"..."
"..."
Consciousness, scalding like hot tar, tore me from sleep’s embrace, pecked at the root of my eyes, jackknifing in my head in time with my erratic, sputtering heart.
I fell forward, half-aware, half-asleep, in unaware shock like a fish drowning on land, ripped far too soon from blissful unconscious. I was boneless, and for a second, an irrational fear that I’d slip and crack my head across the floor bloomed— before my limp body was caught by the rope that tied it to a chair.
Bound, bruised, and probably bleeding, I slumped. Each of my senses slowly, achingly, clawed their way back to the surface, whimpering with stinging pain as they came.
Bleary and blurry, my eyes opened to see— nothing. There was nothing. A plain expanse of lightless black, there was no difference between opening and closing my eyes, only the uncomfortable, painful stinging that accompanied the action.
No— not nothing, my senses mumbled, still waking, still warding off the jagged edge of wakefulness. I could feel it, dimly along the ridge of my nose and brow— cloth, rough and dry and dark that obscured my vision. My breath caught on something— a gag— which was fair, but still irritating. Ropes, blindfolds, and a gag— stupid, stupid joke.
Slowly, my senses slowly expanded, from that of my eyes, to the rest of my body, alight with nettling, thorny pain— barbed wire across the back of my eyes, a heartbeat in my head, throbbing, blooming fireworks in my gut, drowned tingling in my collar, numb spindles in my fingers, a cold, wet heat crawling across the small of my back, chalky, dry ash in my mouth, and powdered glass climbing down my throat.
My awareness slowly rediscovered sound and scent: heavy, wet and moist cut by brass and copper and iron— the smell of watered-down pipes, eroding and corroding metal, damp wood, and the odd, moldy undertone of fruit. Accompanying them, the low, rhythmic hum of distant machinery— hissing steam pipes and burbling vats and burring, drowning ventilation— among muffled, echoing footfalls that slowly quieted and loudened, rattling, absent conversation I could’ve make out. And the faint, but steady dripping of something I couldn’t see.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Painful, shattered remembrance slowly clawed its way out of the bog of sleep— flitting images of Arthur falling, desperate, scrambling struggles— and a mixture of basic self-preservation urged me to escape— to tear the blindfold from my face, spit out my gag, and meet or run from whatever I faced. It did not like the dark, nor the bindings, or the terribly sardonic turn my life had seemed to take. I found I couldn’t disagree.
Fleeting sensation had returned to my fingers, and I flexed them. The movements were dull, and each movement accompanied an aching pain, but it was enough. Enough to feel the rope wrapped tightly around each of my fingers, restricting any worthwhile movement.
Next, I shifted around, finding that I had some leniency in my range of motion— not enough to do anything worthwhile, mind you— but enough to tell me I’d be divested of nearly everything. No Focuses, no glasses, no cloak, no watch, no bag or coin purse. Nothing that could aid me. At the very least, they’d left me in my clothes. The alternative was unpleasant enough, even without the rope and paranoia.
Tentatively, carefully, all too aware of what had happened before I got kidnapped, I reached out to cup a palm of ether. The moment I did, I knew I’d just done something, very, very dumb.
Fireworks went off in my brain— and not in a good way. Pain crawled in my eyes— what I’d imagine my eyes being actively eaten by a bunch of spiders would feel like— The headache suddenly burst like roiling centipedes within my skull, bubbling, simmering over. A flash-freeze of caustic heat rolled under my skin, and my mind reeled, spent, aching, hurt and whimpering in pain.
Time passed.
Don’t ask me how long, I had no idea. All I knew was pain, and more pain. I think I cried, or screamed. One or the other, or both. I don’t know.
After, the back of my head simmered, like the edges of my mind had been singed, like someone had held a lighter beneath it until the edges had began melding together, then melted the cinders to it as well. I’d felt like I’d broken out in fever, thrown beneath a carriage, then slowly cooked over a fire. I tasted blood, my nose feeling shallow and sharp.
Worst case of Burnout? A feeble, croaking part of my brain mused.
Worst case of Burnout. I silently agreed.
Burnout was not the official term for what I was experiencing— no, the official term, the one used in medical offices and academic settings, was the oh-so-vague Strain. In essence, it was just mental and physical fatigue derived from manipulating ether. Though, the ‘fatigue’ often branched into physical side-effects depending on severity— headaches, nausea, exhaustion, inflammation, stress, internal bleeding, internal ruptures, the like. Burnout, as I called it, was simply a personalized term for what I felt whenever I experienced strain. That is— burning up, fever-like, dry and hot and familiar.
I coughed again, feeling like I was gagging on cinders. At least I had learned that— from my ill-fated attempt— that whoever had bound me, hadn’t sprung for proper mage bindings. When I had grasped that sliver of ice, pooled the necessary ether and will to spool the spell, there had been no outside resistance— no tell-tale feeling of rotational or diversionary wards, no blunt entrapment of an encasement ward, or the reactionary tugging of a will not my own.
What now?
The question rose up unbidden, rolling around in my mind over and over, looking at the problem from any number of angles. It didn’t help. My head pounded, and with it, my faculty for critical thinking was at an all-time low. The only conclusion was either Transmutation, or an improvised version of the first spell I’d used on Patches.
Patches sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine, and I quickly shoved the memory away before it could fully surface. Best if I didn’t think about it too hard.
I did not have a knife up my sleeve to slip into my hand to cut myself free— a problem to fix for later— nor could I squeeze myself out of my bindings. My only two options really were just ether-based. I inadvertently frowned, at odds with metaphorically dumping my mind into the pool of fire again.
In the end, my mind shied away from plunging into further pain. I knew a part of me was trying to distract myself from having to do it. I never handled pain particularly well. It supplied a hundred other important-but-not alternatives for me to focus on; What did I last remember? What was my plan of escape after this? How did I get out of this? Transmute the chair? No— no, that’s more material than the bindings— I could be bleeding. The blindfold? How would that be helpful? What— you’re planning to stare out at the room with enough pain to shove you fully into mental, unaware oblivion?
My thoughts chased themselves around back to the first question: what did I last remember?
Struggling, like drawing photographs from a foggy pond, I slowly rebuilt what I knew, as well as what I could learn from the situation preceding.
While we were walking home, Arthur said he’d spotted a figure ducking into an alley. It was adjacent to the road we’d have to take, so we decided to check it out. There, Arthur convinced me to check it out, and inside, we’d found a scrap of cloth— assumed to be from some one he knew. After that, we’d continued, before finding more footprints, blood, and two people seemingly connected with the event. Then, we’d fought. Patches— scarlet honeycomb; I quickly shied away— and Scabs, the person who had felled Arthur.
Arthur. Arthur. Arthur. Was he fine? Was he okay? Was he bound similarly to me? Or worse?
Now, my rationale loudly hissed above the fire-static in my mind, finally awake, what details must be focused on, and what details must be answered at a later date?
The flicker of whatever Arthur saw conflicted with the presence of only a singular pair of footsteps; then, those footsteps combined with the sudden, apparent haste of whoever they belonged to; how had their pursuers not left any? Then, at the clearing, where blood had been spilled, there’d been more footsteps, as if they’d followed along in alleys adjacent; Patches and Scabs— two people come to clean up the scene; their ability to Shroud.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Arthur crept back into my mind, crumpled and laying against the reddening snow. Again, that image of a corpse beneath a sheet in a hospital bed.
I’ve lived a long life, Dmitri’s memory whispered.
Was it a good one? I heard my memory murmuring back.
Running away, running away again, my Shade crooned in her sing-song tone, sounding right beside me.
Two beds, two sheets, two corpses. One for me, one for him. My breath choked, a kicked-up plume of leaden glass shards. Had I led a good life?
I couldn’t do this. I never get to rest— I cant do this anymore— This is too much—
No. No. Stop, the part of me that always picked up the pieces ordered, the cold and calculating exterior come back around. Stop. Focus. Focus. Focus. Keep wallowing, and that future really will come to pass.
I wasn’t sure whether I truly believed in fate— that gross word that the Church liked to throw around, as if parading their off-set responsibility was a justifiable excuse for everything else they did. I despised the idea that we ourselves were not the makers of our own futures— maybe that was the fact that I’d never had to cling to that thimble of hope, that I was so well-off and lucky that I had no need to contemplate whether my circumstances were my own fault.
I knew Divination, practiced the basic, foundational correspondence links needed for Dimensionalism. I could perform the rudimentary auguries people got performed year-round by a million shoddy fortune-tellers, I could divine a person’s lost sock. But, in my near sixteen years of studying, I didn’t know whether the future was mutable. The topic was heavily debated, some claiming that the act of viewing one’s future would set it into stone.
It wasn’t a topic I cared for, I simply comforted myself with the fact that I didn’t know, and held belief that I could control my own future.
Right, then, practice and training and rationality spoke, sounding like a cheerful warning. Don’t hesitate now.
Then, like a child offered candy at a doctor’s appointment before a shot, my veil of comforting introspection was ripped away.
[][][]
It really, really hurt.
I’ll kindly spare you the details— really, really, it’s out of the benevolence of my heart rather than my last scraps of dignity speaking. To say the very least, if anything at all. It was excruciating. Agony and misery and suffering. Like taking a bath in a vat of acid, like a million stitches torn with a lightning strike, like fire but your nerves still work.
But I’d suffered no permanent damage— I hoped, and I found my hands free. In terrible, almost-spasming, burning pain, but still free. I tore off the blindfold, spit out the gag, and promptly, fell over as I tried to stand. My head became awkwardly jammed at an odd angle, my arms flopping beside me uselessly as I tried— and failed— to summon the strength to pick myself up. I ignored the way the dim light stabbed at my eyes, and wheezed out a cracking breath.
My vision filled with off-yellow walls and jagged, crumbling concrete stained a patchy amber in the humming light. From my tiny view of the corner of the room; pipes crisscrossed up and into the ceiling in bronze, dusty lines; molded planks of wood leaned on their side, forgotten and pushed beneath an ancient, pockmarked table. Clearly, this wasn’t a room meant to hold people.
Come on, come on, I urged myself, the top of the chair’s back digging into my nape. Get up, get up.
Bringing my arms to my legs, I blindly fumbled along the chair leg, numbly groping for the rope that bound my ankles. I found them, my sense of touch still raw and unhelpful, and then struggled some more to get myself free. The tips of my fingers stung, but it paled in the face of everything else.
At first, I tried using the chair to help me up, nudging it off myself and trying to draw myself up, only to get to a kneeling position before my lungs felt like they were about to give out, burning in my chest like fading firewood. I panted, my vision pulsing, before I tried to stand again, bracing myself against the wall.
I silently complained, dizzily gasping for air. This is just awful.
As my vision slowly cleared, and I regained enough of my breath to finally look up. The room that greeted me was akin to a large janitorial closet combined with a boiler room; winding pipes and a singular, dingy bulb; cold concrete floors and crumbling mortar exposing metal rebar; abandoned planks of molding wood; buckets holding brooms and pans and mops, among hanging, grimy hammers and hooks and— Oh.
Oh. I blinked once, twice, and flinched when my back hit the wall. I couldn’t mistake that smell for much else.
Hanging from its ankle on a hook from the ceiling was a girl I didn’t recognize, bloodied and tarnished and torn, very much dead and slowly swaying on an unseen breeze. Close-cropped hair and arms trailing against the floor, blood pooling on the floor beneath, dripping like a heartbeat.
I involuntarily letting out a sob, turning away and feeling far too close to just about everything in this room.
My thoughts stuttered, juddered to a trembling stop like a braking carriage— the clamor, the headache, stinging pain in my side fell to the wayside, overtaken by a rising tide of stomach-churning dread.
Another sob built in my throat, and before I could stop it, I let out the smallest whine. Disgust bloomed over top the fear, the flinching, hesitating worry that averted my eyes and didn’t know where to look in the room.
Stop, I berated myself, you’re getting broken up over a corpse? Seriously? You walked through a field of corpses with Dmitri, and you’re getting shaken over a single one? Pathetic, really.
My breathing calmed somewhat, but the thought wasn’t terribly comforting. This wasn’t a dream— no comforting veil that none of it really mattered— no solace to be found in that none of what I saw was truly real. But this was real, no denying that I was awake.
Stop whining, the body makes you uncomfortable— you knew this was a possibility— Heavens— pull yourself together.
Shivering, numbing reality asserted itself— stripped away that blanket of detached security that I’d carried. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, dug my nails into my palm. Reality differed greatly from a dream. There was a haunting realization between knowing something and actively experiencing it.
Emotion has no place in spellcasting— fear and caution is born of irrational things. Think. Think. My gaze drifted to the body and I shied away again. Okay— just don’t look at it if it bothers you so much. Just get it together.
My breathing stabilized, though I still felt the tremor of adrenaline under my skin, like a constant note of roiling paranoia.
Actually, wait, that contradictory voice backtracked, look at the body for a little bit, it might be important. Come on, come on, it coaxed, chin up, a corpse isn’t enough to deter you— you have to get through this if you ever want to fulfill that Oath.
I knew how I probably looked right about now, shuffling in the dim lighting of what amounted to a janitor’s closet, eyes flickering open and closed and muttering to herself like some crazy person. I was losing it. Ha. Ha. The image alone brought the taste of bitter hatred. Swallowing fire, and slowly relaxing my tingling hands, I shakily took in the room again.
Abandoned, moldy boards; crumbling, lichen mortar and concrete; rebar in the walls like exposed veins; layers and layers of dense pipes of bronze and copper and rusty iron; forgotten, dusty janitorial and farming tools; a dingy, flickering light bulb— a light bulb? Those aren't common; grimy, neglected butcher-block tables that seemed to be abandoned and shoved against the wall— more storage closet than anything well-maintained or regularly used, but the scuffed floor didn’t show signs of disturbed dust.
I stumbled my way to the door, cautiously making sure not to trip on anything. I tried it. The door didn’t budge.
Then there was the corpse, quietly whining with every sway in the corner. I brushed past the discomfort, and hobbled my way towards it, stopping a feet or two away. It was a work of hate; hanging from a meat hook ripped through it’s ankle; deep, bone-exposing lacerations ran down the length of her entire body, making her appear more like bloody ribbons than an actual body. Patchy bruises bloomed at places along the skin, peeking past other flaps of skin. I couldn’t even tell if she was wearing clothes— it looked as if she was, in some spots, bits of cloth jutting out from within crimson meat. It reminded me of a burn victim, when the injury had gotten so bad that their clothes would graft to their skin. Frowning, I touched a hand to the corpse’s flank, in a spot that wasn’t so badly broken. It was cool, and I drew my hand back and turned away.
Something felt off, like I was missing something obvious, but I didn’t know what.
I wasn’t sure. Beyond the basic, required first-aid courses— which mostly encompassed basic healing magic and basic anatomy— I didn’t exactly make a continued effort into… that entire field… Concentrated effort in anatomy and body reconstruction— while falling under a partial subset of Transmutation, wasn’t exactly helpful when all my academic efforts were on… more frustrating practices. That, and I was never particularly inclined towards prayer and theology. All I really could conclude was that she— the corpse— probably died in terrible pain.
Think, the rational part of my brain repeated, focus on a smaller part of the picture.
Shoving my spiking headache to the wayside, I righted the chair and took a seat, taking care not to agitate any of my injuries.
The absent din of ventilation, hushing pipes and periodic footsteps still filled the silence, joined by the slow drip-drop of the corpse in the corner. I checked my pockets, confirming the fact that I really had nothing. No Focuses, no cloak, no watch, no bag, no coin purse… Nothing.
I’d been left with nothing but pain, paranoia, the clothes on my back, and no way out.
The door clicked.