Consequences good or bad
Light burned my eyes as the darkness receded, I thought I heard crying, but my ears were ringing. I tried to turn my head, but my body was refusing to do as I told it, and as I tried to force it, I felt something tear and warm fluid running over my flesh and before the darkness had even fully lifted it devoured me once more.
A gentle, familiar voice spoke my name, asking if I could hear them, coupled with a soft nudging to my shoulder. Whilst my ears still rang, the voice was undoubtedly Storyteller's and though it was pained, wheezy and scarcely a whisper I managed to answer.
Storyteller informed me I'd been out for several days and asked what drove me to behave so recklessly offering only an irritating grunt of acknowledgement before he confirmed that I had managed to liberate the girl.
He went on to tell me that whilst the former divine hand may be grateful to me, I hadn't done myself any favours. Assuming he was referring to my injuries I agreed with him, making light of my genuine belief I was dead, but to my near disbelief he took the macabre statement at face value, simply stating that I had technically died briefly as though it was an afterthought before explaining himself in more detail.
His explanation was enlightening, and I now saw the significance, I remembered seeing lights turn on, but never considered there would be consequences to witnesses, nor did I care. I had destroyed an elevation and a divine agent at that. Unsurprisingly, gods and their temples held significant sway over people, and I had been officially branded a heretic.
After that brief moment of reasonable conversation, magic also began talking to me, I could tell it was glad I lived but there was also anger. It told me I wounded it; my direction was too vague to act entirely with purpose and magic expended without purpose is like needless loss of life, at least that's how magic described it.
I decided not to respond to Storyteller, I didn't have the strength to multitask and my priority in that moment was making a much-needed apology to Magic, I could hear it scolding me. I asked some of it to gather in me, just enough that I could walk, but not so much that it believed I didn't understand the severity of what I had done. The more I used it, the more I saw Magic as a living thing, and in that moment, it was akin to a parent scolding a child that had done something foolhardy and dangerous, which I had.
Healed just enough, I stood. Everything hurt, but I needed to let the punishment stand or Magic would have turned from me forever. it wore its heart on its sleeve and thanks to unity I knew that Magic has only accepted my apology because I saved a life. So, I would endure it.
Getting dressed was difficult, but I managed somehow despite the pain from where my shirt snagged repeatedly on bandages which had adhered to my various wounds, as well as the stitches that were holding my patchwork body together.
I could tell that Storyteller wanted to discuss things more, but since I was ignoring him anyway to have my conversation with magic, he left at some point during my struggle in order to answer a knock at the door. I imagined it was Master here to assist Storyteller with my upcoming lecture but when I heard Storyteller tell the mystery caller, I was awake and getting dressed and that he would tell me I have guests, that assumption was disregarded.
I instead began to assume someone had come to interrogate me, ever the pessimist and the revelation I have been officially branded a heretic still fresh in my mind and afflicting me with paranoid fear once again as a result of the alien concept of someone wanting to speak to me.
Shortly after his statement to whomever was at the door, he opened and emerged from mine, ordering me to the lounge, telling me it was time to face the magnitude of my actions and sending a chill down my spine in the process. Staying true to my pessimistic personality I began planning for a worst-case scenario.
My body was wrecked, a pitiful resistance would do more harm than going quietly so I reckoned the most prudent course of action by far was to allow myself to be taken, buy as much time as possible and hope magic is ready and willing to help at the final moment. Storyteller however seemed to sense my scheming and insisted I cease and make my way to the lounge immediately.
At his behest I left my room and headed to the stairs, my eyes stayed glued to the floor, every step agony. As I approached the bottom, I heard footsteps on the hardwood below me. I began to consider if perhaps I was wrong, that maybe they meant to just ambush me there, kill me while I'm still weak. Guards would never execute me so unceremoniously, but temple inquisitors might just do that. The paranoid thought born of a person's self-preservation as they knock on death's door.
My body tensed and twisted slightly in a feeble attempt at readying a defence, but the pain was too much, causing me to flinch from it mid step and slump just enough to be staggered as my eyes snapped shut whilst I grimaced with pain.
A typical reaction I thought I had overcome, as I realised my inability to feel pain the last several years had reduced my tolerance of it, I felt something slide around my neck. In that moment I became fully convinced I was right, they planned to kill me then and there, something smashing into my head was further proof but more importantly my ears now rang with the pain as I once again lost balance. My body was quickly reaching its limit.
I needed to get a read on the situation before I lost consciousness, which meant my top priority had to be identifying what was wrapped around my neck and then restoring my senses which were being overloaded by the pain. Starting with what was wrapped around my neck, It was too heavy to be rope, too soft and warm to be a wooden or metal collar.
Before I got any further with my thinking however, my body gave out and as I fell limply, I also felt a weight press against my whole body, then something blunt and hard, forced into my gut, tugging at some stitches holding my gut together and ripping some wounds open. Whether a sword pommel, or a club handle it was irrelevant now, they weren't taking any chances, and I was too weak to resist, all I could do was hope death would be less boring the second time around.
"Lia, get off him! I know your happy to see him moving, but he's still very injured." The words roared by Storyteller out of concern and snapping me out of my latest dying moment fantasy. Snapped back to reality I had new questions, chief of which, was who was this Lia? and the other voice which was now apologising to Storyteller profusely.
I feel warm liquid again but this time dripping on me from above and I forced my eyes open, to be greeted with the sight of a crying child whose tears were being absorbed by my bandages as they fell, dangling above me wriggling and grabbing for me with an even greater amount of zeal than I showed with my studies, it was like their life depended on reaching me.
Storyteller was barely able to hold her, even as an unfamiliar face tried to help. I coughed in pain as my laboured breathing strained my ribs and lungs whilst magic rightfully denied my request to heal the damage I just received, and as the pain throbbed my mood lowered until I asked them outright who they were, a simple question that for some reason struck the girl hard enough to make her fall still.
"You really don't remember me? But you got hurt so badly helping me." The strange man left Storyteller to hold the girl as she spoke and helped me to a chair instead, apologising to me the whole time, before he, Storyteller and the girl named Lia, who I could now see as the one previously known to me as the divine hand, found seating on the divan opposite.
(I honestly felt a bit honoured, Storyteller always held claim over the armchair I found myself occupying and anyone else was expected to vacate it in his prescence.)
Irritated by the presence of strangers, exhaustion exasperating my injuries would usually be a great mix to stoke anger in one as choleric as I, but it was clear this was an unavoidable situation and I was far too weary, so I thought it best to simply goad them into ending it early. I feigned ignorance of who she was, stating that she resembled the divine hand, but seeing as I destroyed that being, they couldn't be one and the same.
"Unity, spare us the zealous blasphemy and show…" The lecture began but was cut short by a disapproving grunt from Lia.
"Please don't be mad at him…" Lia interrupted balling up her hands and clenching her simple clothes. "Unity is right. He doesn't know me, and he helped me when he could have let me die. Or stay in the dark" I noticed her eyes go hollow again and glowered at her, activating unity to make sure it was still her.
"I never knew what to think of you boy. You were stronger and smarter than any adult, but your eyes told me all you wanted was to destroy. However I hated you for another reason, Lia was given her elevation at the very early age of four, in the throes of a ravaging fever. Her life was spared, yet her eyes were cold, she told us she now lived only to speak to you on the night of the revaluation ceremony and would die that same night." He stopped to dry his eyes as Lia failed to hold back her own tears.
"My wife and I felt like our daughter's corpse was being desecrated, because of you, used just to be discarded when they were done with her." Activating unity once again, expecting to see him hating me, or angry at me, but no it was remorse, though there was anger in his voice, it wasn't to me. "I'm so sorry. To think you would feel the same about her elevation as we did, that you would endanger your own life, not only recklessly using magic, but also acting in direct defiance of the gods." He forced the words out as he failed to hold back tears and he and his daughter clung to each other.
I don't Know why but it was too much, I stood and left asking magic to blind them long enough to leave, when that request was denied, I resorted to forcing my broken body onward needing to get away.
Rejecting the men's calls for me to return, I left the door open, a habit resulting from my tendency to break them. Pushing through pain and both physical and mental fatigue, stumbling as the wooziness that comes with slow continuous blood loss sets in. "Where are you going?" Lia sobbed, coming to a stop after catching up to me as I struggled to move.
I didn't really have a destination in mind, but I didn't feel I could confess that. The only reply I could fabricate was that I wanted to go to hill that was just a small walk beyond the wall and before I knew it, she pulled my arm over her shoulder and was acting as a crutch for me.
I wasn't happy, but I could see it in her vibrant golden eyes, the same ones that had been so hollow the last time I saw them, now burned with determination. Nothing I said or done would have swayed her, so I didn't try.
It was clear she was struggling, and we were attracting whispers and unwelcome gossip as she dragged my ruined body through the quiet but not empty streets, so I decided to ask the magic to reinforce her strength, and it seemed happy to do so. I thought she was unaware of it but as we reached our destination, and I painfully slid down the rough bark of the lone tree at the top of the hill she casually asked if I was using empowerment magic on her.
Ever the introvert I awkwardly explained how I can't cast spells, and I instead just ask magic for a to complete specific tasks. Her face told me she didn't understand, but I guess only I really knew that magic had a will of its own and I was grossly ill-equipped and unwilling to explain the matter.
In a small whimpering voice barely above a whisper she asked if I couldn't just ask magic to heal myself then, but I grew tired of conversation so instead ignored it choosing alternatively to use Unity to see how she felt. I could see the word I was looking for "fearful", but it also showed several other feelings that had no definition, she asked why I look confused so I humoured her this time to satisfy my curiosity. "You're scared of me, aren't you? So why did you come with me?" This is the first time I ever asked someone how they felt, I either never needed to or never cared to know.
"Yep, I am scared of you. My elevation is gone but I still remember the future where you burn the town to the ground, but I'm also grateful…" As she spoke the word grateful, one of the undefined feelings fills in. "… and like I owe you my life…" Another feeling is labelled "Indebted to" "… A… and I…" Her face went bright red, and tears welled up in her eyes again.
As the water works started, I tried to reassure her and begin to state my intent to leave before I can hurt anyone. Finding myself quickly distracted by the realisation that I was trying to help her, something I didn't understand, why was I even bothering? The minor debt I owed that common ground had been paid in full.
There was also the fact I could now see how things would affect me, and that unity's only true limitation was my own understanding. My body reached its limits at that moment though and I passed out again.
When I came to, the first thing I heard was Storyteller asking if I truly intended to leave as he carried me on his back. Lia's dad was in front of us carrying her in his arms. Using Unity to try and understand something I started to feel, I saw that I was concerned about her so I asked Storyteller if she was ok.
His initial reaction was almost as though he thought he had misheard me, but he confirmed, adding that she just got tuckered out as she stayed with me. Apparently, the young girl was too scared for my health to leave me alone, then fell asleep as soon as he and her father picked us up.
Confused and wishing to shake the girl and the newfound distraction of sentimentality from my thoughts, I answered the question he first posed and confirmed my intent to leave. Explaining that I refuse to stay and risk playing pawn to the gods, though he tried to ague this isn't something one should do without a plan.
Before long he was cursing my mind as I began detailing my plan to petition the lord for my right to leave before the six year deadline. I didn't need to see his face to see a dark expression fall across it, as he asked if I had read his book. The question I both expected and dreaded, since his asking confirmed the divine hand was at least truthful in regard to that, it made me grit my teeth so hard they could have shattered.
Staying focused, I denied having read his book and recount the entirety of events that night, to my surprise he didn't scold me or criticise the decision, he just asked if I was certain that's what I wanted, and after I squeezed his shoulder in lieu of a verbal response he had his answer.
I remained silent as we returned to town, I felt so vulnerable, something had shaken off and I began feeling things I didn't understand, I clung to Storyteller's clothes like an infant, but my eyes were glued to Lia's clasped hands resting at her back of her dad's neck The moonlight giving her pale skin a silvery glow.