It’s official!  My Patreon is now live!  To check it out, click on the image above, or right here.  Fully realizing what a long shot this is, I’m super excited I took this step.  Because beyond anything else, this will push me to start writing and releasing new fiction every week.

And in that light, here’s the final piece of my short story, Mortal Wounds.  If you’re just arriving, catch up the with the previous chapters below, then enjoy the ending.  And thanks for reading.

“Mortal Wounds” Part 1

“Mortal Wounds” Part 2

“Mortal Wounds” Part 3

“Mortal Wounds” Part 4

“Mortal Wounds” Part 5

Accepting of my own death.  The words frightened Jali.  If she died, Hanni would have no family.  She would have to live on sufferance among the other villagers.

The orne took another step back.

A sigh of relief almost escaped Jali’s throat.

“I am not mortal, but nor am I weak.”  The creature spoke softly, with none of his usual cackling and chattering.  “We had a deal, even if you did not agree to the terms out loud.  So I take it back.”

Her skin prickled.  Slow heat built in her ankle, rising to a burn as bubbles of pearly liquid burst from her skin and flew to him.  Then her ankle shattered.

The orne’s scream drowned out hers.

Jali sobbed as her leg gave out, and she dropped to her knees.  The orne writhed on the ground, his foot a mangled mess.  Because he had taken his magic back.

He had broken their connection, leaving Jali with no power.  And any second, he might heal.  Stomach roiling, she dragged herself toward him.  She understood pain.  She understood mortality.  It frightened him.  It was too much for him, despite his words.

He let her get close.

Jali lunged and thrust her knife into his back.

The creature roared, a sound far deeper than she would have imagined him making.  She threw all her weight on to the knife, dragged it down, even as her vision blackened.  Colored lights danced over her eyes as the world swam in and out of focus.  Still, she gripped her knife.  She embraced the pain to keep her awake.

The orne writhed, tried to buck her off.  Nails gouged Jali’s arms, ripped her skin.  She held on, fingers so tight, she thought she would have to break them to let go.  She twisted the blade, and shoved it deeper.  The orne keened, the sound weaker, softer.  His hands dropped away from Jali’s arms.

He collapsed, face forward into the ground.  Jali landed on his back with a grunt.  After a few seconds, he no longer moved.

The world spun around Jali as she forced herself up.  She jerked out the knife and hacked at the creature’s neck until his head came free.  Trembling, covered in blood and gore, she sat back and examined herself.

Her left foot had turned back into a crushed and mangled stump.  Deep gouges in her arms bled sluggishly.  Jali pressed her lips together to hold in her gorge and tended to her injuries.  Afterward, she wrapped the orne’s head in burlap and hung it from her pack.

She ate her meal and rested as best she could.  Her entire leg throbbed.  In the morning, she fashioned herself a walking stick from a branch.

The journey home took seven days, and Jali exhausted all her food and water by the fourth.

At the edge of her village, she waved to the men and women working the fields.  One woman ran off toward the village proper.

The elders met Jali on the single village road, expressions skeptical.  Several dozen villagers crowded behind them, many gaping at Jali’s leg.

Jali tugged the burlap free and sent the head tumbling across the ground toward their feet.  In the shocked silence that followed, Hanni burst from the crowd.

The little girl threw herself into Jali’s arms.  Jali bit back her cry and held her sister close, breathing in her sweet smell of wild flowers and lemon grass.  Wounded though she was, she had succeeded.  Hanni would be safe and not alone.

And wounds healed.