IX

Fire.

The sky is chocked by ash. The horizon a red, hot inferno—swallowing dark oak and stone like a hungry beast. Sounds of screams—piercing cries, the dire gurgle of a man as his lungs struggle against the black filth.

It sticks to your fingers. Gums up your eyes and throat. There is no sky anymore, not even ground. Only the red hot of fire. A name rings out, called over the drowning landscape. Your name. Or — maybe you’re just imagining it. There is roaring in your head so loud it rivals the flames, vibrating against your skull. Shrieking, like the sound of choking on barbed wire.  Are they yours?

You can’t see, but you can feel. Skin, the searing—how it bubbles, breaks, splits like the bark of an infested tree.

“Myrie!”

The elf starts, a bitter sound caught deep in her throat. Her arm swings wide—hard and fast and dangerous, were it not off-kilter by the shaking in her fist.

The aimless punch connects with the clawed hand of a Lycan—an Afflicted.

“Breathe.”, the man rumbles, the low bass reverberating in the small space between them. For a fleeting moment, the young elf holds no recognition in her eyes at all— reflecting in the washed gold of her eyes nothing but the visage of a beast, eyes attentive. Calm. Two glowing, green embers, like the copper-fires down south, crashing against hers with an unblinking stillness. The shadows they cast against the pale, wheet-colored fur below are almost sickly. Teeth part, long and sharp, and Myrie tensed as that layered voice came rolling in once more, like the sound of distant thunder.

“Calm. Center yourself,” The healer’s voice was unbearably loud. “You are in Tenvrynn.”, and yet almost incomprehensible above the rapid thrumming of blood in her ear. “Do you remember who I am.”

Myrie bristles at that, her good fist balling tight at the inane question. It wasn’t enough to supress the tremors.

“Ti-...Heulyn.” Without a thought, she tore her captured hand from the wolf-man, scooting back.

“Good. And where are we?”

The elf tears her gaze reluctantly from the druid, fluttering across the dark room with a restlessness trapped in her legs. The interior is cold, almost freezing, illuminated by little else but the light of the moon, streaming through the angled windowpanes. There is a faint, warm glow — and the smell pierces through her brain like a needle. Embers.

Her eyes snap to the fireplace across the room, the faint glow in its cradle barely there. The smell was so faint, entirely drowned by the webbings of herbs and remedies across the wooden hut’s low rafters. Faint, but not faint enough.

“Myrie...you were elsewhere for a moment.” Something twitches behind the young elf’s eye, indignant and furious—at the man, at the obvious. At herself, most of all. The lack of control.

“We should stop for the night-”

“No.”, the younger interjects sharply. “We finish this.”

The Lycan’s brow raises in easy discontent, clawed hands picking up the remedies scattered about the dark floor. Nails scrape against the panels, as Heulyn lifts the wooden bowl beside his knee to his lap.

“Your posturing serves nobody, Thistleblood.”

The elf waivers at the dismissive rasp only for a fraction—back straightening against the cold of the room. Even as the wryly wolf begins carving symbols in the shallow stillness above the remedy once more, she watches with a tension betraying her. The vines of ivy and green that snake over his furred forearms tremble as something—shifts—and a gentle, emerald glow grows about moving hands as a warmth spreads through the elf. Not that of burning, but something kinder. Slow in its wandering, easing hardened and dead muscle to unfurl.

“If you are ready.” Heulyn voices in gentle affirmation. With a deep breath, the elf nods faintly—eyes unmoving from the magic radiating off his practiced hands. “Yes.”

“Let us try once more.”