image [https://i.imgur.com/9JnFmXw.jpg]

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‘Get up!’

‘Whu– Ah! Fuck off!’ Fig yelped. She’d been sprawled on her bed, still reeking of wine from the night before, until Dorian strode in and pulled back the curtains to let morning sunshine flood into her suite bedroom.

Fig thrashed around trying to hide her face beneath a pillow, but in her stupor she couldn’t even coordinate herself enough to find one.

Her throat was so dry it hurt, but she still managed to growl, ‘Bastard!’ at Dorian.

If this was his revenge for yesterday, she was going to kick his teeth in.

Dawn’s Light, literally, why! Everything had been fine when she was asleep.

Now it was like that flash of radiance brought the waiting hangover in through her eyes, drilling its way through to the back of her head where it sat, stabbing her over and over again.

With it came the hazy memories of last night, of Lissie, seeing her sister again after five years, and immediately getting into a drunken fight with her.

Fig groaned and pressed her face into the bed.

Not your finest moment, Fig.

‘Fig!’ Dorian clapped his hands at her, ‘Come on! Up, please, haste. I need your help!’

‘What the fuck do you want!’ Fig demanded, rising to glare at him with bloodshot eyes.

The writer’s face was pale. His hair ungroomed. He looked more rattled than he had at almost any point since they’d freed him from captivity, and Fig was finally awake enough to detect the panic in his tone when he said, ‘Something's happened to Rick!’

That brought her up short.

Oh no.

They rushed down to the suite’s common area where Rick was collapsed on the ground, unmoving and apparently unconscious. Despite that, his hands were curled into rigid claws that clutched his walking stick and Book to his body with a feverish grip.

Looks like he has one hell of a hangover.

Rick smelled strongly of smoke and rot, which was not entirely unusual for him, but the stink was worse than it had ever been before. His breath came in shallow ragged gasps so faint they were barely perceptible.

‘Rick, can you hear me?’ Fig shook his shoulder and head, trying to get a response, but none was forthcoming. The little burnt man just lay there with his one lidless eye glazed over. She could feel his whole body shivering slightly.

This wasn’t a hangover, or a normal state of unconsciousness. Something was very wrong.

‘I woke up just now and found him like this,’ Dorian said, pacing back and forth in the common area, ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I don’t know. With Rick, it could be anything,’ Fig looked around, ‘Here, help me move him off the floor.’

Together, they lifted Rick up and placed him so he was lying on his side on the suite’s chaise-longue. Fig tilted his head to try and keep a clear airway.

She peeled back his hood and robes to check him for injuries, while Dorian fetched a damp cloth to lay over Rick’s forehead.

They fretted in wordless cooperation, their animosity forgotten in service of helping their fallen companion.

Everything Fig found only made less sense. There didn’t seem to be any new marks on Rick, only the old burns, but they weren’t behaving like they had before.

His whole body was hot to the touch, and his skin felt slick. She looked at her hands and realised he was covered in burn sores that were secreting some kind of milky yellow puss; probably the puss was what stank so badly.

Fig recognised that discharge as what happened after a fresh burn, especially a bad one, but that shouldn’t be happening now. Rick sustained these injuries over a month ago, and they’d seemed to be doing fine, not healing necessarily, but not getting worse or weeping puss like this.

She’d assumed his burns were held in check by his bond with the Book of the Undying King, but now that balance seemed to have completely fallen apart. What was happening to him?

‘Oh Rick, what did you do?’ she muttered.

‘Where did he go yesterday?’ Dorian asked from the head of the chaise-longue. He was fidgeting with his messy hair, slicking it back out of his eyes obsessively, something of a nervous tic Fig had noticed him do on the rare occasions when he actually got flustered.

‘I have no idea,’ Fig said, ‘He said he’d be gone for a few hours, and he still wasn’t back when I went for dinner in the evening. I didn’t check on him because I didn’t think anything was wrong.’

She glared at Dorian, ‘You said you were going to give him a tour of Loverlock, but then you had to go and disappear. He was disappointed. He needed a guide to watch over him and you weren’t there.’

‘Need I remind you, that you’re the one who drove me out of the suite!’ Dorian shot back, ‘And you said it yourself, you didn’t ask where he was going, and you didn’t check on him. You just got drunk and went to bed, Fig! So don’t try to turn this on me just because you’re getting stressed and you don’t know what to do. Let’s dispense with assigning blame. It isn’t helping Rick.’

He’s right.

‘I know!’ Fig spat, ‘Fuck!’

She needed to get help.

‘Can you watch him?’

‘Of course,’ Dorian said.

Fig grabbed the Floating Chest’s control ring and descended to wake up Mirabelle’s retinue.

‘I need Casrian outside,’ she said, ‘Rick’s sick, or… something I don’t understand. I need a mage.’

The Alfir mage groggily rose from his bunk, stretching and pulling his embroidered robes around himself only loosely, so his flowery tattoos showed through the open chest.

‘Is there a threat to us?’ Mirabelle asked from her desk where she seemed to have spent the night snoozing over her papers.

‘I don’t know,’ Fig urged the mage up the stairs.

‘Be careful,’ Mirabelle said to Casrian, who simply nodded.

After Fig and Dorian filled him in, Casrian sat beside Rick’s unresponsive form and braced his hands in the air, holding a gleaming yellow ether-crystal in one palm.

The crystal flashed very faintly and a web of glowing ethereal fibres descended to cover Rick and glide over his body in a kind of net. They waited in uneasy anticipation for a minute or two until Casrian finally shook his head and broke off the spell.

‘His ethereal state is very fragile right now. From what I can glean with my art, he’s exhausted, critically dehydrated, and in an immense amount of pain but I don’t detect any malignant magic or disease.’

‘So, what’s wrong with him?’ Fig asked.

‘He’s covered in burns that haven’t healed,’ Casrian said with a shrug, ‘How would you feel in his condition?’

‘But he wasn’t like this before,’ Dorian explained, ‘That’s what we’re saying. Even burned, he was doing ok, but something has changed.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Casrian said, standing, ‘Look, there’s nothing I can do for him, and it seems like he’s getting worse. You should find a healer.’

‘I’ll go,’ Fig said, grabbing her coat and sword while Casrian made his way back to the open Chest.

If Rick was getting worse, as the mage said, then every second they waited might be the difference between life and death.

‘The Temple of Allura, I know a priestess there, Sister Boyle, she’ll help!’ Dorian called after her as he sat down to sponge Rick’s burning forehead, ‘Hurry.’

Fig ran through town with her coat-tails flapping like wings behind her. The day was warm and clear once again, perfect weather for tonight’s festival. Crowds of visitors thronged in the squares and stall lined streets. Fig barged past them, paying no mind to the voices raised in anger behind her each time she stamped on a set of toes or shouldered her way through a crush.

Her stomach growled and churned, and she had to bite back a rising tide of vomit as the sudden exercise clashed with her raging hangover. She couldn’t tell if the pit of dread in her core was because of Rick’s condition, seeing Lissie again after five years, or just the aftermath of all that wine. Probably all three.

Her sister was in town somewhere. There was a part of Fig that just wanted to go and find her, to make amends, but it was necessarily sidelined by the more pressing need to attend to Rick’s critical situation.

‘There's always something going wrong,’ she hissed between breaths as she turned the corner and raced downhill towards the temple in the distance.

The Temple of Allura rose out of an otherwise residential district on the eastern edge of town. The building was one of the few stone structures in Loverlock, and the external masonry was brilliantly decorated with painted roses and stars rising up to the belltower overhead.

Its tall frontal doors stood wide open for the flow of festival pilgrims and priests as they bustled around in the courtyard outside, performing their final preparations for the night of revelry and worship that finally lay just ahead of them.

‘I need a healer,’ Fig gasped, running up to the first crowd of priests she saw. This was immediately followed by her doubling over and throwing up on the cobblestones at his feet, which made them all step back in horror.

She spat out the last of the bile and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, still retching, but with nothing coming up.

‘I need a healer. Sister Boyle…’ she groaned, before looking up and adding, ‘Not for me. I’m just hungover. For my friend up at the Lost Love Lodge. He’s burnt, burns all over. I think he’s dying. Dorian Darling told me to find Sister Boyle.’

‘It’s the morning of the Lovers’ Festival,’ one ancient and wrinkled Alfir priest said, ‘No-one’s avai–’

‘I’ll go.’

A priestess stepped out of the crowd, a middle aged Vermili woman with a slightly wild look to her pinned back hair and sharp features. She held a clipboard and had a pencil tucked behind one ear, and over her sliver trimmed lilac robes she wore an amulet bearing the symbol of Allura’s devoted.

‘Sister Boyle?’ Fig asked.

‘That's me, and Dorian sent you? Silly boy. Ok. Let’s not waste any time, if the situation is as dire as you say.’

‘Wait!’

The old Alfir priest blocked Sister Boyle’s way and glowered down at her, ‘You have other duties.’

‘Not more important than tending to a dying man,’ Sister Boyle said, raising her chin, ‘And you don’t give me orders, Vilaric.’

She pointedly turned her attention to Fig and stepped around the older priest, ‘Lead me to him.’

Fig thanked her and together they rushed back through the streets of Loverlock to the Lodge.

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When they got up to the suite and Fig showed Sister Boyle into the room, the priestess of Allura wasted no time rolling up her sleeves and kneeling down beside Rick’s gently shivering form. She thankfully ignored the stone Chest in the corner, in favour of attending to her patient.

Sister Boyle gave a small nod to Dorian, who returned it and stepped back, making room.

Fig grabbed some water to finally quell her parched throat and perched on a chair nearby. She started fretfully pulling loose threads out of the upholstery as she watched Sister Boyle begin to inspect Rick.

The priestess examined his skin, peeling back the layers of his robes to look at the burns, feeling his forehead, opening his mouth and checking under his eyepatch. The more she saw, the more her face fell into a mask of disbelief.

‘How do you know this woman?’ Fig whispered to Dorian as they watched her work.

‘She was my writing instructor,’ he responded.

So she’s to blame.

‘Your writing instructor?’ Fig hissed.

‘Never fear. She’s the best healer in the church of Allura,’ Dorian raised a hand to placate Fig.

Just then, Sister Boyle finished her inspection and sat back on her haunches. She looked across at Fig and Dorian.

‘I have questions,’ she said, letting out a shaky breath.

‘What do you need to know?’ Fig said.

‘I… This man should be dead,’ Sister Boyle said, then shook her head, ‘Sorry, that wasn’t a question. I’m a bit rattled here. Nobody survives injuries like these. He must have burns over more than ninety percent of his body. The top layers of his skin are gone, and the rest is dying. I can’t see how he could have possibly survived the event that did this to him.’

‘Can you help him?’ Fig pressed her. They were losing time.

‘...Perhaps. It’s… How long ago was he burnt and how did it happen?’

‘Six weeks ago the roof of a burning building collapsed onto him,’ Fig said.

‘Six weeks,’ Sister Boyle whispered, ‘No that’s not possible. These burns are fresh.’

‘He had magic that was preserving him, or keeping him alive, somehow. But it must not be working anymore,’ Fig said, ‘He needs healing.’

‘I don’t know…’ Sister Boyle looked at Rick like she was afraid of him. Fig could guess what she was thinking. The only thing that explained this situation was some kind of unholy magic, lichdom or necromancy. Whatever it was, a priestess of the Aspects had no business meddling with it.

Fig prepared for the woman to flee the room. But what would they do without her help?

Then Dorian approached Sister Boyle and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.

‘He’s just a boy, Lucy,’ the writer said, ‘Please try.’

She looked up at him with wide eyes, then back at Rick, and seemed to make a decision. She took a deep breath, straightened her back and switched to a businesslike tone.

‘Put something in his mouth to stop him biting through his tongue,’ she said pointing an urgent hand at Fig, ‘This is going to be very unpleasant for him. Dorian, I need you both to hold him down.’

Fig unlooped her belt and stuck the leather between Rick’s teeth, then joined Dorian in pinning down his arms and legs.

Sister Boyle raised her hands in prayer.

‘My lady, lay a kind hand upon this poor soul. Whatever afflicts him, let it be washed away in the clear waters of your affection. Whatever ails him, let it be remedied by your doting touch. If dark powers dwell within him, show them the might of your protection, that he may be restored to illumination.’

She stretched out her hands and warm radiance burst forth from her body, engulfing Rick within its rosy glow. The smell of apple-blossom and dewy meadows filled the room.

The divine healing magic began to work on Rick, suffusing his body with that same holy light, but the result was jarringly violent. He started thrashing against Fig and Dorian, and whimpering through his leather gag as the magic took hold. His working eye came alive, darting about and bulging in his head.

Fig remembered all too well how terrible and violating divine healing felt.

‘It’s ok, Rick!’ she said to him, trying to soothe his panic, ‘We’re trying to help you.’

She thought she saw brief recognition in his eye before his head went limp again and slumped against the cushion they’d placed beneath it.

Sister Boyle moved her hands over his body and Rick’s skin seemed to ripple. The violent discolouration of his burns slightly reduced as the minutes passed, and his sores stopped weeping the yellow discharge that smelled so rotten.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Sister Boyle said through gritted teeth. She tilted her head and leant closer to Rick, as if listening, though Fig couldn’t tell what for.

‘Of course! Burns. His body is losing too much moisture to discharge. He’s dying of thirst,’ she barked, ‘Get me water, as much as you can.’

Dorian rushed off to the suite’s mini-bar and returned with a sloshing jug of water.

‘He can’t drink while he’s unconscious,’ Fig protested.

‘He doesn’t need to,’ Sister Boyle said.

She placed the jug of water on the floor in front of her and directed some of her divine magic down into it.

The water began to bubble and rise, filling with Allura’s divine light until it simmered up out of the jug in a glowing cloud of mist that flowed forwards and settled over Rick.

Fig pressed herself down on his arms, trying to control him as Rick’s whole body shook and spasmed. The mist wove around her without any affect, but seemed to press itself down into his skin, becoming a part of him. In seconds it was gone, and Rick collapsed back once more.

The healing continued a few more minutes before Sister Boyle lowered her arms with a gasp and caught herself as she almost fell sideways. The light of her divine magic faded, leaving behind only that fresh floral smell.

Rick’s chest rose and fell, his breaths stronger than it had been when they found him in the early morning. He was still a burnt up husk of a person. Burns still covered his skin, but their colour was slightly reduced from the deep purple they’d been a few minutes ago. The puss from all his open sores was gone, and the sores themselves had closed. He looked more himself, but no better than he had when Fig met him. It seemed divine healing could only do so much in Rick’s case.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Sister Boyle said, ‘His soul won’t recover any further than this.’

‘What does that mean?’ Fig asked.

‘My healing should give his soul the energy it needs to return the body to its ideally healthy state. In technical terms we call it an ethereal identity baseline. It changes over the course of someone’s life, but it always gives them a state to return to with a little prompting. But… it’s as if his soul is stuck. As far as it’s concerned, this is what he is supposed to be like. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘So you can’t heal all his burns because…’ Dorian prompted.

‘Because as far as his soul is concerned, he isn’t injured, and there’s nothing to heal. It thinks this is his baseline,’ Sister Boyle looked warily down at Rick’s ravaged body, ‘Something terrible is happening to him. Evil magic, or some Outsider interference. Something that has wounded his soul. And there’s a foul taste to his ether, like the touch of death. He’s marked by it.’

‘He isn’t a danger to anyone,’ Fig said.

‘Are you sure?’ Sister Boyle asked.

‘Yes,’ Fig met her eyes with a firm gaze. She was glad that she’d tucked away the Book of the Undying King in Rick’s bag before the priest arrived. No need to bring that up with the Aspects’ clergy.

‘On your head be it,’ the priestess said. She rose and gathered her things.

‘He needs water, and rest, and ointment for his skin, to stop it getting infected. You need to keep him clean.’

She started to make her way to the suite door.

‘Ok,’ Fig nodded, ‘What if he needs healing again?’

Sister Boyle paused before answering, ‘Then you can call on me, if you must.’

‘Thank you,’ Fig said.

‘No thanks are needed,’ Sister Boyle inclined her head, ‘I’m glad the hands of Fate put me where I could help, but my healing can only go so far.’

She pointed at Rick, ‘He needs something I cannot provide, true salvation. It’s his soul. He needs to fix it, and shake off whatever thing is warping him.’

‘I’ll tell him.’

‘Good. Until we meet again then,’ Sister Boyle nodded to Dorian and they exchanged a quiet word, then she left.

Over the next hour Fig sent Dorian to collect healing herbs and ointment from a local alchemist, while she undressed and washed Rick with a clean cloth.

Fig checked in with Mirabelle and thankfully everything down in the Chest was going fine. There were no meetings today, just a lot of preparations for the festival in the evening. Mirabelle was planning to attend the celebrations out on the lake in disguise. Fig thought it was a terrible idea from a security perspective, but she didn't have nearly enough energy right now to try and dissuade Mirabelle. That would be a fool's errand at the best of times, and there was already far too much going on.

You're just doomed to have a complicated life, Fig.

'Yeah and I'm fucking sick of it.'

When Dorian returned in the early afternoon, they rubbed pungent medicinal ointment over his entire body then wrapped him in fresh bandages.

Fig and Dorian worked in relative silence, until Fig finally swallowed her pride and muttered to Dorian, ‘I’m sorry for how I spoke to you, yesterday.’

He turned his head and met her gaze with those bright blue eyes, like rushing meltwater. His stare was almost unsettling, like he was looking right through her, but then he cracked a small smile.

‘It’s ok,’ he said, ‘I can’t expect to be everyone’s cup of tea. You were a bit, ahem, expressive with your dislike for me, but I took a nice walk through the forest and felt a lot better afterwards.’

Fig relaxed. She didn’t know what she expected, but it was good to see Dorian back to his mostly chipper self.

‘As long as there’s no hard feelings,’ she said as she tied off the last bandage around Rick’s temple.

‘About you hating me? Gosh no,’ Dorian winked and twirled his moustache, ‘Why would there be any hard feelings about that? It just goes to show that you have terrible taste in men.’

Fig snorted with sudden laughter, ‘Oh is that it?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ Dorian smirked, ‘And unfortunately I’m building up something of a history of getting rejected in Loverlock.’

‘Ah yes, your mysterious Elena,’ Fig said, ‘Perhaps she and I would have a lot in common if we met, since we both decided we’d rather not be around you too much.’

‘I actually do think you two would get along very well,’ Dorian said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes. You each have a dangerous streak, and you both swear like sailors. I think you could exchange vocabulary.’

‘How thrilling. We’ll have to cross paths at som–’ Fig said, and then broke off as Rick jerked and finally began to stir from his exhausted slumber.

He tensed up and looked around in confusion, seeming unsure of where he was, until he saw Fig and Dorian’s faces come into close view.

‘W… happened?’ he managed to mumble.

‘We were hoping you could tell us that,’ Fig said, ‘Your skin got infected sores and you almost died of dehydration because we couldn’t give you water while you were unconscious. We had to get a healer up here and this was the best she could do. How did this happen Rick?’

His eye searched around for a moment.

‘...Book.’

Dorian produced it for him.

Rick’s trembling hands tried to open it, but the covers wouldn’t come apart from the pages.

‘Do you want me to try?’ Fig asked.

Rick weakly shook his head and rested back, tucking the Book under his arm.

They fed him some water, and it seemed to help his throat enough that he could string longer sentences together.

At last, he recounted the events of the previous day.

He told them about his trip to the I.G.A, walking through town, his magic practice in the orchard, then the arrival of the Undying King who stripped away Rick’s access to the Book and everything it provided, including a large amount of the vigour that had been keeping him going since the fire.

‘That’s insane,’ Fig said, ‘How is taking away your power supposed to “teach you a lesson” if you die immediately?’

‘I guess he knew that you two would save me,’ Rick croaked, ‘He spoke as if he’s pulling all the strings.’

‘Like he’s the reason behind all of our strange luck and coincidences?’ Fig asked.

‘Maybe,’ Rick said.

‘I knew it! That bastard!’

‘Fig!’ Rick started, then coughed for a few seconds before he gathered enough breath to continue, ‘Please don’t say things like that. I don’t want us to make him any more angry than he already is. Imagine what might happen!’

‘But you can’t live like this, Rick. Under the thumb of one of the Fallen.’ Fig got down beside him and took his hand, ‘The priestess who treated you said it’s your soul that’s wounded. She couldn’t heal that. She said you need to fix it. You need to get out of this pact.’

‘I know,’ Rick said, ‘But there’s nothing I can do. Not yet. I need more time. I need to learn, and practise magic without the Book so I can fix my soul. If I free myself now. I’ll die. My body isn’t keeping itself alive, the Book is, even now, just a little bit. I should be dead. So I have to do what the Undying King says for now, otherwise…. I’m not ready to die, Fig.’

Fig and Dorian glanced at each-other, but neither seemed to know what to say.

Rick took some more water and a little food. He was regaining some strength, but without the Book’s unholy vigour, he could barely sit up, and every movement seemed excruciatingly painful for him. Fig could hardly imagine how he’d walked back several miles in the dark like this.

‘How long is he going to withhold your power?’ Dorian finally asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Rick said, ‘Days, weeks, longer. Until I’m more desperate than I already am, if that’s even possible.’

‘I’m just sorry you’re going to miss the festival, after finally making it to Loverlock,’ Dorian sighed.

‘What?’ Rick fully sat up, wincing but ignoring the pain, ‘I’m not missing the Lovers’ Festival.’

‘What do you mean?’ Fig asked.

‘There’s no way I’m missing the festival,’ Rick was adamant.

‘You can’t go like this,’ Fig protested, ‘Rick you can hardly move, let alone walk. The festival is out on the lake.’

‘No. I don’t care. I came all this way. I’m not missing it!’ Rick spat. There was a feral look in his eye that Fig had never seen before.

She heard Dorian chuckling behind her.

‘You think this is funny?’ she rounded on him, ‘We only just got him stabilised, and now he’s insisting on something that’s going to get him killed!’

‘I just can’t help but admire the boy’s spirit,’ Dorian said, ‘He’s chasing adventure, no matter the danger. Good for him.’

‘Why am I surrounded by the most stubborn men in Sedalia?’ Fig threw her hands up.

‘You’re calling us stubborn? You?’ Rick croaked.

Fig paused, then sighed.

‘But how are we going to make this work?’ she asked.

‘I think I spotted a spare wheelchair behind the front desk,’ Dorian suggested.

[End of Chapter 24]