[Reminder: This story contains explicit sensual content, violence, mature themes, and references to trauma/abuse. This chapter covers death. Reader discretion is advised.]
Her knees softened, and her hands pillowed her as she knocked violently into the earth and rubble. Blood touched her tongue from somewhere on her face.
She looked instantly, yet there was no other crash. To the shadow above her was magi-mi Chamba, with the baby held close.
She choked in the smoke, unable to stop. He lifted her up in a pull, and they danced through the fire until they reached the Senai Seas.
There was more smoke than fire and plenty of sinking ships at the port. Salīa wanted to see what was left, yet the baby hadn't stopped coughing and crying.
Washed in ash, they tread through the forests, the only part of the land they could breathe in. For the blacktrees barricaded the flames. It never caught its ill or sucked its poison, so the smoke couldn't follow them.
Magi-mi Chamba hadn't seemed to hack as she had, heaving for breath. And he hadn't seemed as breathless as he must have been to arrive so quickly from where she'd left him.
He took his hand and held it above the baby's chest, and soon its coughing stopped. He tilted a wooden flask to the small babe's face, and it sipped, ceasing its crying.
He offered to Salīa, and she took a large gulp, careful to leave some for him.
They returned to treading. It heightened into a run, and soon enough, they were on the twist that peaked into Silio.
"Almost home," she coughed.
A waft of smoke awaited them a few steps out of the forest.
"What of Silio?"
She looked at it.
As much as she wanted to walk straight to her village, she couldn't. Yet another destitute village. She felt her face sour.
It was hard enough walking away from Senai and resisting an attempt at high-grade water elemental magic to calm the fire in Senai due to the realm-wide magic ban, yet now she was trembling at the urge.
With magi-mi Chamba right beside her, he'd have no choice but to stop her as per the law. Though her hands were shaking impatiently.
So what if he arrests me? I'll gladly be punished for helping my land and its people.
To this, she closed her eyes and calmed her hands, ready to risk it. Though magi-mi Chamba clicked his tongue, alerting her.
She followed his gaze and saw it looking back at Senai.
Although they couldn't quite see the faces, it was clear that there were people eagerly putting out the fires naturally. She sighed and nodded as they walked to Silio.
Silio held the best of armor and weapons, yet it came from the opposite village, Shaka. There were no screams. She knew she'd missed them.
This village was burnt in many places, yet the homes still stood tall.
She saw a splay of lashed and burnt bodies and took in the acrid smell of rotting flesh. The smoke that travelled had come from outside of Silio, yet she could see clearly.
Her heart sank at the sight of a dead mother with two children in her arms. She couldn't walk over the bodies, yet it wasn't any easier to trail between them.
"I don't think I can…" Salīa panted.
The Armory Home was about thirty lunges forward, yet the mound of maggot-matted bodies was too much, even if her nose was scrunched and her eyes lifted.
"We can leave," he reassured.
Yet it was then they heard a wailing. She couldn't run this time, not with the smoke having sucked out her lungs, and the whipping of blood dripping down on her, and the burns of her feet still healing.
She edged on until she found the wailer at the steps of the Armory Home.
"Magi Inio," she cried, holding his body up, yet he murmured. "Sorry, I'll be gentle."
"Salīa," he smiled, his lips blistered, and the sockets of his eyes hollowed.
"Sshh," she said as she saw a dribble of blood escape his lips. His hands were on top of bunched cloth, pressed against a bladed wound. "Where can I take you?"
"I'm where I need to be."
She attempted to heal him, yet there wasn't any resonance in his spirit. It only cleared up a few scratches.
Why isn't this working?
"Magi, we must get you to a healer. There must be a—"
"Ah, I have lived, child." he touched a clammy hand to her chin and acknowledged magi-mi Chamba. "Thank the magi for me."
"I will," he said.
Salīa looked at their exchange, yet nothing made sense.
"Who did this?"
"They listen, still. They watch, always. They know, now," his darkened eyes looked at her. "Save them."
She skipped a breath, then asked more, yet he had taken his last. Her body shook as she held her lifeless teacher in her arms.
"Princess," Magi-mi Chamba started.
"Did the magi know?"
"Princess…"
"Did the magi know?" Salīa roared, slicking her teeth until he spoke.
"Yes."
"All this time?"
"They had just found out, before calling on you."
"And they left me to find out on my own."
"It is how it must be."
"Is it?" Salīa shouted. "What about Magi Inio? I could've saved him."
"He was not hurt until now, Princess. It is not yet known to them."
"Yet they knew of the others, didn't they? Didn't you?!"
He said nothing.
Unlike the magi, his face lowered in shame. He was just a magi-mi; he hadn't known how to detach from another's pain and not take it as his own.
A crackling whistled in the trees, sprouting her up. She whisked the bloodied blade that lay beside Magi Inio. The blade wasn't his, yet the blood must have been. And she held it, ready for his killer.
The bristling leaves travelled in a circle around them, and she couldn't trace the feet. A stone jumped through the forest, they turned, then—Clink!
A flaming arrowhead caught stiff in a blacktree shield held up in front of them. Just as quickly, a roaring moan erupted as a spear-end cleaned through the spine of the archer.
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