C. Sebastian Nutt
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Chapter 208 - Scarring
🕑 Added 2025-07-31 10:28:19 +0000 UTCMy eyelids are heavy. Reaching, my nails rake over the sheets fit to the mattress beneath me, my fingers skipping with tiny pops as they scratch over the wrinkles on the fabric. Something in my shoulder pops with the movement, the snapping in my arm eliciting a satisfied groan from me. For one blissful moment, I am relaxed.
I snap my eyes open, the heaviness of my eyelids vanishing as I jump from the bed. A heartbeat pounds in my ears, and my lungs start to pump, dragging in air. White light blinds me, making me stumble to the side. I stumble into a bedside table, upsetting a pitcher of water and knocking over an ornate stool. The piece of furniture clatters to the floor, the pitcher rolling off the end of the table and bouncing on the stone tile next to it. The brass pitcher clinks, spinning on its open top over and over, ringing, before falling still.
On instinct, my soul presence races away from me, soaking over everything within a hundred feet. Everything around is brought into my awareness as things begin to break. A wooden table in the center of the room groans as two of the legs snap, spilling the contents onto the ground. A mirror set into the walls shatters, shards of glass coated with silver clattering to the ground. Two of the chains holding the lone chandelier in the high-ceilinged bedroom scream as the links give way. It hangs there, swinging back and forth by a single remaining chain, slowly rotating on its axis as the unlit candles it held roll across the floor.
I swallow the lump in my throat, my racing heart slowing back to a more relaxed pace. The room is similar to the one I stayed in before, although now the walls are covered in lavender paint. Blank spaces against the painted wall show where once fine furniture had sat, but now the chairs and sofas are gone. Only their staining shadows against the paint remain. Brilliant sunlight spills in from the eastern wall. Most of the wall is gone, the hole covered with a tarp made from thin green material. Wind slaps against the fabric, pushing the tarp inward, one end moving like the tail of a lazy cat as it scratches against the stone floor–open just enough to allow a beam of light in. The candles rolling across the floor slowly stop, gathering around a single tile in the middle of the floor. The room falls still; my soul presence collapses on me, sinking back into my skin.
I’m alone again. The thought slaps me into motion. I am already striding across the floor, tossing open the door before I realize it. A woman in the hall screams as the door bangs against the wall, dropping the load of folded linens she is carrying.
We freeze for a moment, looking at one another. “Miss,” she says, bowing her head to me. “Might I suggest looking to the chamber’s wardrobe before walking the halls?”
I look down at myself, my face reddening. I stand in the doorway, almost naked, only wearing my spidersilk top and a pair of underwear. The door to the room slaps closed, the wood complaining. That is how I start my first day back in the world. I’m just glad there was someone in the hall to stop me before I ran out to look for people I know.
The palace at the top of the district lay in ruin now, half the structure consumed by the trunk of the dead tree that still looms over the city. The remaining parts lay broken and unused, everything inside stripped away and set out onto the lawn in front of the wrecked building. Those who work in the palace have done what they can, covering what furniture remains with mats and rugs to protect it from the elements. They pray for a lack of rain, a stark contrast to everyone else in the city.
The building I found myself waking up in was one of the Mari estate houses in the upper district. It had belonged to Fas, but now was being used as a hospital. The north wing of the sprawling mansion is simply gone, burned away by the fires that swept Danfalla. The rest of the place perpetually smells of smoke.
What had once been a long dining hall large enough to host a party of hundreds has been converted into a makeshift hospital. White sheets strung across the room, hung from ropes affixed to the windows lining the hall, create small rooms throughout the room. People lie inside while nurses, who are often little more than elderly women practiced at delivering children, stalk the aisles, peeking in on the moaning figures secluded inside. The sick and injured lay on everything from fine and well-packed mattresses to piles of pillows held in place by wooden frames. At the head of the hall, a door leads away into the kitchen, where more than a dozen healers linger in a stupor brought on by mana exhaustion. Only a few move about the hospital, deep circles under their eyes as they check on those they might offer a bit of care to.
Nine hours. Almost an entire month spent in agony, followed by a night of battle and near-death experiences, and I only managed to sleep for nine hours. There is a buzz in my fingers, a feeling like lightning moving under my skin. I can’t stop them from twitching. I keep catching myself rubbing the nail of my thumb against my fingertips, like I’m trying to scrape something off my skin. I don’t know what it is, nor why it keeps happening.
That woman had been in the hall still when I left the room only a few minutes later. I had tried one of the dresses in the wardrobe, a very fine yet demure piece made of green silk. That had lasted only a few minutes. The material was too loose; I didn’t like how it rubbed against my skin. The only thing that felt even remotely comfortable was a clean spidersilk blouse and an unused pair of trousers I pulled from my vault. Something about how the material hugged my body made it feel safe, made it feel like I could dare to go outside again.
The woman outside who wasn’t a servant, as it turned out, pointed me toward where they had put Jor’Mari, just two doors down from the room I had been given. He was still sleeping when I found him, shrunken back to his usual self, the burning horns that had poked out of his head gone. The man snored loudly as he lay on his back, his breaths so spaced out that for moments it seemed like he stopped breathing. Jor’Mari didn’t even flinch when I poked him in the face or shook his shoulder. Whatever transformation he had undergone last night had taken a toll. I was just happy that he survived his fall from the tree.
It took a bit of doing, but a dwarven man I found finally knew something about the blonde giant they had holed up in one of the rooms in the building. I found Halford in much the same state as Jor’Mari, though my brother had bands of gauze wrapped tightly around his chest with several inches of padding underneath. The skin all down the right side of his torso was the dark purple of a deep bruise. I knew that Halford had an ability that fully healed himself, making the obvious bruising even more worrying.
Unlike Jor’Mari, Halford did wake up when I prodded at his face. That’s when it all hit me: weeks of cramped loneliness, suffering in silence, burning away those who hurt me, having to hold myself together as my body and soul wanted to fall apart. It all snuck up on me before I could stop it. Halford’s grin turned worried as I climbed into the bed next to him. He held me with his one good arm as tears spilled onto the sheets. I can’t even remember the words I said; they probably didn’t make any sense. Halford didn’t say anything as I let it all out. He didn’t need to; it was enough to just have him there.
I felt like something had left me when the last of my tears had dried, like I had lost something final and precious. Sniffing, rubbing my face clean with the heels of my hands, I let him shoo me out while he claimed to need more beauty rest. It took a lot of sleep to keep him as handsome as he was, he claimed, and I let him have it.
There are murmurs in the air. In the large room turned into a hospital, people speak in hushed tones to one another. Their attempts at politeness are a nicety, but they raise my hackles. Sitting in a chair, one arm broken awkwardly halfway down the rest, I try to sit still, try to focus my attention. Less than a day before, I don’t think it would have even taken more than a token effort to shut out all the voices in the room. Right now, though, I can’t keep them away. It feels like everyone in the makeshift hospital is whispering just behind my back, forty voices talking just low enough that I can’t make out the words without concentrating on them. I close my eyes, taking purposeful breaths, trying to find that sanctuary I had before, the focus that exists on the edge of rage. It feels so far away.
Jess lies in the bed inside the small room of white, linen walls. She looks so peaceful, her chest slowly rising and falling as she breathes, like she might wake up at any moment. She won’t.
One of the healers stalking the aisles of the hospital peeked his head in once, came in, and held his fingers to his neck for a moment before sighing. He asked if I knew how to contact her family. When I told him no, he gave me the news, asking that I share it with them.
A snort on the other side of the linen cubicle pulls me out of my dark thoughts. Dovik starts awake in the chair opposite mine, the one resting right next to Jess’ bedside. He blinks, looking around as the realization of where he is slowly returns. The man was here when I arrived, sleeping unsoundly in the chair, his hand lying on Jess’ bed.
“Charlene?” he asks, sitting forward and making the chair creak. He rubs his temples with his fingers, blinking rapidly to clear away the sleep. “You’re up already? How long was I out?”
“Just a few hours, I think. I got here less than an hour ago, so probably not that long.”
“Ah. Right.” His shoulders slump as he leans on his knees. Dovik takes a moment to contemplate the floor before looking back up at me. “That’s a little unsettling,” he says.
I follow his eyes, looking down at my hand. My knife glints in the light, the tip dragging across the palm of my left hand. “Forgot I was doing that,” I say, putting the knife away. “Can’t really feel it.” I sag into my chair, trying unsuccessfully to find that focus once again.
“It’s worrying,” he says, not taking his eyes off me. “You’ve always been a bit odd, but, I don’t know, there’s something different. I can see souls. Gods, my mother would have a fit if she knew I was telling anyone that. I’m saying it to you so that you understand that I know what I’m talking about. I saw it when you arrived last night, something different about you, something changed. You were already passed out by the time I saw you again last night, so I couldn’t ask you about it then, but I can now. Charlene, what happened?”
I hold his stare for a moment. We share a quiet moment, the murmuring of the room around our little spot seeming to fall away. Then, I tell him. I tell him everything about what happened to me since leaving the party, how I fought those monsters under the city, how I was tricked and trapped, how I had to stay awake and aware for nearly a month. The only details I spare are about meeting the Exeter and the business with the Throne of War. Something tells me that I should keep that business close to the chest.
The telling doesn’t take nearly as long as I expect it to, and when I’m done, we lapse back into silence again.
“I can’t imagine that,” he says, shaking his head, slumping back into his chair. “I don’t think I could have done that.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” I say. “You wouldn’t be dumb enough to get yourself into that kind of situation.”
“Anyone can be tricked, Charlene. My failing was much worse,” he says, reaching out and laying his hand on Jess’, granting himself not even a tenth of the understanding he offers me.
I can’t bring myself to argue against him, to console him. Not because I think that what happened to Jess is his fault. If anyone’s, it’s mine. I’m the one who promised I wouldn’t go anywhere before doing exactly that. How much of the horror could have been prevented if I hadn’t carried on with a stupid feud against Priscilla? None of it? All of it? I’ll never know, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering. No, the reason I don’t contradict him is because I have harsher words to deliver, the news the healer told me just fifteen minutes before.
“Soul damage?” Dovik asks, turning and looking at Jess’ slumbering form. He squints, his eyes narrowing for a moment before they grow wide. “I see it. I see it now.”
“He said that she won’t wake up until it's fixed,” I hear myself say. I’m scraping my thumbnail against my fingers again, but I can’t make myself stop. It’s so frustrating that I want to violently cut off the hand for an instant. I don’t, of course, and just continue to scratch as I try to get the information out. “Something about the body trying to protect the mind. I’m not sure how it works, but being awake with soul damage is dangerous, apparently. It can cause personality changes, so sometimes the body refuses to wake up as long as the damage remains.”
“Can they fix it?” He hardly needs to ask the question; just looking at my face is enough. “Someone has to be able to fix it.”
“I don’t know.” My head falls back against the rest of my chair. “I don’t know.”
We sit like that, silent in the tiny room made of fabric. The world continues to move around us, no matter how wrong that is. When I stop my hands from scratching, my foot starts tapping the moment I stop paying attention to it. After that, it's my arm itching, then it’s my toes feeling cramped as they’re trapped inside my boot. I bear it for as long as I can, and when I can’t any longer, I push from the room of fabric. I can’t even bother to make an excuse as I hurry away, and Dovik doesn’t look up to ask for one. He only stares at Jess as she continues to sleep on her bed.
Breathing becomes harder and harder as I hurry out of the building. There’s a weight on my chest, something pressing all of the air out of me as I stumble into the sunlight. My knee knocks into a chapel pew set out on the front lawn of the manor, cracking the armrest off the side of it. I don’t even feel it. I’m in the air, climbing into the sky under the power of my summoned wings.
So slowly that I start to wonder if it will ever happen, I regain control of my breathing. The sky expands out in all directions. I hover, staring out at the city. There is a chill from the shadow falling over me, the dead tree at the top of Danfalla casting a shadow that stretches far into the lower district. I suck in air, alighting on the roof of the manor, my right hand clinging to one of the three chimneys decorating the roof.
Danfalla spreads out before me, a soft glide down a shallow slope toward the far wall of the city. Smoke still rises from the streets, the remnants of the fires that pocked the city just a few hours before. None still burn, but the skeletons of buildings remain. They cut black lines through the mess of still-standing structures like jagged scars. The people down there fare little better. Now that the nightmare is over, banished back to the place between daylight, they will throw up new buildings in place of the destroyed. Those scars will stay, even when every brick and beam of lumber has been replaced, partially healed wounds invisible to the eye. The people will carry them in their memory, and they will last until all that were present last night fade.
How long will that take, I wonder, until all the witnesses down there are gone? A hundred years? More? No, there are elves among them; they will carry this night for centuries. To them, this night might as well last forever. I can’t bring myself to pity them for their long lives. Far too much of my pity is turned inward, and I hate myself for it.
Atop the manor of the late Fas’Mari, I stare out at Danfalla, and I give myself time to dwell. I won’t have it in the future, but for now, I can allow myself at least a taste of it. I can allow myself to stand still just for now. Just for now.
