Ablaze Without Flames

Chapter 2, Part 1 - Blaise

Blaise left the trees as soon as the night swallowed up the white light. Pain lanced across his shoulders and down his back as he struggled through a gap in the iron fence and took off amongst the jungle of grey towers. The patrol had consisted of nothing more than a single she-demon. Even though he had jerked away from the blinding light, he knew she'd seen him. She would be back with a guard soon.

He stumbled over himself, unable to decide whether to run or not when he had no idea which direction to go. The towers and smooth stone roads didn't register fully in his mind while he focused on looking for something he recognised: a dirt path, the village, Ruff Wood, the ravine. Even a glance of the stone walls of White Tail village would be welcome. But he couldn't see anything past the towers.

The great glass towers, stone towers, of varying heights and wide windows that glowed with light a colour no flame could produce.

Blaise reached a dead end after his fifth turn and stumbled into the glass wall. He reached out a hand and rested his palm against the icy glass, smooth under his skin. His breath fogged against it. His breath coming in sharp gasps, Blaise stared up at the glass tower looming above him with wide eyes and his mouth agape. He shook his head and blinked hard.

The she-demon was something he recognised: a human. A tailless, glass-eyed creature that walked on two legs with tiny rounded ears, no claws and an insatiable desire to quash every spark of magic. There were no reports of humans on Learus. Blaise had read through the chief's library so many times that he was certain of this. The dryland held numerous hostile creatures that looked nothing like the animals of the greenlands but humans were not among them. If there was one now, he had to sound the alarm. If he really was still on Learus.

Blaise frowned up at the glass tower, the crane of his neck sending new shots of pain through taught muscles. He remembered clearly what had happened; he had been thrown, and he had dragged the okami shepherd with him. He remembered falling. If he had survived such a fall with little more than a sore back and a headache, then where was he?

A delusion. A post-death dream, maybe.

He pushed away from the tower and hurried along the wide stone road. He appeared to be in a maze of brick houses and towers built so tightly together that the only space between them were narrow passages where sprouting grass had managed to cut through the stone. His head throbbed. He gripped his temples as he walked, squeezing his eyes shut and allowing his other senses to guide him. His whole body hurt. Nobody had delusions of a mythical world as a result of a fall, even one as great as that. Breath whistled through his teeth, one fang digging into his bottom lip and drawing a thin stream of blood. It felt hot on his chin.

Why could he still bleed if he was dead? Why could he still feel his heart thrumming against his ribcage?

He banged his fist against the brick, tearing the skin off the side of his hand in the process, and ran.

Darting down roads and swinging around corners at random, Blaise raced in the search of the ravine. The village. Anything. If he ran fast enough he might be able to outrun his delusion and see what was real. The fall had addled his brain, created an illusion of a demonic world on the surface of his eyes. Learus existed beneath the layers of falseness. It had to.

Air currents flickered in and out of his vision as he tried to focus on them, part them, to run faster. They were tangled together and refused to part. Blaise tore at them with his mind, desperately trying to rip them apart but they wouldn't. Two white lights glowed in front of him behind the air currents, growing larger and brighter until Blaise realised they were attached to something. He threw himself to the side and landed heavily on his shoulder as a loud blaring shook the air and a great metal something flew by. It was becoming harder to breathe. Blaise dragged himself into an alley, peering over his shoulder. The thing looked to be a self-propelled carriage of sorts, which jerked to a stop. Ignoring the stabbing pain in his shoulder, Blaise scrambled further into the shadow. A human stepped out.

'Hey!'

Blaise pressed himself against the wall behind a group of dustbins - those, at least, he could identify – and pressed a hand over his nose and mouth. He flattened his ears and listened to the slow footsteps pacing at the edge of the road. It felt an age that he sat there listening, praying to the stars that the human would not come looking for him. He would not let himself even breathe until the steps receded and the carriage rolled away.

Gasping in a lungful of air, Blaise rested his forehead in trembling hands. He shivered, but not because there was a chill in the air. He was certain of one thing now.

He was no longer on Learus.