* * *
She awoke to the sensation of falling. Her head was filled with blinding pain. She could feel the ground beneath her stomach, though for some reason she felt as if she were floating above it, not pulled towards it by the force of her weight. Something was tugging at her foot, grinding against her ankle through the leather of her boot. Consciousness seemed to flow through her fingers like sand. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
Chaos reigned all around her.
The cliffs were gone. The ground beneath her was the same ground she had been walking on when last she had been aware. Her leg had been swallowed nearly halfway up her thigh. This much Sandrena's mind could understand, if vaguely. Everything else...
Gone were the red-hued but otherwise normal clouds that had filled the sky before she fell. Liquid clouds of blood, like those in her last dream, swirled around her maddeningly, as if the sky were spinning. Flashes of red lightning danced between them.
A few feet in any direction from where her leg was trapped, the ground was sheared off, as if her little piece of canyon floor had been ripped out of the earth and sent flying through a nightmare.
Sandrena realized, as she saw other chunks of the canyon wall and floor careening about, seemingly as weightless as she felt, that that was exactly what had happened.
Pulse racing, she slammed her eyes shut. No. This isn't real. This isn't happening. Just a dream again. The ground doesn't just explode and float through the air. Clouds don't look like that. This is just the Madding Shores, wearing at me. This is all just an illusion, a trick of the mind. This isn't real.
She opened her eyes, hoping, expecting...
But the world did not go back to normal.
Sandrena gritted her teeth, gathering whatever fortitude that remained within her. She couldn't help what she was seeing. It didn't matter that it didn't make sense to her; it was still there. It was what she had to deal with as best she could.
Taking a deep calming breath, she studied the situation.
"Okay," she said, grateful for the sound of her own voice. "The ground is gone, and my leg is trapped in a piece of it. The clouds—" She closed her eyes briefly; she wasn't ready to deal with that yet. She opened them again. "Other bits of the ground are flying through the air. That wasn't in my dream... Motherspear—"
Motherspear was in her hand. She had held it through her unconsciousness and all this madness. Her grip on it tightened. It felt like a lifeline to sanity.
"The others... the Lady. Where are they?" Frowning, she glanced in every direction she could from her awkward position, searching for flecks of white in the endless tumult of red.
Nothing. No sign of any of her Sisters or the Lady. Despair filled her. She was alone.
No. She squinted, cursing her eyesight, as she caught sight of something floating toward her, something white.
Her eyes widened in shock as she realized what it was.
Dormaun, floating through space, a peaceful smile on her lips, hair rippling out behind her, eyes closed in seeming bliss.
Everything below her torso was gone. A ragged mess of pale innards spilled out, spraying globules of white blood through the sky.
Sandrena screamed. Tears did not roll down her cheeks, but outwards, no longer feeling gravity's pull. Even they were white, like Dormaun's blood.
She was too late for Dormaun. Were the others dead, too? Had it all been for nothing? Had she come to start caring for these women only to see them butchered before her eyes?
The tugging on her ankle became more insistent.
In a fit of fury, Sandrena stabbed Motherspear into the phantom ground that trapped her leg.
She heard sizzling, then a pop. A rattle of chains falling away, and then her leg was free.
She started to float away from her chunk of earth.
"That was poorly considered," she muttered as she watched it shrink in her field of vision. Oh well. Nothing to be done for it now. And it hadn't been doing her much good anyway.
Sandrena now had to deal with the problem of moving herself. She tried swimming through the air, to no effect. She would probably have to wait until she reached another errant chunk of rock, and push off of it in the direction she wanted to go.
But where did she want to go? She had no idea if direction even meant anything here, or at least anything useful.
A line of black shooting through the air caught her attention. She realized immediately what it was—a living chain. It was headed towards something. Sandrena followed its intended path with her eyes.
And saw a human form missing a left arm. Poised with a knife in its hand.
Semorie. Still alive.
Again, Sandrena tried to swim toward her, cursing the futility of it when she only seemed to thrash around in place. It reminded her of a time underwater, trying to swim, failing—
Something grabbed Sandrena's wrist.
She spun, whirling Motherspear to prepare for a killing thrust.
But it wasn't one of the chains that held her wrist. The Lady's silver eyes stared into her own, filled with relief.
Sandrena collapsed into her embrace, sobbing wildly. "Oh, Lady. You're alive."
The Lady stroked her hair. "Yes, for now. We must go. The god awaits us. He will not stop killing our sisters until he is dead."
Sandrena pushed back to look at the Lady's face. "Semorie—"
"Will have to fend for herself now."
"But I thought I needed them. How can I defeat the god without them?"
"There's no time. Come."
Sandrena glanced back at Semorie. She could barely make out the chain, which swirled around her, attacking from every direction. Semorie was handling it, if only barely. Sandrena doubted she would last long.
But then the image of the battle fell away. Sandrena was moving.
Or rather, was being pulled along by the Lady. She didn't know how it was happening, but the Lady didn't seem to have any problems moving through this world. One of the advantages of being one of Berahmain's divine agents, Sandrena supposed.
She watched Semorie fall away out of view. Helpless again. Tears drifted away from Sandrena's face once more.
She glanced back the Lady, pulling her along by the hand. The Lady's eyes were fixed forward, drawn to some destination which Sandrena could not see. The Lady's posture, still though it was, was clenched in purpose. Like a general facing a superior force, knowing that death on the battlefield was the best she could hope for now. Yet facing that fate nonetheless.
Sandrena knew how that felt. She had done the same that day at the pond. Because doing nothing is sometimes worse than death.
She gave the Lady's hand a squeeze. The Lady did not look back, but returned the squeeze in kind.
Sandrena knew then, like she knew that day at the pond, that she would be willing to die to save her.
She just hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sandrena saw a shadow racing along the clouds of blood. She couldn't tell what cast the shadow. Her heart gave a lurch. She knew, suddenly, what she was seeing. Four more shadows appeared around them, then raced on to meet at some distant point directly ahead of Sandrena and the Lady.
"He comes," whispered the Lady. Her grip tightened on Sandrena's hand.