Willow screamed in agony as Annabelle dragged her across the rough forest floor on a litter of branches.
“Quiet down,” Annabelle shouted back, but there was no way her voice could overpower Willow’s. Not with the pain she was in. She was trying to keep quiet.
The pain was just too intense.
Another root scraped along her spine and Willow wailed toward the canopy of trees above. She feebly tried to roll over in the litter, but the muscles along her spine spasmed and writhed in painful and unnatural ways. She hadn’t thought it would be like this.
The surgery had been a success, as Annabelle had said right after Willow awoke from the anesthesia. It only took one moment of movement, one twist of her spine, to set her body alight with agony. Annabelle had shouted something to her over her screams about her torso having attenuated the sensation she was feeling from every other part of her body, but Willow understood little of what the other woman said.
Her life was, moment by moment, one of intense pain.
Annabelle jerked the branches forward with her psychokinetic spell and Willow fell into a small ditch. Her diaphragm hitched, suddenly at war between her own psychokinetic spells and her newly activated neurons, and the screams stopped dead in her throat.
“Willow,” Annabelle asked and turned around. Willow fixed her with her bulging eyes and tried to move her arms up to claw her throat. They flopped feebly on the ground beside her.
“Oh shit,” Annabelle said, and knelt beside her. She wrenched Willow’s mouth open, pressed her tongue down and looked into her throat. She tapped Willow’s ribcage with her ear close to her chest. Willow continued to gasp.
“Stop trying to breathe,” Annabelle sighed. “Just let it happen. You’re overriding yourself.”
Willow’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s on dry land, and Annabelle looked around at the forest surrounding them.
“Do you want me to put you back under,” she asked. Willow frantically moved her eyes side to side.
“Then you’re just going to have to let your body take care of breathing. Or you’ll pass out and it’ll take over anyway. Your lips are already turning blue.”
Willow felt numbness prickle her fingertips and toes, rushing up until her vision was little more than a black tunnel. She tried to swallow, got nowhere, then closed her eyes. She willed herself to stop breathing, even though that was the only thing she wanted to do at all.
The air came. Suddenly and clear, straight into her lungs. She coughed, her chest seized again, and she had to work to relax enough to let a second lungful in. Annabelle cursed from beside her and walked away. Willow couldn’t see—she wasn’t sure if her eyes were open or shut.
What felt like an hour passed, which was probably only a few minutes, as Willow slowly released conscious control of her lungs to her body’s automatic processes. It would take days to train herself to only use her new nerves, and she couldn’t imagine having this battle for that long. But she would if it was what got her healed.
A loud report sounded in the forest, but Willow didn’t have the strength to search the trees. Where had Annabelle gone? Vision slowly came back to her, and she realized she was alone in the small clearing.
No, not alone. Something was rustling the leaves a few paces away and Willow swiveled her eyes to fix a small salamander in her vision. It was approaching cautiuosly, flaming back barely a flicker around its slick skin. They must be near a stream for a salamander to be this close.
The salamander walked right up to Willow’s side and sniffed twice at the litter. It opened its mouth to reveal a wicked set of recurved teeth and leaned down to take a bite out of her.
“Stasis,” Annabelle said from the treeline and the salamander froze in the act of lunging for Willow. Willow hadn’t realized she wasn’t breathing anymore, and forced herself to let go once again.
“These things,” Annabelle said and kicked the salamander away from Willow’s arm, where it bounced across the forest floor out of sight. As she passed by, Willow saw that Annabelle’s hair was stringy with sweat and the hem of her sleeves were charred.
“You’re attracting every magical creature in the forest with that screaming,” she said. “And whatever signal you’re putting off with your thrashing. They can probably sense your essence. I just took out a skinbear. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Willow gritted her teeth and focused on not focusing on her breathing. So far she was succeeding, although her breath hitched every few seconds—not enough to black her out again.
“This isn’t working,” Annabelle said and sat beside Willow’s head. “If you weren’t so… you, I could just levitate you through the forest. Maybe Carl could’ve done it. I’m not good enough with that kind of stuff to overcome your effect.”
She was talking about how magic would warp and distort when it came close to Willow from the pressure of her psychokinesis-driven body. That had abated mostly as she gained control over her arms and legs, but her torso flickering in and out of control after the surgery seemed to destabilize anything within ten feet.
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Annabelle sighed. “What are we going to do?”
🜛
It took three days for Willow to finally regain the ability to walk. Three days of being nursed by Annabelle, of being dragged through the forest and healed after the ordeal for hours afterward. Three days of almost no progress at all. As Annabelle said; they should have reached the edge of the forest by now, but they were still deep in the trees. Whatever pace she’d set for them in the beginning, they weren’t keeping up with it now.
Twice more magical creatures had emerged from the forest to attack. Annabelle was probably right, she probably was putting off some kind of signal that made her seem more like a wounded magical creature than a mage. The creatures would never have dared approach otherwise.
On the third day when Willow had finally regained her feet and they’d replaced her litter with a rough staff, they reached the sparse treeline. The world opened up from horizon to horizon and she felt the sun for the first time in a week and a half.
“How are we… going to eat,” Willow wheezed. She still hadn’t gotten fine control over her lungs and couldn’t easily manage speaking. It was like being a newborn all over again.
“There are magical creatures outside of the forests,” Annabelle said, and scratched her bramble-ridden hair as she surveyed the wide plain.
“Might not be able to find them though,” she admitted. “I think I see smoke, over there.”
Willow saw it too. “A… town?”
“Maybe,” Annabelle said. “If it is, we can procure rations for the next leg of the trip. Things are only going to get harder from here on out as the hills turn to mountains.”
Willow let herself groan. She hoped she’d at least be in better shape by then.
They walked for most of the rest of that day at a slower pace. She had to learn to walk all over again, coordinating the twisting of spine, hips and legs in the intricate dance of movement. She was glad she still had the wooden staff Annabelle had cut from a live oak, but what she longed for was a cane once again.
By twilight they were close enough to the small village to see twinkling lights in the buildings, and they found themselves on the beginnings of a road shortly after dusk. Three shadows walked from the town, obscured by the lights to their backs, and met them before they passed the first line of buildings.
Willow and Annabelle stopped. From the silhouettes they appeared to be three very muscular men. Two were wearing swords and the third looked like he was carrying a crossbow.
“What’s your business here,” the man in the center asked. He laid a hand on the hilt of his sword almost casually, but Willow couldn’t mistake the ease at which he’d be able to pull the deadly blade free.
“We’re travelers,” Annabelle said. “Heading west toward the mountains.”
“How far west,” the man on the left asked.
“The foothills, no further,” Annabelle lied. From what she’d said to Willow earlier, it sounded as if they’d be heading far into the mountains through an old pass.
“That land out there is tainted,” the one on the left said. “Wild things, unnatural things. Attack on sight.”
“Wild things that would be worth a pretty penny to the right collector,” Annabelle said, and the man on the right snorted.
“Poachers,” he said. “You’ll get in over your heads.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Annabelle said. “But before we continue on we’d like to stop for the night, perhaps spend some coin on provisions for the trek. If that’s alright?”
The man in the center who was the tallest of the three gave a short nod. “Keep to the street until you get to the general store. Frank’s closing up for the night, but I’m sure he’ll let you take a room up top. You can haggle for equipment in the morning.”
“Much appreciated,” Annabelle said, and the men parted to let them through. Willow didn’t miss how they stared at her limp and staff, but they didn’t say anything.
The town was a sparse collection of wooden buildings which could equally have been houses or stores, probably both. There was a blacksmith, although the forge was cool at this hour, and they found the general store easily enough by its size.
“I’ve never heard of a general store before,” Willow said.
“Out this far west a lot of small towns pop up to supply gold claims. They run out anyone else who tries to set up shop and they’re the only ones left standing. The general store.”
“There’s gold out here?”
Annabelle shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s none of our business. As long as they think we’re idiotic poachers they won’t think we’re a threat. And us both being women helps a lot too.”
“Yeah,” Willow said. “I thought that’d be the case.”
There was a small lamp-flame behind the panes of the general store and after a few good raps with Willow’s staff the man inside, Frank, opened up and talked with them on the porch. They could have one of the rooms at the top of the store for two silver, which Annabelle easily supplied. Willow wondered how much money Annabelle had brought for the journey. Had she been prepared to leave Durum this whole time, just waiting for the shoe to drop?
“Why are we staying here,” Willow asked in a whisper when they got to the small room. The walls were canted from the roof above and there was hardly enough height to stand up straight.
“First, it’ll ingratiate us to the owner, who’ll be less likely to cheat us. I don’t want to find out we’ve been sold bad jerky in three days’ time. Second, I hate camping.”
“You’ve picked a bad profession then,” Willow said. “Hauling me across the wild.”
“Well, Carl could’ve opened a portal to Asche, but…”
But. But Willow had accidentally killed him during their training. Willow quickly undressed and eased into the hard bed. She’d been doing so well at keeping the memory at bay; now she suspected it would nip at her through the night.