9 – 5

If Adelaide's fall brought all the world to a halt, if it created an empty moment where the agony of husband and daughter could echo, it's the sliding scrape of horn against steel that resumes its onward roll. Milo's strike catches one of the ram's horns that flank the bramble-beast's long, narrow head. The blade sticks, caught in the cut it made and the horn's own curl. He pulls with increasing force, going from a grip of one hand to both, bowing with hunched shoulders over the effort of freeing it. Adelaide's name slips between the grind of his teeth, the lock of his jaw, and it leaves him open; to a gutting swipe of those same talons, to a bone-breaking strike from an eight-fingered hand, to a flesh-tearing bite from a toothy, lipless maw.

These fates are kept from him by the lit torch his wife stabbed into the bramble-beast's eye. Smoke curls from that hollow socket, small tongues of fire licking out. What part of its mane of dead, thorning brambles catches alight and races across the breadth of its wide shoulders. It howls in fearful agony and paws at its face. The torch remains where it was placed, burning and burning still. It would seem those huge and eight-fingered hands, with each finger ending in a long, curved talon, are ill-suited to the task of removing it.

Good. Good.

It's not pain that keeps me on my feet and moving, each step falling faster than the one before it, nor is it the only feeling in the rictus twist of my mouth. I am alight with hatred. My blood roars with it, my heart thunders with it, and my hands tremble with it! When I close them around my knife's hilt, I will not pull it free from the bramble-beast's chest but down it! Let it bleed and slow and die!

I must reach it first, past the thicket of lashing talons and the waving of those too-long arms. Were I hale and whole, it would be easier. My body would listen to me. As it is, all I accomplish is being struck in the chest by the back of a swinging hand. My teeth crash together and bright pain blooms in my mouth, as does blood. I've bitten my tongue. My feet leave the ground and fly up into the air as the blow sends me spinning. I land on my side, and hard. My head lolls to the side as I gasp for the wind driven from me.

Clarke's hands are covered in Adelaide's blood. Smears of it cross her brow and the bridge of her nose, from where she has pushed stinging sweat from her eyes. “Come on!” she growls, snarls, pleads. The piece of ice swells with light, streams twining down her shoulders, around her arms, and into Adelaide's body. “Come on!” I can't see if the wound is closing. Adelaide's breath comes in short, shuddering gasps. Blood stains her mouth, her teeth, her face. Her once-keen eyes are glassy, rolling without sight or focus.

She's dying. Before my eyes, while I lay useless, she is dying.

It will not be borne. Not by any of us. Lavinia, in the woodshed's shadow, screams for her mother to live. Milo, in the circle's center, cuts ribbons from her attacker. Clarke, in the wet pool of her blood, strives to save her. What do I do?

I lay on my back, open-mouthed and breathless, gasping like a landed fish. I do nothing. It will not be borne. Over onto my stomach, up on hand-and-knee, and I crawl. Eight feet or less between us. It takes an eternity to cross. Steel bells ring as sword parries talon, as talon parries sword. The foul stench of the bramble-beast's thickly oozing, tar-black blood begins to fill the air, as does the smell of dead, burning plants. Adelaide's dealt blow was a might one. The torch still burns.

I reach her side and breath returns to me. With it, I ask of Clarke, “What's wrong?”

She shakes her head. The star at her throat dims, the streams of light recede, and she wipes her brow with the back of her stained, shaking hand. “I can't – ” she sniffs, words hoarse. “There's – she's hurt so bad, it's just – too much, I don't know how to – !”

Adelaide's hand rises, flutters in the air. I catch it between mine. It's cold, her grip weak. “Save her,” I beg, watching glassy green eyes close and open slowly. More so every time. “Do something, you have to save her!”

“I can't!” Clarke cries. Her eyes swim, tears and sweat and blood on her face. Her voice is hoarse, crackling as she confesses. “I don't know how!”

How can she not? She is a magi! “Stop the bleeding,” I say, “like you did with me!” Her work to fill the gash on my back had worked. That had been a canyon, long and wide. What's killing Adelaide is just a small, deep hole. Far less of a thing to reckon with.

“I'm trying,” Clarke rasps. “I'm trying, I just –” Tears in her eyes, their tracks on her cheeks. Sweat and blood on her brow. “Help me.”

Between us, beneath us, Adelaide's eyes close. They don't open again. Her hand goes slack in my grasp. I let it fall against her chest and reach across, sliding my hand into Clarke's. “Just like before,” I say. She nods, and breathes deeply. Ice-blue light ignites in her piece of ice, then curls up around her neck and sinks into her eyes. They glow, and lock with mine.

Her mouth doesn't move, yet I hear her voice. Just like before, she says, and the cool touch of her magic rushes into my mind.

- - -

The torn veins and severed vessels that spill her life across the hardened earth are a vast and sundered tapestry. Within them are things so small that a naked eye, no matter how keen, could never perceive them. They rush to these broken ends and attempt to dam them, dying in numbers beyond counting in a vain and valiant effort to halt the flow. Should we bolster it? It would be reasonable to; any blood that stays in her body would be blood that keeps her alive. But there's another problem.

The talon shredded one of her organs. A small one, no larger than a fist, that has an intact twin on the other side. Some foul and noxious fluid stagnates where the shredded organ once laid whole. That poison seeps outward in a slow spread toward the rest of her. If it should reach any other organ, or enter into her blood, it'll be her doom. Should we rebuild it? Gather up the bilious discharge and use the intact sibling as guide to resurrect its twin? It should, in theory, be possible, but there's another problem.

The wound writhes with infection. Rot eats away at muscle and flesh, at so small a level to go unseen by the naked eye. We feel it, maggots crawling on the skin of our waking minds. It's digging tendrils into her, feasting and breeding. By the time it could be seen, it would be too late. We should purge it. This, at least, is well within our ability to do. But there's another problem.

Through two sets of ears we have heard the ongoing battle: the hum of swinging steel through the air and the stamp of feet on the ground; the tear of grass beneath pivoting heels and the grunting gasps of the once-and-current soldier; the sizzling burn of a torch buried deep in an empty socket. We hear his misstep, slick sole sliding over frost, and the cost of it. We hear the dull thud of the bramble-beast striking him. A blunt blow, and he goes flying. We hear that, too.

The bramble-beast, half-blind as it is, aimed well. Milo will hit us. When he does, the link between us will be severed, and take with it any chance of us saving Adelaide's life. We can't fix everything, even if we had the time. The wound is too grievous and our knowledge, too lacking. We must choose.

The infection? We can, but it is not in immediate danger of killing her. Clarke can heal it later on her own, should we survive. Though the feel of it spins nausea in our stomachs and revulsion down our spines, it will keep.

We can do nothing about the organ, about the kidney, as Clarke's knowledge names it. Her voice drifts along threads of gossamer magic, saying that she can survive with one. It will not be life as she knew before, but she will live. That leaves the problem of the toxin it contained, the gathered impurities in her blood. Their spread is slow enough that it can be left for purgation, along with the infection.

The bleeding, then. But how? Shore up the effort of those small, dying things in vessel and vein? Close them off entirely? Knit them back together? Milo's flying body grows ever closer. We must choose. If we choose wrongly, or make a mistake, or don't finish in time, Adelaide will die. What do we do? What do we do?!

The little things, Zira's voice rolls down the threads, help them, and they stop the bleeding. Simple.

No time left to argue, even in here, so we do just that. Send our power racing into the horde of things too small for sight and too numerous to count. Boost their effort to greatest extent we can, as long as we can. We only stop when Milo collides with Zira's head and shoulders, sending her crashing back into her own mind.