I'm not dead yet!
Seventh Chapter: Sparks
A redheaded woman stared out at the landscape blankly, her dark green, almost black eyes taking in the surroundings while seeing nothing.
Why the hell am I going back? She wondered, picking idly at the black roses she had embroidered on the sleeves of her denim jacket. It seemed lifetimes since she had returned home, and lifetimes since what had been done to her. It hadn't really been quite that long, of course. It merely seemed like forever. The emptiness inside of her seemed to pulse as the train drew inexorably closer to the one place on the entire continent that she had no desire to return to…
"What's a pretty little thing like you doing all alone?" a tall, stocky man with messily cut sandy hair and a shadow of a beard on his face asked, sitting far too close for comfort.
"I am not 'little', and I am alone because I wish to be so." 'Go Away' all but echoed in the train car with a near-physical presence, but the idiot either missed or ignored the hint. She scanned the car, and finding it empty briefly toyed with the idea of doing something… violent. But no, that was a bad idea, corpses always prompted annoying questions and paperwork these days, and it would take a baffling amount of effort to slip away unnoticed.
"You certainly seem little to me. Like a cute little dolly..." Well, maybe she was short. In her time period, she had been just slightly above average height, and people only seemed to get taller and taller as the years rolled by. However, simply because that was true did not mean that she wished to be called, 'dolly' by a total stranger. Or any other demeaning nickname, for that manner. And at no point in her life had anyone ever dared to call her 'cute' unless she had given them leave to do so.
"I am returning to the city for a funeral, I wish to be left alone," she said coldly. And she did look it. Other than her dark denim jacket, she was dressed entirely in black. But did the idiot back off? No, of course not. Why do the sensible thing when you can persist to make a jackass out of yourself?
"Hmm, that's a shame, maybe you need some… comforting…" And, like the total fool he was, he made a clumsy grab for her, which she tried to dodge, but his calloused hand, ran almost casually between her breasts…
He jumped back as something jolted his fingers. "What the hell…?"
The woman clamped down on her disgusted glare and traded the expression for a satisfied smirk as she swung out of her seat. She gave him a venomous glare and replied with a dark chuckle, "Oh, but it is hell, stupid man. I did warn you to leave me alone… behold the folly of Sadinra." She swept carelessly past him, seeking the comfort of a different car. She was going to have to get off at the next stop, there would be awkward questions if she remained…
The lout looked at his hand, the hand that had touched something hard that had shocked him where there should only have been soft, female flesh…
And, with growing horror, he realized that the fingers that had been affected were now encased in a crystalline substance that was spreading rapidly along his hand…
Every child on the continent of Ohanel is familiar with the story of the downfall of the mighty empire of Sadinra, when the gods brought judgment on the capital city and imprisoned the people in crystal…
Since it was noon on a weekday, the train was practically deserted. There was no one close enough to hear the man's single wail of panic.
(This is a scene break. The button won't work...)
"Okay," Vanyel said as they headed for a second courtyard located in the center of the compound, this one possessing a large treelike thing whose black flowers were as large as her torso that emanated a very strong magical aura. Vanyel seemed to ignore it; perhaps he was used to it. "One of the hardest things about Spirit magic is also one of its strengths, that it draws heavily on emotion. For an untrained Spirit Mage, strong emotions, like extreme anger or fear, can be dangerous to everyone in the area. For example…"Vanyel seemed to concentrate very hard for a moment, and a large patch of grass caught on fire. Seiryah gasped and opened her mouth to chant, but before she could say the first words of the water spell, the flames were snuffed out as if they had never existed.
"And why, little boy, did you wake me up for a temper tantrum?" A feminine voice hissed from the huge tree in the center of the large courtyard. From between the branches materialized the oddest woman Seiryah had ever seen.
Her hair and eyes were jet black. Although that wasn't so unusual, her hair was made up of large flower petals that curled around her head and her eyes were completely black, as if her pupils had expanded to take up her entire eye. Her clothing consisted of leaves, the top was bands of leaves held together by thorny branches, the bottom a short skirt of rounder petals, also black, that seemed to stick together of their own accord. Her skin was a pale shade of green, and she wore no shoes.
"And that is the reason that we're practicing here. This is a rose apparition, the spirit of the rose tree that grows in this courtyard. She can nullify lesser magics and control any other plants or plant spirits as long as they're weaker than her. Apparations don't give out their real names, but we call her Rosa.
"Um… Hi?" she said rather hesitantly. She could sense that the apparition was connected loosely to every plant in the area, and had to wonder what would happen if she lost her temper. Although, something seemed to be restricting her range. Seiryah decided to investigate that later…
Rosa smiled softly, and gently touched Seiryah's shoulder. "My poor little seedling, what did they do to you?"
"Uh…" all that was flying through her mind was: seedling?
Vanyel had a different reaction. "You know something about Seiryah's accident?"
"Not accident," the flower maiden spat. "Definitely not accident. Child, I am sorry, but I cannot break the seal. I apologize, you will need to seek one whose power is greater than mine… or perhaps the one who cast it in the first place."
"I would rather die than ask for her help," she said resolutely, and was rather surprised that she still felt so strongly. But, as she thought about it, she realized it was true. She really would rather die than be in Melodia's debt. "Besides, she is as far beyond my reach as the moon is, now."
"What are you talking about?" Vanyel asked, and Seiryah realized with an unpleasant jolt that she had forgotten that he was still there and had probably said more than she should.
"The seal on her memories, of course," Rosa replied as if it were obvious.
"Seal?" Vanyel asked, incredulous and rather angrily.
"Ahah… seal? What seal? I don't know about any seal!" Seiryah said frantically, knowing that she had probably already dug her grave too far to start backtracking now. She had had made such a mess of things that she could almost hear Kalas laughing at her in the background, as he would probably have if he were here.
"Fine, I won't press," Vanyel sighed. "But if there is a memory seal, and if you want it removed, you should probably seek someone's help. Removing a seal on your own memories is practically impossible."
"Why?" Seiryah asked.
"Because such things usually feed off of or otherwise pervert your own magic. And if you mess up when trying to remove them, you could end up destroying the memories that are sealed, or scour your mind blank. Depends on the strength of the seal." His eyes narrowed. "Actually, I'm not sure that you should risk using any magic until we get rid of that…"
"She'll be fine," Rosa called out, melding back into her tree. "It's not that kind of a seal. And it's already unraveling on its own. In another ten or fifteen years, it should be gone completely."
"How do you know all that just by looking at me?" Seiryah asked irritably. Fifteen years? Oooh, if I could get my hands on Melodia right now…
"Fine, but we should start with basic meditation anyway, before I reteach you the starting incantations."
…I would skin her alive…
At that moment, Seiryah and Alfard's representative were sharing the exact same thought.
Vallye had no desire to be asking any favors of Duchess Calbren. In fact, Vallye would have liked nothing better than to plant a plasma rifle shot in the center of the Duchess's chest. Melodia had tried to kill her personally during the invasion of the demon army. She and Skeed had gotten lucky, a section of the fortress's ceiling had fallen on them when Melodia had ambushed all of Alfard's top-ranked generals, obscuring them, injuring them, but not killing them. Some of Skeed's aides had braved Malpercio's monsters and dug them out before the demons could come back to do whatever the hell they did to the bodies after they killed them. They'd been forced to mount a pitiful resistance from the desert, barely scraping by and keeping themselves alive before the other nations had defeated Malpercio.
Okay, before Lyude and his barbarian friends had defeated Malpercio. Coming back to her brother… no, her half-brother as a national hero… he hadn't even stayed! He should have stayed, he should have helped to drive the demon armies out of Alfard… he should have done something for the Emperor…he should have…!
Well, instead of doing those things, he had saved the world. She'd live with it. She didn't have a choice in the matter.
"Oh," was all that the duchess said when she recognized Vallye. "You survived."
There were several rather impolite responses that came to mind in response to that statement, but none of them would have sat well in the mouth of an ambassador from an impoverished country. So all that she could say was, "Indeed. I believe I requested an audience with Duke Calbren…"
"My uncle is i… indisposed, so I am afraid that you will have to deal with me."
Vallye suppressed a flinch. The only 'I' word that she could think of that someone would use instead of 'indisposed' was ill, and this would be a very, very bad time for Duke Calbren to die. And now, she had to ask for help from not only an inferior country, but the very woman who was primarily responsible for the state her homeland was in now. "Alfard has been having difficulty over the last several days with… accidents… in the reconstruction efforts."
Crimson eyes narrowed in suspicion at Vallye's tone. "You do not seem to believe that these are accidents."
"All accidents were caused by very slight things that were aggravated in far, far too short a timeframe. However, no one has seen anything, our electronic surveillance has picked up nothing, and…" she couldn't bring herself to say it. It was too humiliating.
"You do not have enough manpower to protect your machinery from sabotage," Melodia said softly. If Vallye had seen that expression on anyone else, she would have called it a guilty one, but on Melodia Calbren's face she called it good acting. "And you are here for extra troops."
"If they can be spared," Vallye said. If they can be spared. Please, oh please help us. What have we come to?
"I cannot help you," Melodia said sadly. "Mira… Mira has problems of its own."
"I… see…" Problems? What problems? Mira had barely been touched by the war. There had been almost no civilian losses, most of the monsters hadn't been able to get through the dimensional rift…
"My grandfather," Melodia said, "stripped Mira's defenses to the minimum once he realized that Malpercio… that I was directing the main forces elsewhere. Miran soldiers reinforced the ranks in Diadem and Anuenue, and like those countries, we too suffered significant losses. Many of the soldiers in Mira's ranks are new recruits. And… we have our own problems. We need all our soldiers."
Vallye nodded, surprised that Melodia had given her so much information. She had known that Mira had reinforced the other countries, but not to such an extent. Then there was Duke Calbren's possible illness and the nebulous 'problems'. The same problems that Alfard was having, or something else? It could always be civil uprisings. Considering who was next in line for the Duchy of Mira, that was a very real possibility. "However…"
Vallye waited, not liking the tone of that at all, and barely suppressed the urge to snap back with a 'However what?'
"Invisible saboteurs." Vallye mentally scoffed at the idea of 'invisible' There were several mechanical devices and hacking techniques that could be found in Alfard that would make a person unable to be seen by a security camera, but current stealth technology consumed an enormous amount of firepower. The only piece of equipment in Alfard that had possessed stealth technology had been the Goldoba, and that had consumed so much power that it had to be dropped before the ship could attack. The one on the newest battleship, the Dawnrunner, was supposedly being designed to be more efficient, but from the preliminary blueprints the Dawnrunner was going to be even bigger than the Goldoba had been. Vallye couldn't believe that anyone was capable of designing a stealth device small enough for a single person or people to carry around. "Destruction for seemingly no purpose," the duchess continued. "And… our own problems. It may behoove you, Ambassador Vallye, to visit the Shrine of Spirits before you leave here. Your mechanics may be able to make something of this, as well," she handed Vallye a Magnus, containing, judging by the picture, some sort of broken machine.
"What is it, if I may ask?" Vallye asked, looking more closely at it.
"Before I destroyed it… it made the wearer invisible," she said with a small smile.
Vallye almost dropped the magnus as if it were a hot coal.
"Mira does not have the technology to repair, or even to examine this very closely. Perhaps Alfard will have more success finding out how it works." She and Melodia exchange more protocol-babble and Vallye left the audience chamber as quickly as decorum would permit. She left the manor somewhat more quickly than that, but she almost wondered if anyone even noticed. All the servants seemed preoccupied with something, and the soldiers were clearly looking for trouble to be coming that was not her. Little somethings that she might have loitered around a bit to investigate at any other time were brushed off without much more than a second thought. Alfard still had some agents in Mira that were getting their reports through, no doubt they would be able to discover whatever Melodia's 'problems' were. What was important was to get this Magnus back to the labs to see if it was what Melodia claimed it was. Because if it was… well, it might be the key to solving Alfard's current problems, and their way back to being the greatest power in the known world.
It is a pity, though, that Vallye did not follow Melodia's advice. For if she had, she would have found a little girl of about eight years asleep in the forest of Nekton, an odd child with red-gold hair almost as long as she was tall, a little girl who the monsters that lived in the wood instinctively avoided. And if it had been Vallye that found the girl, future events might have reached a very different conclusion.
A gray-haired, scrawny teenaged urchin swiped a sandwich from an unwary street vendor, dropping it into the burlap sac that hung from her black leather belt with the speed and fluidity that spoke of some actual training, not mere pickpocketry. Her clothing appeared to be of relatively decent make but filthy, indicating that she had only recently fallen on such hard times. She wore a pair of tight-fitting slate-colored jeans, a somewhat baggy light blue t-shirt with the number nine emblazoned across the chest in sky blue, and a turquoise scarf wrapped around her neck. The boots on her feet were well worn and very scuffed, but fit her perfectly and had probably been a stretch for her to buy when they had been new, and the twelve inch dagger that hung from her leather belt opposite the sack was a custom-made weapon, complete with the insignia of one of the better-known swordsmiths in the city. It was doubtful that such a fine weapon had ever been in this child's price range, but she wore it as if it were her right to use it, and those who recognized this gave her a wide berth. The rarer ones that actually recognized her would often give her a pitying look as she passed. Some, all Yena like herself, actually went as far as to grab her shoulder and give her a quick, commiserating squeeze. She'd never admit this to another living soul, but she was grateful for their sympathy. The reminder that others cared about what had happened made things a little easier to bear.
She rounded the corner and judged herself to be far enough away from the vendor that she had robbed that she could get her sandwich out of her bag and tear of the clear plastic wrapping. She hoped that there was something that she actually liked eating on the sandwich, She'd had to skip breakfast, and she was starving.
Well, not really starving. Not yet. This was a fair distance from starving, she remembered vaguely the time she had wandered the street after her mother had died of plague and before her teacher had taken her in. Her memories of that time were deliberately vague; the memories of her younger siblings starving to death because no one would feed them were not something that she relished. If it hadn't been for the old man…
At least this time, I know enough to be able to steal enough food for myself without getting caught every other attempt. And there's Serena. Serena was all sugar and softness, a dog-type Yena whose ears blended so perfectly with her wavy coppery brown hair that she was often and easily mistaken for a human. She was a warm, caring woman who excelled in everything that made their small apartment worth living in, including cleaning, sewing, and above all else, cooking. Serena was rather gifted when it came to preparing everyday food, and was great at making even the most meager of food into something edible, but the little dog-type Yena had her limits. The old man was dead, had been dead for two weeks, and now there was almost no money coming in. She needed a haul, a big haul, and soon.
She grimaced in distaste as she bit into the sandwich and tasted turkey. She had never been very fond of turkey. It was probably one of her least favorite meats, after bologna (which didn't really count as meat, as far as she was concerned.) But it was food, food she could eat without emptying her stomach, and it would do. At least it had been freshly made, not something out of a dumpster. As a child, she'd had to resort to that. And begging. She detested begging, although it had been something she had been good at out of necessity before she had learned her trade. Unlike her ragtag and unremarkable siblings, she was rather attractive, with luminous pale green eyes, pert features, soft gray cat ears, and a naturally guileless expression. All of which lead susceptible people to treat her like a poor hapless waif, which although it irked her, put her at an advantage. She was several times stronger than she appeared, and a good deal faster.
The smell of shrimp simmering in butter and garlic drifted out of a nearby restaurant, making her mouth water. Shrimp was her great weakness, her favorite food, but she restrained herself with an effort. It would be a long, long time before she tasted shrimp again. Right now she had a job to start.
She was heading to a small, grungy bar several blocks from here to meet her contact for her first solo job, and she was looking forward to it immensely. The Redcoats were going to pay for stealing the life of her teacher, the closest thing she had ever had to a father. By the name he had given her, Tinsel Bastalia, it would be done.
She was trapped.
She was wading through a pool of blood up to her knees, blood strewn with pink petals that looked like the petals of the Celestial tree, but much, much smaller. The pool spread uninterrupted to the horizon in every direction, where it met with the gray sky. It was utterly still, utterly lifeless. The only thing that moved at all was she herself, and the atmosphere felt like it was trying to suppress even that.
That was probably why she noticed the family so quickly. In a world so still, movement of any kind was spotted almost instantaneously. There were six of them, a mother, a father, and four children, ranging from full adulthood a young child of six or possibly seven. Their colors were washed out and pastel, making it hard to see fine details, like faces or hair color. Most of them seemed to have very wavy or curly hair, however. Everyone did but the father and the littlest girl. They were walking parallel to her, parallel and very far away, and they did not seem to see her.
She ran to them as quickly as she could, but she could only make so much progress in the knee-deep water, the shallow ocean of blood. When she had closed about a third of the distance, she began to wonder if the family was actually here, and not a figment of her imagination, for they seemed utterly unaffected by the atmosphere of the bleak place. They were smiling, laughing even. It was unthinkable for such a morbid place.
When she had closed slightly over half the distance, something struck.
The father fell first, set afire from some unknown source, screaming as he hit the water… blood… with a sickening hiss. The joviality of the group evaporated in an instant. The child screamed, while the others fell into fighting stances. The second eldest, one of the girls, produced a sword from her long coat. As she shucked off the cumbersome article of clothing, a silvery sheath briefly in the dull light of the not-world, before the coat disappeared beneath the sea(giant puddle?)
The wanderer briefly wondered why the girl had used a sheath for a weapon that she wished to be concealed, since using a magnus would have been so much easier, but the thought was dismissed as magic began to crackle and hum through the air. The wanderer hesitated briefly before forging forward, magnus deck in hand, ready to help the moment she got in range.
The battle was short but brutal. The remainder of the family fought well, but one by one they fell. First went the mother, who could not use magic and recklessly ventured out of the shield that the eldest had forged to protect them all to attack the ones who had brutally murdered her husband, the enemies that the wander could not see. Once she was dead, the children dropped the shield and attacked simultaneously, raising magical barriers when fire burst upon them. The eldest was the second to fall, her energy greatly depleted by holding a shield for so long. The brother, the only surviving male, was struck down by the swordstroke that had been meant for his youngest sister when he threw himself in the way.
The blood-sea rose up hungrily around the little girl, and she screamed as it seized her. The only remaining sister, the one with the sword, whirled to help, and was struck in the back by a burst of fire in the moment that her back was turned. Wavy hair fell from its complicated bun as the girl, almost woman, screamed in agony, barely catching herself from falling face-first into the bloody sea. With a pitiful moan, the little girl vanished beneath the vastness of the crimson as her sister screamed in pain.
And suddenly, both the defeated warrior and the wanderer were grabbed by a fierce wind and thrown in a random direction.
They both regained their feet. The blood-water was slightly deeper here, and there was a bit of a tug about their ankles. The petals drifted slowly on the surface, instead of remaining stationary upon the surface.
"There's a current here," the wanderer commented. "We need to be careful."
The warrior looked at her for the first time with utterly dead eyes and asked in a monotone, "Who cares about careful?" She then began walking forward with slow, deliberate steps that became more confident as the pain in her back faded. The wanderer, with nothing better to do, followed.
Suddenly there was another figure, one that the wanderer knew and cherished.
"Kalas?" she asked joyfully. But he didn't hear her. He removed his sword from a magnus, walked up behind the oblivious warrior, and struck her with a sweeping, two handed horizontal blow that knocked her forward several feet. She went under for a brief moment, but came up spluttering and gasping for air, slick with the blood of the water and festooned with pink flower blossoms.
"What the hells was that for?" The warrior spat. "We're supposed to work together!"
Kalas glared at the warrior. "We're doing this my way, and you will help me."
The warrior shook her head. "I never refused to help you. I sympathize with your goal. But this is not the way to get what you want. Don't play marionette to her puppeteer. I thought you had more respect for me. I know you have more respect for yourself."
"What's going on?" the wanderer shouted, but neither of the people in front of her could hear her anymore, and hence she was ignored.
"Neither of us are strong enough. I need her help."
"Damn it to Junadriel's lowest hell, Kalas, did you ever even stop to consider what would happen to your world if you go through with this? Or, if you can't bring yourself to care about all the innocent people that will be slaughtered, could you please stop and think about what will happen to me if you go through with this?" the warrior shouted, grabbing him by his cape and shaking him. "Do you–"
Kalas was suddenly standing three feet away, Melodia across from him, and the warrior trapped between.
"You will forget everything that occurred… since the day you became a Guardian." Melodia smirked, and the warrior's eyes widened in horrified understanding.
"So it ends…" she murmured, closing her eyes.
"NO!" the wanderer screamed, but she was still unseen and unheard. A bolt of tainted light struck her in the chest, throwing her somehow through Kalas and a great distance ahead. The wanderer rushed to catch up as the warrior pulled herself up yet again, weaponless and utterly confused. She turned to the noise of the wanderer's footsteps.
"Ho, stranger! You wouldn't happen to know my name, would you?" asked the warrior.
The wander skidded to a stop. "You can see me?"
"Of course I can. Do you know my name?"
"No. Mine's Xelha, though," the wanderer, Xelha, shouted while she resumed her running. She was closing the distance.
"Well, I can't be Xelha if you are," pouted the warrior, annoyed. "Maybe I'll ask that blue-haired guy. He seemed nice enough."
The warrior jogged ahead at a pace that made Xelha wonder once again if she were even there. It was all she could do to keep from losing ground. She wished she still had her wings, but they had disappeared when the Ocean had returned…
…then why does Kalas have them…?
As if in answer to her unvoiced thought, Kalas appeared once more. He was preparing to walk into a column of blackness, but before he stepped in, Melodia threw in the warrior as a shield.
The warrior's scream was unlike anything Xelha had ever heard before. It sounded like her soul was being torn apart. Xelha ran forward as fast as she possibly could, but knew that she was far too slow.
…IwishIhadmywings,IwishIhadmywings,IWISHIHADMYWINGS-!
And suddenly she did.
She flew forward, battered by things she couldn't see. The black column disappeared, and Kalas watched impassively from above her as she surged forward, his twin white wings casting an eerie, somehow tainted white light, if pure white could be tainted. It was more of a feel than a color. She ignored that temporarily and dove down to where she had seen the warrior go down, and shoved her hands into the water. Her fingers closed around hair and she heaved, dragging the warrior out of the blood with all her strength.
"Xelha?" the warrior asked weakly, spitting out a mouthful of blood as she did so.
"Yeah. I think I remembered your name now."
"I… know. I'm… Seiryah."
A blast of wind loaded with the pink blossoms that were scattered on the surface of the water caught them both, ripping them apart and tossing Xelha around like a top. When it died, Xelha was about twenty feet above the water…
And her wings were gone.
She screamed as she fell through the air, striking the blood-water at an odd angle but more or less headfirst, causing her body to sting as she abruptly went under. Luckily for her, the water was deeper here, deep enough that she was up to her neck.
Unluckily for her, she could finally see an end to the blood sea. It stopped abruptly about fifty feet ahead and dropped off into oblivion.
Thirty feet ahead of her stood Seiryah, alone.
"I… I am Seiryah Veranen," she said hesitantly, and took a step forward. The moment that she did, the current of the water and the wind started driving her in every direction so that she was too busy trying to remain standing to see that she didn't have time to notice the edge that she was being slowly driven towards. Xelha started to swim clumsily towards her friend. Surprisingly, since the crosscurrents and changing winds were slowing her down, the distance between Xelha and Seiryah was steadily shrinking. She had a sinking feeling that it wasn't going to be enough, though.
As she got closer, Xelha could see that it was people that were causing the shifts in current and wind. People that she had never seen before, many, many people. Some were old, some young, some even had animal ears or scales on their skin.
As Seiryah came within feet of the edge, the water began to drop for Xelha. Now she was only submerged to about her chest, and still ten feet away. But Seiryah had been to her knees at this point! Why was the water so deep for her?
Suddenly, a person appeared quite clearly before Seiryah as opposed to the flickering of dozens, maybe hundreds of others, and the wind and current abruptly died. He was a gentle-looking young man, maybe the same age as Xelha and Seiryah were. Unfortunately, the nature of the place made his features, coloring, even what he was wearing difficult to fix in her head, and she knew that there was a pretty good chance that she wouldn't recognize him if she saw him again. The only thing that seemed to be sticking was the coronet of black thorny material that he was wearing.
He held up his hand, and Seiryah raised the Ocean Mirror in a weak attempt to shield herself. Her arm was trembling from the light weight of the mirror, her hair soaked with drying blood to the point where Xelha wouldn't have been able to distinguish its color even if she had been able to see one other than the crimson of the blood, and her breath came in breathy gasps. The young man knocked her arm aside with his left arm and placed the index and middle finger of his right hand on her forehead. A malevolent dark energy gathered at his fingertips.
"I'm sorry," he said softly. A single tear rolled down his cheek. "This is for your own good, and for Misel…"
The energy focused into a single concentrated blast that knocked the barely conscious Seiryah off the edge of the world of bloody water and flower petals into the oblivion of whatever lay beyond…
"-la! Xelha!" shouted a voice that was as familiar to her as her own. She put aside her dream for a moment and opened her eyes.
"Kalas?" she asked weakly, surprised at how little strength she felt she had. Opening her eyes had almost taken enough energy to make her fall asleep again.
"You're alive… thank the Whale you're alive!" he gasped, hugging her gently, as if he were afraid that holding her too tightly would break her into a thousand pieces.
"Kalas… I don't… what happened?" she gasped. Kalas was very, very pale. He looked scared. The last time she'd seen him like this… well, she had died. Seeing stark fear on his face wasn't inspiring much confidence.
"You don't remember?" he asked, sounding rather worried. "Xelha… Wazn was attacked… you were hit and… I… I thought I'd lost you." The again that went at the end of that statement hung between them unvoiced, but somehow the louder for its silence. Each one knew the other was thinking it, and the loss was still fresh enough that even bringing up the subject was painful.
The rest of the statement, the part that was a lot more important that her second brush with death finally cleared the processing part of her mind. "Are we still under attack?" Xelha asked, trying to rise from her bed. If Wazn was being invaded, it was her duty as the Ice Queen to help the defenders.
"No," Kalas said, holding her down gently but firmly. "We drove off the assassins, but you were poisoned. You're confined to bed until further notice."
"If you think you can keep me here…"
"Barnette said so."
"Oh." That put an entirely different complexion on things. A simple doctor she could probably overrule, but Barnette had enough sway with the servants of the castle as Xelha's nurse that she could probably force Xelha to stay in bed no matter what orders she gave. "I… think I need to sleep…"
"I'll tell you everything that happened when you wake up, if you can't remember it on your own," Kalas promised, kissing her forehead. "Rest up, Xelha."
"Good-night, Kalas…"
(...End. And may the button work next time...)
Eheh… long time no see…. But since you (hopefully) don't know where I live, if you want to take out your frustrations at the long hiatus, you could always burn a copy of Huckleberry Finn for me. I think it was the paper that I did on that book that threw me into writer's block. And maybe a copy of Tom Sawyer, just for the principle of the thing. Hopefully, there was enough that happened in this chapter to give you all some excitement and something to think about to make up for the long wait. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter.
Now, I'm going to bed. If you're in high school like I am, I hope your school year didn't start on August 31. Ours did.