Beyond the Glow

Chapter 24

But she looked just like the one they told me to look for. And her magic was so similar, it can't be a coincidence. I would have liked to take her back to the base and make sure she got out of here safely, but they came too fast. I can only hope Tran can protect her until she is awake and able to fabricate a likely excuse.

And I'll be there to help her out with that. 

The only thing I had time to do before the guards came was get make sure the two who witnessed it all didn't have a chance of telling their version of what happened. Then I went to make sure she survived, and get whatever that was that was controlling her away from her mind, where it can influence her. 

I continue on my path, making sure to avoid any red or black that I see, it's when I lay hidden next to a rock waiting for one patrol to pass that I feel the presence behind me. I turn quickly, grabbing whoever it is and kicking their feet out from under them as I hold their wrist at a painful angle. There's little resistance, and she lets out a quick gasp of pain I quickly stifle with my hand. 

I frown, looking down at the girl in front of me. Her eyes are filled with fear, and she her hair is dirty and matted, falling in her eyes. A dirty and ripped cloak had been used as a tourniquet around her lower arm to stop a gash that was still bleeding profusely. Another girl sits behind her, unconscious but still breathing, with a ribbon around her neck. I can sense magic from both, and immediately cloak us all. The guards will follow that scent like hummingbirds to sugar. 

"H-elp, us..." The one who grabbed my arm whispers, before she too falls to the ground in front of me. She crumples, and I cringe at the sight of the awkward angle her ankle is at. She must have been in extreme pain carrying her friend over to me, but the stray hope I could help must have been worth it. Whatever they did to these girls in there must have been terrible. 

I sigh. Looks like I'll be making a quick stop at the base tonight, we have some new recruits. 

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The first thing I notice is how silent everything is. Unlike the buzzing that had filled my ears before, or the strange voices in the back of my head arguing with me, all I could hear was my own slow breathing. 

Carefully, I cracked open an eye, half expecting the woman to be wielding an axe or something equally large and deadly over my head. But when I don't see anything other than the normal stone ceiling of the castle interior, and I relax a bit. I think I'm alive. You don't have to breathe when you're dead, do you? 

And hopefully my after-world doesn't include a full size replica of the castle. Because I don't think I like it here much, not with everything that's happened here so far. Carefully, I sit up, expecting my body to scream in pain or at very least ache, but I don't feel anything other than rejuvenated. Weird, last time I was awake, all I could feel was tired, beat up. Even I don't heal that quickly without the use of someone else's magic. 

But who? That woman looked pretty threatening to me. 

I'm shamed you think of me in such ways. The voice echoed throughout my head, making me cringe, it wasn't the one I wanted to hear. 

What do you want? Come to finish me off? My gaze darted around the empty room I was in, not seeing anything other than the lone window next to me and watching it suspiciously. 

Relax. I'm here to help. 

Help? I scoffed. That's funny. The last time I heard from you was before I fell to what I'm pretty sure should have been my death.