When Gale awoke something had changed... The sounds... It had to be.

The sounds were... there?

But weren't they?

He listened. He listened to them, he heard them all. No longer were they a wild array of white noise bearing down and entrapping his kingdom. He could hear them, he could hear each one so clear. He picked out each one and listened to them.

The marketplace outside, the vendors, the buyers, the cars. The rain…

Gale then opened his eyes. His room looked... different? Why would it be different? In ten years nothing had changed...

He looked at every mark on his ceiling. The stains from upstairs' leaky pipes. The many thick cobwebs. The broken light fixture and peeling plaster. It looked... refreshed.

In fact it all did. Like a thick smog had been cleared. The air was fresh. The patterns on the fading wallpaper were strangely inviting, even if they were stained grey by dust and smoke.

Gale rolled onto his side and propped himself up on the edge of his creaky bed. He could feel every tendon pulling, he could feel every muscle straining. His bones creaked, his joints cracked. His heart began to beat manically. His head span, his eyes wandered...

He saw everything in his room. Unopened moldy boxes, faded books stacked on bookshelves, damaged crates and rotted furniture. Why hadn't he noticed its condition before?

Gale reached for his glass of whiskey. Its contents ready and inviting, the amber liquid was like liquid velvet. It yearned to be consumed. It called to him, its gentle whispers wormed their way through every nerve in his body, finally sauntering into his mind. It worked to seduce him, like it had done for many many years.

He gave it what it wanted. His shaky hands worked together to raise the glass to his mouth. Its smell saturated his senses. Smokey, dry, oaky…

His hands continued to shake as he tilted the glass. The ambrosia snaked its way down the tumbler's form, touching his lips it was almost numbing. It pooled, almost teasing him until it pushed through. The taste exploding through every sense. Its effects were already felt. His heart slowed, his breathing turned deep.

Gale lowered it back to his lap. It's contents half consumed. Yet he noticed something. He raised the glass back to his eyeline, the liquid sloshed and jostled. The glassware was stained with filth. Green mold crusted around the base, dirt and grime coated its exterior. Waterlines ringed its interior like layers of rock. Small white semi circles intertwined around its rim.

It hadn't been cleaned for ages…

How did he not see that?

He pushed himself to his feet only to fall back slightly. Gale looked at his legs puzzled.

"You boys fancy pulling your weight?" He grumbled at them. Even his voice was different, it sounded slightly interested. Gale rocked forward and heaved himself, groaning to his feet. His steps were shaky, his legs were wobbly. Old wounds showed themselves.

He worked his way slowly but surely to his bedroom door. Gale struggled to step over the scattered items and boxes. Old toys, magazines, memorabilia, trinkets and knick knacks spilled out of toppled over boxes and sat dejected and tired. Memories clung to each one, yet memories that were long lost to him. He'd never know the significance of any of them ever again. They were now only the remains of a lived life.

Part of Gale felt sad about that. But it was an issue to be dealt with at a later time. He'd reached the door, its hinges were stiff and heavy, just like every night he had to heave with all his weight to open it.

He stumbled back as it opened. His arm snapped out with laser precision and lightning reflexes, grasping onto the door jam and arresting his near fall.

But hell did his body throb with ache afterwards. Gale gritted his teeth. He leaned against it, his face contorted in pain. His knuckles were turning white.

"Gale!" He heard someone shout his name. He couldn't even register who the voice was.

"Don't... just... stand there... that takes the piss!" He barked, his voice was crackling. His body was locked tight now. The pain refused to subside. He could feel static as someone held onto him, their touches were reserved but delicate. "Cory…"

"I'm here Gale, come on let's get you sat back down." She began to pull him into the bedroom. He wouldn't let go.

"Not on that bloody thing!" He spat in one breath. With a marathon's worth of effort he lifted his leg. His joints were locked, it took everything he had to even bend his leg.

"Living room? Bathroom? Throne?" Cory asked. She was taking mental notes of everything, his lack of mobility, his pain, everything.

"Living room…" He huffed. He'd pulled away from the door. His energy levels were plummeting by the second. Each step hurt like hell, yet every one his muscles moved that bit easier. His breathing was getting heavier by each passing second. He could hear Cory behind him giving out unwanted words of encouragement. He tried to croak out for her to be quiet, yet his pain shrouded his mind, only the drive to keep moving held strong against it.

With his heart thundering in his ears above a backing track of static they made it to the living room. His eyes flicked from item to item.

His memory got slowly foggier and foggier. The events of those moments from the doorway to the chair went by without recognition. He could feel the chair beneath him yet he couldn't recall getting to it from that point. His mind said he should still be standing. It said he should be still walking. Phantom movements plagued his body.

He could just about hear Cory say she'd be just a moment, yet he couldn't retain it. He saw her run from the room. His eyes even followed her, yet nothing else could.

There was no playback of those events. There was no consciousness in those moments. He was a spirit with a loose attachment to a body, he couldn't tell if it was his, or why. He couldn't tell if he was there or not. He didn't even know what had happened, if the pain had brought on this sense of lostness or something else had.

Gale was scared. He sat in that void looking out his eyes truly terrified.

"Breath Gale, Breath." Cory said as calmly as she could, barely audible over the sound of his own heartbeat. She was placing things in his mouth, small objects. He could only feel them on his tongue, the taste was vile.

He suddenly found himself looking up at the ceiling, his head had been tilted back. He made no attempt to hide the terror in his eyes, he struggle to keep them locked onto hers. She avoided them at all costs.

Gale felt fluid run down his throat. He was drinking. The liquid was cool and tasteless. It was horrendous.

The endless tide of pain intensified. All Gale could feel was it now, and nothing more. Every sensation had faded into its depths; it was all that linked him to life now. It continued to rise, it continued to consume him. He was drawing tired, exhaustion was filling him, yet his body pumped with more adrenaline than blood. not even rest could quell this attack.

The assailant drew final stabs of pain through his body. each strike hit every nerve, it shook every muscle. Every thought, every memory, every sensation he'd ever felt in those briefest of moments was torn open and replaced with it.

His body reacted to it, it shook to it...

For those briefest of moments, there was nothing but.

"Gale?" Cory asked. The sudden silence was deafening.

"Am I dead?" He could finally muster those words. Like he had to search through the library in his mind for each one. The world was replaced with darkness.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"No, thankfully." She replied, he could hear her smile.

"It's so dark…"

"Gale, open your eyes."

Like a baby's eyes creeping open for the first time, he stuttered under the light of day. The glow of the waking world filled his senses. A warmth he'd not recognised for ages. He didn't repel it, he didn't hiss and shy away. but it did sting, but not anything like he had just felt. Not even close.

His kingdom came into slow focus. The blurred smudges of shape and colour gradually gave way to form. He could see Cory smiling at him.

He could see piles of boxes in the distance. He could see the light pouring in through the window.

"What was that?" He finally muttered between pants. Sensation flowed through his body again like fluid. Cory's smile faded slightly. He wondered if he wanted to know.

"Your war wound hasn't gone away, Gale. You're not as strong as you once were." She explained slowly. "Some things never heal."

"Cory, don't shit on my lawn." He snapped back, it hurt. He could feel the fire reigniting, and as it did the noises on the world outside began to press on him once again "I know what my CRPS feels like, this wasn't that."

"You're right." She admitted. "But it and your pericarditis caused A brief bout of arrhythmia" She paused for a moment. "Fighting's over but the war isn't."

"Is it ever?" Gale retorted. He didn't know how he felt, nor what he wanted to. He just knew those four words repeated in his head. Ones he never wanted to hear. "End of the line…"

Cory stopped herself in her tracks. It saddened her, just that little bit. She felt Gale's gaze leave her. He wasn't asking, he was stating.

"You have a lot of life left in you Gale, you're not there yet." She said as firmly, yet as warmly as she could. She wanted it to be fact. She shook her head in despair as he pulled a crumpled cigarette box from his pocket, plucking one out with skilled precision. "Please don't Gale, you've just had-"

"A heart attack?" He interrupted. He found the power in him to rise from his seat, strength that shouldn't be there, yet there it was.

"No not a heart attack…" Cory trailed off as Gale walked past her, slightly in shock that so quickly he was moving about in his usual shuffling fashion. He turned back to her, still wobbly, but more furious.

"But that's what you just said. 'Your heart started to beat out of rhythm." He waved his hands in the air. "That's a heart attack!"

"Gale listen-" She began, rising to her feet, she kept her stance open.

"No bullshit Cory!" He barked, fire was in his eyes, fueled by depths of hatred. The old Gale was back. "I've seen people go through this! I have seen people, in the heat of battle, shit themselves so hard their heart stopped! I watched men hit by grenades that survived, then died on the stretcher as their heart-" He quoted with his fingers mockingly. "'Went out of rhythm'. I've just had a heart attack, I'm at the end of the road, Don't tell me what I shouldn't do, I'm gonna live before I die if you don't mind!"

He spun back around, his movements were jagged. His usual pain was back, a familiar friend now compared to what his body could really throw at him. He swept a bottle from his radiator and stomped to the window.

"I ain't gonna sit and be all passive and say 'Oh Dr. Haylay I don't want to die.' I ain't scared of it, I never have been! Hence why I didn't shit myself to death!" He snapped the window open and leant his head out. "Will you shut up you loud bastards!"

"Gale getting angry will make things worse." She said as gently as possible. "I know you don't want to hear this but drinking now would be very bad, you've just had your medication. I'll get you some more water."

"I'm an environmentalist, I don't drink water." He growled. "When fish start living in whiskey I'll stop drinking that too."

"You did just now." She said as she made haste to the kitchen.

"Only because you poured it down my bloody throat, and those damn pills!" He spat. He quickly undid its cap, taking a mouthful of the burning ambrosia within moments. He drank it like it meant everything, he drank it like he needed it to live… And he carried on, with no other want in the world.

Cory walked back as he finally separated the bottle from his lips. He'd drunk half of it in one go. She let out a sigh. You try and stop him, he tries ever harder.

"Gale are you trying to kill yourself?" She asked, frustrated. She placed the glass loudly on the radiator, her frustration seeping into her actions. "Don't you care if you end up doing serious damage?"

"Why should I? No one else does." He said simply, he sloshed the liquid in the bottle, it called for him again but he didn't answer it.

"I do, Alban does. I'm sure if Tala was here she would too." The expression change was quite quick. At the mention of her name he gripped the bottle harder.

" Wake up now!"

His frown lines deepened. it was time for a tactic she'd never used before. "I'm sure your City does as well."

"Don't even go there." He said, pointing at her with the bottle. There was probably a good reason she hadn't gone there before "Don't go to either of those places. That's the low road, it's boggy and sad down there, that is my territory. Go take the high road like a good little pup."

"Well as your doctor I can't let you do that. If you're going to drink whilst on these meds I will have to make a best interest decision and take it all from you. You need your meds, you can't have them with alcohol. So I will have to put you in for alcohol therapy." She was once again straying into unfamiliar territory. Cory took a step forward, then another. Gale didn't react to any of them. He didn't even move, yet like a hunter waiting his eyes didn't leave her. He never blinked, he never shifted. He might as well be a sculpture.

"Gale…" Cory reached out, placing her hand on the bottle. She gave it a gentle tug. His grip tightened further, his knuckles turning white. "Give me the bottle.

Cory could feel the rage burning off him. It seemed like only his respect for her held it back. Gale knew she wanted to help...

But it wasn't enough...

Cory jumped. A sudden crack rippled through the flat.

Her eyes sunk from his own down to her hand as she felt a warm liquid flow over it. Gale's knuckles were white. His fingers oozed with blood, coating it and the broken bottle already. That same hand raised, and a bloodied index finger uncurled towards her.

"Leave this flat." He ordered, his voice a low growl. It was calm, his words cold as ice yet sharp as blades. Each one made her soul gently vibrate, shaking Cory's very being. "And never… Ever let me see you again."

"Gale please." She pleaded, trying to muster the right words for an apology.

"You are not my doctor anymore." His words were still low and nearly quiet, yet his next ones weren't. They came forth deep and loud like the commander of a massive army. "Get out!"

Cory nodded. She didn't say another word. she backed away slowly, watching the man stand there breathing very calmly. She was easily eight feet from him when he moved again. Stretching his hand to his side to drop the blood sheened bottle neck from his hand. It clattered on the stained carpet.

Cory pulled her phone out and immediately began ringing someone as she finally turned around and walked from the room. Gale could just about hear the conversation over the noises from outside.

"Hey… Yeah you need to come to your dads, Al… He's thrown me out, properly this time… his heart was acting up, and I said…" Her voice became silent as the door shut loudly. Gale let out a huff of indignation.

"Al?" He asked himself. He shrugged it off, raising the broken bottle to his mouth. As he made his way to his armchair he drank more of the dark liquid, sucking it through his teeth as a strainer. He continued to ponder the nickname. Pulling bits of glass from his mouth he turned to the window, fed up. "Shut the hell up!"

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"I didn't think you'd have me back…"

Gale didn't know how long he was asleep for, but it couldn't have been more than thirty minutes…

He came to, standing still on the ocean's surface. The Skyline ahead of him had collapsed. Towers and spires now rose as decrepit ruins, like stumps of massive trees, scattered with debris all around. The sea level appeared to have lowered, like it was slowly being drained. The faceted ocean floor rose out of the surface in places. The waterside shores had now become sheer cliffs. Behind him the World Tree now rose on roots like a mountain from the oceans depths.

The City was grayscale, like a noir film. Everything was a slight off shade of black, white and grey. It gave the feel of a graveyard, Whatever had happened here since that last night the city was at this point near death.

Gale realized he couldn't hear anything. Not the rippling of waves or the beat of the City's heart. He laid his hand on his forearm and the flightsuit beneath his glove remained as it was. There was no restoration, the surface remained cracked and muted. The plates remained smoothed and pitted like it had been sandblasted.

All he could hear was the haunting, distant howl of the far off spires. The sound echoed across the ocean, surrounding him and ensnaring him.

"Help me…" Gale begged the world around him. He drew the cold air in, and bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Help me please!"

Yet it wasn't enough...

The City didn't hear him. Nothing did. Gale felt truly alone, a feeling familiar yet forgotten in recent days. He stepped forth, dragging his feet. The soles of his boots flickered like they too were dying.

Gale suddenly felt solid ground beneath his feet. He looked down. The seabed rose unmarked out of the ocean's surface. There was no apparent waterline, merely the still, flat surface suddenly rose faintly upwards. It was pure, unbroken. It sat the same as it always had, yet now it rose to feel the air across it for the first time. Tiny crystals the size of pebbles were scattered across it, deposited by unknown means this far from the ocean's shore.

Gale reached for one, plucking it from its brethren he turned it around in his hand. The faintest of marks gave away its previous existence as part of one of the finest spires, long forgotten, long scattered into the depths of the ocean. It had met a fairer fate than most of its brethren. It remained with the City after death whilst so many took the plunge into abandon.

Gale pulled his arm back, and in a swift movement, fired the piece of history across the ocean's surface. It bound across it, landing with an almost unnatural ping only to bounce ever further away.

Gale was skipping these relics of a glorious time like stones across a pond.

It was somewhat relaxing actually. It felt unusual. Not that much unlike the days of wandering the City aimlessly. He was merely filling the time he had to himself.

It brought a smile to his face, each throw it went further and further. He was engaged in a one man tournament. His challenger was the previous throw, his goal was that little bit further.

He would have happily spent his time in the City doing that. Yet after a while each throw became slightly more disjointed. He could hear the sounds of the real world echoing through the depths of the dying city.

"Dad?" He would hear, it would rebound through the distant spires, echo across the great ocean and come to him and him alone.

Gale dropped the remaining stones, leaving just one last in his hand. He fought the will to wake, his arm arched back.

He couldn't tell if he'd thrown it or not...

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