The Towers of Adrala

Chapter 4 - Recollections (Part Two)

Sye slowly sat down and closed his eyes. Cold tears ran down his cheeks. How could one imagine such a number? Millions of names, faces, families, friends, futures, secrets, laughs, and sorrows. Erased in one terrible night like they didn't exist. Like they didn't deserve to exist. Trying to envision so many was like trying to imagine the distance between stars. It was simply too much.

“How is this possible?” Sye whispered. The guard's reply was a sweeping gesture, taking in the blanket of devastation around them.

“That's the million cut question, isn't it?” Zook said, seemingly to no one.

The guards led the four down into the dip in rubble the enormous mansion had crumbled in. As soon as they came near at least thirty men and women rushed from the teeming crowd to surround them. The desperation in their once collected voices was a blade through Sye's heart.

“More survivors?”

“Kolin, are you there?”

“Rita?”

“Say something Kolin!”

“My wife, did you see her? Her name's Kina and she's got-”

“Kolin, please! Anything!”

“-about my height, blue eyes-”

“Kolin, my son!”

A woman threw herself onto the broken stone of Eretia’s tomb, grief stealing her will from her. Pained moans and sobs rose into the air. For every one who fell apart under their own agony, there were two more who just returned back to their work. People who had come to see them out of habit, not hope. People who were defeated. Sye could not look at them, they left a trail of people overcome by loss and despair on the outer edge of the milling crowd. Seeing the people who were farther in twisted the dagger. Here the survivors didn't look up, didn't seem to see each other. They seemed so fragile, staring intently ahead, as though they might break if they saw what lay around them.

Sye wanted to shout at them, tell them to panic, to drop what they were doing and run screaming in circles. Anything besides this careful, meticulous work. It felt like they were just building sandcastles at the shore, ignoring the rising tide.

“It goes away after a while,” one of the guards said, as if reading his mind, “You'd be surprised how panicked these people were just a few days ago.”

“A few days-?” Zook began when the guard pulled aside a curtain tied between two tiers on the outer wall.

“Magist!” Eris and Pird said together.

Their mentor lay propped up in a makeshift cot, leg hanging in a sling. He held a pen frozen above a piece of paper, his mouth slightly agape as he stared at them.

“My...” he began in a whisper, “M-my gods, you...you are alive!”

Pird and Eris rushed to either side and threw their arms around Magist. Sye settled for holding his hand, feeling it shake under a lifting burden of grief. Tears silently rolled down Magist's cheeks as he pulled his godchildren closer.

“Losing Eretia I could bear, but losing you four I could not,” Magist gave a weak chuckle, “What a terrible thing for me to say, but I cannot deny it.”

Sye wanted to say something, but the alternating bursts of relief and horror so far left him without words. He then noticed that Zook hadn't come with them, but stood awkwardly to the side. Zook gave Magist's broken leg a cursory look, gave a nod of approval, then left with the guards without a word.

“I think he left his cheerfulness back in the hole,” Pird muttered.

“Let him be,” said Magist, voice still a bit weak, “He wants to be angry, it makes it easier for him to get over things. He just does not know the who or the what to be angry at, because there is no who or what. Until he realizes this he will not let any other emotions distract him.”