The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Forty-Five

"Wonderful. The How and Why aren't very important right now. Just wake her the hells up!"

"Even if I had any idea how to expedite her recovery, and I DON'T, I know enough to realize that you can't rush it. You risk permanently damaging the War-Magycke-Adept, mentally and physically" Yllvanea retorted hotly. "Using War-Magycke can kill you! A fistful of chemical inhalants or pungent aromatic oils isn't going to pull her back to consciousness. This period of semi-torpor isn't a native reactive bio-response. It's something she's been trained to do to survive the stresses of using this kind of energy manipulation. Her mind has purposefully gone away to protect itself and to heal itself from further harm."

The Red Archivist groaned suddenly and grabbed her head, her trembling hands taking care not to aggravate the torn, open wound marking one side of her ravaged face. She shook and then was seized by a brief series of wracking coughs that ending in agonized panting.

"I'm not a Psion or a mutant Esper," she said at last. "And I'm certainly no empathic healer. I don't have any ability I can bring to bear to fix this."

Lumynn silently cursed and desperately searched his mind looking for any possible fragment of knowledge, any theory, he could use to better their predicament. Nothing came forward that was of any help.

He felt a pull and an insistent tightening at his wrist and forearm. Akkitus was again fighting him for attention.

"No more time for debate. Leave me! You have to go! Get away from this place if you want to live!"

When next anyone spoke, the voice was a resonant, sepulchral sibilance from the ghostly figure of Rarbuji'i Koraevenus as he floated above the ground. His unsolid visage was an angry bruise on Reality Itself, cast against the gloom, appearing like a dark and ancient manifestation of disdain.

"Am I really seeing this? Would I had remained lifeless and trapped in limbo. By Keryge'diann's Bloody Fangs, is THIS what the world of Teshiwahur has come to since I left it? Look at you! You moan and complain and cry because you're hurt, because you're frightened, because you have to fight, because you may die ... These things are the Natural Order! There was a time when these things were the fire that put steel in our blood. We were warriors once, we were conquerors. Now I see we have become a bleak and crumbling, pox-infested world of tiny, panic-stricken children."

Lumynn glared up at the spectral figure and said from between clenched teeth, "Truly not helping, corpse-face."

Rarbuji'i Koraevenus gracefully floated, gliding against the rushing wind of the storm, over next to where Lumynn knelt holding Akkitus Orthwaine. The phantom's image shown against the dark night's shadows lit by the flames of an unwholesome inner light.

"Your wish is for this man-machine to survive?" the dour and unkind spirit asked archly.

"Yes."

Koraevenus, a vulturine wraith, bent over until his cowled, burnoose-adorned face was even with that of Lumynn and intoned, "Then it will be so."

Something that looked like a pearl-sized ruby sun, bright enough to cast brilliance enough to read by despite its miniscule size, fell as a single tear from the hollow place where Koraevenus would have had a left eye. That fiery tear dropped down to splash like liquid neon onto the helmet of Akkitus Orthwaine's exo-chassis armor.

The sound of that diminutive, deep crimson drop hitting the jetellin pilot's body was the sound of distant world's colliding.

The dynamic bolt of corruscating energy that suddenly blossomed throughout Akkitus' body was strong enough to throw Lumynn back away from the metallic figure, as if he'd been blown over by the shockwave from an explosive blast...