The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story (IBF Part 6.5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

point in the old ballroom floors, tries to set aside his anxieties, and tries to feel the truth .
    Someone starts to say something. Bohdi’s dimly aware of one of Steve’s ghostly arms lifting and then there is silence.
    He takes a deep breath. Creation and Destruction, the two sides of Chaos, always find each other and are often oddly in-sync even when they are apart. Hoenir and Loki both decided to incarnate as humans at nearly the same time without consulting one another. He usually has some idea if Amy needs him, and vice versa.
    His hands tighten around the rifle. He can’t clear away his anxieties — all he feels is terror. He doesn’t know if it is real — maybe it is just the reality of his wife and daughter being marooned on a primitive realm with raping, murdering, cannibalistic savages. His jaw grinds … truth doesn’t matter. He looks up at Steve. “Send me. Just me. It will be dangerous for the rest.”
    Steve nods, and Bohdi walks toward the platform.
    Hsu strides next to him. “Sir, all intel indicates the Lemurlike are violent; however in our armor — ”
    Bohdi thrusts the rifle he is carrying at Hsu; it will just get in the way. The Einherjar stammers. “Don’t you need this—and armor?”
    “No,” says Steve. “He doesn’t.”
    Bohdi is at the top of the final step, reaching into his pocket when Steve says, “Give him your headpiece, Hsu.”
    And that is a good idea—Bohdi doesn’t have a phone, after all. Turning, he takes the small electronic-magical gizmo from Hsu and slips it behind his ear.
    As Hsu backs away, Steve says, from the bottom of the steps. “Do what you need to do.”
    Steve’s jaw is hard. And Bohdi knows what he means. The third, most enduring, most vulnerable, and maybe most valuable member of the trinity must be saved. All other lives are secondary.
    Amy would hate it if she heard them discuss it like that.
    “Thank you,” says Bohdi.
    Steve nods. Bohdi tightens his hand around the marble and is enveloped in rainbow light.
    x x x x
    Once, Amy was a slow runner, but that was before she was a magical. Focusing her magic on her muscles, bones, and sinews, she moves with the silence and agility of a deer. Hopping over fallen trees and rocky terrain, she lands with nearly catlike stealth; Durga’s weight in her arms is the only thing making her slightly unbalanced.
    Durga whimpers and some Lemurlikes call, “There in the trees.”
    Amy focuses and drops silence around them, but it’s hard to maintain while simultaneously keeping them invisible and moving so quickly.
    Amy calls up a memory of the terrain from above … does she run toward the savanna or the sea? She could survive underwater, but she won’t have the energy to keep Durga alive in the depths—especially if they attract carnivorous sea life. At least on the savanna she’ll be able to run. She picks the savanna and veers west, Durga still whimpering in her arms.
    “Broken twigs! Went this way!” she hears one say behind her. “I smell them,” says another. Amy swears and runs faster. Hoots rise from behind and also in front of her. The tribe she was just observing is calling a neighboring tribe. They’re preparing to kill cooperatively.
    She bites her lip and pulls Durga’s tiny frame closer — she can feel her tiny heart beating against hers. Amy can raise the dead, and she can’t die — but she can be injured. If Durga is killed and her body goes cold or is hopelessly mangled while Amy is injured, her daughter will be lost for her forever. She hears hunters up ahead, behind, and to her right and left. She isn’t Bohdi or Steve, she cannot walk the In Between, even if she can create World Gates, raise armies of the dead, cause evolution with a thought, and, by her very presence, fuels scientific discoveries of all kinds.
    “Bohdi,” she murmurs. He hates this place, was always warning her about it and the Lemurlikes … they are murdering, raping, cannibalistic savages … she had tried