Ink Forged

~Waking Up~

When Maevus once again dredged her way to consciousness, she didn't feel like she'd been dancing with Faldana, the mistress of death. She didn't feel so exhausted that even breathing was hard.

What she did feel was embarrassment. Even the foggy memory of how she'd fallen apart in front of Vraylor made the blood rush into her cheeks. She flipped the blankets up over her face and let out a groan of mortification.

Her eyes felt gritty and puffy from crying, but what smarted more than anything was her pride. Her pride and her common sense.

After all, she barely even knew Voron. Sure, she'd felt a certain kinship with him after learning of their similar history with the revolutionaries who had destroyed Iressa. And there had been more than a little responsibility that weighed heavy on her shoulders after she'd seen Voron's lacerated back.

But still...all of that was hardly a reason to have fallen to pieces so badly.

Maevus groaned again, hiding her face behind her hands for good measure. She could just imagine the jokes Vraylor had in store.

"Because I was tired," she muttered to herself. "Being tired makes you stupid. Stupid enough to cry." She pulled a face, trying to make herself believe everything about last night had been the result of temporary, magic-exhaustion induced idiocy.

Maevus' face grew hotter as she remembered who else she'd managed to embarrass herself in front of last night. No doubt Volt would also manage to land a few jibes.

She hated him. And Vraylor.

Self-pitying as she might be, she couldn't stay under the blankets like that for long. Her warm breath was trapped by the covers, making her feel smothered. Throwing the quilt back, she was relieved to find herself still in the clothes from yesterday. The only thing that had been removed were her boots. 

Her muscles still ached with weariness and she was so hungry it felt like her stomach was rubbing a blister on her backbone. Maevus sat up with a groan, rubbing at her eyes. After having eaten and slept last night, she didn't feel so painfully weak, but her magic was still pretty much out of commission. 

Out of instinct, she sent a pulse of feeling down each of the eight threads. A cacophony of response flew back to her, each dragon's "voice" flowing and colliding over each other as they clamored to know why she had been so silent, then so distressed.

They didn't communicate with words. Rather, the language of dragons was one of emotion. Of images, smells, sounds. Maevus closed her eyes, sending dashes of information down the links. Images flickered in her mind: waking to realize she'd driven herself to unconsciousness, her conversation with Vraylor, then her conversation with Voron. She showed them the return of her sword, which pleased them, and the lash marks on Voron's back, which did not.

When their curiosity had been satisfied, each dragon gave Maevus what she called a heart hug. Each thread pulled tight around her heart for a brief moment, a feeling of love and the desire to protect flowing through her.

Maevus did her best to return the feeling, but she had learned long ago that dragons felt on a different level than humans. To say it was deeper, or simply more wasn't quite right. Richer, had been the description Maevus had settled on long ago, though that had never been quite right either.

The threads loosened around her heart and Maevus sat up, swinging her feet to the ground. She stretched her arms over her head, flexing her spine, movement working the stiffness out of her sore muscles. 

She untangled the braid Korie had done for her last night, instead tying her hair into a heavy ponytail. After a little persuading, Maevus managed to push herself to her feet.