OBSIDIAN 3.3: RED RAIN

“There beside the River Wylion the final battle was joined. The archmages Lorquaine and Yisildegrath slew one another in the skies as, far beneath, the wand-armed soldiery met on the field. Thrice the Leopards of Senteli surged forwards, driving in the van the host of fiends they had dared call upon; the legions of undead were destroyed, and the Wort fell back into the trenches, whereupon they were slaughtered most bloodily.”

– from ‘The Latter Mage Wars: A History’, ch. 18

I awoke.

My first thought was that I’d fallen from the sky and landed in bed, but no, that couldn’t have been right. I felt warm and safe and comfortable.

I opened my eyes.

I was in an airy pavilion, a triangle of white canvas lit by globes floating near the apex above me. The radiance of the spellbound balls had been set to a dim level, what with the daylight streaming through the tent fabric all around. The air smelt fresh, and I could hear soft voices, the distant singing of birds.

My fingers gripped the soft bedding beneath me.

My robe. My mask. Everything still in place.

How…?

I should’ve been a corpse. Or, at least, I should’ve been paralysed, or wracked with agonies. But as it was, all I could feel was a weakness in my legs. There was the odd jolt in first one leg and then the other, a clamp of pain taking hold of me somewhere around my heel, making me curl my toes, tense up my calf muscles as it trickled upwards, shooting slowly towards my knees…

But I could sit up, see, think… The pain was little more than an irritation.

I cast about myself – there were about two dozen low to the ground, wood-framed beds in the pavilion, each with thick white mattresses and woollen blankets, and a white canvas partition at the other end of the tent. Most of the beds were occupied with magisters but there were other champions too, going off the masks and the lack of Magisterium sigils on their robes – most were lying in repose, but some were sitting up quietly, and one turned his or her face towards me –

I turned my head away, looked farther to my right – the bed next to me on that side was empty – I looked back, to my left –

I immediately forgot my own condition – I surged from the bed, staggering, falling onto the edge of the bed next to mine.

My fingers took Em’s, lacing our hands together, as I knelt up beside her.

“Em!” I wanted to take her shoulder and shake her but my hand froze halfway there, the realisation burning into my brain that I had no idea how damaged she was, what was actually wrong with her – I could make things ten times worse with such a simple action, such a simple mistake –

As if I held a hot iron I quickly let go of her hand, hoping that I hadn’t already made things worse.

Lord Suffering…

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

But no, there were no gods to blame for this, save perhaps for Mekesta, who’d allegedly spawned the forebears of the demons many ages past; but no one sent the demons. They had come of their own accord. And we had sent them back, casting them out with our own power.

It’d been good to play my part in defending against the Incursion, but I’d been taken out too early. Two summoners, that was all I’d stopped.

I almost wished I’d had more of a chance to slay demons, now they’d done this.

“Em,” I said more softly, “I’m here. It’s me. Can you wake up? Can you hear me? Why don’t you open your eyes, tell me you can hear me, eh?”

Her parents. I’d promised Atar and Linn that I’d keep her safe. And now… this.

“What… what happened to you, Em? Can you hear me? Please tell me you can hear me.”

A highborn voice, young and masculine, came from behind me: “Hm, well, she shouldn’t be able to tell you she can hear you yet, Feychilde, see, she’s still asleep, and I don’t know how things work where you come from but here sleeping people don’t usually tend to answer questions like that, though, hm, sometimes they do, so –“

I turned to see Nighteye right there at the foot of Em’s bed, his dark-green, short-sleeved robes now clean of mud, the gold avian eyes on his robe clearly visible. He was speaking from behind the same owl’s-beak mask he’d been wearing when he’d ended my episode as a rat.

“– maybe you could carry on, but you could just wait for her to wake up, which should be in, hm, eighteen minutes or so –“

“Nighteye!”

I was so glad to see him, so glad to hear his words – it explained so much of what’d happened since my fall – I actually teetered up on my feet and threw my arms around him in a hug.

“My good man!” He seemed momentarily at a loss for words, and then, “You really shouldn’t be up out of bed yet, you do heal awfully well for a human, but, it’s going to be, hm, at least another twenty minutes before you can walk again, and if I could prevail upon you to spend the next twenty-four hours in bed I’d –“

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Okay? Oh yes, you aren’t to know, are you? – she’s fine, not even scarred, don’t you go worrying yourself! Lucky she had that, hm, healing philtre. Just a spot of blood loss, she was only technically dead for a minute or two – not real ‘death’ death, you know – it was nothing I couldn’t replace in a jiffy…”

I broke off the embrace, breathing deep as I lowered myself back onto my bed, half-turned so that I could still watch Em.

She died?

“Your mask is still in one piece,” he was saying, “but your robe’s rather ripped I’m afraid – got caught on some rubble, Starsight said, and he needed to get you free –“

I looked down, checking out the long tear up the right side of the robe. It was barely enough to expose my trousers.

It didn’t matter one bit, anyway. I was getting a new one soon enough.

“– and that funny Ilitar fellow was here when you came in, and he told them to place you in the bed beside her – I gather, hm, you know her? – and you –“

“How long was I here?” I interrupted. “Out, I mean? Unconscious? I already feel like I’ve had twenty-four hours in bed.”

“That’s my magic,” he said smoothly, “but I’d say you were actually unconscious only for three or four minutes – Starsight was able to deliver you – what was left of you, haha – here very quickly – and I put you asleep for, hm,” he looked up as if trying to remember, “about fifteen minutes, while I worked on your bones…”

A cold feeling settled in my stomach.

Zel! Are you there?

“Kas! Oh Kas – you are alive. I thought so.”

You were banished?

“Twelve Hells, what happened?”

I think Nighteye’s fixed me. What’s going on out there?

“I… ah, you mean beyond the wall of enchantments? It’s hard to say for sure.”

That was enough to confirm it for me.

“… didn’t think that there’d be enough beds, but – what do you know? – we only had fourteen survivors to deal with, the rest were, hm, rather too flattened for me to h-“

“Nighteye, is the Incursion still going on?”

He looked at me blankly. “Still going on? Why, yes, of course –“

I started to rise.

“But you can’t walk, you certainly can’t run, and –“

I manifested my wings.

“I can fly,” I grated.

* * *