Avengard: The Fall of Senvia

Chapter 21 - Dawn

The sun actually rose.

It was more than a creeping light through the narrow tunnel connecting our souls to the sky, reflecting from the clouds and leaves above us to cast a humble glow into our small clearing.

No.

The dawn came.

It broke my sleep in a heartbeat, from the instant the trees allowed its existence. They parted their leaves in eager hungering anticipation for something they had been missing for days.

I opened my eyes to the blue and green I hadn't seen for ages. To the morning dew of spring lingering on a forest of trees I had stumbled through in a flight for my life, but had never glimpsed.

I stood up facing what had been the abyss, staring into the place we had come from. I had been right about the trees. They were sparse, and moss and underbrush covered the floor of a shaded forest so thick and consistent, it formed its own sub-canopy. I took a breath in to smell the pine and larch that had been muffled by Hunak. This type of forestry meant we had reached the hills that bordered the north and east edges of Durn. We were likely well off the path, but we were alive. Vox's canteen had saved us. Jenny's light had rescued us. The dawn had pulled us from the endless ocean.

I turned back towards them. Jenny was awake, and struggling to fit on her boots.

"Don't look at me," she snapped.

We hadn't had a fire, nor much of a meal besides a few herbs Vox had spared for us from his strange pouch garden belt around his waist, but the conversation had kept us awake well past what might have otherwise been sundown. Jenny had slipped her boots off midway through for comfort.

I looked over at Vox. He was just sitting on the fallen tree, completely calm. I gave him a slight nod of appreciation, and he returned it in acknowledgement.

"It was a cold night," I said.

He nodded. His garments were well and neatly bundled around him, a composition that must have worked well in winter and overheated in summer. But he didn't exactly seem like the sort of man who would have much more than a cabin to visit infrequently. And from our conversation the night prior, he never said much about himself. He never said much at all, in fact. He was clever that way.

"AH!" screamed Jenny. "Why? Why! Why are you not getting on my foot!"

"A side effect, most likely," said Vox.

"From what?" she demanded.

"You overused magic," he said. "It's not the same for everyone, and not everyone experiences anything, but swollen feet after casting as much magic as you did?"

"That was days ago!"

"And you only took off your boots last night," he pointed out. "You've been sleeping with them on."

"But wouldn't her feet have swollen with her boots on?" I asked. "She would have felt them getting tighter."

He raised his brow. "Didn't you?"

She stopped struggling with her boot for a moment and considered the question. "How should I know?" she asked dismissively. "I wasn't exactly walking around in them."

"Here, let me help," I said, starting towards her.

Jenny leapt to her feet, boots in hand. "No! No. Look, I'll admit, neither of you seem particularly shitty. You're alright. For Kindred. But you—" she pointed at me, "—need to understand something."

I flapped my arms at my sides. "Okay?"

"You're dangerous. Not just in the 'could-kill-me-with-her-pinkie' kind of way. You attract danger. This? All of this? Hunak? That doesn't just happen to people. People don't just randomly get trapped between two fucking ARMIES using spells like Hunak! And I don't know what the fuck you're doing with Eskir, but something weird's going on with you two, and it's not normal! What, we have a Deacon just crossing our path, and that's? Normal to you? In what world is that a normal thing!"