Chapter 251: Failure
Ashlynn’s world went black after she witnessed the damage to the Ancient Oak. As the world around her faded, she wondered if this counted as passing or failing the trial and if she would be taken to another vision after this. Instead of being greeted with a new vision, however, it seemed like this one wasn’t done with her yet.
"Ashlynn," a pained and grief-stricken voice said, piercing the darkness that enveloped her. "Lady Ashlynn, please wake up!"
"Thane?" Ashlynn asked, her voice weak and weary. "Thane, what’s..."
Before she could speak further, her eyes opened and she flinched back in horror from the man standing before her. Thane’s elegant and refined features had become hideous, twisted by ghastly burns that blackened his flesh and raised fluid-filled blisters across much of his flesh. His once soft, elegant flowing locks had been reduced to strands of charred and crumbling hair, clinging to his tortured scalp and one of his brilliant, amber eyes seemed to have ruptured as the fluid within the eyeball boiled.
"Thane!" Ashlynn gasped, her eyes instantly filling with tears. "Come here, let me help you," she said, forcing down the revulsion that twisted her stomach. Slowly, with trembling fingers, she reached out toward the scarred and ravaged former knight, her fingertips coming to a stop just inches from his tortured flesh.
"The living can’t heal the dead, Ashlynn," he said. Very little touched the vampire’s heart these days, but seeing the young woman he thought of as a little sister with such a pained expression on her face and knowing that it was the sight of his injuries that pained her gave him a moment of warmth unlike any he had felt in years. Enough that he could relax and say what must be said.
"Mistress needs you," Thane said, his voice harsh and strained. "Zedya has her, she... she will not survive without you."
"Nyrielle!" Thane’s tortured appearance had distracted her from something that should have been much more apparent. The echo of Nyrielle’s heartbeat within her chest had grown irregular and weak. Lurching to her feet, Ashlynn searched about the tent full of wounded and dying soldiers until she found Zedya’s equally burned and scarred form cradling a wounded Nyrielle.
"Nyrielle," Ashlynn repeated, staggering across the tent and dropping to her knees beside her wounded lover. Nyrielle’s wings had been all but consumed by flames, the once pristine, inky black feathers reduced to husks of crumbling ash. Her pale, alabaster flesh was slick with dark crimson blood that flowed from countless cuts and more than a dozen arrows were embedded in her flesh.