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“Alasdair was a guy I knew. We weren’t like best friends or anything, but he was one of our group. You know, like buddy group,” Levi explained.

I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded anyhow. This fluffy part didn’t matter to me.

“We hung out and hunted together, sometimes helped raise barns and fix things around town. I didn’t know him extremely well, but he seemed a good enough guy.” I heard the turning point coming in his voice. “And then he started acting funny.”

“The Longing, right?”

“Yeah. But before you go and think this is just something seen everyday around our village, that’s not true,” Levi told me. “Sometimes it wouldn’t show up for a generation. People would think it was gone. Other times, like now, it seems to run rampant among the younger crowd. We don’t know what triggers it or why only some people are called, and not others.”

“Hm,” was all I said. Not because I wasn’t interested, but rather because I was trying to measure this new information next to the things I already knew. There really was no pattern to any of it.

“Anyhow, Alasdair started acting funny. He shows up late to his jobs. People find him sitting out in the middle of the forest at night. He blanks out when you talk to him randomly… just all kinds of funky stuff.”

“And then he left,” I supplied, sensing where this was going.

“Pretty much. Just one day, he was gone. No one knew why,” Levi frowned. “He didn’t leave a note. He didn’t say anything to anyone. Just gone.”

“I can see how that would be disturbing,” I said. See, I can be a little sympathetic from time to time.

“Him leaving wasn’t as disturbing as when he came back,” his voice lowered as if he was nervous to talk about it.

“Why?” I’m not sure why I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. None of this related to me.

“When Alasdair came back… we hardly recognized him. He was a mess. Like, a mangled mess,” Levi shivered with the memory. “The Elders ordered the village under lock down. But I saw him… I saw…”

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He was at a loss to find the words to describe it. The sick expression on his face told enough.

“They called it the Flames of Bedlam,” he spoke slowly. “It got inside of him and twisted him backwards into some kind of…”

“Monster,” I supplied. He didn’t want to call his friend such a thing, but that sounded to be the truth of it.

Levi just pursed his lips.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“They tried to drive it out of him using the cuffs,” Levi told me.

That’s when I felt something in me go cold. I knew where this was leading now.

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“You knew what the cuffs would do to me, then.” My voice was low. Now I understood his feeling of guilt and why he was reluctant to tell me.

“I took a guess. I didn’t know for sure,” Levi answered.

“What did they do to Alasdair?” I asked, trying to mask the contempt that wanted to sneak into my voice.

“It never got to run its course.”

“Oh?”

Levi looked down at the fire. His face crinkled with pain. “He got so sick. So weak. He begged and cried and… it was terrible. It was like he craved it… whatever it was… he needed it to live. We couldn’t stand to see him suffer. We gave in, against the orders of the Elders.”

I looked at my own cuffs. Levi knew the risk he was taking when he did this to me.

“A few of us, the guys… you know, his buddies… we snuck in there and let him free.”

He hesitated.

“And?” I asked.

“Alasdair went Wild. The cuffs had done something to cut him off from the Chaos as long as he wore them. He might have gotten better… but releasing him too early… Chaos just came right back and worse than ever,” Levi pursed his lips. “He killed a few of us that night… before the Elder’s hunters came and took him out.”

We both sat silent for a time. I listened to the crackle of the fire, trying to drown out the anger that wanted to well up in me. There was a tiny, fragile part of me that wanted to do something stupid… like trust Levi. Since he did nurse me back to health and all.

But there was that big, dark, angry part of me that wanted to wring his neck for almost killing me. Chaos or not, I went through days of pure suffering because of his choices.

I ground my teeth.

“You’re angry. I get it,” Levi said.

“You almost killed me.”

“I saved you,” he reminded me quickly.

“After you almost killed me. Do you know the torment I went through?”

“No, I don’t.” He met my eyes. “But I believed it was the only way to secure your life.”

“Oh, so almost killing me is keeping me alive.”

He sighed. “I couldn’t take you before the Elders like you were. They aren’t going to give some Flame-burnt Chaos creature a chance to step into the village and hurt more people. There’s never going to be another chance like Alasdair had when it comes to Chaos.”

“So you think you’ve cured me?” I retorted hotly.

“I don’t know. I think it’s done something. I think it’s helped,” Levi spread his hands.

I didn’t say anything. I glowered into the night.

“You don’t think it’s helped?” he asked. “Not even a little?”

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I growled in response. Then I promptly pulled my blanket up over me and ignored him the rest of the night.