SERAVEL ROVODIA IS A REBEL WITH A WARRANT. As the head of the Daily Embers, a chronicle criticizing the tyranny of the current ruler, Seravel gained significant enemies who preferred to keep the truth in the dark. When a number of small accidents st...
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For a second, it confused him why he stared up at a gray expanse which he could only identify as the sky. Then, it all came crashing back, his mind sputtering to come up with a legible timeline for all the events he lived through so far.
Wait. Live through.
He's alive? But how? He plunged into the lava. People die from being exposed to its fumes. How much more to the real thing?
"Took you a long time," a voice grouched by his side. Sera sat up with a start, a blanket flopping over his lap. He's...on a mound, fortweres away from the base of the volcano. Which was saying something, because no way in Hexen's name did he float from the caldera's base only to be dug out under the magma later on.
He turned to the source of the voice to find a familiar man stirring a pot over his burning hand. "Who..." he started to say before the memory clicked. "Opposite Guard?"
The man whipped towards him with a frown. "What?"
Sera flinched. "Oh, sorry," he said, averting his gaze to his legs. Under the scratchy blanket—why they felt the need to give him one was beyond him—he felt some sort of tightness around his legs. "I didn't know your name, so I...well, um."
His voice trailed off at discomfort edging into his system. Now that he thought about it, the same tightness gripped his arms, torso, and neck too. His hair remained on his head, though, the apricot strands blocking most of his periphery. As if there's a residual inkhura in his veins, it took him more than a few seconds to realize bandages sheltered him from the horrors that might have been his skin. So, how come his hair made it and it didn't?
"I'm called worse names," the soldier said, tapping his ladle against the cauldron's lip. Said cauldron couldn't be larger than a helmet. Could it have been one before? "My real one is Zenca, though."
"Family name?" Sera said.
Zenca shrugged. "Does it matter?"
It didn't, at least that's what Sera gathered from the soldier's non-verbal gestures. The only time when it mattered was when they're talking about nobles, Advisers, and the royals.
"I don't know," Sera replied instead, smoothing the blanket against the bandages around his legs. He also felt a familiar softness of a pair of trousers forming a second layer before his skin. As uncomfortable as it might sound, he didn't hate it. His vest probably had perished somewhere in the caldera, or even before, and walking home naked was the least outcome he wanted.
A steaming cup inched in his periphery, and he turned to find a drink being offered to him. "I suppose we owe you an apology, Your Highness," Zenca said, urging Sera to take the cup with a slight nod. "We should have recognized you when you first came to the fortress."
Sera gripped the sides of the cup as much as his bandaged hand could allow him. "Really? I thought you knew who I was when we're playing poserne," he said. "I'm hurt."
