Bereft: Foretold

12 | A Stolen Salvation

The first fingers of light that managed to pry through my eyelids sent fresh waves of pain through my skull.

My temple ached where the mage's boot had collided with it. The skin was split, the cheekbone bruised and possibly cracked. I wasn't slumped by the sofa where I'd been before. Instead, I was in the foyer, thrown onto my side with my back against the wall and my face partially stuck to the floor.

I bore my teeth against the fresh sting that arose when I peeled my bloody skin free of the hardwood.

Lust was on her knees near me with her hands laced atop her head, surrounded by three sages of the Blue Fire Syndicate equipped with spelled lances. The tapered ends of the lances radiated a thick, dusty smoke, filling my dry mouth with the taste of hot iron. Whatever magic those arrogant mutts had channeling into their weapons wouldn't be enough to kill Amoroth, but it would impede her, and the last thing she needed now was to be impeded.

The Absolian would be coming.

Amoroth held herself stiff and alert, waiting for the mages to lower their guard so she could escape. Her hair was a tangled mess, and soot from the explosion covered her front, but her expression was livid.

Only a single mage stood at my side with his eyes on the room's center, discounting me as nothing more than a simple human who needed his memory wiped. Of course, to him, I was nothing. Some of my names may have found their way into the texts and grimoires of the syndicates, but my face was unknown. I was just a human to these men.

Cage was the main object of their attention. I was surprised, considering they knew Amoroth's nature. The Blue Fire mages surrounded him, each uttering a part of a communion spell being woven into a construct etched in haste beneath the black mage. He turned to each of his brethren and greeted them with the same unnerving grin.

"Did you enjoy your nap?" Amoroth sneered, drawing my eye back to her. My head throbbed from the movement. 

"Silence," the short, balding mage quipped. 

"I've had better," I returned.

"You didn't miss much." 

"I said silence!" The mage jostled the lance he held and earned a scalding glance from the Sin of Lust.

"I'm going to ram that thing through your chest, boy," she told him. "Before all is said and done."

He paled and laid the lance's end against Amoroth's face. She hissed and jerked back, revealing the swollen, bloody blister the weapon left upon her smooth skin. Seeing as it didn't immediately heal, they had to be channeling some form of theurgy to create such an injury. Theurgy was black magic according to the strict, ridiculous Blue Fire creed.

I didn't find their hypocrisy surprising. Mages were notorious for creating "loopholes" in their own conformities whenever the need for them arose.

Incensed, Amoroth nonetheless remained where she was, shooting a venomous look at the mage who'd wounded her before her sharp eyes landed on me. We couldn't converse verbally without one of the gray-coated men intervening, but—unfortunately for the mages—my memory of Terrestria's languages had survived my degradation into a mortal.

That included Morse code.

Amoroth wasn't as quick as I was, and I wasted several seconds blinking in rapid, disjointed succession until recognition dawned upon her.

"Why are they here?" I asked as I eased myself into a sitting position without provoking my attendee. I doubted it would matter if I jumped up and down, screaming my lungs out. I was only a human to him, and thus inconsequential. Weak.