Nyx (Complete✅)

Chapter 40

Kelbar felt as if his body was made of fire. Everything ached, and even when he was only preparing himself to move, the pain increased. He stopped trying and began to try and figure out where he was. He certainly wasn't in his hut. The ground there was padded with woven mats. Here, the ground felt hard, and coolness seeped up from it as if made of a boulder that had not felt the touch of the sun for thousands of years.

He decided to risk opening his eyes.

When only darkness greeted him, he started to panic, thinking that he'd gone blind. He tried to remember what had happened and if there was a reason for the sudden darkness, but his mind drew up blank. He could remember nothing out of the ordinary.

He tried to sit up again and discovered that—instead of his whole body being hurt like he'd been thinking, it was mostly the back of his head that was causing him pain. Yes, there were numerous cuts and scrapes all over him that he could easily feel by running his hands over them, but they were covered by something wet and slightly slimy.

He racked his brain, trying desperately to think of where he might be, and what had happened to him, but he remembered nothing but a brief flash of pain, and darkness.

There was a scuffling sound, coming from somewhere close, and he tensed up, scooting backward on the unfamiliar ground until he hit another stone jutting up perpendicular to the first. It formed an effective wall. He was trapped.

A light flared up, and Kelbar stared. Someone was walking towards him, framed in a hazy white light by a power stone they held in their hand. The person was obviously female. Beth, maybe? What other person would come to see him?

But as she moved closer, the haze left and he saw that—

He caught his breath. He had to be dreaming. There was no way... but his wounds felt real, and the stone beneath and behind him was no dream.

The person he saw in front of him was real. She had a thick, furry-looking cloak that blocked the light from traveling all the way up to her eyes, but the rest of her face that he could see was definitely not human.

The corner of her mouth twitched into a brief smile.

"Our mysterious guest is finally awake." She said, sounding almost amused. She had a strong voice as if it was used to yelling, and now she had to contain it to a normal volume. Kelbar blinked at her, unsure what to say.

The smile returned, and this time it decided to stay. She walked for a second, and then the light of her stone hit another wall, directly opposite the one he was still pressed against. They were in a room, roughly formed from four stone slabs. He wondered if the walls were naturally occurring because he spotted deep clefts and small hollows in the stone that wouldn't be there had it been cut.

The lady set the stone down, and suddenly, the room was ablaze with lights. Up in the sloped roof, several power stones were glowing. They were set deep into the surface of the rock, and nothing was touching them. So how were they glowing?

"Your poultices will need changing again today." She murmured, almost as if she thought he was still unconscious, and she was talking to herself. As she spoke, he noticed a twang to her voice. He didn't know if it was because he'd been so long without the company of his own kind, or because she was actually speaking differently than his friends and family had.

He cleared his throat, testing it to make sure he wouldn't croak when he tried to talk.

"Where am I?" he asked the first thing that popped into his head, but then more questions flooded in, and he couldn't help himself. "What happened to me? How are you still alive? How are—" he stopped when she held up a hand, a clear sign for him to stop.