Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

14 Betrayal

Obscurity surrounded them, its intense blackness choking and suffocating, except where Brushä's torch lay flicking. It lay on Ketiya's side, which was good, because she didn't fancy staring into the gloom like a blind dog. 'What is that?'

Tendrils of smoke, or a mist of some sort curled and swept out of the darkness, heading in their direction. Ketiya could only see it in the odd shape the torch cut into the darkness. They looked like vines, but moved as fast as snakes. She frowned, adjusting her hands' hold on the sword, tilting her head. 'Avétk,' she whispered. The unspoken rule had been broken.

Avétk was so surprised to hear her voice that he lowered his axe, frowning a lopsided frown at her. She pointed at the mist, her eyes saying, 'look there, what is that?' She watched realisation dawn on his face, then confusion settled, and he scratched his temple in thought.

Each smoky tendril swayed and curved, hypnotising them, mesmerising them. Their weapons lowered a tad while they watched, but a mere mist seemed peaceable enough. It approached and Ketiya found herself feeling calm. Her eyes fixed on its smoky tendrils with wonder, and her sword clanged to the cave floor. It was an arm's length away now, and a sweet smell filled her nostrils. If she had been lucid enough, she might have realised the sweetness smelled too sweet, pungent and foetid, like rotten flowers or honey that's been left in water too long.

Avétk coughed, spluttered, and fell like a conquered city with a sharp thud. Ketiya heard it, but concern didn't sprout in her like it should. The noises blended into a fuzzy, happy feeling which warmed her chest. The heat of it was comfortable, but it began to feel tight, scratchy, and dry. She breathed deeper, but the scratching pain of the air became more and more painful with each heave. It tore at the back of her throat and her lungs, and she coughed. The cave, its darkness, and the tendrils of mist blurred together, and her last spluttering coughs echoed into silence. Just before her eyes dropped closed, she spotted little Brushä's carrot top through the vapours. 'I'm glad he's okay,' she thought, and then the darkness strangled her into insentience.

*

Rotten things were the first thing she smelled. Emeline's eyes opened to chaotic semi darkness, floating red orbs of light in a mist quite similar to the one in her dreams, and a too sweet stench like old perfume. She coughed, lifting herself to a seated position. Furs warmed her buttocks, and she vaguely recalled being too cold to think. 'Where is Avétk?'

A sense of bé-da-ru tightened her chest, or maybe it was the smoky mist doing that. Emeline squinted into the haze and coughed again, holding a gloved hand over her nose and mouth. 'Oh,' she exclaimed with pleasure, inspecting the tight fit, snug gloves someone had put on her hands. The tips of her fingers felt tender, as though she'd sizzled them in boiling water or injured them in a struggle with a rooster. A cloudy, nubilous sense filtered into her brain as soon as she'd moved her hand away from her mouth, so she returned it, clasping her face.

'What's going on? Where am I?' For a second she thought it might've been another dream, but she was too familiar with Träumenil to think it long. Träumenil had an effect on a person. You could feel it, not on your skin, not in your belly, not even emotionally. Somewhere deeper than your skin and your heart, in the deepest part of you, a feeling lay. It was the feeling of being far from home. Her father had called it verlange. He said that when your body entered Träumenil, it yet lay aslumber on Erdil, and though your two bodies were connected, a subconscious longing filled you for the wholeness of the one left behind on Erdil. No, it was not only for your earthly body, but for being wholly present in it, for being tangible in one familiar place. That feeling was absent now.

With clarity of mind came panic. She was in an unfamiliar, dark place, with ominous lights flickering in obscurity-three, that she could count. Her friends and allies were nowhere to be seen. Her heart thumped in her chest, fingers numbing with adrenaline. One of the red lights moved, and reflected on a metallic surface near her. She leaned towards the object with careful precision. 'Oh no!' It was Avétk's axe. 'He is never without his axe' The panic burned in her chest, her breaths short and quick. The axe gleamed once more, threatening her like a bird's beak, telling her she was alone in this dark hole. Maybe she had died in the cold, and was now lost forever in darkness.