The Raven's Rising

Chrysalis

Chapter 7 - Chrysalis

Holly woke up cocooned in smooth black scales. She would later wish that she had never left that cocoon, never stepped back into the world. She would wish for that more than anything, that she would have just stopped and stayed in that safe and warm place. She would wish she had kissed Liatris that one last time. She would wish she had gone to dinner. She would wish she had confided in Aven. She would wish she had told Tarragon, had told everyone, how much they meant to her. She would wish she had never left. She would wish...

Holly pressed a hand to the scales that surrounded her like thick smoke. They shook a bit and parted at her touch. She crawled forward, towards the light of day shining through the crack in the cocoon and then stumbled out into the snow, ears ringing, head swimming. Rolling onto her back the green pines twisted above her. She sat up and the world tilted. 

Then her cheek was cold. 

It was touching snow. 

There was a sprawling black mass before her.

Raven.

Holly got to her hands and knees, and slowly, so, so slowly, crawled towards the dragon. She fell at least three more times, but she wouldn't lay down, wouldn't let the darkness claim her. She would get to him. And so she would claw herself back up onto her hands and knees, stomach turning, and vomit. But she would continue forward.

Blackness crawled at the edges of her vision as she dragged herself to the dragon. But she fought it off and only when she felt cool slick scales under her, when she had fallen face first into what she had originally thought was the ground, did she finally let herself lay down. Holly lay there against Raven for she didn't know how long, but the soft sunlight of dawn slowly became the more piercing light of midday. By that time when Holly looked at the sun there was only one hung high above, fighting to burn away the everpresent winter.

A large head nudged her side and she lifted a hand to pet Raven's nose, relieved that she seemed to have some coordination now. The pair slowly, clumsy managed to get upright looking like two drunkards. Then Holly again mounted raven and the two began the long walk back to Brisque.

As Holly's mind had cleared a bit she remembered the fall - the fall that should have killed them. She thought about what Kalon had said about Raven being crafted by the gods. Frankly the only way that they could have survived was through some godly construction. As it was there was no blood on either of them but Hollys body and head ached and Raven moved as if he was feeling the same, sometimes running into the pines instead of weaving about them.

Holly recalled the temple, Kalon, and then the smoke that had seemed to swallow the sky. Holly prayed, though to her horror the only god she really knew was Kalon, who was a god of death, that Brisque hadn't been gravely impacted. But she couldn't seem to release her anxiety about it. Though the volcano had never been an issue before, hadn't Kalon said that the earth was turning on itself, acting out in odd ways? If that were true then Brisque was too close to the volcano to see it as anything but a threat.

By the time the pair had made their way to the edge of Brisque it was dusk. But even the fading light couldn't stop the truth from greeting them.

Brisque had been burnt into a skeleton of itself. Caked in cooled magma accented with jutting remnants of the city it had been. It was dead, that was the best way Holly could describe it. The Volcano had killed the city, had killed everything and everyone. 

Thousands of people, years of memories, wiped from the earth in the blink of an eye. Holly felt as if she was walking in a dream, she felt numb, detached. Holly didn't dare to step onto the dark smudge that had been Brisque. She stood next to the skeleton of a tree, trying not to choke on the smell of ash and death.