The Lord of the Crows

Part 23 - Pain

The man in pain does not know what's worse: desire to die, but not being able to, or dying but having your soul desperately clinging to life. The old woman told me that my scales weighed for days on which side to prevail.

And I was, like many times before, fighting my demons. They invaded, besieged me, reminded me, deceived me ... loosened their grip, just to return even stronger, even more cruel.

Our flag was high up, right there on the Lagrenian walls, but there was some strange anxiety in the air. No foreign flag had been flying over these walls for more than a day since the city had been founded. Was it possible that ours would be the first?

Earlier that day, our army had broken down the main gate and stormed into the city ... merely to find it abandoned.

The Crow Prince stood on the walls, not far from my group, and shouted, again and again, to search the city more carefully. In vain. The stone city was deserted.

I watched the sunset in the distance and looked down the walls once more and shivered. The city was buried deep in the rocks, and the only way to completely abandon it, without any Lagrenians passing through the main gate, was through the labyrinth of corridors in the heart of Mount Strife.

But ... why would they leave town at all, unless ...

The sound of the trumpet spread from all sides with the last rays of the sun, simultaneously with the harsh sound of cracking of the pole holding the flag.

Our flag flew over the walls into the abyss.

And they invaded. From everywhere.

The stench was the only thing my depictions had been deprived of. Often, I knew I was dreaming precisely because I did not smell the shattered and decapitated bodies in the Lagrenian corridors. 'The man is a bag full of shit', the captain who led us told us, 'And shit stinks wherever and however you spill them'. I was terrified of those words then, and many years to come. Was that all we came down to?

The stench of burnt corpses, flesh, bones, skin, clothes, hair ... lingered with me for days, for many months, years. It crept into every pore, filled my nostrils, and stayed, never completely fading. Same as the sight of pilled up corpses, whose bonfire I had to ignite.

Didn't fade, didn't disappear, never actually leaving me completely. Just as the grip of terror could not subside, the memory of me looking for one specific face in the sea of ​​faces, dulled by death, mutilated by wounds, never faded. They all looked alike, every outline was losing its recognizability and shape, and eventually faces began to merge into each other. There was no peace for my soul... not when fate left me with uncertainty, not to know, to always doubt, to ask myself ... and I was not to show it in any way, nor ask anyone for help.

The pain was real. Both in reality and in the images that bothered me, the pain was real. Peck's medicine and Lela's syrup saved my life, but the pain remained. This time, the knife with a blade soaked in the blue flower juice intended to kill and it was a real miracle that my plan worked at all and that I managed to live long enough to be brought back to the Sanctuary.

I woke up, sweating, asking for water, convulsing in pain and fever, falling asleep again. And so on, for days, spinning in a circle.

Delicious smell of fruit and hot milk and a strange feeling of hunger finally woke me up. I turned my head and met Daina's gaze. She sat on the floor next to my headboard and, judging by the amount of light in my hut, had breakfast.

"It smells good," I muttered, "even though there is no meat in it."

She smiled, tucked her hand under my head and pushed me slightly forward, bringing a jug of milk to my lips. It seemed to me at the time, it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.