Time passed like the slow drip of cold molasses in the dead of winter. Oralia spent the first two days in a torturous state, too exhausted to keep her eyes open while simultaneously too anxious to sleep. It resulted in a lot of unnecessary tossing and turning as her consciousness slipped into traumatic, dream-like hallucinations. She was running, always running. Sometimes through walls of fire, or dark, endless tunnels as smoke and ash steadily filled the air. Fear would jolt her awake again and the torturous cycle would start anew.
The nightmares weren’t the only thing keeping a restful sleep at bay. The parasitic voice within Oralia’s head tormented her with its ceaseless pleas of hunger. Militarized witches from the Division of Divination stalked the forest and the dark entity had taken notice. It pervaded Oralia’s thoughts, its poison writhing beneath her skin, promising all manner of rewards if she would just get close enough for a taste.
Eventually, driven to the brink of madness, Oralia unfastened the chain from her neck and stashed the amulet in Briony’s pack. With their connection severed, the entity’s fervent whisperings vanished from her thoughts. Alas, even without a voice, the dark entity made its presence known. The dark veins burrowed within Oralia’s flesh wriggled and writhed whenever a division witch passed by. It always seemed to happen just as she was drifting asleep. Oralia was beginning to suspect it was intentional, as though it was the dark entity’s way of sending a message:
You will not rest until my demands are met.
Unfortunately for the entity, when it came to stubborn tenacity, Oralia could not be beat. The entity would have to let her sleep eventually. Its survival depended on her own. Until then, she would simply have to find something else to occupy her time. Oralia sat hunched in the dark instead, peering out of the tangled root system that partially obstructed the cave entrance, watching the surrounding wilderness for movement.
Unable to rely on her normal supply of safehouses, Briony had found a small cave for them to hunker down in and wait out the ongoing manhunt. The surrounding forest was rife with activity at first. Hunting parties scoured the area, coming and going at all hours. As the days slowly crawled past, Oralia saw less and less of them. These were soldiers, after all, not professional trackers. Whatever meager trail she and Briony left had been trampled over so many times by now, she doubted even the best bloodhound in the territory could have picked it up again.
Which was why on the fourth day Oralia nearly leapt out her skin when a ratty figure darted out from underneath a tangle of undergrowth, scuttled across the mossy ground on all fours, and ducked inside the hidden mouth of the cave.
Oralia seized the intruder and slammed him to the ground, hand already curled around his throat to prevent the inevitable scream.
The man threw up his hands, hissing, “It’s me, idiot!”
“Mul?” Oralia slid her dagger back into its sheath. Torn between relief and outrage, she considered leaving her hand on his throat as a reminder not to spring up on her like that ever again. Ultimately, she decided against strangling him. Doing so would only convince the Stoneclaw to keep doing it.
Mul eased upright, broad chest heaving, wide-eyed and unable to utter anything more than a hoarse croak. His coarse hair had escaped its usual braid. The sections that weren’t plastered to his head with dirt and tree sap stuck in the air at odd angles, reminding Oralia of a large, awkward baby bird. He was coated from head to toe in a crust of dried mud and pine needles — a tactic she’d seen the Stoneclaw brothers use before to disguise their scent. Despite Mul’s best efforts, the air around him was thick with the sour stench of sweat and fear.
Something about his demeanor made her skin crawl. It took a second look-over before Oralia realized what unspoken change her instincts were picking up. In all their months together, she had never seen Mul Stoneclaw show an ounce of fear. And now, huddled on the ground beside her, shaking like a leaf, the man couldn’t fake his bravado any longer. He was downright terrified.
Oralia reached for her waterskin and pressed it into his trembling hand instead. “Take a drink and catch your breath.”
She winced when Mul threw his head back and drained the waterskin in a single gulp. Having rationed it for the past four days, their water supply had already been running on empty. The skin would need to be refilled again, soon, but that was a worry for later. Presently, all Oralia wanted was answers. Resisting the urge to shake the burly man by the shoulders in a desperate bid for information, she bit back her questions and waited for Mul to recover his ability to talk.
Briony was less patient. She scuttled closer on her hands and knees until she and Mul were nearly pressed nose to nose. “How’d you find us?” She hissed, her amber eyes searching the man’s dirtied face for clues. “I made damn sure we didn’t leave a trail. What about you, huh? How well did you make sure you weren’t followed?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Insult furrowed across Mul’s wrinkled brow. His lower jaw quivered open, practically choking on the single word that escaped his parched lips. “Followed?”
“You could have led them right to us!”
The few patches of bare skin on Mul’s forehead burned beet red. “Fuck you.”
Oralia awarded Briony his fiercest ‘back off’ glare. Its reception was not entirely successful as Briony appeared unintimidated, but the faun did grudgingly give the man space to breathe. Once certain she would not be required to break up a fist fight, Oralia returned her attention back to Mul. There were more pressing questions on her mind, but she started with the customary ones nonetheless. “Are you injured?”
“I’m fine,” he rasped.
His statement was false. Oralia could see a multitude of crusted scabs and green and purple bruises running down his neck. Amidst the overpowering odors of mud and body odor, she detected the faint whiff of dried blood as well. It was pride, probably, that kept Mul from disclosing whatever injuries he’d sustained during his escape.
At the moment, Oralia wasn’t going to fight him on it. Not with so many other questions still unanswered. “What happened?”
“Seriously?” Briony interjected with a huff. “We know what happened.”
Oralia’s second glare was more successful than the first, convincing the impatient faun to settle back down and stop interjecting. Oralia found herself wishing she could recall the saying Rali had about assumptions and how they correlated with rear ends, but the words weren’t aligning correctly in her head. She stuck with what she knew — blunt and to the point. “We were not there, Briony. We do not know what happened. He was. I value facts over assumptions.”
The smirk on Mul’s face vanished the moment Oralia’s stare swept back over him. He sat a little taller, struggling to piece the night in question together into a coherent string of events. “We were attacked. I don’t know who was supposed to be on watch, but the enemy must have gotten to ‘em first, because nobody sounded the alarm. I awoke to screams and the smell of the roof on fire. I ran into Sascha trying to fumble my way out and he made us a nifty hole in the wall. Practically brought down half the house in the process.”
Mul took another gasping breath. “It wasn’t just soldiers waiting for us on the outside, they had witches too. Our only saving grace was the powder charge I’d swiped from Rali. It was squirreled away in my pack under the bunk. The fire must have set it off because the damn thing blew the roof to smithereens seconds after Sascha and I stumbled out into the yard. The blast scattered the awaiting soldiers, allowing us to slip past into the trees.”
“Did anyone else get away?” Oralia asked.
Mul’s slack jaw clenched as the ruddiness faded from his dirt covered cheeks. He shook his head no.
She knew it had been a long shot — that perhaps more than one member of her team had evaded capture. But it was such hope that had kept her functioning the last few days in waiting. The reality of the situation, the one kept at bay by wishful thinking alone, came crashing down all in an instance. Oralia’s tongue felt numb, unable to form the words with which to speak.
“Sascha?” was the only sound she managed to get out.
“Taken.” Mul still stared dejectedly at the ground, unable to meet her gaze. “We it a ways together, but the soldiers were too fast. Sascha held them off so I could get away.”
No, no, no. Oralia felt her last sliver of hope wither and die. Why would he do that? Why would he throw his life away so recklessly? He was supposed to be the cautious one, dammit!
“Sascha, uh, gave me a message for you.” Mul raised his head and locked eyes with Oralia as words that were certainly not his own rumbled from his mouth. “No lone martyr shit. He said to stay low and wait for help.”
Oralia sank back on her knees. It was a sensible message. Sascha knew her well enough to anticipate that her first instinct would be to try to free him. Still, she could have done with a little ‘I love you. You can do this. I know it goes against everything you believe in, but you have to trust me. I will be okay without you’.
She spoke to Mul without looking at him, her gaze boring into the side of the cave wall. “And if help doesn’t come?”
Mul bristled at the absurdity of the question. “Your beau and I really didn’t have time to go back and forth with the hypothetical scenarios, you know. What, with the running for my life with a pack of wild witches hot on my heels and all.”
How utterly cruel, Oralia thought as she deflated into a puddle of limp defeat. It was she who was supposed to cause the worry. She was the one who rollicked about with reckless abandon, tempting death at every turn. Sascha was the fretter and she was, by default, the fret-creator. It was a dynamic that, while not perfect, worked for them. Except when it didn’t, which was now — as for some terrible reason, their roles had reversed.
Being on the wrong side of worry felt like drowning from the inside out. Concern clogged Oralia’s airways, dragging her down, down, down into the deepest pit of despair. Her instinct was to fight their oppressors tooth and nail, but she couldn’t. Sascha’s message had been clear. She felt paralyzed by his words, torn between what she wanted to do and what she was supposed to do.
Stay low. Wait for help.