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It had been only a matter of time, she knew. They were faster than she was, and stronger, and corrupted by the calamities. Still she fought, ducking and dodging and throwing spells as quickly as she could muster the willpower to manifest them. Something that had once been human lunged at her, and brandished a thick spear of sharpened rebar, and stabbed at her. She dodged, sliding away, and throwing in return a thick cloud of supercooled air that flash-froze it. She ran forward, kicking it as hard as she could, and it shattered.
Another came rushing, and she took careful aim as it approached, then launched a thick icicle through its head, and it slumped to the ground, dreadful un-life extinguished in an instant. Two more came, then, the last of this pack that she could see, and she jumped backwards before raising in front of them a solid wall of ice, which she then commanded to shatter and fly into them.
The sound of an explosion was her only warning, before a shadowy figure shot forwards from beyond her hail of ice, a razor-sharp tail plunging deep within her right shoulder. Bright agony overtook her, and she could barely see or think beyond the sudden pain. On reflex, and reflex alone, she froze the blood within the thing, and it fell to the ground, and she followed right after. She heard, then, through the haze, the approaching of more footsteps, and then, dimply, yelling, and then she saw no more.
---o---o---o---
Selicy awoke, startled and pained. She felt like she had just been stabbed, which, tiredly, she supposed she had been. She kept her eyes closed, then, and listened to her surroundings-- a fire, she heard and felt, was keeping her warm. She was on some sort of bedding, beneath which was concrete, or some other hard surface. She heard the wind howling, though it was muted, and, even through the fire and blanket settled over her, it was terrifically cold. Cold, she knew well, was dangerous, even if it was often a relief to her-- her shoulder ached terribly under what felt to be thick bandaging. She heard, approaching, a set of metal-clad footsteps.
She opened her eyes, and looked towards the source of the sound. She tried lifting herself on her arm to sit up, but, at a sharp, burning pain, she lay back down, only to succeed with her other arm a second later.
She saw, walking towards her grim-faced and bearing a red box, the girl with the shield she had fought a week ago. Her armor was worn and pockmarked, and Selicy, with grim satisfaction and a note of regret, remembered contributing to its sorry state in that dreadful duel. She had let her live, of course, as she had everyone she ran into on this hell-bound crusade.
The other girl caught her eyes. Hers were a brilliant emerald, and her armor, somehow, matched them perfectly, and her hair was the color of young plants in spring. Selicy looked at her a moment, then closed her eyes, and lay her head back down upon the bedding.
"Thank you for saving me," she said, quietly. She heard the weak crackle of the fire and felt the chill it could not dispel.
She heard the footsteps approach, and, when they reached her, the sounds of the other girl kneeling down in her armor. A soft metallic clank and the sounds of a latch being opened followed thereafter.
"May I touch you?" asked a soft voice, one that Selicy had only heard twice before, and never this gentle.
"Why do you care?" she replied.
"I cannot help it." she heard, and then a pause. "You let me live when you could have taken all that I was. Not many would do that, these days. May I touch you to change you bandages?"
Selicy drew in upon herself a little, and nodded, saying nothing. She heard the girl remove her gauntlets, and place them gently on the ground, and then she felt a delicate touch on her shoulder, which disappeared as soon as it came. The sound of cloth being unwound by deft hands came next, and then she felt herself being prodded to sit up, and a hand braced her back as she did so, guarding her somewhat through the agonizing twinges that shot through her body.
She shivered, then, as the bandages were unwound, and her skin exposed to the frigid air. She, Selicy, Queen of the North, shivered in the cold. That more than aught let her know how narrowly she had evaded the end of her foolish dream.
"You are healing well. The blood has stopped, at least." Selicy heard the stained cloth being set aside, and then felt those same deft hands wind fresh bandages about her chest and shoulder. She shivered again, and, when she felt the bandages were tight and secured, laid back down onto the bedding that she still lay in, and covered herself again with the blanket.
"Thank you," she said, quietly, barely hearing herself above the loud gales just outside, and she cleared her throat, and opened her eyes. The girl was putting her gauntlets back on, despite how cold they must be in the arctic air. Her brilliant green eyes were looking at her with a deep and unfamiliar concern. "Where are we?" she asked, somewhat louder.
"Some sort of abandoned building," the other girl spoke. "I do not know enough about this place to say what its purpose was before. A warehouse, perhaps." She stood, then, and walked to the other side of the fire, and sat down far too quietly for a girl wearing that much armor.
"Thank you," she repeated, though louder this time. "My name is Selicy. You didn't need to help me."
"Of course I did," said the girl. "My name is Reva.” The girl-- Reva-- paused, and the added quite all-at-once as one who had thought of this quite often, “There are so many people that need help in this world. Of course I would help any that I can. And one so merciful and kind especially."
Selicy looked away from Reva, and flushed a little, and drank in the bare walls and flickering light of the fire. A metal door set in one wall, presumably the portal to the unforgiving environs beyond the room, and a hallway leading into darkness on the opposite side.
"Reva,” she said eventually, slowly, taking the weight of the name. “ It’s good to meet you properly.”
“I am sorry that it took your injury. I did not want to startle you, but I felt that you would need my help sometime before the end."
"The end? End of what?"
"Your journey to Eden, of course. The only end left in this world besides death."
Selicy drew a sharp breath, then. "You want in too, then, Reva?"
The response was hesitant, and quiet, and Selicy could only hear, "... to protect." Louder, then, came, "I do not know. Perhaps I should go in, if I am able." Quieter again-- "I do not know."
“No-one would blame you if you did. I wouldn’t keep you from coming along, either.”
“It is not-- I do not know if there is a place for me, there, in Eden. I am-- this world is damaged, and so am I.”
“Hell, Reva, I think we’re all damaged one way or another.”
Selicy looked at Reva again, and saw her hunched shoulders, her tired and blood-shot eyes, the bags under them looking almost as bad if not worse than her own. Reva's skin was dry and red from the cold, and she looked just as on the edge of collapse as Selicy felt.
She looked around to room again, and saw no other bedding on the cold floor. She looked at Reva, and felt sad, and yearning, and lonely, as lonely as she had felt since the world had ended. And here across the fire from her was a truly kind girl, who had, with seemingly no regard for her well-being, ensured her own.
"How long has it been since you slept?" she asked, with as much kindness as she could muster.
"You do not need to worry about me," she received in reply, fast and well-rehearsed.
"Of course I do," she said. "You should-- That is, with the both of us--" she trailed off, and paused, and listened to the steady crackles of the dying fire and the keening cries of the hungry wind. Reva seemed content to wait, studying her intently.
"We should share the bedding," she said, finally, breaking her gaze from Reva. "This far North, we can keep out the cold better together."
Mercifully-- cruelly-- Reva didn't say anything immediately. Selicy felt herself grow warm-- warmer than she already was, and she flushed, and lowered her gaze further, and she began to crease the blanket. She heard, then, the clank of metal joints, and she saw Reva stand, and her hands went to work the tight straps on her armor. Selicy looked away, then, and studied quite carefully the patterns of weaving in the blanket, and the material of the bandages she wore, and the state of her own now-tattered clothing, and--
She heard the last piece of armor being placed on the ground, and the padding of bare feet as they approached her. The rustle of cloth, and the soft crackling of the dying flame, and the loud, loud, loud and demanding howl of the irreverent world beyond.
And then, a voice, so soft, from above her: "May I touch you?" And she nodded, and opened her eyes, and there was Reva, clad in worn and well-loved clothing, mended countless times by the stitches in their fabric, and she was beautiful, and real, and she radiated a warmth Selicy had long shunned and feared. And Reva laid down by her, and, tentatively, hugged her, ever-mindful of her torn shoulder, and they settled into the bedding on the cold concrete floor by the weak embers of a dying fire in the last remnants of a dead world.
And Selicy, for once in her life, felt, instead of horrified by warmth, comforted, and she held back her tears as best she could, and sniffled. And she said, quietly, "My name isn't Selicy."
And she heard again that soft, measured voice so close to her, behind her, say just as quietly, "And mine was not Reva."
And she nodded, silent, and settled into the bedding and the embrace, and let sleep reclaim her.