Soulwoven

Chapter Twenty-One

~21~

“Lit?”

The voice slid softly through a veil of darkness into Litnig Jin’s consciousness. His dream appeared and faded and appeared again, quick as a hummingbird’s wings or quivering shadows before a flickering source of light. The pillars were there and then gone. The blurry, worried face of the Aleani walker filled Litnig’s vision and blinked away.

“Lit?”

The voice was louder, this time, and closer.

The rapid play of the dream slowed and then stopped. Litnig stared into darkness so thick he felt that he could walk into it and be swallowed whole.

“Lit? Quay? Dil? Ryse? Len?”

The voice was Cole’s.

Something warm shifted beneath Litnig. Something with dreadlocks.

Len.

Litnig remembered Cole handing the Aleani off to him so that they could run faster, remembered struggling to balance the weight on his shoulders, remembered falling—

“Anybody?”

Litnig rolled off of Len onto sharp rocks. He had to put his left arm down for support.

Fiery pain scudded up the arm and exploded behind his eyes. His forearm bent and cracked underneath him. He hissed sharply and rolled onto his other side.

Broken, he thought immediately. A cart had once crushed his big toe. The digit had swelled until it was the size of a cucumber, and he hadn’t been able to put weight on it for weeks.

The pain in his arm was much, much worse.

“Lit?” asked Cole again.

Litnig took in a deep breath to respond, and his lungs filled with dust. He coughed explosively. His ribs barked with pain.

“Yeah,” he croaked when the fit had passed.

Cole gave a relieved-sounding sigh. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he said.

Litnig heard rustling from Cole’s direction. There was a sharp clack, and a few sparks split the darkness. Cole coughed again and cursed fluently.

“Are you okay?” Litnig grunted.

Clack. “Okay enough. I landed on a little slope over—” Cole sighed. “Over there.” Clack. “Nine-tailed, effing torch!”

More coughing parted the gloom. A moment later, Quay’s voice asked, “Is everyone alright?”

Litnig tried to get his feet under him without moving his injured arm.

“No,” he mumbled. “At least not Len and I.”

And Ryse and Dil are still missing—

Len’s breath hissed in and out slowly next to him. It sounded crackly and dangerously shallow.

Cole’s torch finally sputtered to life to Litnig’s left. It took a second to catch fully, but eventually a warm, orange glow spread over the rocks, and Litnig could see his brother.

The sight made him inhale deeply enough to suck down another lungful of dust.

Cole’s face was covered in blood. His hair and eyebrows were matted in it. More was trickling down his forehead.

Another coughing fit racked Litnig’s body.

“Cole, your face—” he wheezed when he could.