Chapter 37 - Vacuous

My consciousness flickers against the fiery gale we are fleeing from, casting brief, distorted images on the inside of my skull.

I can feel each uneven edge of our path through the thin fabric of my tunic. My world is the underside of Riel’s jaw, tense and smeared with soot, and a sky of roiling smoke and hateful orange. 

A stagehand is dragging a broken prop offstage. My show is over

I can vaguely hear screaming and shouting, it's frantic but not panicked. 

My head loosely falls behind my neck.

A stone ceiling passes by my vision before being erased.

That must mean we’re at the gate. But the screams and shouts are getting louder.

The intimate heat has lessened on my skin as I feel myself being gently lifted. I catch the eyes of the boy as I am torn from his side, they’re empty but cloying. He’s being abandoned once again.

I can’t do anything.

My eyes flutter open. My head is supported by something soft. My vision takes in a sliver of the scene. I’m in a small, wooden building. There are others around me who I can’t quite discern. I think my glasses have been taken off my face.

Riel is collapsed beside me, his sword jutting awkwardly from the ground. His chest rises and falls in ragged breaths, the adrenaline finally catching up to his grief.

A small, warm hand touches my cheek. I turn my eyes and see the boy I saved. His face is a mess of tear tracks and grime. He doesn't say anything. He just lays his hand on my face trying to grab at a direct connection to me. You are here. I am here. We survived.

Familiar aromas of dried herbs, clean linen, and ozone pierce the smoky air.

A new figure kneels beside me. Long, white hair cascades around their face that’s etched with a terrifying, focused intensity. "Clovis." Her name is a thought, not a sound. I don't have the strength to give it voice.

Her hands assess my still body, the shallow nature of my breathing and the sickly violet glow of my wounds that still weep. 

"Don't" my voice whispers in my mind. "You can't fix it."

But she has to try. She is a healer. It is who she is. 

A soft, turquoise light, the colour of life and restoration, emanates from her palms as she holds them over my arm. She begins a low, steady incantation. 

I watch the light descend, and touch the weeping purple wounds.

Clovis recoils, the magic fails to penetrate the wound's inherent evil.

Clovis halts, a sharp hiss of disbelief is exhaled from her throat. She repeats the incantation with greater force, and the light intensifies. A jolt of pain strikes her hand, and she instinctively grasps it with her other.

"I don’t know what’s happening to me." Clovis mutters as her composure crumbles before me.

“I’m sorry, Shikara.” Clovis looks directly at my eyes and I can see tears carving their way past her hardened resolve. "I... I can't. My magic... it's not working. I don't know why. I'm so sorry."

Her apology is a dagger in my heart. 

She turns away from me, a wounded animal seeking to hide its pain. She stumbles over to another patient, a man with a simple gash on his leg, and her hands begin to glow again, but the light is weaker, unsteady. 

Her movements are stiff and mechanical. She is forcing herself through the motions, her spirit broken. I watch her blurry shape as sorrow grips me, a feeling so powerful it eclipses my own agony.

It’s my fault. This monstrous, unhealable part of me has not only broken my own body, but it has broken the spirit of the one person strong enough to hold this village together. 

She carries the weight of every life, and I have just added my own impossible burden onto her shoulders, a weight that actively fights back.

 I want to tell her it isn’t her fault. I want to save her from the despair that is consuming her, the same despair I know so well. I am a patient on the floor, but all I want to do is comfort my healer.

I gather the last dregs of my will, focusing all of it into a single, monumental effort. 

I force air into my lungs, command my throat to constrict, and my lips to form a shape. It is the hardest thing I have ever done.

I push the breath and intent out of my lips.

"It's ok... Clovis."