Phoenix by Finley Aaron Page A

beheading those closest to the door.
    But even as he does so, a dozen more pour in behind those.
    I’m slicing with my swords as swiftly as I can, but we’re outnumbered.
    So vastly outnumbered.
    “We’ve got to work together!” I shout, swinging my blades, decapitating yagi two at a time, kicking their bodies back, trying to push the swarm aside.
    But my brother only grunts as he shoves back a wall of dead yagi bodies, their stunted necks spewing the oily neurotoxin that serves as their blood. He has to be the hero, doesn’t he? He just assumes my plans are broken, like everything else I touch.
    Nia’s safety is at stake. This is no time for his ego or my rampant failure. I just have to try harder, to overcome my inherent tendency toward failure.
    I focus my efforts on the point closest to the door, but they’ve already filled in between us, cutting us off from each other, cutting us off from the door. I lunge, swords swinging, trying to get to that windowed slab before the yagi reach it. Can yagi work a door knob? Are their hands that dexterous? Mostly their defenses are the rapier-like antennae on their heads, which aren’t quite as long as our reach with our swords, so we don’t worry about them too much.
    Their most dangerous part are the spines on the undersides of their limbs, which contain a venom that’s potently deadly. It killed my grandmother. It killed my parents’ dog, and apparently killed the one-armed dragon Nia met.
    So I’m trying to stay out of the reach of those venomous barbs, which is tricky the thicker they mob us. And I’m working to stay clear of their antennae, as well. The trick is to keep moving, to keep a yagi-free circle around me, killing them four or five feet from my body, keeping them at kicking distance or further away. But more than any of those things, I’m trying to get to the door before they get it open.
    I can hardly see the door now, though it’s less than ten feet from me. The yagi block my view too thickly, and my eyes are stinging from the vapors of their dead, and my own sweat streaming down my forehead.
    “The door!” I shout, though I can’t see my brother anymore, either.
    I hear his voice, his tone condemning me from beyond the mob of yagi. “If you’d have stayed down there—”
    “Then what? You’d have been overwhelmed that much sooner!” I spear another yagi through the neck, but my hands are getting weak from the relentless fighting. My sword sticks, lodged in the thick exoskeleton.
    I tug the sword by its handle, simultaneously kicking the yagi back, pulling my blade free.
    But in the time it took me to free my sword, the yagi moved into my circle. They’re close now, more than rapier-antennae-close.
    Too close for me to use my blades in the manner I’m accustomed to.
    I hack at the nearest one, kicking in the other direction, overwhelmed. Ram was right, and I knew it when he said it, in spite of my protest. I should have stayed down there with Nia, or awakened her, or something. I did the worst possible thing I could have done, which was to leave her unprotected, asleep, when I knew the yagi were surrounding us.
    I didn’t mean to endanger her. I was only trying to help. It’s my broken touch, the anti-Midas-golden-touch, the curse of my breaking things.
    I thrust my guilt-driven swords at the yagi, hating what I’ve done, the very thing I vowed I wouldn’t do. Of all the things I never wanted to break, Nia is the most precious.
    Through eyes nearly blinded by stinging vapor and sweat, I see something from the direction of the door.
    Something silver, like the blade of a sword. Are the yagi armed?
    But no, the creatures fall away from my side nearest the door. I step into the gap, finally able to swing my blade. I kill two more before I can spare another glance that way.
    Silver blades cut through the swarm. Two long swords.
    I behead two more yagi and spin again.
    Ram is nearly to my back. The yagi have fallen away from him, as well.