“We have a new guest among us. What do we call you, miss?”
“Do I have to give you my name? I thought that this was anonymous. With the masks, and everything…” If one could see through the plain black cloth she used to cover her face,one would notice boredom adorning Auria’s face. Why did I let her talk me into this…
“No, not your name. Just tell us how we should address you.” The speaker was a man, and by the sound of his voice, a young man. Perhaps younger than she was.
“Very well. Call me… Auria.” She noticed a slight shiver from a masked woman sitting right across her. There you are, Naira.
“Thank you, Auria. Now, since this is your first time, you don’t have to talk at all. You can just listen…”
“I came here seeking help. Not listen. I want to be done with this, and leave.”
“Well then…” The speaker continued. “What troubles you, Auria?”
“Nightmares. Memories. My past.” A chuckle sounded around the room. “Did I say something funny?” She was getting more irritated by the minute. This was really a dumb idea.
“Nothing funny, Auria. It's just what people come here with. A trauma from their past, nightmares about a painful event from their past… Do you wish to elaborate?”
“I really don’t.”
“So why did you come?”
She stood up and wanted to say something cheeky, but a familiar voice stopped her. “Sit. Down. Now.”
“Now now, sister Uransahr. We do not hold anybody here against their own will.”
Uransahr? Her surname. I was right that it is Naira. She sat down, fuming, and lit up her pipe to calm down. Nobody protested. “What nightmares do you have?”
She blew a large cloud of smoke from her mouth. “You want to hear them?” She was silent for a few puffs from a pipe, but then, with the pipe in her shaking hand and a restless leg, she started talking. Quickly, nervously. “They repeat. Again, and again, and again. Five different dreams, without a change. I dream of nothing else. I am in a carriage, being carried somewhere with other poor souls, deformed, reeking creatures, we are carried somewhere only to be beaten up and pissed upon. I am in a dungeon, being served what is clearly human flesh, but I still eat it like a good dog because hunger drives me senseless. Worms crawl over the flesh, worms crawl over me, tickle me all over my body. I am blindfolded, somewhere damp and cold, and one by one, sharp… nails, or whatever the fuck it is, are being driven into my back. I scream, I cough blood from my torn throat, I bite my lips bloody. I am being cuddled by a monster, a deformed woman with skin sown with blisters, an eye replaced by a hole, teeth… some are missing, some are pointy, almost canine… But I feel love, and safety… I am happy, I am… home. In the last one, I am in bed, with a reeking, fat man that caresses my hair with a filthy hand, licking my fingers, squeezing my body...” She was visibly shivering, with rage and past trauma.. She could not stand the mask anymore, so she tore it down. “Now these… I am sure that these are not just dreams. These are my memories. Things I have endured when… Before I came here. Before I was brought here.”
Stunned silence filled the room. War stories, death of a relative, broken hearts, these were the memories and dreams they were used to. But this…
One by one, people in the room took down their masks, yet she paid their faces no attention. “You wanted me to speak. I spoke. What now? How do I forget? How do I stop having Nightmares?”
“When did the nightmares start?” Speaker asked her. She turned to him, and his face felt somehow… familiar.
“Four years ago… After…” She glanced quickly at Naira. “Something happened. But it is not my tale to tell. I guess that she has already spoken about it.”
“Miss Uransahr never spoke of what happened to her. She just sits here, and listens. But back to you, miss Auria. What do you want?”
She barked a laugh. “What do I want? For the nightmares to stop. To have a full life again, albeit filled with painkillers. Just as it was before.”
Speaker thanked her for her contribution, and invited other people to talk. Auria paid them no attention at start, but after a few short minutes, she treated each speaker with polite interest. There was a soldier, whose family died in a fire, and he blamed himself for it, even though he was far away from the Citadel when it happened. A chemist that has poisoned her colleagues after an experiment went wrong. An old artist, a painter who tried to capture the beauty of his wife in a painting before she died, yet he did not finish the painting quickly enough and after she died, he could not remember her face clearly…
Is this the ultimate fate of everybody? A life full of misery?
She got lost in her thoughts. All those people here, including Naira… They have lost something, and it could never be returned back. But she… she did not lose the opportunity to deal with her own problems. She just ran away from them, farther and farther away, instead of facing them. She chuckled softly and silently and after the session had ended, she thanked everyone for sharing.
Young speaker that led the discussion came to her after everybody but her and Naira left. “You might not remember me, medic, but you might remember my child. You have saved him in…”
“Cryota. I see the resemblance now. How does he fare? Were there…”
Speaker interrupted her, smiling. “He is fine, thank you. Happy and well. He studies as a medic, actually, probably thanks to you. Now, I don’t want to waste your time, so listen. You do a lot of good. Perhaps more than you should. You save lives, you heal others… But you yourself wither. And nobody is going to take your mantle after you are unable to perform your duty. Medic… Auria, I will give you some advice. Heal yourself. Face yourself. Find your past. And then, only then, return back to your duties.”
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It did not feel like the words came from his mouth, his mind. She knew that those words were not his, but Naira’s. But Auria understood. If Naira said the same words to her, Auria would probably think about them… but do nothing. She actually told me those words. Often. And she was right.
***
“Why don’t you talk in there?”Auria asked Naira. “It actually helped me to get it out of my system to a bunch of unknown people.”
“I know them all. They are not strangers to me, and I am not a stranger to them. They know, and so they don’t ask… anymore.”
They walked silently through the streets paved by basalt cubes. Auria looked around her, admiring the architecture of the Citadel for a thousandth time. Houses, shops, inns and taverns, all built with red bricks, with orange tiled roofs, each of them built with care, each of them a master’s work… A small stream ran through the middle of the wide street, small enough that one could jump across it easily, yet there were plenty of small bridges across it. And in the distance, on a small hill, the building of the university, surrounded by a large number of factories, laboratories and workshops, with smoke and steam coming out of tall chimneys… The Citadel was beautiful. But its beauty did not come only from what was lovely for the eye.
“Do you know what I love about this place?”
“Tell me.” said Naira with a curious voice.
“The smell. Or rather the absence of it. You walk through a street, and you smell what, the pies and fresh bread from the bakery, or wine, or smoked meat… do you remember how Antiga stank?”
“Thousands of dead bodies have a tendency to smell, yes.”
“Oh, I forgot that you came after it all went to hell. Well, the city stank incredibly even before that. Like shit and piss and sweat and horses… God, how I hate the smell of horses.”
Naira smiled warmly. “I have read the works of Jariah the Wise once. You have probably never heard of the name, but he was a philosopher. Do you know what he considered a true mark of civilization?”
Auria thought a bit. “Not leaving anyone behind? You know, forgetting the whole survival of the fittest and actually taking care of your wounded and ill?”
Naira shook her head. “No. The removal of your own filth, even if it’s not on your property. That means, cleaning after yourself. That means…” Naira pointed to the nearest sewer hatch. “Plumbing. Sewer systems. And showers and baths…”
Auria laughed. “So we, in the Lands of the Citadel, are the only civilized people in the world.”
Naira simply grinned and nodded.
***
“What will you do?” They stood in front of the hospital close to the university, where Auria practiced her arts. “Will you go and look for your past?”
Auria was unsure what to say. “I am considering it… Will you join me… If I decide to go, to leave this…” she waved her arm around, across the hospital, the university, the bulky man carrying a brown clothed body with a long metallic device sticking from him…
***
Harian was tired. He ran to the closest healing ward, closest hospital he could think of, and had the luck of meeting a medic right in front of the building. With her help, and the help of a dark haired woman, they carried Lakar into the free surgical suite in the hospital. Both him and the dark haired woman were instructed to clean their hands with water, then alcohol, and then water again, put on gloves made from soft but firm fabric, and wait for instructions. White haired woman - the medic - started to cut Lakar’s clothes open. “He is not bleeding.” Medic muttered. “What is it, how did this happen?”
“Some artifact he was examining. He has inserted a weird, blue thing into it, nothing was happening, but he… Fell on the device, and it impaled him.”
“It did not impale him. There is no blood. There is no wound, actually, it’s more like it… grew into him. What is it, Naira, have you ever seen a device like this?”
She shook her head.”This was not made in the Citadel. I guarantee that.”
“How do I disconnect it from him?”
Lakar woke up and screamed. The metallic arm moved and hit Auria with a force that made her stagger back and hit the wall. “Get it off me!” Lakar screamed.
Harian jumped to him and tried to pin the arm to the table with the help from Naira. Two of them could barely hold the arm down. “Get it off, get it off!” Lakar screamed repeatedly.
A circular hand with five blade-shaped fingers on the end of the arm started to glow. Naira noticed it, let go of the arm and dragged Harian with her to the ground. “Cover yourself, Auria!”
The hand on the end of the metallic arm was glowing as a small sun and - same as sun - it emitted a strong, searing heat. Where Lakar looked, the arm followed and under his gaze, the surgical suit burned down. “What is happening? Harian! Help me!” His voice was getting dry and raspy.
“Calm down, historian! We are trying, but the arm…”
Auria crawled on the ground, staying out of Lakar’s sight. From below him, she reached with a syringe in her hand, and quickly stabbed and injected Lakar with a sedative. The arm twitched and hit her forearm with a loud crack of broken bone. Auria cried out and moved away from the flailing arm…
Lakar fell asleep and with him, the arm stopped moving.
All three of them stood up. Auria was clenching her teeth from pain, but moved to a historian to check his vital signs. “He’s okay.”
“Are you okay, medic?” Harian asked her. She nodded quickly, and looked around the room.
Black scorch marks trailed across the room. Everywhere that Lakar looked the gaze of a glowing arm followed and left a black, burnt mark.
“The arm was protecting him.” Naira muttered. “I have noticed that its movement followed his own eyesight. That is… remarkable.”
Auria gritted her teeth. “He burnt, and broke my arm. Nothing remarkable about it. Fuck.” she spat on the ground. “We need to get it off of him.”
“Medic…” Harian gasped. “He… aged.”
“What now?” Auria was confused.
“He aged, by… twenty years, perhaps. His hair wasn’t starting to gray yet, he was rather young looking but now…”
Wrinkles were noticeable on the historian’s face, as well as a soft, gray tint of his hair. “We definitely need to get it off him.”
“You can’t. The device is… ah, look for yourself, Auria.”
She did. Under the skin on the historian's back, Auria could see that something was spreading from the device directly to his spine like thick worms crawling through the dirt.
“When he wakes up, he will burn down the building if we don’t subdue him. Or it will kill him, make him age…” Harian muttered softly.
“Not necessarily.” Naira said. “It seemed to be protecting him. And following his gaze… if he wakes up, and if he doesn’t panic but is calm and rational, he might… subdue the mechanism. Control it. Maybe even somehow command it to detach itself from him. Auria, can you make him wake up calm… somehow?”