Kelsam

Kelsam had booked tickets for Esar, Naomi, Jason, and himself on the overnight train to Thaliron, where Esar said there was another one of those portals that Naomi could use to send Jason home. Meanwhile, another young man was going into the Ocean; Kelsam couldn’t help but think of the stranger like the victim of a human sacrifice, but there was nothing he could do for the boy. Like the rest of Elorhe, he would have to wait and see what happened to Adrin Remyer.

On the way to the station that evening, Naomi fell a few steps behind the others, gawking up at the cathedral. Kelsam followed her gaze. The alcoves were lit to illuminate the six statues that stood in a row across the facade. The paint had chipped off the sages’ robes in a few places, but the colors were still vibrant.

“We don’t have time to sightsee,” Esar said.

“I wish we did.” Naomi slumped her shoulders and jogged to catch up with the others. She still clutched the incand in her fist, after practicing with it for much of the afternoon. Sometimes a bit of light escaped between her fingers, but when it did, she extinguished it right away.

“Maybe after you take me home you can go on a tour,” Jason said. He walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets, as if he were trying to disappear. Red hair and normal clothing should have made him look less out of place, but he still didn’t seem to belong. It was as if Jason resisted belonging, rejecting anything that might allow Kelsam’s world any claim to him.

A broad avenue ran down the center of Norana, connecting the cathedral to the station at the northern edge of town. Somewhere along the way they left the Sanctuary proper; Kelsam wasn’t sure where the exact line was that marked the beginning of secular land. The Sanctuary and the town had both grown over the centuries, building guest houses for pilgrims alongside the shops and businesses of non-devoted townspeople.

Music from the patio of a nearby restaurant drifted into their ears, along with the sounds of conversation. It seemed like everyone, tourists and locals alike, was talking about the boy going into the Ocean more than a thousand miles away. What had possessed him to try the Ocean at such a time? Was he under the water right now? Had he already drowned, or against all odds, had he been chosen as their next king?

Then Kelsam felt a tiny shock, something like touching a door handle on a cold, dry day. Esar cried out and clutched his head with his hands. And all the lights went out.

The music ceased and shouts of confusion and consternation sounded all around him, but Kelsam barely heard them.

“Esar!” Kelsam steadied his husband, who looked like he was on the brink of collapse.

Esar held on to his shoulder and met his eyes. “I’m all right. But something—” He shuddered. “Something’s wrong. It’s all wrong.”

“What just happened?” Jason asked, shooting an accusatory look at Naomi.

“I don’t know! I didn’t do anything—did I?” Naomi looked to Esar.

“We have to go,” Esar told her, releasing Kelsam to stride towards the station.

“Where are you going? What if the linecar’s not working, either?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Esar said.

Kelsam hurried after them, his fear mingled with frustration. “What do you mean, that’s what you’re afraid of?”

There was still a bit of sunlight remaining in the western sky; enough for Kelsam to see quite well by, now that his eyes had adjusted to it. Smaller lights flickered up here and there as people lit their incands.

“Should I—?” Naomi began, holding up her own ceram sphere with a glance at Esar. He shook his head firmly without breaking stride.

Ambient devices did malfunction from time to time due to fluctuations in the field from which they drew their power. A few years ago a whole neighborhood in Norana lost power because of some kind of anomaly. But the whole city? Kelsam had never heard of a whole city losing ambient power all at once. Did it have something to do with the boy in the Ocean, more than a thousand miles away?

Esar kept walking, deftly avoiding anyone who attempted to ask if he knew what was going on. The streets filled up as people poured out of the hostels, shops and restaurants to look for explanations. Some gathered around the newsstand, but there was no information to be found there—the speaking lines and presses depended on the same ambient power as everything else. Kelsam mouthed an apology to a friend Esar had just ignored as he passed her by.

Kelsam had already given up hope of reaching Thaliron by the next morning. He expected to see the linecar sitting still up on the dark platform, but they were too early for that—the car hadn’t even pulled into the station yet. The clock had stopped four minutes before its anticipated arrival according to the station board. The linecar must have been out on the track somewhere between Tsill and Norana—

A terrible grinding squeal cut through the twilight. Esar went right past the steps to the platform and around the outside, and Kelsam and the others followed, working it out quickly enough. The track might have lost power, just like everything else, but the linecar would still have momentum carrying it forward. But without the ambient field there would be nothing to maintain the air buffer between the linecar and the rail.

And there was nothing to power the brakes.

Sparks flew as the linecar ground down the track towards Norana, wobbling and lurching. Friction slowed it down, but the cabin was breaking apart. A large chunk of ceram snapped and flew off the leading car to lodge itself in a nearby tree, and the car listed to one side, pushed on by the momentum of the cars behind it. Kelsam’s stomach turned over as the screech of metal rose higher. If it slipped much further it was going to fall off the rail, and the other cars would follow.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Get back!” Esar shouted, his voice amplified by vitricity to rise above the crowd that had gathered to watch in horror. The linecar was falling apart before their eyes, chips of ceram raining down from the damaged side. Consumed by horror, Kelsam had nearly forgotten about Naomi and Jason, and he looked back just in time to see Naomi dash past him, out towards the careening linecar with light blazing between her fingers.

“Naomi—” Kelsam called out to her halfheartedly. He glanced at Esar, then back to Naomi. Would she be able—

She made it to one of the columns supporting the track. Her incand went dark as she dropped it to grab the post and haul herself up onto the broad foot of the support. That still left a six-foot gap between the highest she could reach and the track itself, and the linecar would reach her in seconds, veering at so great an angle that Kelsam couldn’t see how it remained on the track at all.

Naomi gripped the pole with both hands, facing the approaching machine. What was she doing, trying to power it with her own vitricity? Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to make a difference.

A small body fell from the open side of the linecar. Naomi let go of the column and jumped down. She wasn’t in time to catch the person, whoever it was, before they hit the ground. But she scooped them up right after they landed and dashed away as the leading car finally lost its grip on the track and fell, bringing the others behind it in a chain of disaster.

The fall might have been survivable. The victim would have been crushed, though, if Naomi hadn’t gotten them out of the way.

Kelsam joined in as everyone surged forward to help once the last car landed. In a way, it was fortunate that the crash had happened so close to the hospital and school that trained the finest doctors in Elorhe—and that you didn’t need any ambient energy to heal. Kelsam had never finished his own training as a healer, but he knew enough that he wouldn’t be useless. He let the better doctors rush into the leading car, where the need would be greatest, and headed for one of the trailing cars, where his own, less-skilled hands might still do some good.

A hand grasped the back of his tunic. “What can I do?” Jason asked. He looked so stricken, so pale his face seemed to glow in the darkness.

“I don’t know yet,” Kelsam replied honestly. “Come with me.”

The fourth car had landed on its side, and people cried out from within it. It wasn’t easy to climb to the top, even with vitricity to draw upon, but he was able to reach one of the doors and slide it open. It was disorienting to peer down into the darkened cabin, the seats all seemingly along one wall. Someone in there had lit an incand, but from Kelsam’s point of view it seemed to create more shadows than light.

“Over here!” someone called, just as someone else tried to lift a toddler to him. But while Kelsam had been struggling with the door, Jason had managed to climb on top of the car as well. He might not have any vitricity, but he did have youth on his side.

“Wait, who needs help?” Kelsam asked.

“It’s my dad! He hit his head—”

“Give me room to get down there,” Kelsam told the passengers who were gathering beneath the open door, the ones whose injuries were minor enough that they could still get around.

“Can you help get them out?” Kelsam asked Jason.

“I’ll try,” Jason said. Kelsam dropped in, and Jason reached in behind him, grunting when the child was placed in his hands. Someone else reached in to help Jason haul the child out, and Kelsam walked back awkwardly along the wall, holding on to the headrests of the seats to keep his balance, to find the person who had called for assistance.

Blood drenched the face of an older man slumped unconscious against the seat, and his daughter’s hands as she attempted to staunch the bleeding.

“It’s early Blight,” she told Kelsam when he took over, leaving red streaks on her face when she wiped tears from her eyes. Kelsam could have told that without her words. He knew that feeling of resistance all too well, the man’s body trying to reject the vitricity he gave it.

“Come on,” he murmured, grimacing. He could push through it—the man wasn’t so far gone—but it took a lot more out of Kelsam than it would have to heal a younger victim. Could he do enough? What if he couldn’t? This was why he’d never finished his training as a healer. It hurt too much to lose someone who’d been entrusted to his care.

But he didn’t have to fully heal this stranger. He just had to do enough, just give him enough that he would survive until someone more skilled than Kelsam could arrive to help him.

How much time passed before another healer arrived? Kelsam wasn’t sure. Dazed and disoriented, he got out of the way and made his way back through the nearly-vacant cabin. He’d done all he could, but he still didn’t know if it had been enough. It took him a moment to recognize that the person who helped him up through the door was Naomi. She hugged Kelsam and started to cry.

“He’ll be okay,” Naomi said, answering the question that Kelsam hadn’t known how to ask—what had happened to the child who fell out of the linecar? “But his mom didn’t—she didn’t make it. She was shielding his little brother and he’s hurt and his dad’s hurt but they’re gonna make it but she didn’t make it.”

Kelsam returned Naomi’s hug and looked over to Jason, who was standing at a bit of a distance, awkward and alone. He reached a hand out, but Jason shook his head.

“I’m fine,” Jason said. Kelsam doubted that—he had the same hollow look in his eyes as everyone else—but let Jason have his space.

Kelsam released Naomi from the hug, and she wiped her eyes and nose, sniffling. Kelsam had gotten blood all over her—he must have had the old man’s blood all over himself.

“Where’s Esar?” Kelsam asked.

Naomi and Jason exchanged a look. “I haven’t seen him,” Naomi said. “I was looking for any of you, and I saw Jason and he told me where you were, but I don’t know where he went.”

Where would he have gone? A brief search of the area turned up no sign of him, so Kelsam decided to take Naomi and Jason back home. Maybe Esar was already back there. A pang of disappointment hit when he saw the house was dark, but he quickly chided himself for it. Of course the house was dark, everything was dark tonight.

And he did find Esar, standing alone in the bedroom like another shadow. Kelsam embraced him, but Esar didn’t move.

“I couldn’t do anything,” he said, in the raw, cracked voice of someone who had run out of tears. “I could feel it coming, like a meteor falling from the sky, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“No one expected you to stop it,” Kelsam said.

Esar laughed. “Of course not. Why would they expect anything from the broken Tresuan? My mother would have stopped it.”

“It could have been worse. We were close enough, quick enough to save a lot of people. Only four dead. And Naomi was able to rescue that child.”

“They would all be alive if she weren’t here,” Esar said, with a bitterness that took Kelsam aback. “Oh, I don’t mean that it’s her fault. But it’s still true. And I still have to take them to Thaliron. I know that, even if I don’t know anything else.”

“We can leave tomorrow morning.”

Esar frowned. “I can’t ask you to walk all the way to Thaliron with me.”

“You don’t have to ask.” Kelsam stretched to bring his face as close to Esar’s as possible, staring right into his eyes. “I’m going with you, so skip all the noble self-sacrificing ‘I can make it on my own’ talk, all right? I’m too tired to argue with you.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Esar’s face, and Kelsam pressed a kiss to his lips, relieved, before relaxing to stand flatfooted once more.

“You should rest, then,” Esar said. “Thank you.”