When Elion awoke, he saw Keyla sitting on a stool beside his bed. She held her arms folded across her chest, and had cleaned up since he last saw her. Her face was no longer smudged with grease and blood, and her clothes were clean and neat.

She gazed at him, care and concern showing in her features, until she noticed him watching her, and her face hardened.

“Well, well, well, look who’s finally awake,” she said.

Elion’s mouth felt dryer than the inside of a cotton ball. He licked his lips, rasped, “Thank you. For watching out for me.”

“What?” Keyla looked surprised. “Oh, Gorman told me I had to. Besides, this is my room and I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to puke in my bed.”

Elion blushed, glancing down at the bedspread. Not that he was doing anything wrong, but it felt strangely intimate to be lying in the girl’s bed. Elion shifted, sitting up. His shirt and pants were gone; he wore only his boxers. He blushed again at the thought of Keyla undressing him.

He touched his neck, relieved to find the Starholder pendant still dangling there. The paper clip holding the chain together still seemed sturdy enough.

Keyla rose from her seat aggressively, knocking the stool over. She clomped out of the room. “Gorman, he’s alive!”

Elion scanned the room. Small and utilitarian, the room presented a distinct contrast to the clutter of the garage below. The outward curving wall of the tower formed one wall, a circular window set too high to see out of letting in diffused light. Shifting in the bed, Elion pulled a scratchy blanket up over his bare chest.

A sturdy dresser stood beside the bed, a picture frame and a few neatly arranged tools lying atop it. The picture was of a smiling woman woman with a younger Keyla.

A scuffed and dented metal chest rested in one corner. The room was clean, too. No greasy fingerprints smudged the edge of the door, no piles of metal shavings or dust in the corners. Nothing cluttered the floor, and no decorations adorned the walls.

Thinking about the perpetual disaster in Liora’s bedroom, Elion struggled to imagine this space belonging to a girl.

Gorman entered the room, carrying a steaming bowl of food. He set this on a small table beside Elion on the bed, then picked up the stool Keyla had toppled. Sitting down on this, he watched Elion, appraisingly.

“Did it work?” Elion asked. “How is Kasm?”

“Maybe,” Gorman said. “He’s still sleeping under the power of your talent. But we cleaned out the wounds as best we could, and cut away the diseased flesh. He’ll probably have major scarring, but I didn’t even have to replace his kidney, so we’ll see.”

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“Just rest up, kid,” Gorman said. “Your talent took a lot out of you, and I’m afraid you are going to be in for a fight.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s probably easier if I show you. Eat and then if you’re feeling up to it, we can go for a ride.” Gorman left the room.

The bowl was filled with soup. Warm and savory, it reminded him of chicken noodle. Elion slurped it down, hungrier than he had realized. After he finished eating, he felt greatly restored. Gorman returned with a pile of neatly folded clothing for Elion, then left the room again.

Elion dressed. In the pile of clothes Gorman brought him he found clean underwear and socks, a new shirt and a new pair of jeans. Examining the jeans, he found them to be not too different from a normal pair you might find in a department store on Earth, except they didn’t have any belt loops, which was weird.

The pants were probably Gorman’s because they were tight on his waist but baggy through the thighs. The shirt was probably also Gorman’s, hanging loose over his shoulders but fitting snugly over his belly. Elion wondered how the old man got so muscular.

The scratches on his legs didn’t look nearly as deep as he’d imagined them to be, but they still stung when he prodded them. Maybe his overactive imagination had remembered them being worse than they really were. Maybe Aurelia’s Protection had hastened their healing. Probably both.

Gorman had also brought him a pair of the combat style boots that Keyla wore. He pulled these on and laced them up. Uncomfortable, heavy, and an ugly beige tan, they looked like something from a military surplus store.

At the bottom of the stack of clothes he found his hoodie, washed and mended. Whoever had patched the it had done an excellent job. Elion detected no signs of blood, black ooze, or holes from the pemalion’s claws. On the inside it felt softer than it ever had before.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

He wasn’t cold, but Gorman’s clothes made him look fat. Liora might have a point about his weight. He pulled the hoodie on, then checked his pockets. Where was the knife? He felt a pang as he realized that he’d lost Catherine Walker’s butter knife somewhere along the way. He’d grown attached to that blade.

Maybe he’d dropped it in Gorman’s workshop. He’d have to ask about it.

Elion scanned the room to make sure he had everything. The picture frame on the dresser caught his attention, and he gave it a closer look. It contained a picture of a younger Keyla, and an older woman, probably Keyla’s mother. She smiled brightly, her hair pulled back into a blue scarf with yellow polka dots on it.

Keyla looked genuinely happy.

I wonder what happened to her, Elion mused.

Elion found Gorman downstairs in his garage, tending to Kile, the man whose leg Gorman had removed just below the knee. Kile now had a metal pipe fused to his stub, an articulating footplate at the bottom of it.

“I wish I had a better leg for you, Kile,” Gorman said. “I’ll do my best to cook up something for you, but this should work in the meantime.”

Kile took a few experimental steps. “Thank you for saving me,” he said. “I can live with this just fine.”

“After you get a couple of days in with it, you let me know if I need to adjust the length. You’ll have some awful aches if it’s too long or short.” Gorman clapped Kile on the back as they walked to the exit.

“Will do,” Kile said. “Thanks again.”

Kile and Gorman both saw Elion at the same time. Kile’s face twisted uncomfortably, and Gorman pushed him out the door, making the man stumble on his new peg leg. Gorman closed the door.

“What was that about?” Elion asked. “What’s his problem?”

“There’s a rumor going around that you are responsible for lowering the bridge,” Gorman said. “A group of people came to the tower last night to confront me about it, but I was at the bridge. You’re lucky they didn’t try to confront you.”

“A rumor that I lowered the bridge? Why? How?”

“Well, you showed up in town at the same time as the infected did. How else would you have gotten here?”

“I got here through a portal,” Elion protested. “I never crossed the bridge.”

Gorman shrugged. “We’re mainly followers of Artefix around here, and you’re Aurelian. There are still some hard feelings left over from The Breaking of The Sky, so it’s easy to blame you.”

“Speaking of that, what’s up with the sky?” Elion asked. “What happened to it?”

Gorman gave Elion a peculiar look. “You don’t know about The Breaking of The Sky? The civil war in Erod, when the Celestial Sphere was smashed?”

Elion sighed, not understanding half of what Gorman said, even though Praxis informed him << Translation Active >>.

“I don’t know a lot of things,” Elion groaned. “By the way, did you find a knife in your workshop? I’m missing mine.”

“Listen, son, you seem hesitant to talk about your past, but you’re going to need to start explaining yourself. You’re asking questions about things that every Kylian knows by the time they can walk. As your mentor, I will answer all of your questions in due time. But first, I need you to be honest with me. Where are you really from?”

Elion shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for people to know that.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Gorman said, folding his arms. “But if I’m going to help you, I need to know.”

“I’m being chased. It’s probably better if I just leave.”

“All Aurelians are being chased,” Gorman said. “But you didn’t know that, did you?”

Elion shook his head.

“Well, you’re right, it would be better if you could just leave. But you can’t. First we need to talk. In private. I won’t risk having you overheard.” Gorman drummed his fingers on the table. “I still need to figure out what went wrong with the bridge. Keyla won’t like it but it might help the others trust you if you come with me. And we’ll be able to talk there.”

Elion looked across the garage at Kasm’s sleeping body. Had Elion somehow caused the bridge to lower? His presence here seemed to only be causing problems. He needed to get off of this island somehow. If he could find a way to contact Zev, see if his uncle was on Kylios, he might be able to help him. At least Zev would know how to get back to Earth.

If he’s still alive.

If not, then maybe he could find Dorian’s palace. Elion sincerely doubted he would be able rescue Liora single-handedly, but he had to at least try. Right now, trusting Gorman was his best bet.

Maybe I can use my new abilities to help Liora.

“Let’s go to the bridge then,” he said.