Back in the east end of the forest, the bodies of the first group's dead were growing cold. Well, most of them.
With a groan, a young Burmese man slid his arm beneath his body, tried to lift himself up. His dark hair clung to his face and neck in bloody clumps, and his limbs trembled. More blood stained his clothes, particularly across his back, which had been raked open. A demon with long claws, he thought, his head was fuzzy. Bracing himself, he pushed up, forcing himself to his knees, and then upright. He wavered as dizziness swept over him, but he just focused on his breathing and recovered.
He looked around, almost too tired to feel anything. He recognized some of the bodies. Minko. Lewis. Anastasia. The others were too badly mauled to identify. There were a few demon bodies scattered among them; at least they'd gone down fighting. All but him. Who'd have thought a scrawny little teenager like Kai could survive a battle that took out so many talented men and women?
What Kai wanted to do most was lie down and sleep, but he knew that would probably end up as his final sleep. He forced himself to think through the haze of pain. Had to get back to the Academy. Infirmary. Shelter. And he might have to keep fighting to get there alive. Where was his dha-shay? He looked around, spotted the sword gripped loosely in the hand of one of his fallen comrades. Must have taken it up after he went down. Kai started a slow crawl towards the sword.
As his fingers closed around the hilt, something white-hot scorched his hand, and he recoiled with a yelp of pain. What the--demon fire? There was something glinting in the corpse's palm. More cautiously this time, Kai grasped the lower hilt of his sword and slid it free. The gleaming thing was a small rosary, wound around the corpse's wrist. A small silver cross, splattered with blood, lay on the now-open palm.
Kai stared at the little necklace in disbelief. That couldn't have been what hurt him. He reached for it again--after all, he needed all the protection he could get--and again he felt a sudden searing pain in his fingers, as if he'd seized a sword right out of the forge. He closed his hand around the cross, jerking it free, and felt his skin burning. With a curse he let go, dropping the rosary into the turf. It smoked. There were bright, shiny red burns on his palm; the most prominent was in the shape of the cross.
"W-what?"