Broken

Chapter 15

One second I had been in a scorching lava pit surrounded by corpses with a demon towering over me, and the next I was standing on a grass knoll with a crisp wind cutting through the rips of my clothes. Half heartedly, I looked down at myself and noted that my gear was back on my body. It didn't do much to cover the blood and sorry state of my clothes, but it did hide a little of it.

Feeling absolutely emotionally drained, I took a quick glance around and saw the instance portal was at my back. It seemed that Misfortune had sent back to the start of the instance he had taken me from. Were the others already out? Surly they must have finished the raid by now. I hoped the boss had not taken them out...

As if reading my mind, a clear voice rang out over the deserted fields, causing me to turn and see a group of people hurrying my way. It seemed they were led by a young honey brown haired girl. It seemed like they had all made it through the crazy horse fight in one piece. That was good.

"Aoife! Thank God you are okay!" Shouted Winter Hoffman, breaking away from the group, who also all looked rather worse for wear. "We just about gave you up for dead."

She basically launched herself at me, her thin but strong arms pulling me into a hug. I wasn't one for being touched by strangers, but I would have been lying if I said that I couldn't have done with a little care right then. Still, I held myself back. I couldn't break down just yet, no matter how much I wanted to. Not here, not now.

I hesitantly patted her on the head, at which point she aggressively exited my loose grip and glared at me. "Where did you go?" She demanded, as if I had vanished on purpose. Her anger was brought on by worry, but I was not in a state to humor her at the moment.

Besides that, there was no way I was going to tell these people what had happened. Who knew what would happen if I did- even if they actually believed me. There had been instances where freshly Selected people had been assaulted by raid members, either in the vain hope of gaining an item that might have been given to them, or -mainly this was directed towards the Depraved- just to straight up kill them. 

There was a heavy stigma out there for being a Depraved. It was directed at the Divine as well, but not nearly as frequently. There were groups of people out there who thought the Depraved were the harbingers of hell and the end times. The truly fanatic could be scary, and very much deadly. Given my shit luck, half this group could very well be among those pseudo cult types.

No, it was best not to reveal what I had become, and what I had to do to get that status.

"Did everyone make it back alright?" I asked, avoiding having to give Winter an answer. I saw concern pass over the girl's face. I could understand why; even to my own ears my voice sounded hollow and dead.

Bradley, the raid leader, nodded. He was eyeing me with concern, eyes noting the blood but lack of visible wounds. "It wasn't easy, it was hard to take down the Shadowmare, but we managed it in the end-"

"And, given you weren't even there for the fight, you better not be looking for a cut." Snapped Blake, also looking me up and down but looking more irritated than anything. Though, for a second I could have sworn a flash of concern passed over his features before he covered it up with a sour look once again. "Did you get swept into a side instance or something? Get anything good from it?"

"Why do you care?" Winter snapped at the man, arms folded over her chest as she stood by my side in a defensive posture. I would have smiled if I'd been capable of it right then. "You didn't participate so you better not expect a cut."

It looked like Blake was going to spit out a rebuttal, but Bradley stepped between them, running a hand in exasperation through his beard. "Alright, enough. At least wait till we leave the damn instance before you go at one another won't you?"