Broken
...Eighteenth Part: Krad...
My whole body ached from the separation, and my energy had been reduced to much less than half. I stumbled through Azumano, tripping on nothing at all and falling to the ground. I could hear the running water of the large fountain nearby and the crash of waves from the ocean just over the edge of the cliff. Everything else was deathly quiet.
I struggled to stand again, cursing as I slipped on the dew-covered grass and lost my balance again. This was getting to be ridiculous. I didn't bother with my wings. If I couldn't walk anywhere, then I certainly wasn't going to fly.
"Hey, there. Can I help you?" a gravelly voice asked. I followed the two shoes in front of my face up to the face of whomever it was that was talking to me.
"I'm perfectly fine," I lied stubbornly. My irritation gave me the energy enough to at least stand. "Now would you mind getting away from me?" I growled. I was tired, cold, and now my own body had its own hunger issues.
I turned and tromped away from the stranger, rubbing my arms to try and relieve some of the night chill.
A sharp pain shot through my head from the back of my skull, and the world sealed itself into oblivion.
. . .
I shot upright out of my sleep, only to be restrained by Dark's arms still wrapped around my waist. But at least they were Dark's arms.
"Krad...?" Dark sat up behind me, taking his arms away from me to stretch. "What's up?"
I yawned, turning sideways in the thief's lap to curl up against his chest. "Just a dream," I sighed.
"You sure you're okay?" Dark interrogated me.
"Yes, Dark. I'm fine. Now go back to sleep." I closed my eyes, feeling a lot better being here with Dark than tumbling across cold, damp grass. "Oh – and Dark," I added before falling asleep again. "I was wrong about them restricting my magic."
"And you figured this out... how?"
"The day I was kidnapped," I told him, "was the day we were separated from our tamers." I knew Dark would be able to recall what it first felt like to have his own body, if it was anything at all like what I had experienced.
"That makes more sense," he relented. "...So... you went missing from day one?" Dark's embrace tightened around me subconsciously.
I nodded.
"What happened to you, anyway?" he wondered.
"I got hit in the back of my head and blacked out. When I woke up, I must've been too disoriented to realize that my magic wasn't going to work because of severe lack of energy rather than something someone else had done to me. And the notion just stuck. I didn't question it..."
"Until now," Dark added. "You had one of your weird memory-nightmares again, didn't you?"
I yawned, pressing my face into Dark's shirt. "Yes, I did."