BULAN STARED UP IN confusion.
Krushita hung in midair, high above the wagon train. Her body pulsed with energy, great snaking bolts and jagged edges like shards of blue lightning. They felt their skin prickle with the sensation. The energy was like something in the old tales.
They turned to look at the charging dromad lines. They were only a few hundred yards from the wagon train now. In moments, they would be in throwing range, and it would be the beginning of the end. Bulan was not afraid of dying. They were a warrior born and bred; dying while facing impossible odds was an honorable end. They regretted that Krushita had lost her mother so horribly, that she had not been given a chance to avenge that death. That was unbearable. Bulan had come to love the woman in a way that could not easily be expressed in either Vanjhani or Aqrish, something more than friendly affection and perhaps just short of romantic love. They felt the pain of her loss keenly, almost as keenly as they had once felt the anguish of losing their own mate and offspring.
Suddenly the energy in the sky grew deafeningly loud. It boomed and vibrated like a living thing.
The dromad lines were slowing, despite the forward momentum of their charge. They would not stop in time before they reached the wagons, but the dromads were unsettled, scared by the unaccustomed energy building in the sky.
Bulan felt their ears throbbing, their bones screaming with sensation.
They tried to look up.
Krushita was enveloped in a cloud of blue light so intense, so bright, it was a miniature sun.
Bulan blinked as they tried to see clearly.
They thought they could make out the silhouette of another person in that cloud, beside Krushita, holding hands with her.
A man.
That was impossible.
Or was it?
Whatever was happening here was the stuff of legends and myths. Fit for a campfire tale. A good one.
Bulan watched the sky, no longer caring about the charging army or the sharp-edged steel that they expected to feel tearing their flesh at any moment. The only thing that mattered was what Krushita was doing. Krushita and whoever the other person was who was aiding her.
Then the desert was blanketed by a blinding flash so intense that Bulan felt their vision go completely dark.
Blinded, they sat down. Their hands opened, and their weapons fell out.
That had never happened before.
They felt stunned, bludgeoned by the explosion.
Not one caused by fire or conflagrating oil in barrels.
But an explosion of pure power.
Eventually, their vision and hearing returned, and Bulan saw two things. There were many more things to be seen: such as the fact that the entire wagon train was still intact and everyone still alive. But that was beside the point, to Bulan at least, although probably not to Krushita. It was a happy consequence of what she had done.
The two things that were to the point:
Dirrdha’s army had vanished completely. Not a single dromad or warrior remained. Only the fading sand cloud and a broad hoof-churned expanse of hoofprints that marked the charge of the army up to a point several dozen yards from the wagon train.
Krushita was gone too.
As was the silhouette Bulan had seen beside her in the sky.