We floated above the horn of the African continent near the very tip of it next to what was once the Gulf of Aden some centuries ago. The landmass, once verdant with crystalline blue-green waves and sandy shores had become a pock-marked mass of dug in fortifications huddled like small turtles against a scorching sky nestled against a wine-dark sea.

Pulsefire rained upward like rays of liquid light punctuated with eerie humming implosions of the QEVs blotting out portions of the sky. I looked right and a QEV erupted into the erasure of a large portion of the formation some hundred yards away, and I felt their loss through the coordinator’s bond like the loss of myself, the power blooming in me in whipping tendrils of light to grasp people away from different paths, curing blast wounds, and missing limbs.

To call the fall carnage would be an understatement, a poor pretender to the massive mix of all that was in the sky. The noise, the fire, the shadow, the flood of sorrow and agony, the exhilaration of survival, the draw of the power on the very limits of my own soul and the resonance of power between us.

Yet in that fall, in the utter madness and relentless harrowing, I felt a strong hand upon my arm, and turned to see my father – wreathed in flame, smiling with delight. He opened his mouth to speak, but I could not hear – his own gravmag suit and comms erased by the power of his flash. He gripped me hard and I felt the pulse, the strange weightiness of the transition from matter to light and back, and suddenly we stood upon the beach. He hugged me tightly and spoke in a hurry, “My love and light, my Daria.”

“Baba!” I started to take my helmet off, but he held my wrists and shook his head.

“Not yet, my little light. Soon, should he will it.” And with a shimmer and flash he fired into the sky. My eyes followed him and saw the intersecting flashes of a hundred lightrunners, burning through their power to carry the remaining sons and daughters from the sky straight to the earth through the maelstrom of the fight, burning away the void zones. They seemed to tear apart the very sky in their dazzling display opening it to the light of the sun above. Soon, though many were lost, the brunt of our force was on the ground and the coordinator’s pull drew us into groups.

I thought to resist it, eyes straining back and forth looking for my father amid the rays of light-empowered movement. The pressure of his pull became too great, as well as the sense of need in the direction inland. I grit my teeth against it and kept looking for him. Another pulse shook me within, a deep need was near, and the power rippled across my skin. I was running before I knew it.

I was not alone, never alone. Sons surrounded me as I moved, called to me by the coordinator’s tug. We cleared a rise, and I heard a frantic voice on the other side.

“Thank the flame. A Deathslayer!” The son’s suit was still intact but he trembled like a man possessed holding on to the battered remains of what could hardly be called a person. He was not the only one. A chorus of shouts greeted me as I came into view, each calling with deep need. It pained me to run passed any who needed aid but the power guided me directly to a place in the middle right of the formation where the bulk of the injured were.

“Gather them to me,” I shouted as I ran, not sure who all would hear. Hundreds it seemed flocked and moved. Lightrunners gathered some fallen, and protectors erected shields of force. I did not stop, but the power within me reached out with flaming hands and knit bone to marrow to joint, staunched bleeding, opened airways, restored limbs. I grew weaker with each step, yet stronger as well.  It was only then I pondered what was missing. Where is the enemy?

#

It took some time to regroup, but I was not the only one who realized the strange absence of further assault. No pulsefire, no more QEVs, just the sounds of screaming, the call for healers, the frantic movement of the lightrunners, and the collective pull of the coordinator for us to gather in our tens and hundreds, spread out so as not to be fodder for a single munition.

More deathslayers showed and lightened my burden, blessedly, though these I did not recognize. None older than myself. The power is not ours, but the passthrough seems to affect us. We are vessels, and the vessels crack and break, like Sephina did. So much can pour through that we are broken entirely, and the very power which heals and brings life can break us – and eventually will. I have heard of deathslayers fleeing, abandoning their posts, and the light, suppressing the cry within them to bring life. It is hard not to hate them nor to envy them.

As I worked my way through on a man whose stomach was half-torn away by a pulse blast, my gut wrenched and I could hardly keep myself from vomiting. I restored another’s arm which was entirely lost, and another man’s eyesight, blackened by the energy shrapnel of a shield bursting apart in blinding flashes. With each new use of the power I felt heavier, weaker, agony of my own – not merely for what I had given, but what more I knew I would have to give. The coordinator’s connection did not let me rest. I knew there was much more, but this conduit was reaching its breaking point.

I could see it in my sisters too. Seven of us with the power wandered through to the care of hundreds. Where their portion of the power resonated, they would heal more readily, but some would not heal at all. Their screams haunt me most. Begging me to do something, as the power through me healed ones on either side, but not them.

One man cursed me to my face screaming that he should be next, but when I reached for him the power recoiled to another. I looked pleadingly to my sister deathslayer whose name I did not even know, but she simply shook her head her own light fading and shoulders hunched in barely-resisted weight.

Still no fresh assault came. And as the healthy among us grew with each passing minute, the deathslayers faded into near catatonia. The rest of the tale is difficult to tell. I held my hands to the crushed ribs of a man who had taken a hard fall from the dive, his suits gravmag system failing when torn from him by the edge of a void zone. His faceshield was a cracked mosaic leaving the bottom half open to the air and showing split lips and shattered jaw. He whispered thank you through pained breaths as the power poured from me, and I felt a splitting agony in my own head.  I collapsed in the dust with my last vision his smile, jaw reset, lips healed, breathing steadied.

#

              I awoke in familiar arms, every muscle complaining of its use, my head drumming with weight. I opened my eyes to the smiling face of my father, and above him stood the Colonel. I thought it was a dream.

              “Baba,” I whispered, and my vision swam. I could not hear his reply. Though I did hear the voice of another saying rest Deathslayer, your work is not yet done.