Castle on the Hill

Chapter 8

Skeppy felt memories pooling around him in the darkness, most of which too far away for him to grasp on to, but some of them provided comfort from the weird emptiness he felt. He would slip between memories and darkness, occasionally hearing a distant voice calling for him, but he could never find where it was coming from. All of his thoughts from the day of the war seemed so far away from him now, as if he had never even been there at all, but something was pulling him around. Something made him aware that he had been there and that he may still be there.

With a gasp of air, Skeppy bolted into a sitting position, eyes wide, panic filling him as he tried to recognize his surroundings. A house, he was in a house. Whose house was this? He tried to pay attention to any one thing around him, but his mind refused to focus. Someone approached him from the doorway, bringing him back to reality. "Skeppy, it's just me, it's okay, you're okay."

"Bad?" He took a deep breath as he tried to make out the figure standing in the dim light that came in from outside the room.

Bad took a step back outside the door, grabbing a candle before returning into the small room. Skeppy could see him more clearly now, but still felt confused. "Are you feeling alright, Skeppy?" Bad asked as he approached, setting the candle down on a table beside the bed Skeppy laid on.

"Yes, I'm fine, why would I not be-" He glanced down at his body in the dim light, noticing his upper arm was wrapped in bandages that were slightly bloody. "Oh, oh no," Skeppy felt the pain from his arm, despite not knowing how bad the injury was. Now that he was aware of it, it hurt a lot. "Bad, what happened to me?"

"You were struck with an arrow," he said simply. "You almost fell off your horse, I had to get you out of the middle of the battle."

"The battle..." Skeppy repeated, the memories coming back to him now. "How long have we been here? What time is it?"

"The battle was yesterday, it's just past sunset. You kept drifting in and out of consciousness, so we waited for you to properly wake up before trying to take you anywhere else." Skeppy heard something unspoken hiding in Bad's tone, but he couldn't tell what it was.

"Who else is here with us? Does my family know I'm okay?" Skeppy had many questions, but he tried not to bombard Bad with them all at once.

"Your servant friend, Ranboo is here. Some of my guards are here too, they fled with me. Your family- I don't think they know, we didn't have a way of telling them."

"Fled?" The question was simple, Skeppy didn't understand what Bad meant.

Bad's eyes flashed with an emotion Skeppy couldn't distinguish in the candlelight. He sighed. "Let's talk about this in the morning, Skeppy." Bad stood up, but Skeppy reached out with his uninjured arm to stop him.

"No, Bad, tell me. What happened after I passed out?" Skeppy demanded.

Bad sat back down, sighing once more. "Yesterday, Belansoa was quickly outnumbered by your army. I was meant to give the command for the relief soldiers to come in and win the fight, but I didn't give the signal. As many of the soldiers retreated, my parents... They spotted me carrying you away from the battle..."

Skeppy seemed to fall into Bad's story, imagining yesterday, despite having been knocked out during this event. The Belansoan king stood over Bad, who kneeled beside a limp Skeppy.

"What do you think you're doing?" His voice was spitting with rage. "Get up and fight!"

"I can't leave him to die!" Bad shouted back.

"He's the enemy, he's supposed to die! We're going to lose if you don't get back up!"

"I'm not leaving him! He needs help, you can't make me!" Bad's desperation was clear, grief thick in his voice.