Chapter 36
Roden remembered thinking the most painful hit he had taken since coming to this world was when Seven put him through a wall. This was far worse.
His entire body hurt. His ears were already ringing from his up close introduction to his own Conflagration spell. When the shaman’s staff exploded he was deaf before the shockwave even hit him.
He woke up to his Never the Time and Place ability healing his wounds. As great as the ability was, it did little for the pain of his injuries as they essentially underwent the entire course of the healing process in seconds. He blinked repeatedly to try and clear his blurry vision.
When he looked around he saw three figures chasing a few small black silhouettes. He laid his head back onto the ground and closed his eyes. Either they had won or he was just going to lay there until a gremlin decided it wanted to try him.
When he opened his eyes again he realized he must have dozed off. He could hear some people talking softly. There were some sobs that cut through the hushed conversations.
When Roden sat up he could see the townspeople were heading back to their homes, their weapons put away. Errrkkkk was the first familiar face Roden saw when he had worked his way back to his feet.
“Hey man, how are you doing, cacaw?”
“I’m here.” His voice did not come easily, “I’m still a bit shaken up from it all, I think.”
“No surprise there! That blast left a crater you could stand in, cacaw!”
Roden hadn’t realized he had been moved closer to the base of the treehouse. He looked around and saw Errrkkkk was right. Out past the edge of town there was a good sized hole in the ground presumably where the shaman’s staff had detonated.
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“Yeah, but you can take it easy, we are handling the clean up, cacaw.”
Roden had a pit in his stomach, but he had to know, “How many townspeople did we lose?”
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Errrkkkk clenched his beak, “There were four dead, and five seriously injured, cacaw.”
His words were a blow to his very core. People had died because he couldn’t live up to what they needed from him. Thoughts of self doubt washed over him. It took everything in him to keep from crying at the loss of those he was to protect and what he saw as his own failure.
“Hey man, don’t worry too much! We saved a lot of people, and the ones who died did so fighting, cacaw!”
“Yeah… it’s just so sad to see it.”
“Cacaw.” Errrkkkk placed a hand on Roden’s shoulder in solidarity, “Hey if you have any magic left you could go help Riakon heal the injured. He’s got them in the market, cacaw.”
Roden’s world swam as he was possessed by an intense wave of vertigo. Errrkkkk’s words echoed in his mind. It was finally happening, Riakon was in the market and the fight was over. He felt his heart start to race.
He could hear the thumping in his ears. The sweat already covering him went cold as ice in the night air. He had never had a panic attack, but this felt like what he imagined they would be like. It took everything in him to get out the words, “Yeah… I think I’ll go take a look.”
Errrkkkk eyed him with a hint of suspicion, but must have chopped up his condition to his recent trauma. “Okay man, take a break if you need it. I’ll be around looking for any stragglers, cacaw.”
Roden walked through the dark paths between the buildings of Pescatin, his mind racing. He did have enough magic left to cast a couple healing spells. He could save those people, but at what cost?
He wandered aimlessly. He wasn’t really looking for the market, he just didn’t want to be around anyone while the terrible thing he wanted so much to avoid was happening.
He stopped alongside the back of one building and leaned against it, his head in his hand while the other braced him on the building. So many questions plagued his mind.
‘Did he really have to let this happen?’
‘Was it really necessary?’
‘Couldn’t there be another way?’
'Fuck this world,' he thought. Then he heard a noise. Instinctually, he crouched into the shadow of the building. He couldn’t see anything from where he was, but could see the roof of the building wasn’t too high. He put a foot on the wood siding of the structure and leapt up the side of it.
He landed on the roof of what he hoped was an uninhabited shop. From there he crept forward just enough until he saw the small cul de sac that made up the town market. Laid out on one side of the market was five figures. Each one lay mostly still, but occasionally Roden could make out a faint whimper.
Standing above them was a large figure. It was in the shape of a man. It stood perhaps two meters tall. The definitive gray scales and draconic features stood out in the moonlight and made it clear the man was a Dragonkin.
He wore a black cloak that rustled as if blown by a slight breeze over his shoulders with dark brown pants, and a dark green shirt stained with blood. It was Riakon, and it was time for him to enact the terrible thing Roden wanted nothing more than to prevent.
‘Fuck that,’ he would prevent it. ‘To hell with the unknown.’
He moved to leap off the roof when a hand touched his shoulder. Roden nearly fell off the roof, he was startled so greatly. His heart nearly burst from his chest; it was beating so fast.
It was there in the moonlight, on the roof of a random shop in the small fishing town of Pescatin, he saw the face of his mother, Miriana, but in that moment he knew it was Zamira who had placed her hand on his shoulder.
“I am sorry my son, but you cannot go through with what you just decided. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this so soon, but it is time we have a talk about why I brought you here, but first you need to see this.”