Marisol had not always been a healer. She has taken life, and she has saved lives. Long ago, she had been known as Marisol the Freezing Blade of the Frostsprite, the falcon of the Winter Castle. Her name had been whispered in war camps, sworn in curses, and praised in hushed admiration. Her sword arm was as famed as her knowledge of herbs.
But tonight, as the door shuddered open under the invaders' relentless blows, she was simply a mother.
"Took me a long time to make that door." She thought, almost absently. It had been a good door of sturdy oak, reinforced with iron. Strong enough to keep out wolves but not men.
With a clear mind, she stood waiting at the center of the cottage, her back to the hearth. Her breathing was steady despite the agony in her lungs. The air was thick with the scent of burning wood, a familiar comfort, though nothing about this night was comforting.
A layer of frost started to build up on her right side the more she steadied her breath. She began chanting, a slow chant reminding her of her past glories:
"Falcon's breath on winter's spine,
Edge of dawn, this blood is mine,
Where my longsword once sang clear,
Shadowed Blade draws winter near.
Frost-veined, the hearth fire dies,
Ash to ice, my right hand lies,
Crown of hoar frost, cracked and thin,
Bind the wound I fight within.
By the oath, my fathers swore,
By the steel, I wield no more,
Cold rise slow, and bite thy fill...
(She coughs blood: the ice that was building in her right side stalls, it is fragile, weak.)
...This short steel forgets the hill
Where my true blade shattered still."
In her hands, she clutched not a tincture or a poultice, but a short curved sword she'd hidden for years beneath the floorboards away from the touch of Ewan, its hilt wrapped in linen, its edge still sharp enough to split moonlight.
"It is a miracle it hadn't become rusty after all these years."
But as she turned it in her grip, something sour curled in her stomach. It wasn't her sword. Not really. It was too light, too short, too... thin. She had wielded longswords and greatswords; blades meant to cleave through bodies, meant to shatter shields, meant to end lives in a single arc. She had known the sweet, terrible joy of swinging steel and feeling the ice in her veins bloom outward, a gift attributed to her bloodline, an ancient power that had made her a legend.
Now, the thin and cracked frost creeping across her skin was nothing but a dying echo of what once was. Her gift had faded. The years had softened her. The short blade forgot. The spell unraveled, incomplete.
The door splintered with a final, deafening crack.
Marisol exhaled, steady. The hearth behind her cast long shadows against the walls, and she shifted her stance, feet planting firm against the floorboards. No more hesitation. No more regret.
Clicking her tongue. "But this would do."
The door exploded inward.
Several men spilled into the room, too many to count in the moment, armor clanking, their breath reeking of ale and bloodlust. Marisol studied them with a practiced gaze. Everything about them reeked of incompetence. Their breathing was unsteady, their armor ill-fitted and rusted. Their weapons were crude, their stances careless. They moved like men who had never known true battle, only drunken brawls and back-alley stabbings.
Not professionals.
This stank of Varian's schemes.
The leader, a hulking brute with a scarred face and a long axe - an absurd choice in such a confined space, grinned as he spotted her.
"So this is the famous Marisol. The myth? You don't look very good there."
She said nothing. Her eyes flicked to the bronze bell on the table. A lovely thing, old and heavy. More than just a decoration. It was a distraction. It was an opening.
She smiled.
"Look at me when I'm talking!" The brute stepped forward, raising his axe, the edge catching the firelight.
She struck the bell with the flat of her blade.
A pure, piercing note rang out, deafening, rattling the jars on the shelves. The men reeled, clutching their ears, momentarily blinded by sound.
Marisol moved like a storm.
Her heart pounded - not with fear, but with exhilaration. It had been too long.
The brute recovered first, his stance wide, axe poised, but his feet were wrong. Uneven. Knees stiff. Weight was poorly distributed. This was not the way.
His swing was hollow, a shadow without substance.
The only thing he struck were the rafters. The axe bit into the wood, sending brittle rosemary leaves fluttering like dead moths. With all that muscle, he couldn't even break them. Pathetic.
Power does not come from the arms alone. It is born in the hips, fueled by the core, and released through the weapon.
What are you fighting for?
She sidestepped, silent as the snowfall, her bare feet whispering over the groaning floorboards. One quick slash to the hamstring.
The brute crumpled, howling.
Before he could draw another breath, she drove her sword upward through his jaw. He spasmed, eyes wide one last cry, then went still. Men always cried when they fought her.
Blood sprayed the hanging rosemary, the scent of earth and pine now steeped in iron.
Dead.
The second attacker, a wiry man with a club, swung wildly for her head.
Marisol ducked, her knees nearly giving out, and grabbed the nearest jar. The nightshade tincture shattered at his feet. He screamed as the poison burned his eyes.
She ended him with a clean thrust to the throat.
The third and fourth came together; a pockmarked youth with a spear and a bald thug with a cleaver.
Marisol staggered, breath ragged, her vision blurring. The cleaver caught her shoulder, hot pain blooming down her arm. She crashed against the hearth, her hand closing around a fistful of searing embers.
She hurled them.
The burning ash met flesh.
They howled, momentarily blind, and she surged forward. One strike to the gut, twisting the blade deep into the bald man's core. A second, faster than breath, slashing open the youth's femoral artery.
Both fell, gurgling, their blood pooling across the wooden floor.
The fifth one - just a boy, not much older than Ewan, stood frozen in the doorway. His knife shook in his grip.
"P-please," he stammered.
Marisol swayed where she stood, her own blood dripping from the wound on her shoulder. She should kill him.
But she saw his hands - small, unscarred. His eyes were wide, terrified.
"Leave." Her voice was hoarse, ragged. "Now."
The boy fled.
But before he reached the door ...
A flicker.
A whisper of motion.
The boy fell to his knees, a severed head rolling across the floorboards.
Someone else was there.
Silence settled, broken only by Marisol's ragged breaths. Blood dripped from her fingers, pooling beneath the bodies. Her sword slipped from her grip, clattering against the floor. She slumped against the wall, her vision swimming.
They hadn't known about Ewan. Not yet.
But they would.
Outside, hoofbeats thundered.
The ruined door groaned as it opened once more. A man stepped inside. Tall. Cloaked. His boots crunched over broken glass, deliberate and unhurried. Unlike the others, he moved with precision, his presence shifting the air itself. His gaze swept the carnage, then found her.
"Too late," she thought.
"You've aged, Falcon." His voice was smooth as oiled steel, familiar as an old wound.
Marisol spat blood at his feet. "Still prettier than you, Varian."
He smirked. The same smirk she remembered from their winter campaigns and dying men. He ignored her quip, his gloved fingers trailing across the oak table, brushing the symbols etched along its edges; whorls of frost etched that looked like a child's doodles she had carved absentmindedly. His eyes glanced the markings of height each winter along the doorframe, and the wooden toy horse peeking out from beneath the sheepskin rug.
A shift. A calculation.
"You bore a child."
Marisol held his gaze. Said nothing.
Varian crouched, peeling back the rug. He picked up the toy, turning it between his fingers. "A son, judging by his obsession." His head tilted slightly, considering. "How old? Ten? Twelve?"
Marisol moved.
A desperate lunge for her sword.
Varian caught her wrist in a vice grip. A snap.
Pain, white-hot, lanced up her arm as her wrist shattered. She screamed, but it twisted into a raw - breathless laugh.
"You're too late," she rasped, slumping against him. "He's gone."
Varian smiled, cold as the northern wind. "No, Marisol. He won't reach anywhere. We'll hunt him. We'll peel the forest apart, root by root. And when we find him ... "
She headbutted him.
Bone cracked.
Varian staggered, blood streaming from his nose, his grip slipping just enough. Marisol twisted free, stumbling toward the hearth. Her ruined wrist hung useless, but her good hand shot up, ripping down the dried bundle of thistle and foxbane strung above the fire.
She turned, eyes burning, breath heaving.
"Burn," she hissed.
The bundle hit the flames.
The cottage exploded.
Green fire roared to life, swallowing the rafters, the walls, everything she had built. Smoke thickened, choking the air. Varian swore, retreating, his cloak snapping in the rising heat.
Marisol collapsed, coughing, fingers clawing at the loose stone beneath the hearth.
There.
A small wooden bird. Its wings were whittled by Ewan's small hands, shaped with love.
She clutched it to her chest as the flames took her.