The Truth Over The Wall

Chapter 38 (Part 1)

*Dedicated to the wonder combo :) Because you said you wanted confessions. And here's the first installment. :D*

"Quickly," Fobos said briskly, "we don't have time."

Alistair's eyes were closed and his mouth was clamped shut to keep from shouting out in agony. The veins in his neck began to rise up against his skin, and turn a dark, unnatural color.

"Hold him tight!" Fobos instructed Hanalea and Dominic. Swinging her gaze to Hanalea she added with emphasize, "Don't let go."

With tears shinning in her eyes, Hanalea shook her head forcefully, and gripped his shoulders while Dominic held down his legs.

Fobos sat by his right arm and pressed her fingers in a spot between his shoulder, and collar bone. While she wrapped her other hand around his wrist.

Closing her eyes she began chanting in another language, too quick and whispered to be understood. And yet pieces of it came back to Hanalea over and over. Maybe she had read this spell somewhere?

In any case she could feel the same kind of words repeated again and again. The gist and emotion of it was pleading,

Save this life.

Save this life, save this life.

No, wait, Hanalea thought as she shook her head. This spell, she remembered feeling a sense of evil on the face of it. These were not the words, what Fobos was actually saying was,

Take this life.

Save this life, take this life.

"Fobos-"

"Shush!" Fobos cut her off angrily just as Alistair's skin began to grow warm. His body was getting ready to remove the poison.

Fobos removed her hand from his shoulder, and began guiding the movement of the poison. At least that's what it looked like because each time she would flick her fingers back and forth...

...Alistair's pallor got a little better. The dark color disappeared and his veins eased back into his skin. While the poison continued to move through him.

Eventually Fobos guided the dark sludge along his veins, down his arm and – through a cut she had made on his palm earlier – onto the grass beside him.

Alistair's body shuddered and his eyes flew open. He took a few desperate breaths, and then passed out immediately. Returning so close from the plane of death had taken its toll.

Fobos looked even worse than he did. Exhausted as she was, she flicked her fingers in the direction of the red-black sludge, and compelled it to crawl across the very dagger she had extracted from Alistair's shoulder. The poison obediently crystallized on the weapon and gave it a wicked red sheen.

"The witch's curse," Fobos said bitterly as she picked up Amara's dagger now bound in Fiona's blood, "will be her own undoing."

* * *

Alistair lay unconscious in the bed where he had been laid while his friends looked on. Hanalea sat in a chair by his side, her spine stiff and her hands folded in her lap: waiting.

Dominic stood leaning against the wall opposite the bed, his arms crossed across his chest as his eyes surveyed both Alistair and his savior in turn.

There was a knock on the door and Matthew entered. This was his second visit within two hours, to ask how Alistair was doing.

After the inquiry was made he walked over to Hanalea and asked her to come outside. They needed to talk, he said. It was important. Hanalea heaved an exhausted sigh, and got up to follow her uncle out.