Chapter Twenty

The sky above my head darkens, and the wind picks up out of nowhere. The air itself tastes wrong on my tongue, and I turn away from the tavern, drawn to the lower part of the city. The slums where most of its people live. Fifteen feet away from the set of stone stairs that divide the lowest district to the marketplace, the scourge comes.

And it comes with a bang.

The air around me grows thick with black mist, and the only way I can see through it is because I light up the tattoo. I want to make sure Frederick and the others at the tavern make it, but I need to go into the heart of the storm and help those who didn't go to the celebration at the tavern.

There are still people in the lowest district. They need my help.

Fuck. Listen to me. I sound like a goddamned hero, the one thing I never wanted to be.

I run towards the residential district, where every refugee and every poor citizen live. I don't know how many people are down there. The tavern and the space in front of it was jam-packed with people, so I can't say how many didn't come, how many people are trapped inside their homes, hoping the storm doesn't find its way in.

I don't know how the scourge works. Can it enter homes? Can it go in if the doors and windows are open? Would they be safe if their homes were all locked up? I don't know that it matters.

I run head-first into the shadowstorm, and immediately my mouth is drier than a desert. I hold my tattooed arm up high, and the light from its glow illuminates only three or four feet ahead. The storm is too thick and hazy; I can't see a thing beyond that, and it makes navigating the streets a pain in the ass.

My heart beats fast as I hurry along, looking for anyone who may need my help. The storm rages in the sky, in the air, the wind whipping around me so hard it hurts my face, but I plow on.

"Well," Rune muses, his voice still carrying some attitude after our fight, "this came out of nowhere, didn't it?"

It did, but I don't say it aloud. I'm mad at him. He may not have a body, but even he has to realize how much of a jerk he was to me. Granted, I wasn't the picture of grace either, but I just… I just can't deal with him right now. I need a break.

So I don't say a word as I race through the streets of Laconia. Without having much in front of me, it's hard. I nearly whack myself into the corner of a building once or twice as the shadowstorm rages around me.

I see a figure hobbling about three feet in front of me, and I skid to a halt as I reach for them. "Come on!" I shout over the volume of the storm. "We need to get you to the upper city—" If the storm swallowed up all of Laconia… then we're all fucked, but right now, I'm operating on the assumption somewhere else is safe.

My tattoo-less hand touches the person's shoulder, and they spin around to face me. An elderly woman, her cheeks gaunt and her eyes sunken in, wrinkles everywhere. "You," she starts to say, but then her body convulses in front of me, jerking and shaking as she stumbles back.

I watch in horror as she changes before me. Her skin thins and grays, as if the scourge itself is eating away at her. Her eyes dry up seconds before her lids fall. She shrivels into nothing but skin and bones, and then she collapses on the ground in front of me, evidence of what a storm like this does to regular people.

Except me.

Why doesn't it affect me like that?

I'm about to keep moving, but before I can the woman who succumbed to the storm jerks back to life. My mouth falls open as I take a weary step back, watching as the woman gets to her feet again.

Strange movements. Mechanical. She doesn't look human anymore as she straightens out. Parts of her flesh are completely eaten away, revealing bone and diseased tissue underneath. Some of her teeth are visible through the storm, most of her right cheek gone. Her eyes glow with an otherworldly hue. She looks like a zombie gone mad.

Shit. The storm doesn't just kill them. It turns them, twists them into things that shouldn't exist.

I'm frozen. I can't move as the woman lumbers toward me, outstretching both of her hands—hands that look more like bone claws than anything else, unnaturally sharp and jagged. Something pulled straight from a nightmare.

This whole place is. It's all wrong.

I hear moaning behind me, and I turn around just in time to see I'm surrounded by other zombie-fied people. What did the Emperor call them? The afflicted? Those taken and tainted by the woes, morphed into something that goes against nature.

I don't recognize the hollowed-out, holey faces staring at me. Their clothes are nothing but rags that now hang off bodies too thin and angular. But just because I don't recognize them doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It does. As I stare at the crowd of ten or so afflicted before me, I think of all the hardships they had to endure to get here, all the pain, all the loss…

And for what? What did it accomplish? They stayed alive only to die like this, en masse, in a fucking storm?

"Uh, Rey, I would do something if I were you," Rune chimes in.

"I can't," I whisper as they take a collective step toward me. "They're people—"

"They are not people anymore. The storm changed them. You can see that, can't you?" He sounds desperate, like he's genuinely worried about me or something. I don't see how. I drive him crazy. The dude obviously hates me.

But he makes sense. These aren't people anymore. Still, as I stand in the middle of a raging shadowstorm, I can't shake the feeling that everything I've done, everything I will do… it means nothing. It's all pointless.

How can you fight against something like this? Something that doesn't have a tangible presence, something that can come and decimate you in a matter of seconds?

"Rey!" Rune's voice cuts into my thoughts the same moment the old woman behind me reaches me. Before either of us can react, before Rune can throw up a shield to protect me, the old woman's claws rake down my arm, cutting into my skin deep enough to draw blood. Pain blossoms within me, shooting up and down my arm, flooding the rest of my body and driving me to action.It's the same arm that Gladus's sword cut into, and I'm pretty sure the wound re-opened as a result.

I shoot a bolt of yellow, sizzling magic toward the old woman as I flip around. The magic impales her and sends her flying back. She turns to ash before the magic bolt disappears.

With my arm hurting and probably bleeding, I bare my teeth as I glance at the crowd of afflicted who gathered around me. "You want some of this?" I ask, ready to be done with all this shit. Done with Laconia, done with the woes, done with Rune; done with everything.

White magic grows from my right palm, coiling and elongating like a snake. My tattoo glows brighter when the magic fully forms into a whip; something I've never used, but that doesn't stop me from hitting each of my marks when I raise my arm and jerk the magical whip back. I swing the whip around me, catching the afflicted in their midsections and sending them to whatever god they believe in.

Or believed, since they're dead.

The air around me turns to ash, tasting wrong on my tongue, but I'm not happy about my victory. These were people. To survive the last twenty years, to possibly have hope again thanks to me…

I can't linger on it, nor can I save any of these people. It's clear everyone who stayed down here is gone. I should make my way up to the marketplace and see if everyone made it out of the tavern, or if the shadowstorm kept growing until it swallowed all of Laconia.

What would I do if it did? What would I do if I'm the last person alive in the entire kingdom? I don't like how hopeless that makes me feel.

The thought of returning to the marketplace came easy, but the action of going back turns out to be anything but. I'm lost in the storm, not knowing which way's which, and it seems after every turn, more afflicted are waiting for me.

I don't hesitate again. Anything that steps into my path meets an untimely end and turns to ash, one way or another. I don't let the pain in my arm stop me; the wound feels pretty deep. Deeper than the cut I got from Gladus. The pain is hot, scorching, and I can feel the blood dripping down my bare arm as I move through the streets.

I'm turned around, so it takes me forever to find the stairs that lead up to the markets. Hell, by the time I make it to those stairs, I bet every single afflicted in the vicinity has tried to find me and kill me. None of them succeeded. If there are any left, it can't be that many. I lost count of how many I killed.

They might not be people any longer, but that doesn't make it easier.

I hike it into the markets and find the shadowstorm isn't so thick. It seems to condense more over the slums than here, which is good. Hopefully everyone in the tavern made it to the upper district and are safe from the scourge.

As I walk across the marketplace, to the stairs that separate the lower part of the city from the rich, well-to-do part, I'm in a daze. My arm has gone numb; I don't feel it anymore. Either my brain has gotten used to the pain or everything else feels just as bad so it doesn't stick out.

Up the steps that seem to stretch on to infinity. One by one I go up what would be multiple flights of stairs in my world, and when I reach the archway that rests between the stairs between the markets and the rest of the upper city, I find the doors are shut. Big, wooden things, as if that would stop the storm from coming in.

No. If the storm wants to, it will come in whether all their doors are shut and locked or not.

I lean against the door as I fumble for the iron knocker. "It's Rey," I shout. "No one else is coming." I don't know if guards are inside, if they can hear me, but it's worth a shot. Otherwise I guess I wait out here until everything either clears or gets worse.

Here's hoping for the former.

It takes a minute, but eventually the left door creaks open and I'm able to slide in once the guard sees it's me. He closes it behind me, and the moment I'm through I see people huddled together, people from the tavern. The air is full of wailing and crying, people openly weeping in the shadows of the night.

I don't want them to look at me. I don't want them to ask me where so-and-so is or why I couldn't save them, why I couldn't stop it from happening, so I shuffle my feet around the crowd and find myself an empty spot to collapse.

I end up stopping along the wall that separates the upper and lower districts. Leaning my back on the wall, my knees give out as exhaustion takes hold. Fuck. I'm so tired. It's one thing after another. I never have time to rest, time to regroup. Time to catch my fucking breath before the next thing is thrown at me.

The moon is almost directly over Laconia, not a single cloud in the sky. Its silver light illuminates more than it should, and my eyes focus on the ribbon tied on my left wrist. Seeing it, staring at it, I'm forced to reckon with everything.

All this loss. All this death. The pain and the misery. When will it all end? Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to give up than to fight.

My left hand curls into a fist. But that's not me. I don't give up. I don't stop when things get hard. I keep going, keep pushing myself, and eventually everything works out. I'm not and have never been someone who gives up.

"Rey!" I hear my name being called out, and I work to get to my feet right as Frederick reaches me. I'm seconds from asking him if everyone from the tavern made it up here, but he pulls me in for a hug before I can voice the question.

It's the opposite of a bad hug, but maybe it's just one of those nights.

"Thank the empresses you're safe," he breathes out, slow to release me. "When I heard you went into the storm, I feared the worst. You didn't find any survivors?"

I shake my head. "No. I mean… do you know what the scourge does to people?" The way Frederick looks at me is my answer, which shouldn't be surprising since no one seems to know anything about these woes. "It doesn't just kill them. It turns them. They're dead but they're still walking, and they attack anything that's not afflicted like them."

"Oh, my… I've only ever heard of it killing, not turning people into the undead." His gaze falls to my arm. "Is that blood? Are you hurt? Come with me." He takes my hand, thereby giving me no choice in the matter to refuse, and he leads me through the crowd. I have no idea where he's taking me, but at this point, I'm too tired to argue with him and tell him I'm fine.

We end up in a stone building near where the conclave gathers. It's where they keep their medicine, I guess, and by medicine I mean their herbs and bandages and such. No pain relievers here.

The building only has one floor, an oddity in the upper district. It's basically one giant, wide-open room with multiple beds and makeshift stretchers. This must be where they took Prim after she got hurt.

They couldn't save her, though, so what good does a place like this really do?

Frederick brings me to an empty bed, and he sits me down and tells me to wait. He wanders off, which allows me to survey the room. Most other beds are occupied; I don't know if they're occupied because of what happened tonight or if they were here before. Torches hang on the walls, lighting the room, but I'm not close enough to the others to see their faces.

When Frederick returns, he carries a small bowl of water, along with a bandage, a rag, and a small satchel of some sort. He sits beside me, by my right arm, and sets everything on the bed next to him other than the bowl. That he keeps on his lap.

"Laconia lost its herbalist a few years ago. I help out when I can. I've learned a lot, but… I know there's a lot of knowledge we've lost," Frederick says as he dips the rag into the bowl of water. "I hate to think of what else we've lost. Our history. Our future."

He brings the rag to my injury and starts to clean it up. I wince the first time I feel that rag touch my tender skin, and I make sure to keep looking away. Anywhere but my arm. Honestly, I'm scared to see how deep the wound actually is.

"All the people," he whispers. "Friends, family… parents and children. You are the only thing these people have left, Rey."

Frederick must touch a particularly bad spot on my arm, because a jolt of pain surges through me, reminding me I'm still alive in spite of everything that's tried to kill me here. I tell him, "I don't know why. I couldn't stop the storm."

"No, but you sensed it coming, which is more than any of us can do. You're the reason we made it up here." He dips the rag into the bowl and squeezes excess water out of it before returning his attention to my injury. "Whether you want to be or not, you are a symbol of hope to what's left of Laconia."

"I thought killing Gladus would help," I mutter with a frown.

"I have researched the woes more than anyone else, and I still don't know where they started or why they suddenly appeared twenty years ago. My father's journal hints at something, but it's unclear. I'll admit, I hoped you defeating Gladus would change things, turn the tide to our favor, but it seems the empresses themselves are not the key to this."

Fuck, my arm hurts like a bitch. I want to pull my arm away from him, but I resist the urge. Barely. "What if there's no way to change it? What if this is just how it is forever?"

Frederick sighs. "I refuse to believe it, as should you. Without hope, all we're doing is waiting to die, and I won't spend what's left of my life—short as it may be—waiting for death. I will do what I can when I can, and you should do the same."

"What do you think I've been doing? I've done everything I can. You can't ask me to do more." Under my breath, I say, "It's not like I asked for this."

"No, you didn't, but that doesn't change reality." He must be finished cleaning the wound, because he drops the rag into the bowl and goes for the small satchel he brought. His fingers deftly work it open, and he pulls out a pinch of some kind of powdered herb. "But we need you." He dabs the powder into the claw wound, and I let a whimper slip out.

It's so easy for him to say all this when he's not the one who has all the pressure on him. It's me. I'm the one who everyone thinks can save them. I'm the one they're going to come to with every single problem because they think I'll be able to help. Not Frederick. Me.

Frederick whispers, "I need you." Those three words sound way more pleading than they have any right to be, and they cause me to look at him. He's staring right at me, having finished dabbing some of that powdery stuff against my wound.

Kissing him was nice, yeah, but that's just it. Nice. There was no fire. No passion. It wasn't enough, like only half of me was in that kiss, like I just wanted to be touched because of how alone I've been.That's not fair to me or him.

Maybe I'm too in my head, still too pissed at him for lying to me to get me to do what he wanted.

"I remember seeing you in the conclave, when they first announced you," Frederick goes on as he grabs the bandage to wrap up my injury. "You were so defiant. So… steadfast in your beliefs. You brought up surviving a shadowstorm as if it was nothing. No one really believed you then. I was skeptical, too—but that's when I first felt it."

"First felt what?"

He wraps a bandage around my arm, moving slowly, in no hurry to stop being so close to me. His answer is a single word, and it shouldn't surprise me since he's brought it up before: "Hope."

Whatever he put on my wound seems to be working. It doesn't sting anymore. Must be some kind of natural pain-reliever. My eyebrows furrow as I ask him, "I thought you had hope?"

He finishes with the bandage, and then sets his hands in his lap. "I do now, but before… I'm ashamed to admit I didn't. I've lived here almost my whole life, and things never changed for the better. I lost my father, then my mother… and I didn't even have it the worst. Seeing you, hearing your story, reminded me of what having hope is like."

Frederick goes on, "I refuse to go back to the way I was. I won't do it. These people need me. The city needs me. It also needs you. Maybe you're not an empress… but maybe you are. Maybe you need to believe in yourself a bit more, Rey."

I finally look away. I don't say anything to him, either, and it makes him sigh and stand. He gathers everything and tells me, "Why don't you try to get some sleep, hmm? I'll come to check on you in the morning."

My eyes stay fixed on my lap as he walks away, and only when I'm relatively alone do I let out the sigh I've been holding. I'm not one who gives up, it's true, but if I say I believe in myself, I don't know if it's true.

Do I? Do I have faith in myself, or do I think that if I keep at things, someday things'll eventually work out? My main goal in life has been to survive, to work to have a better future for myself, but the whole time, I felt like I was trying to be something I'm not. A liar. A pretender.

I'm nobody. I have nobody. Being here, in a place plagued by the woes, I'm reminded of that every damn day. It's hard. Fuck, it's so hard.

I do the only thing I can: I lay back on the bed and close my eyes. At this point, I don't know how much worse things can get, but, really, I've seen enough movies to know that just by thinking something like that, I'm fucked.