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There's a poker stuck through Julia's stomach.
It doesn't hurt too much, of course; her body is delaying the pain for later, letting her adjust to the metal in her gut so she can do something other than go into shock and die. For the moment, she just lays there and stares, wrestling with the urge to pull it out. She gave that lesson to dozens of people during the blockade -- don't pull out the thing that's keeping all of your blood in -- but until now, she's never dealt with the visceral horror of having something stabbed in your body. It shouldn't be there; she just wants it gone, for fuck's sake, she wants to pull it out like pulling a wasp stinger from her arm.
She doesn't, of course.
Julia sits up, her pained hiss echoing through the empty shamble of the workshop. She tenses up her arms to stop her hands from shaking, feeling numbly around the poker so she can rip the fabric around it and see the damage.
What can she say? It's bad. It's in at a diagonal, pushing up through her right side, but it hasn't come clean through. Probably speared right through some abdominal organs.
"Okay," she says. "Okay."
The ringing in her ears starts to subside. There had been a booming sound. She'd heard a booming sound, she'd grabbed the poker when she went out to investigate, and then the world had seemed to explode. That explains most of this, at least.
It doesn't take much intuition to realize that they're being attacked, and by Kalen, no doubt, but her blood-dazzled brain can't quite figure out how or why yet. She tries to stand, and watches blood pumping out of her too quickly to believe.
She and Magnus used to play that game back in the hard days: can I laugh it off? A concussion? A broken leg? The blood coming out of their mouths?
So she smiles and wipes her eyes and says, "Well, I'd need one hell of a healer to get out of this one."
There's no way she makes it to the Medical Column like this, and no magic user on this column will have anything optimistic to say. So she's gonna die. This is the part where she picks how she does it: staring at the poker going through her stomach, or doing something about this.
Groaning and chuckling, Julia crawls to what's left of the fireplace. The embers are still glowing hot, and so is the pair of tongs that had been resting inside. She takes a few seconds to rest when she gets close enough, trying not to think about the blood leaking into and out of her body, then rips the hole in her dress even wider.
No use in intellectualizing. If there was ever a time to rush, it's now.
Julia's hands grip hard around the poker and pull.
The ringing in her ears is too loud, the haze around her eyes is too strong. Distantly, she sees viscera dangling off of the hooked end of the poker; she throws it away, she never wants to see it again. She can see her father's tongs but can't quite grasp them, like her fingers have forgotten how to hold something. The tongs are heavier than she'd remembered them being. When the bright orange ends touch the hole in her stomach, she's sure she'll die passed out on the ground in what used to be her home. She'll be dead before she falls with the rest of Raven's Roost, dead before Magnus so much as thinks of her.
It's a stupid memory of him and her father arguing about furniture polish that ends up keeping her conscious.
Julia sits up a little, panting and staring down at the crusty burnt mess of her torso while she tries to wake herself up. She remembers watching a friend die from internal bleeding, and knows that she's going to lose the feeling in her hands and feet, maybe want to vomit, feel her heartbeat getting explosive, and eventually be too tired to stand.
So Julia stands now, before she should, and lurches her way to the remains of the door frame, grabbing anything she can to keep her upright. A beautiful sunny day makes her eyes ache as she surveys the damage.
The Craftsman's Column is crumbling.
Every other workshop looks like the Hammer and Tongs, and if she concentrates, she can feel the column shaking just a little. There are little signs of life -- stones being pushed away, people crawling out from under wreckage -- but none of Kalen's troops. No clattering army marching onward. Barely even a breeze.
"Julia!"
Their neighbor Kira is running down the street towards her, her baby daughter clutched to her chest. People like to say that the rebellion was thanks to the Burnsides, but Julia will tell anyone that in a world without Kira, they'd all still be living under Kalen's rule.
She staggers towards Julia, grabbing onto a nearby fencepost like she's getting ready for a second blow. The sight of it makes Julia's stomach (or what's left of it) turn.
"Kalen's bombing the south bridge!" says Kira. "He set charges between here and the Market Column, I started running as soon as I figured out, I think-" Kira presses her daughter's face into the crook between her shoulder and neck. "Julia, I think he's bombing this column. I think he wants to bring it down."
It doesn't make sense, tactically. Beyond the horror of the idea, it just doesn't make sense. Raven's Roost is one of the central columns and if it topples, there's a chance it could take a few others with it. If he wanted to take a column hostage, he should've chosen a residential column so he wouldn't run into collateral damage.
Unless the bastard is just trying to blow all of them to hell. But that doesn't make sense, either; this column is central, but it isn't by any means the tallest. If he wanted to cause a chain reaction, he should've picked the tallest one -- the Arts Column to the east -- and made it topple over. That would've taken the others down, easily.
It puzzles her for a moment before she realizes that this isn't about Raven's Roost. Kalen isn't trying to achieve anything other than destroy the battleground where he lost his city. That means no bargaining, no strategy, no diplomacy.
Julia wants to spit out the dust that has settled into her mouth. She wants to spit it all into Kalen's face, along with the blood that dripped down the Craftsman's Column during the rebellion and the sweat she watched pouring from her friends' faces.
"How do we stop them?" asks Kira. Her daughter, Marlowe, peers at Julia, her dirty face streaked with old tears.
Julia can hear stone scraping and wood creaking; underscoring everything is a chorus of people crying, groaning, gasping, wheezing. Her eyes keep darting to the house across the street where she and Magnus used to go for metalwork from Hans, the best blacksmith on the column. His house is rubble. She tries not to be able to see the shape of a motionless arm when a few stones fall away.
"We don't," Julia replies. "We get everyone out. Now."
"But there has to be something we can-"
"Maybe there is," says Julia. "But we don't have the time to figure out what it is."
She doesn't realize she's clutching her bloody stomach until Kira dodges closer, clutching Julia's shoulder with her free hand and saying, "Oh, gods, Julia!"
Julia makes herself smile. "Come on, you think a little thing like this is anything to worry about?" Kira smiles back like she's smiling into a grave. "It just means I need you to get to anyone- anyone you can and tell them to get out. You said he took out the bridge to the south?"
"Yeah, we're cut off." Kira pats an absent hand against Marlowe's head as someone starts screaming a few blocks away. "So we get everyone going north. And east?"
To the north is the gate out of Raven's Roost, to the west is the Livestock Column, and to the east is the Residential Column. Kira has always been a little more willing to bet that Kalen has some amount to humanity in him than Julia ever was.
Julia nods. She tells Kira to get everyone out, not to bother with taking anything with them. Send runners to get the message in all directions. Her father was visiting a friend in the Residential Column this morning, so she asks Kira to find him and make sure he stays put. She doubts he'll have the time to do anything, in any case.
Kira looks her dead in the eye. "And what about you? Don't you dare order me to leave you behind, Julia, that's not happening."
"I would never try," Julia pants, even though that wasn't exactly true until now. "But we have to multitask. You get people to run the message. I'm going to- I'm going to get myself south. Start evacuating people from there."
Kira makes a sound like a dry sob, but makes herself stand up straight. "I'm going to look for you when everyone's out, okay? I'm gonna look."
"Kira-"
"I'm going to look, Julia," says Kira.
There's no harm in hope, she has to believe that. "I'll look for you, too," Julia smiles. "But when this is over, we have to evacuate the town. We can't risk-"
"I understand."
"I thought you would." Julia's tongue is heavy when she says, "Look, if you see Magnus after this, will you tell him…?" But as soon as she says his name, she knows there's nothing to say. There will be no right way to explain it, and nothing that will discourage him if he wants to go on some quest for revenge. The important stuff, he already knows. And it'll hurt to have Kira echo it to him when Julia is long gone.
Kira saves her. She leans in and presses her lips against Julia's forehead for a long moment, and says, "Get going, General Burnsides."
"Aye, aye, Lieutenant." She peers back at Marlowe. "Take care of your mother."
As Kira runs to the gathering crowd to the north, Julia realizes that that was the last conversation she’ll ever have – or maybe it’s the last conversation she had – with Kira. It's not useful, but she keeps cataloguing lasts as she staggers to the south: the last time she'll see that smelting shop or that cobbler's shop, the last time she'll tread on this cobblestone, the last time she'll see that face.
People don't need a lot of explanation in a time like this. She just keeps yelling, "Go north! Get out of the city!" Her voice gets hoarse and her head is swimming. Every now and then someone will rush up to her and try to help, but she'll beg them to get north, to get out alive. The more perceptive ones will see what she's done to doctor herself, understand, and drag others away.
The further south she goes, the worse it is. The rubble is blackened, and parts of Raven's Roost have been reduced to fine powder, rather than chunks of stone and wood. There are gaps where buildings have fallen in on themselves, leaving empty spaces like missing teeth. She has to define her home by absences.
When she gets to where the bridge used to be, her chest aches with something bigger and heavier than simple injury. She can see body parts, faces that are far too young to be lifeless. Only the bridge posts still stand, the decorative tops have been blown off. She remembers watching Magnus carve those tops not so long ago: sturdy huge dogs with always-alert wooden ears, gazing at anyone who approached.
"Are those supposed to be scary?" she'd asked, her nose pressed just over his ear, the hairs of his sideburns tickling her skin.
"Nah," he'd said, pausing to reach a hand up to her face, because he would always drop his work for her. He would always drop everything for her. "They're just too cute to mess with."
Julia doesn't know how long she's been crying, but her eyes feel too swollen to see. Nothing around her is moving, but she keeps muttering "go north," her teeth chattering as she feels her hands starting to buzz.
She can't die like this, lost and numb. She refuses to.
The smoke is just starting to clear across the way, and Julia can see armor glinting through the haze. There, in the thick of it all, is Kalen. He's as motionless as the dead, his eyes trained on her as she makes her way closer and closer, at last collapsing against the bridge post and looking down to see shattered rock and splintered wood.
He holds up a hand, and the soldiers behind him fall silent upon spotting her. "Burnsides!" he calls, congenially. "Come to see what your rebellion has bought you?"
"I-" She has to keep talking. She'll die stringing this fool along if she must; she pulled a poker out of herself, and she can pull her words out, too. She can’t think of anything to say to such a cheesy villain line, though. "I was just taking a walk," she croaks. "It's a nice day."
Kalen scoffs. "It's being cut short," he says. "Along with the lives of anyone who thought it wise to challenge the sanctified order of my city."
"Do you want to know something?" she calls back. "My husband- he just left a few days ago."
It makes a muscle in Kalen's face twitch, but he collects himself and smiles again. "So I'll have to take my time with him, once I find him."
She waves her hand, the one not clinging to the post and keeping her from collapsing. "No, idiot, just listen to me," she says, trying to catch her breath. "He left for this… This contest, this big contest. He's gonna win it, too. Master Craftsman. Everyone knows it, but- it's gonna be official now."
"What's your point?" Kalen shouts, red creeping into his face.
"My point?" She laughs and feels her insides clench. "My point is that- I guess that doesn't matter to you! My point is that it happened anyway! And I'm so fucking proud of him!"
Kalen shouts back something rude about how she's lost her mind, but honestly, screw him. Part of her wishes she'd had the energy to give him some sick burn about tyrants or throwing tantrums, but as she feels herself sliding down to the ground and knows that she's bought all the time she can, she's happy. She doesn't want to go out on a bitter note, trying to hurt someone she can't change. She doesn't want to spend the last moments she's got trying to craft a good zinger.
She wants it to be like this, trying to imagine Magnus's bashful smile when they give him a plaque telling him something he's been told a hundred times. Imagining that her father and Magnus will seek each other out after all of this is over and keep each other company, and that all of the survivors of Raven's Roost will get on with their lives and leave Kalen to rule over a ghost town.
Julia supposes that Kalen is giving commands for the final charge to be lit, but she doesn't care, because a breeze blows through Raven's Roost and carries the smell of fresh bread and fine leather from the Market Column. Julia's head hits the cobblestones, but it's a soft landing, as far as she's concerned. She feels herself slipping somewhere else.
She feels herself die before she hears the blast go off, before the Craftsman's Column collapses and plunges down, opening a black hole in the middle of Raven's Roost. The plunge down isn't frightening, because there's nothing to be scared of. Death rushes at her, but she only picks up her pace to run alongside it.