by Jada Fisher
A soft, small hand slid into my own, and I managed to flick my eyes down enough to see Sokhanya’s concerned face.
What was she doing up? I tried to ask her, but that required far too much muscular ability that I didn’t have. After so much running and…and…
Had all of it even happened? Or had I just come out of the worst nightmare in my entire life? The worst vision I’d ever encountered… The worst terror that had even lurked in the back consciousness of my mind.
She squeezed my hand once then left as quietly as she had arrived. Not too much later, Bronn and Mal were running in, Krisjian skittering just after them.
“You’re awake!” Mal said, sounding happier than I had ever heard her. “Oh God, I thought you might not wake up!”
She pressed right up to the side of my bed, looking down at my face. I had to be low to the ground for her to be above me, but I couldn’t quite roll to my side and glance at the floor.
“Get the doctor,” Bronn said, his voice low. He didn’t look like he was happy. In fact, he looked the worst that I had ever seen him. His eyes were sunken in with dark rings around them. He had a slice down one cheek, and he looked ashen. What had happened while I was gone?
“Davie…” he whispered before his voice crumpled and suddenly, he was right where Sokhanya was, snatching up my hand and holding it to his face like he almost couldn’t believe I was there. “Davie, I’m so sorry. I’m…” He choked on his words, and tears dripped down the side of his cheeks. “I couldn’t wake up. I could hear you running, the manor falling down around us, but I couldn’t wake up.”
I tried to say that it was alright, but my tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of my mouth. Welded there with a solid layer of what could be crust. Gross.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so—” He couldn’t get it out. His head was pressed into my middle as he just cried.
Something truly terrible must have happened. He hadn’t even reacted so poorly when I had come back to life after sacrificing myself. And what did he have to be sorry for? It was old magic, magic that was so laid into the foundations of that amulet that I hadn’t been able to sense it at all. And my soul had literally bathed in magic when I was dead.
He stayed pressed against me, his palms gripping my side with a terrified sort of tenderness that made my heart ache.
“So, it was all real then?” I asked after I couldn’t take it any longer. I wanted to support Bronn, to wrap him up in my arms and tell him it was going to be okay, but I could barely even wiggle my fingers.
He looked up at me, his face seeming to crack even more at my question. “How much do you remember?” he asked, clearly struggling to hold on. I hated seeing him like that, all broken open and barely clinging together. Was this what our destiny was going to be? Always with me in a hospital bed, grievously injured, and him just watching me try to knit myself back together?
That certainly didn’t seem fair to him.
“All of it. Or all of it until you arrived. I was just hoping it was a horrible night—” I halted myself, realization hitting me. “Krisjian put me to sleep, didn’t he?”
Bronn nodded. “You were fighting us. You wouldn’t let us get you away from that awful place.”
I swallowed, but with so little spit in my mouth, the action mostly just scraped along my sore throat.
“And Mallory? Did you get her too?” He didn’t answer, his lips pressing together so tightly that they were hardly even there anymore. I felt my stomach come to life only to sink down inside of me. “Well… That’s alright. I can find a way to bring her back. I’ll just get to your library now that the shield is down—”
“Davie,” Bronn interrupted me gently, but urgently, and I could see all the grief and pain written across his features. “You can’t go to the library.”
I rolled my eyes, and I was so happy to have that function back. “Well, obviously not now. I can tell I’m a little beat up here. I just meant…you know. In a bit.”
His brows went up and his eyes squeezed shut, leaving me to wonder exactly what I had said to make him look like that. But then a few moments later, he finally opened them back up again to answer me.
“You can’t go to the library because there is no library anymore. There is no castle. It was one of the first things the rotted dragon burned, and he has built his nest in the ashes and debris of it.”
“He— But how—”
“The manor is gone too, as well as what is left of the anti-humanist castle after our sabotage. Every stronghold we had in the statewide area is gone completely. Burned down to nothing.”
“I…” I needed to get a solid sentence out. Taking a deep breath, I forced my heart to stop pounding—with mixed success. It was like my whole body was waking up, except everything it was waking up to was unpleasant. “How long was I asleep?”
“I believe the technical term is medically-induced coma. But you’ve been out for…two weeks? Maybe three? It’s hard to say.”
My eyes went wide. “Three weeks!?”
“Give or take.”
“I…” I had no idea what to say to that. Sure, I’d been dead before and for quite a while, but that was different. I hadn’t really been alive, but I hadn’t really been dead. I’d just been…there. “Three weeks is a long time.” He nodded. “So… Is there even a world to wake up to?”
There was that grimace again. “Yeah. He seems to have stopped for now. A few tried to attack him, on both sides. None survived. Most of us are squirreled away in bunkers.”
“And the humans?” I didn’t know that many, but I thought of my old coworkers. Of all the kids and innocent folks who populated the city.
“He seems to be leaving them alone for the most part, but we’ve had some of our faster, smaller dragons ferrying them to neighboring cities.”
“But won’t that expose all of you to the world?”
“Davie, the rotted dragon is here. I think the cat is out of the bag.”
I had to breathe deeply. In and out. Once more, my brain was trying to catch up with everything. Too much had happened in far too short a time. The dragon that had ended worlds was in my world. Mallory was gone. And I was…
“Where am I?” I asked, finally able to move my head a little. I saw more of the room, and it was much of what I had caught in the corner of my eye. Incredibly old and more than a bit damp.
“In one of the dwarf strongholds—old ones that existed from when the city was first being built. They don’t have the best setup, but we don’t think the rotted dragon will be able to find us down here… For a while at least.”
“So we really have lost everything.”
“Well, not yet. But the situation is grim.”
“Where… where is my sister?” She would have been there right beside me. What if something was wrong? What if she was hurt?! I couldn’t lose someone else on top of Mallory. I couldn’t! I—
“She’s got a lot of medical training, apparently. She’s at a connected complex just an hour or so walk away through the underground passages. I’m sure Krisjian is booking it there now to fetch her. He’s faster than ever, that little one.”
“It’s because he’s afraid I’m mad at him, isn’t he?”
“Mad would be an understatement. But yes. Are you?”
I paused, giving it actual consideration. But then all of that rushed out of my mouth with a sigh. “No. I’m not. I understand why he did what he did. I…” My breath hitched, and I felt like I might have my ability to cry back. How lovely. “She’s really gone, isn’t she?”
He didn’t have to ask who I meant by that. “As far as I know, yes. But you’ve always been able to do the impossible, Davie. Maybe this will be another one of those situations.”
I nodded, because that was something I could do again. I could feel pain and sadness all coiled tight like a spring inside of me, but the drugs they had been pumping into me dealt with that first part.
“I… I think I’m ready to sit up.”
“Are you sure?” Bronn replied automatically. But I just nodded again. His hands were on me again, soft but strong, holding me steady as I pushed myself up.
Or at least, I tried to. But when I put pressure on my arms, I suddenly went lilting to one side and might have careened off the bed if Bronn hadn’t caught me. When he righted me, I just sat there a moment, blinking.
“Uh, I forgot my arm got bit. Whatever meds they’re giving me are pretty good, because I can’t feel it at all.” Bronn let go of me, and he was wearing that crumpled and shocked expression again. Frustration began to bubble up, making my tone sharper than perhaps it needed to be. “What now?”
“Davie… You said you remembered everything.”
“Well, I do, as far as I know. What are you—” I followed his gaze to where it was boring into me. Not into my eyes, or even at my face, but somewhere lower and a bit off center. It took an embarrassing amount of time for me to figure out that he was staring at my injured arm.
Actually, that wasn’t correct. He was staring at where the limb should be but wasn’t there at all.
Several sounds tried to punch their way out of my mouth at once, but mostly all that escaped was a garbled sort of shout. My arm was missing.
My arm was missing?
Eyes wide, chest heaving, I felt sweat start to bead on my forehead. I had a shoulder. I had less than a hand’s length of arm that was all covered in bandages. And then…nothing. No arm. No hand. Nothing.
A horrible keening sound, a truly broken sob, filled the room. It startled me, and my first instinct was to tell whoever it was to shut the hell up, but then I realized it was me. I was crying? No, worse than crying. I was sobbing. I hadn’t even meant it. It was like the shock of the situation was letting my body run off and do whatever it wanted before my brain caught up.
“I’m so sorry. I should have known you were taking all of this too well,” Bronn said, moving to the other side of the bed and reaching into a drawer beyond my reach. “Here, they taught me what to do to help calm you down if this happened. I know it’s hard, but you can’t get this upset. You were really sick. You still are.”
I wanted to snap at him, to ask him how the hell I was supposed to calm down, but then a needle was piercing my skin and I felt a strange sort of burn speeding up my leg. It was nothing compared to what I had gone through, but it was yet one more thing.
“Ow! What are you…” I trailed off as I felt the world go just a tiny bit wavy. Just enough to distract me from whatever I was about to object to.
“It’s going to be okay, Davie. I don’t know how, but it will be. What you need to do now is rest again. Rest as much as you can for as long as you can.”
Rest? Okay, I could do that. But I was going to have some strong words once I woke up.
Assuming there was a world to wake up to.
Dragon of Death
Dragon Oracle, Book 8
1
I Should Have Known
Reality ebbed and flowed, as liquid as the tears that I wanted to cry but couldn’t quite work up the willpower to get out. My thoughts grew mushy again, time softening along with them, until I was eventually allowed back up to the surface to try the whole being conscious thing again.
I remembered what happened better, was less shocked by suddenly being one limb down, but then when Mickey came in and hugged me tightly, I started sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe and there was another needle.
I hated it. I hated it so much. The next time I came to, I begged the doctor at my side not to do it again. She was calm but firm when she told me that some sort of toxin in the rotted dragon’s spit had spread into my body, damaging the tissues of my heart and my lungs. If I was too stressed, or started breathing too hard, I could irreparably damage myself. So, it was either stay calm or be put back to sleep for a day or two until my numbers were better.
It made sense, and I appreciated that they were looking out for me, but I grew to hate that needle.
I lost all my muscle, laying there in that bed in the poorly lit room. And most of my color. I looked nothing like the Davie of my mind, and after a while, I asked Mal to take the mirror out of my room. I couldn’t stand looking at it, as small as it was.
Eventually, however, my numbers did improve. I could breathe easier, I learned to sit up on my own. But that didn’t stop me from forgetting all the time and feeling like my hand was still there.
I knew about phantom limb syndrome. I’d read about it and seen it in plenty of documentaries. But knowing about it and feeling it were two entirely different things. Every time I was startled by my violent amputation, I had to go through the shock of it all over again. It was like my mind couldn’t wrap around the idea that the limb was gone.
But to be honest, thinking about my missing arm was much better than thinking about what else was lost. Much easier.
And yet she pushed into my dreams, pushed into those moments when I lost my concentration and just drifted off. Mallory burned bright, a beacon in my subconscious, tearing new holes through me. Sometimes, I relived her death in all its awful glory. Sometimes, it was situations that never happened at all. Sometimes, it was a mishmash of the two.
And sometimes, she just asked if I had forgiven her or if it had all been for nothing.
Those were the worst, without a doubt, and left me with a raw, aching sort of guilt.
I should have forgiven her. I should have talked to her. I shouldn’t have shut her out. If I had known…
If I had known that she was going to be ripped away from me, then maybe I wouldn’t have taken her presence, her love, for granted.
And I knew what some folks would say, that one could never know how much time they were given with a person. After all, I’d lost my parents with no warning as well. But I had been so sure that we would win. We’d been doing so well. We’d killed the prince. We’d captured Baelfyre.
But all of it was for nothing.
The rotted dragon had returned, and he’d used my best friend as transport then killed her.
I should have known.
I should have known!
She had been sick for so long, I should have sensed something. Should have been able to feel that the rotted dragon had been able to bury a piece of himself inside of her. Maybe if I’d talked to Mallory I wouldn’t have been so sideswiped.
Ugh. It was all wrong.
And that feeling only increased as I became more conscious, others sharing with me what the rotted dragon had been up to. They’d tried not to at first, to protect me, but I didn’t need to be protected that way. I needed to know what he was doing so I could stop him.
Even if that seemed impossible.
The whole world knew about dragons, that much was for certain. But I was so deep underground, stuck in a tiny, old room that clearly hadn’t been meant as any sort of recovery area, that it was hard not to feel detached from it.
But of course, part of that could have been because some parts of my mind were just…fuzzy.
“Here, I rewrote the latest report in bigger letters if you want to try again,” Mickey said, coming to sit on the edge of my bed. I reached up to shakily take the papers, managing for only a couple to slip down onto my lap. Mickey helped me restack them without comment, but when I tried to concentrate to read, my ears began to ring sharply.
I tried to cover my wince but of course Mickey noticed.
“Remember what the doctor said. Try closing one eye and reading with that one, then switch.”
“I know what the doctor said!” I snapped, surprising even myself. My stomach curled sourly, and I set the papers to the side. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I could feel the room starting to spin around me—what happened whenever I lost my temper. Or got confused. Or even moved too fast.
“It’s alright, love,” Mickey said, kissing my forehead. “The doctor said that confusion and agitation are common side effects of traumatic brain injury. You hurt yourself pretty badly, but this is just your body
working things through.”
“I never thought I would say this, but I’d rather have the recovery from being burned than this.”
I didn’t need my eyes open to feel Mickey’s frown.
“Don’t say that. I know this isn’t great, but at least you’re out of your coma. And the doctor says you should be good to start basic physical therapy in a couple of weeks.”
I looked around at my surroundings. “Uh-huh. And I suppose this underground has an outpatient program for that?”
“At least your ability to be snarky wasn’t injured. But there’s a surprising amount of medical personnel they managed to ferry down here. I do a lot of grunt work, but there are several doctors I trust.”
“Good to know.” I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. Unfortunately, losing an arm wasn’t even the worst of my trauma. The damage to one of my eyes had been intense—a severe orbital fracture, as the doc called it. The swelling had been bad enough to damage some of my nerves, giving me splitting headaches more often than not and a hard time tracking movement with both eyes. Things were fuzzier as well, unless I only had my less-injured lid open.
“You’d think that being a reanimated golem would have saved me from a lot of this. Isn’t there some old magic we can call on to make me whole again or something? This is my second body, after all.”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the expert.”
“And you’re the big sister.”
“Fair enough. You focus on healing, and I’ll see if I can induce some visions or something.”
I shook my head and immediately regretted it. Cognitive brain damage, the doctor had said, which was weird. That sounded like something that left someone a vegetable or breathing from a tube. I wasn’t doing either of those things. I was me.
Just…a me that got confused sometimes, and who occasionally flew off the handle for no reason. A me who slept way more than I ever had and sometimes forgot things that didn’t make sense to forget.