Soulburned : The School of Souls

Chapter 10 : Aftermath

It took hours for Hur to rescue Lyra from the smithy. Entity had long since fallen silent, leaving Lyra cold, and alone.

Logos is the part of one's soul responsible for thought. To draw so much, in so short a time was incredibly dangerous. Wizards that had overdrawn their Logos were known to become brain-dead. Living corpses, trapped in a dreamless coma.

Lyra wasn't there, but she had to be close. Each thought she had was sluggish and incoherent. She felt like she'd just drank an entire case of her father's wine. A mistake she had made only once before.

She had been only fifteen. Still a child by all accounts, but she hadn't thought so. She and Declan had drank bottle after bottle of the rotten homebrew and ended up blacking out. She didn't remember the details of that night, but she knew that they had destroyed one of their father's barns, and loosed a dozen horses into the highlands. Father had not been pleased, to say the least.

She hadn't drunk a drop since, but now, she felt like she had.

She lay on the cool tiles beside the Logos fountain, staring up at the ceiling. It, like the floor, was patterned with spiraling mosaic tiles. The pattern was beautiful and reminded her of the ocean.

She'd been to the ocean once. When she was a child. Her mother had taken her.

I wonder if she's still alive. Lyra thought. She hadn't seen her since that day she'd left. Funny. Lyra thought. It had been years since Lyra had really thought about her mother, and here she was. Reliving past traumas and wondering where her mom was on the same evening.

She still didn't quite believe what had happened. Had any of that been real? It could have just been some strange hallucination. Maybe that weird astral projection had just been part of her Trial? She couldn't have really weilded that much power could she?

It was late morning before Hur came looking for her.

"Lyra!" He screamed. "You're alive!"

"Why-why wouldn't I be?" She asked, confused. After hours of laying motionless on the cold tile, the world was starting to spin a little slower.

"When you didn't make your way back up to the Library, I figured that you'd failed the Trials..."

"Oh. I can't walk." She said slurred. "And I did fail. Entity told me so."

"No, Lyra, you passed. You'd still be in there otherwise. Look at your Mark!"

She didn't move from the floor. She couldn't.

"It's full of glyphs, maybe not the most intricate... You'll have a long road ahead if you want to graduate, but still! You passed. "

"Why'd you leave?" Lyra asked. "You said you wait. for me."

"Yes well... My attentions were needed elsewhere. We were attacked last night. It was... bad. We're still assessing the damage. The Kovites managed to take another district, the Second Wall has fallen."

Lyra sobered immediately.

"Declan!?" She demanded of Hur. She rolled over and began painfully peeling herself off the tile. Hur moved to assist but she waved him off.

"I don't know. It's been rather hectic."

Lyra finally managed to get her feet under her.

"Take me there."

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The climb out of the catacombs was significantly worse than the climb down. Tired as she was, she had to stop and catch her breath multiple times, and she was still struggling to fight through her claustrophobia. By the time the pair had managed to reach the stifling darkness of the Library, it was early afternoon. Lyra rushed out of the Iris as quickly as she could. She was tempted to burst into a sprint towards the outer walls the second she hit the cobblestones, but Hur stopped her and hailed a carriage. Together they rode out towards the Wall.

Sclera was a rather populated city at the best of times. but that population was usually spread out over a larger distance. The two outermost districts of the city were the largest and held the most people. Now that most of those residents had been evacuated into the Third and Fourth districts, it was almost impossible to move through the city. People were everywhere. Refugees from the outer district were packed together, clogging the streets, trying to move. Lyra could hear several people shouting, trying to direct the mob, but their cries were lost in the din.

"Where are all these people going to go?" Lyra asked.

"The tunnels are being opened and aired out for human occupancy." Hur said, "But I'm sure many will choose to leave the city, now that they have no home to stay for."

Lyra didn't even want to think about what they must be feeling... being forced into making an unplanned pilgrimage further into the continent sounded awful. The mountain passage to Sclera's north was infamous for its death toll.

Stolen story; please report.

Their carriage was forced to a stop.

"We'd be faster on foot!" Lyra complained.

"I would be, maybe, but you're in no shape to walk anywhere. You tripped half a dozen times just coming out of the Iris. The Trial really took it out of you."

"Yeah..." Lyra said. "The Trial."

She could still feel Entity, as a buzzing in the back of her mind, like a headache that hadn't quite manifested yet, but there wasn't anything resembling communication coming from the spirit. If it wasn't for the massive dome of light suspended over the city, Lyra would have a hard time believing that Entity was even real. As she climbed up the steps out of the catacombs, she had managed to convince herself that the entire ordeal had just been an elaborate illusion. Just part of the trial.

Entity? Lyra thought, trying to reach out to the strange creature. Silence.

The sun continued to climb the sky, diffusing strangely through the dome as it marked the passing of time. Lyra grew more and more agitated at the carriage's pace, and the grating noise of conversation all around. She wasn't mad at the people, it wasn't their fault they had been displaced, but did they have to be so damn loud?!

"That's it!" Lyra said, jumping to her feet in the carriage. "I'm walking."

"Lyra wait, I don't think it's wise to-"

Without waiting for the rest of Hur's speech, Lyra jumped out of the rear of the vehicle and started jogging.

She knew where she was going, of course, she may not have been from the city proper, but her father had brought her and Declan to enough council meetings for her to know her way around the districts. Declan would be inside one of the barracks, nestled inside the walls. Assuming he had made it behind the 3rd Wall... Lyra wasn't ready to entertain the possibility that he hadn't yet, he'd be there.

She bobbed and weaved around refugees, catching snippets of conversation as she ran.

"Shhhh," another said to their crying child. "They're gone now. We're safe."

"What are we going to do?"

"We'll set up shop in the plaza, you'll be surprised how many people will pay for-"

"No, Frank. I won't just leave her alone! Tonight we'll-"

"Follow that man there! He's leading people down into the caverns."

"Never seen a spell like that dome..." An old man mused. "Wonder if-"

The constant hum of chatter was putting Lyra's teeth on edge.

I've got to get away from this crowd! She thought.

She ducked down a nearby alley and continued padding along. The narrow side street was darker, tucked so close between buildings like it was, but the decrease in pedestrians and noise was well worth it. This alley didn't head directly the the barracks like the main roadway would, but since there were fewer people, she made better time, even on foot as she was.

Refuges sat along the edges of the alley, leaning up against the cold stone buildings. One coughed as she walked by.

With so many so close... there's bound to be an epidemic...

Her father would profit nicely from this situation, and by extension so would she. The herbs and ingredients her family grew would be purchased for many potions, and no doubt her father would acquire many new indentured workers from the refugees. She felt sick to her stomach just imagining how she'd be directly profiting from these people's suffering.

No. Not anymore. You're a member of the Iris. You forsake your House when you took the Mark.

It was an oddly soothing thought, and it drove away some of the guilt she was feeling.

This hypocrisy of her family's station had been one of the reasons she had finally convinced herself to leave and make the journey into Sclera one of the reasons she had left.

It was another hour before she reached the barracks.

She ran up to one of the guardsmen standing in front of the long, squat building. The pair closed racks as she approached, clearly trying to block her passage.

"Declan Mornstag?" She asked them as she approached.

"What business?" One of the men croaked.

"Declan Mornstag, my brother, I'm trying to see if he's made it into the city."

"Sorry miss, I can't let you in here. You're the sixth this morning. If I let every concerned spouse, parent, or sibling, that had someone on the Wall, we'd have more civilians in here than soldiers, I'm sorry."

"Please, he's all I have."

"Listen." the other man said, "We'd let you in if we could, honest, but we can't. If you head over that administration building over there, one of the secretaries should be able to help."

"Thank you!" Lyra said breathlessly, then trotted over to the building.

The building was chaos incarnate. Papers and people flew about the room in a frenzy. Clerks shouted for runners, who would take their missives and then depart back out into the city. A woman shouted something about the western wall not having enough troops. A wizard was using an illusion to amplify his voice, and barked orders to room. Lyra walked over to one of the sitting clerks.

"Excuse me," Lyra said.

The man ignored her.

"Sir! Please!" Lyra shouted.

The man continued to ignore her.

"Sir!"

Lyra kicked the front of his desk sharply, knocking quills and inkwells off the edge of the desk. One of the inkwells shattered, spilling purple ink across the carpeted floor.

"Yes?"

"Declan Mornstag. Where is he?"

"Declan?" A woman passing by said, "2nd division, 3rd squad?"

Lyra sighed.

"Yes. Declan Mornstag."

"Infirmary." The woman said and pointed at yet another building.

Lyra took off at a sprint.

The Infirmary wasn't a building in the proper sense. It was a glorified tent. A Quickwood frame that stretched out a thick canvas, which was, in turn, transmuted into a rigid polymer. Lyra burst through the entrance flaps, completely blowing past a lone sentry. Cots lined the tent in two long rows. Each bed was filled with a groaning soldier. Some were awake, some were unconscious... or at least, Lyra told herself that they were unconscious. The smell of blood and death hung in the air. All around her men and women groan.

Her stomach rose into her throat as she looked at all the casualties. Somewhere in that ocean of injured warriers was her brother. Panic was beginning to build behind her shoulder blades.

"Lyra!" Declan shouted.

She spun to see her brother, who was sitting upright in a bed, a large bandage wrapped around his head, obscuring one of his hazel eyes.

He pointed at his forehead.

"You passed!"