COMPANION, Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Insistent, throbbing pain brought Mane part-way back to his senses. Disoriented, he made the mistake of trying to move. What had been a dull ache flared into a spear of pain, driving through his side and up into his shoulder, turning his stomach. His eyes were open but he saw nothing but darkness. Just as he came to understand his blindness, his eyesight adjusted to the nighttime forest.
          His arm lay badly twisted beneath him, bent in places other than the appropriate joints. The sight made him gag and swoon. He laid his head back on the soft forest floor to avoid vomiting. After a few steadying breaths, he re-opened his eyes.
          A wide swath of forest lay open to the night sky above, rimming the ashen crater where his beloved cabin once stood. Oh, his cabin, with all its tricks and wonders, and his construct companion, all gone in the blink of an eye. Living through the explosion—even in someone else’s body—brought with it the worry of other survivors, but all he could do now was hope. Hope that this sacrifice, this minor apocalypse, had not been in vain. Hope that Pare and Eriane were safe.
          Mane shifted painfully to free his broken arm, then took hold of that wrist with his good hand. With three deep breaths and a succession of panicked ones, he sat up. Excruciating pain lit through his arm and threatened to deposit him right back in the dirt. He held firm and stayed upright, cradling the mangled limb. A few more deep breaths and the pain settled back to a dull roar.
          Pain drowned out his sporadic memory and sluggish thoughts. His clothes lay in tatters but still mostly covered him, tears revealing his murderer’s dark brown skin beneath. Although he’d be exposed to the early winter wearing naught but rags, more importantly his boots were still intact.
          He shook away the fugue and tried to focus, drawing khet to at least begin healing his arm. The draw was weak and unfamiliar. His experience still allowed him to raise a bump field with relative ease, but more complex workings would have to wait. Ah well, he’d never had much skill as a kheurgeon, anyway. He’d have to do this the hard way.
          He examined his arm and thought setting the breaks might be possible with one hand, as long as he could stay conscious. He slowly rearranged his broken forearm with numb fingers, trying to get the bone as close to right before having to endure the hard part of actually setting it. Every little movement shot jolts of pain through him, stalling his breath.
          He scooted himself to his right, next to the stump of a tree blasted free by the explosion. Leaning over he braced his twisted elbow between his hip and a jutting root, grabbed his wrist, took a deep breath… and stalled. His jaw locked up and his grinding teeth sent spikes of pain into his temples.
          Mane let out his breath and laid his broken arm carefully across his lap. Never in his life had he experienced pain like this, and he was surprised now to feel it starting to slide away. Fog settled back around his mind and dulled his senses. The intellectual part of him identified the sensation as shock. He fought hard against it, trying to keep his wits about him. With his good hand he managed to fumble his belt loose of his torn trousers, fold it in half, and bite down on it.
          Gripping his wrist once more he pressed his arm between himself and the stump, inhaled sharply, and twisted his arm back into place. And promptly passed out.
          Bitter cold and a bright sky woke him the second time. Luck had never really been on Mane’s side before, but just waking up again was enough to convince him that perhaps that had changed. With some pain and aggravation he found two sticks he could use as a splint, fumbling his belt around them and his arm with his one good hand, then tying it off at his wrist with a strip of torn fabric, cinching the knot with his teeth. He shoved his splinted arm through his torn-up shirt to act as a sling.
          Aside from the broken bones, some blisters and scrapes, and a lot of bruising, Mane’s new body felt intact. Through the chore of simply standing, every muscle and joint sang together in a chorus of protest. Finding balance a foreign concept he stumbled. He couldn’t be sure whether this was a function of adjustment or injury. At this point, the reasoning didn’t matter much.
          Big Sister and Little Blue flew through a small break in the clouds above the treetops, casting a brief, bright ray of light on the devastation. Mane stared in stunned silence across the thirty meter wide crater where his home used to stand.
          What trees had not been vaporized by the explosion had been blasted into the forest. Splinters, broken branches, and logs littered the perimeter of the new clearing. A blanket of grey and brown covered the forest floor, ash and dirt mixing into a slurry as the previous night’s light snowfall melted. The meaty carcass of a former mercenary hung from the branches of a tree at the edge of the circle, but he found no other traces of the people who’d set this destruction in motion. He tried, for a moment, to foster the vain hope they’d been vaporized like the rest of the cabin, but concerns for his own survival banished that thought. As much as he wanted to count this as a win it was, at best, a fleeting victory.
          At the first sign of despair he chided himself. Nothing more could be done to help in his current condition, and he needed to break down his next steps into digestible goals. The first step would be making it to the road. Then, if luck ran his way, all the way back to Morrelton, a place where he could find real help and competent healing. And buy some new clothes.
          He walked to where the crater butted up against a rocky rise in the forest and knelt, thrusting his hand wrist-deep into a cleave near eye level. It took a moment to find his target, and with a muted click a small section of the rockface crumbled, the dust and rock shards falling away and unearthing a small, round cubby from which he withdrew a weather worn leather pouch. It jingled with coin as he stowed it as best he could in his shredded trousers.
          Well, there’s something to be said for preparedness, he thought. Morrelton would be several days walk in his current condition, and he had little choice but to make it. The disadvantages of his sheltered existence became quite apparent.
          The once-hidden trail to his cabin had been hacked wide. The mercenaries must not have wanted to fumble their way out once their task was complete. It made the walk much easier, though, and for that Mane was thankful. It wasn’t long before he came upon the small clearing where one of his defenses had stood, an illusion designed to draw people away from their real goal, had they been searching for his home.
          The illusion would show travelers whatever might sway them from their course, perhaps making them believe their destination was destroyed, or just too difficult to reach. An airy, broken illusion stood now in the clearing. A conglomeration of different imagery, split by shifting blue light, flickered and spat amongst the flowers, a useless binding of khet with no purpose now but to mark the path to where Mane had lost everything. Even himself.
          He closed his eyes and breathed deep. Khet coursed around him, through him, its flow so alien in his new form. Deconstructing the illusion would be more effort than it had taken to build it, and he wasn’t even sure if he could do it without some time to properly adjust. Perhaps leaving the broken illusion intact would further serve his purposes, convincing any more who might come he was dead and gone. As if the giant crater wouldn’t drive that point home.
          Dusk had fallen by the time he reached the Bleeding Pine. He’d gone unmolested by siphils after the clearing, and suspected the breaker had destroyed the bait that kept them near the trail. All the better that they were free, with nothing left to protect.
          Mane stepped out onto the road by the pine and waited, a moment of hope that he might run across a traveler. When snow began to fall, he knew none would come, and settled back into the woods to find a place to rest. He propped himself against the trunk of a tree just outside the Bleeding Pine’s clearing, and took a deep, cleansing breath.
          He began to experiment, feeling through the flow of khet in this unfamiliar body. Every adept had a unique connection to khet, and their own combination of knowledge and talent dictated how they accessed it. The rules governing Mane’s access to the forces around him had been rewritten, but the rulebook was still readable.
          Mane just needed enough access for a simple conjuration, practically a child’s trick. The flow was easy enough to read, but harder to access as he molded his mind into his new body, feeling around the flow as a sculptor might look for shapes in a lump of clay. Understanding formed quickly, but seeing the path and walking it were separate matters. With some effort, he began drawing on his inherent flow, pulling inward in an attempt to contain it.
          His breathing grew ragged. His muscles burned; his head throbbed. Like a wounded man re-learning to walk, all but the smallest effect required monumental effort. His face drew into a pained grimace as he pulled inward, the idea of his goal forming in his mind, coalescing into reality as he solidified his will. A simple cantrip to create a barrier, something to hold in warmth. A basic survival trick. Mane felt as though he were attempting to uproot a tree with his bare hands.
          And then it clicked. As the barrier fell into place he blew out a long breath, wiping sweat from his face. A warm trickle of blood ran over his lip from his nose. Closed off from the elements now, he felt himself warming as though wrapped in a comfy wool blanket. Under the perfect combination of warmth and exhaustion, he faded into sleep once again, only this time by choice.