his heart stops like the beast's?
— No... I cannot — she whispered, pulling her hand away from the wound. — I will kill him. I will finish what that monster started. — Falazahr said aloud.
The blood gave a fresh lurch, seeping into the moss. Heridor's pallor was now absolute. There was no more time for doubt. It was the risk or the certainty of death.
Falazahr closed her eyes, hot tears streaming down, the only warmth that seemed to remain in the world. She concentrated not on the fury she had felt in the ravine, but on a desperate desire for preservation.
With trembling fingers and a hesitation that made her muscles lock, she brought her palm close to the open wound. The blue flame began to emerge, but this time she tried to contain it, to muffle it, to transform it into a faint glow.
— Please... please... — she murmured like a prayer.
As soon as her hand reached the exposed wound, the sensation was overwhelming. Heridor let out a rough, ragged gasp, his entire body convulsing in a spasm of intense pain. Falazahr instinctively pulled her hand away, his scream terrifying her.
She watched, her heart in her mouth, the encounter of the flame with the blood. There was no sizzle of burnt flesh, but a sharp crackle.
The bluish fire, this time, acted surgically under Falazahr's desperate will. Instead of spreading through his body like a cold venom, it concentrated on the surface. The blood, upon touching the light, dried instantly.
It was a cauterization. And, finally, the bleeding had stopped, interrupted by an ember that weakened life, but which, also, preserved it.
Falazahr withdrew her hand, panting. She observed Heridor's face.
He was not dead. His chest filled and emptied slowly, almost imperceptibly, but constantly.
— Thanks to Khulag... — she let out a nervous laugh, which soon turned into a sob. — ...you are still here!
Leaning over him, exhaustion dominated her. Although the immediate danger had ceased, the burden of her actions persisted. She had saved her friend, resorting to the same power that annihilated the creature — the line between cure and curse had just become as thin as a strand of hair.
Looking at Heridor's dry, staunched shoulder, Falazahr realized that the reborn world would demand a high price from her. She was not just a woman with a new name; she was the bearer of a kind of ability that needed to be domesticated, before it killed everything she loved.
— Falazahr... — he gasped, opening his eyes slowly.