CONTENT WARNING: Panic attacks
My chest heaved as I desperately tried to calm myself. Her eyes filled with concern when I didn’t respond, instead choosing to lean against the near wall. I slowly sunk to the floor, taking in gulps of air.
“A-are… are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghoul…”
Licking my lips, I gave her a small smile. My voice came out small, strained, as I forced it out of my constricting throat. “You are not… far off... I was trapped in a memory… I am recovering…”
“You look… sick,” she said, coming to kneel in front of me. Oh, how the tides turn.
“I am fine,” I insisted, forcing my voice to stay even. “What did you need?”
Her lips twisted as she looked me over. “I was thirsty,” she finally said. “I dropped my bag while I was running away, you see… so I don’t have a waterskin…”
“Ah, that is easily solved,” I murmured, and gestured to the waterskin by where I’d been sitting. “I cannot offer an unused waterskin, however, so I hope that is alright.”
Elisabeth smiled and reached behind her, to the waterskin I’d mentioned, and picked it up. “This is fine. I’ve drunk worse.”
I shook my head, feeling my lungs starting to relax. “Go on back to bed,” I told her quietly.
But she shook her head and picked up the discarded blanket, wrapping it around her once more. She sat by the fire on the ground and took a sip from the waterskin.
“I don’t think I can sleep anymore,” she said after a moment, her eyes staring into the fire. “I keep seeing the knights behind my eyes.”
Slowly, I returned to my seat by the fire. My legs wobbled slightly as I moved and I was glad of my loose clothing that hid such weakness.
“Do you… want to talk about it?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the fire as well.
“You said you were trapped in your memories earlier,” she said, “if you tell me about yours... I’ll tell you mine.”
Ah.
“You… do not want to hear about it,” I murmured. “What haunts me is the stuff of nightmares. That which crawls from the abyss with no care for life.”
She was silent for a moment before she said, “You’re an elf, right? I’ve… actually never seen one. Elves don’t usually come up north, where I’m from… but I’ve seen a demon. Not when it was alive, only after our honorable slew one. It was, to use your words, the stuff of nightmares. Stone-hard skin, weeping boils all over its body… twisting horns on its head and huge spikes down its spine… I heard it scream as it died.”
At her words, I turned my eyes to stare at her, seeing her in a new light. She wasn’t so innocent, then.
“I may not have seen as much as you,” she said, her voice dropping as quiet as mine, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t listen.”
With a rueful smile, I let out a soft laugh. “I see… you speak wisdom far beyond your years. Very well. You wish to hear what haunts my steps?” She nodded, clutching the blanket tightly around herself.
“First… I should correct you. I am not an elf. I am the last of my kind. That which haunts me, hunts me. It has hunted my species to the point of extinction. I’ve been hiding from it for many centuries, moving every few decades in case it catches my scent.” I turned my eyes back to the flames, watching the hungry element devour the logs. “I hear it’s called a hemokai. An apex predator, created by the mad desires of a king. I hide from it because you cannot hear it coming. You cannot see it coming. It hunts in silence, concealing itself with innate magic.”
I took a breath to steady myself as I remembered the white fangs shining in the moonlight.
“Only when it’s sure it has you cornered will it show itself.”
“And you’ve seen it?” she asked quietly, her eyes wide.
“Yes. I’m the one that got away,” I said, a small smile lifting my lips. In the flames, I saw the faces of my people contorted in terror as the creature sprang from the shadows and dragged us away. “The only one that got away.”
“My fear seems small compared to that,” she murmured, ducking her head.
Now it was my turn for wisdom. I reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder, offering a smile.
“You are young. Your fears are valid and understandable. These knights dragged you from your bed, yes?” She nodded. “Then you have every right to fear them.”
She finally gave me a small smile in return and nodded again. “I think… that, and what they’re planning for me… and their captain.”
“Is their captain very scary?”
“Terrifying!” she exclaimed with a shudder. “He’s huge! Like, bigger than a plow horse!”
“Really? That big?” I asked, letting the heat of the flames push away the chilling memory of the hemokai.
“Bigger, I swear! He’s got blood red horns, big as a demon’s, and scales! Like some kind of lizard. And gold eyes and an angry voice. He’s definitely not human or elf or anything I’ve ever seen,” Elisabeth described, gesturing wildly. “And his armor is blood red, too! Oh and the thing he calls a mount is a vicious man-eating beast!”
I smiled slowly, a bit amused by the description. “Really? He sounds like a demon, certainly. Are you sure he isn’t?”
“I don’t know, he called himself a Holy Knight. I don’t think demons are allowed to be holy,” she said. The blanket had fallen from her shoulders and she paused long enough to pull it back up. “The other knights with him are pretty scary, too. There’s one that’s got white skin, like snow-white skin. I’ve never seen anyone with actual white skin.”
“Does the white-skinned knight have red eyes?” I asked, a little curious after hearing such a description.
“Yeah! Wait… how’d you know?”
“Ah - it’s a bit of color variation that can happen to some species,” I said with a smile. “Hearing you describe the white skin made me think of it… I believe such a thing is called ‘albinism’. It’s an absence in color in the skin. There’s another that can make all colors turn black… ah, melanism.”
“That’s… weird.”
I laughed. “I have a lot of weird knowledge… I pick up books in my travels and I’m not too picky on what I find… so I just read whatever I happen to come across.”
“Wow… you just read to read, then?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied simply, picking up the book I’d dropped earlier. “Take this one, for example. It’s a biography of a famous musician that lived over a century ago, but her work shaped the nature of music theory even today.”
Elisabeth blinked at me. “I got musician and music.”
“Ah… well, anyway, suffice to say, I’ve read a lot of books about a lot of things,” I said, setting down the book. “It’s just a way to fill my time while exercising my mind.”
With a shrug of her shoulders, she turned back to the fire. “I guess that’s-”
Before she could finish her words, the echoing sound of metal on stone reached my ears. I jolted up, turning towards where my side cavern met the larger tunnel of mazes. At my sudden movement, Elisabeth flinched and quieted, shrinking in on herself. I motioned her to be quiet and to stay put before I padded past my workbench towards the front of the cave.
I grabbed my quarterstaff by the entrance, holding it ready, as I stepped out into the tunnel. Just as I did, a hulking figure rounded a corner.
Glowing, gold eyes fell upon me, freezing me where I stood.
But not in fear.
My eyes widened as my senses screamed at me, the scent of sulfur and burning things clogging my nostrils. The overwhelming, heavy presence of a progenitor dragon thudded down upon me, warring with my own aura.
Taking a steadying breath and using the quarterstaff to keep me steady, I forced my eyes away from his eyes, taking in the rest of him. Dark red horns swept up from his forehead, sprouting up from behind the crown of dark red scales that framed his face and spread down his throat, disappearing in the collar of his breastplate.
His red breastplate.
I swallowed hard, moving my eyes back to his face. His gold eyes stared down at me from where he’d stopped, several feet away, wide as he looked me over.
Something tugged between us. Something pleasant and beckoning, warm and comforting, coiled around my chest and whispered in my ear. My legs trembled, forcing me to lean more heavily on my quarterstaff, my knuckles going white.
“Who are you?” came a deep, gravel-raked voice, steady as a rumbling storm.
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