Afraid of the Dark

Chapter 35: Goodbye

It's hard for Reela to really remember what happened. She recalls she was fighting Avinalyn, and they were both frozen in the moment with uncertainty of what to do. Neither of them struck first. They looked arrogant, but then there was a stabbing pain in her back and chest and she was struggling to breathe.

She watched the cockiness on Avinalyn's face turn into fear, but she couldn't register it.

Everything went dark.

And now, she's slowly waking up. No longer on a cold stone floor, she's covered in soft blankets in a warm bed. The sounds of fighting in the streets is gone and instead, all is quiet. She hears the faint sound of a crackling fire, and even fainter is the wind whistling outside. The clock softly ticking on the wall.

This all sounds familiar. She's been here before.

She groggily blinks her eyes open, letting the room come into view as her vision returns in a blur, clearing enough for her to realize she's in Avinalyn's castle. In their room. She looks down, and she sees she's also in their bed.

Being back here, she instantly pushes herself to sit up. But as she moves too quickly, a sharp jolt runs down her spine and her back seizes up, forcing her to lay back down and take a couple paced breaths to calm herself down.

Reela takes a moment to compose herself, remembering that the stabbing pain in her back was from someone injuring her. She was hurt. Looking around, she realizes that she's alone here. Avinalyn isn't in the room.

She takes another deep breath and this time, she carefully pushes her arm under her to help her sit up enough to look around the room better. Her eyes land on the polished dark wood bedside cabinet next to her, and she sees that scattered all over it are empty glass vials of a few different shapes and sizes. And with the vials are a few rolls of bandages that look like they've been used.

It takes a moment to click in her brain, when she – yet again – recalls her injury.

She quickly looks down at herself, pushing the soft black fur blanket out of the way so she can roll up her shirt and see the white bandages wrapped neatly around her torso. With a shaking hand, she carefully pushes the bandages out of the way so she can see how bad the wound is, and she sees the scar between her ribs. The blood has been cleaned up, and she was expecting it to have maybe been stitched, but it wasn't. It's cauterized.

Burned shut.

She can feel that the parallel wound on her back doesn't have the same sting of a burn, and instead the sharpness of stitches. Only her front was cauterized. Did Avinalyn do this? She thought their magic was uncontrolled, more than even hers. How is it possible that they could have controlled their fire enough to not kill her? Though, knowing them, it's unlikely they would have cared either way.

The wound looks relatively healed enough that she doesn't think moving will threaten to reopen it, but she still opts to take it slow as she shifts forward, lowering the bandages and her shirt back over the fresh scars. She moves so her legs hang over the edge of the bed, almost touching the floor.

She pauses for a breath. Her body feels weak and she's still somewhat shaky, but at least she's alive. While she's giving herself a moment, she reaches back to feel her pocket, and she feels that at least she still has her rift shard and her phone.

She'll use the rift shard to get out of here, but she guesses she should probably at least stand first before trying to use her magic and her strength to move herself back to Letroseli. She figures her best bet would be to return to Ceelyaer. Jules would know what to do. She always does.

Reela turns her head towards the closed door of the bedroom, still waiting to see if Avinalyn is going to show up. But still, she's left alone. "Avinalyn...?" she meekly calls out. She waits for a few moments, but there's no response.