Riven Isles

37 | Flushed Out

The weight of my limbs is too great, as though the blood flowing sluggishly through my weary vessels has turned to lead. Even my eyelids hang laden like anvils, so strongly burdened that I can scarcely manage to pry them apart even a sliver. By Laod, my head is pounding like an axe in the forest, sharp and constant and ear-splitting. Over its throbs, I can make out the ring of steel clashing against steel in rippling shrieks and scrapes. Gunshot reverberates all around; close, but not immediate. Voices. Aggression, valor, spirit, rage. In the haze of my awakening and the loud and prominent aching of my head, it is a strain to listen for the chaos nearby.

My heart flutters, and my eyelids do, too, until I am wide awake and staring at rock. It's a small cave. So small, it could not really be called a cave at all, if you think about it; rather, a slab of rock that covers me, jutting over the hole in the ground where I am neatly hidden, a familiar white coat draped around me. Covered in long grasses and dirt, almost buried, I feel as though I may as well be dead. This cramped, damp crevice feels close enough to a cold, final grave, that I start to wonder—half-musingly, yet, half-convinced—if I have died after all.

No, can't be. My scalp scrapes against the rock overhead as I inch forward to peek from my hiding place at frighteningly close combat between the Witch's men and our own, who grapple like animals with menace and malice glinting in their blood-lusting eyes and flashing over their sharp, bared teeth. Few guns are out. The battle appears almost futile with so many swords against our small few in close quarters. My eyes drift downwards to the scuffling collisions of boots and sandals and uprooted plants and their dust, and quickly glance away at the sight of bodies, wounded or dead, covered in blood either way.

My throat catches with a wave of illness and I sit forward, shoulders hitting the overhang. My hand flies to my forehead and rests there a while as I breathe and breathe.

I don't want to fight, I think.

I think I hurt people.

I don't think I can do it again, even if I wanted to.

The thought makes me only sicker and my head bows lower on my hunched shoulders, chin sinking pitifully to my dirty chest.

Why, I wonder, did I join this fight at all? Why did I come to these Isles?

For Mother. It was all for Mother. I did not cry when she died and it wore on me terribly, but the tears are ample, now. Sniveling silently, cowering alone. Snot on my quivering, pursed lips, salty crystals listing meekly down my cold cheeks. I could not avenge her. I don't know who the Witch is, this Darling, nor where she is, nor if she, truly, is at any fault at all. I know not where the Captain is, either. He, so hellbent on revenge against the same woman; he who convinced me to hate her, too.

Now, we—my comrades, and his crew—are fighting his battle, and I know not what it means. Where is he, while our loyal hands bravely put their lives on the line... for what? His sunken old ship, Eclipse? He lost a crew already, and he was losing this one.

My fingers gnarl through my fallen hair, scrabbling for any grounding feeling. The stinging tug against the roots stirs nerves throughout, and I think I must move now or never. The grass and dirt falls from my lap as I push to my knees. I take the coat with me as I crawl hesitantly out from under the rock with my heart in my throat. Away from the fighting and bloodshed, the clay village stands by the edge of the woods. My brows set, expression brave as I can summon, and I start to run, pulling the coat's oversized sleeves on as I go. The tails flap wildly at my heels.

Then I fall. Suddenly. Why, or how, I do not know until I am staring at my bleeding shin in amazement. I gasp as the pain smacks me like a belt. A second bullet flies at my head, and I cry out, throwing my arms over myself, ducking. It whisks past like a silver fish through the rapids. I scrabble to get back on my feet, but my leg protests beneath me and it is all I can do to lunge a few yards away and gape back.