Chapter 9 #2
“Thank you for your honorable service,” Kanuvi hums, crossing her arm with a fist over her chest in salute. Sully gives her a weak nod as his honey-brown eyes flutter shut.
Her fingers drift over his chest, a white glow emanating from them, humming at various frequencies as she assesses him. Her hand freezes over his right ribs, and we both jump slightly, ears clawed at by the screeching pitch.
Her shoulder blades tense, eyes growing wide, her fear twisting around a subtle anguish. At that moment, I know.
She turns to me slowly and looks up with eyes drenched in regret.
“I am sorry. There is nothing I can do about his affliction. All I can offer is a salve to ease the pain, allowing a more peaceful passing.”
The heavens themselves come crashing down, dragging my howling soul to the pits of Emberhell with them. After a long second, I whimper, “What if we brought him to the woods? Your magic is stronger there, yes?”
She stares at the floor. “Regretfully, I don’t think that will help. His condition is beyond my abilities. I will bring you the salve tomorrow. May the Celestials bless you both.” She quietly leaves the room.
I’m frozen. Waves of shock, horror, and despair crash through me, but I don’t shed a tear. I stay absolutely frozen as the storm threatens to consume me. I cannot break. Not now. I raise my mental shields, a calming numbness taking their place as I become a hollow ghost.
I sit by Sully’s side for the next four days, applying the salve as directed every four hours without fail.
I watch him wither away as his respirations become quicker, more uneven.
He’s awake for less and less time each day, unable to speak in more than two-word sentences due to his shortness of breath.
On day five, he stops eating and drinking altogether and doesn’t wake from his suffering slumber while he continues to gasp for air.
I go back to Kanuvi and beg her to meet me in the forest the next day, to at least try to heal him. She initially protests, but when I make it clear I won’t give up, she gives in to my pleas.
The next morning, I place Sully’s withered form into a modified chair with wheels on either side, which I borrowed from the Healer’s Ward. To my surprise, even with barely any meat on his bones, he is still so heavy. I wrap him up in several wool blankets.
I meet Kanuvi at the location she marked on a map deep within the Amberwood—a unique forest where it’s always autumn, between the Highland’s tundra and the Midland’s golden meadows.
She makes me dig a shallow oval into the ground where I place Sully, intentionally disturbing the dirt that exposes the mycelium network.
My strong muscles softly lay his skin and bones down on the bare soil. It’s odd how he now resembles the form he found me in. Spindly. Holding on by a thread.
Kanuvi kneels over him, placing one hand on his forehead and one on his chest while I hold his right hand. Then, the earth beneath him moves ever so slightly as a wild array of mushrooms spring up from the soil and cover his body.
Under their growth, his breathing seems to ease; only his face and hand in mine are still exposed. His eyes flutter open for the first time in over twenty-four hours. In that moment, hope dares to trickle into my heart.
He squeezes my hand as he gazes up at me. “It’s time to let me go, little dragon. The stars are calling my name.”
Tears pour from my eyes like they intend to flood the entire planet in their reckoning.
His eyes become pure, iridescent starlight, and he squeezes my hand tightly as he draws his last breath.
“I love you. Always.”
“I love you, big bear,” I whisper.
Then his eyes close.
Kanuvi removes her hands as the mushrooms continue to grow. Their spindles flourish between my fingers and Sully’s. I refuse to let go until nothing more than soil remains in my hands. The mound of mushrooms grows over him and collapses into spores before twirling towards the sky.
I wail to the heavens, my cry so thunderous that it shakes the earth beneath us.
After I quiet, in the eye of the storm, Kanuvi’s footsteps trail into the distance, leaving me in mourning.
The cyclone swirls up inside me once more.
I wrap my arms around myself as I scream with the pain of a pack of ravenous Ronew, shredding my heart to ribbons.
Agony fractures through my bones in the wake of my powerful sorrow, splintering the surrounding trees into shrapnel—a reflection of my shattering heart and soul.
I lie there on the ground next to where his body returned to the cycle of the earth. I weep as all that makes me tame and kind dies with him.
When I wake the next morning in the Amberwood, my skin is chilled, and it isn’t the air.
Yesterday feels like a distant dream. I am a haunted shell of a being.
The only thing left inside me, still tethering me to this realm, is my mission of becoming an Ellian Knight.
A glorious suicide mission, to die one day in battle and join Sully once more.
My body is nothing more than a jagged dagger of ice for my mind to wield.
The eerie silence is thick as I pack mine and Sully’s belongings.
I am numb to it all. It’s as if my humanity departed with him at his eternal resting ground.
After all, he was the one who brought me up from a feral creature hiding in the shadows to become something more, something whole.
In his absence, I am fractured once more, as if I’m still at his grave, screaming and shattering along with the trees around me.
Tomorrow is the Trial of Tenacity on the edge of the Amberwood, closer to the city of Frostma.
Every trialist journeys here for this challenge, which is too elaborate to recreate anywhere else.
I’ll be going in without a practice run.
A shudder crawls down my spine at the barren room. I can’t stand being here anymore.
I move to a different inn on the other side of town, closer to the Amberwood. To save some coin now that I only need single accommodation. The world seems to fall still as I fall asleep, part of my soul wishing I never wake again.