ShadowSong [Book 1 & 2: Complete] [NaNoWriMo16/17]

Chapter 81 - Not Yet Broken

Week 1 Vote Goal #3: 200

Banshee and Cryo walked out of the common room and down the corridors to Harpy's sector together.

The hallway was dimly lit towards Harpy's end, and her bedroom even more so. Soft music wafted through the air, sweet and... pining, Banshee figured was the word for it.

She understood that music. She understood the grief behind it. It was a grief that lingered just before the final notes of death. When you couldn't yet mourn because there was hope, yet that was somehow worse than the closure you had from knowing someone had truly reached their end. A guilty grief, one you did not yet deserve, yet one that consumed you all the same.

Harpy, comatose.

Ella, kidnapped, alone, because Banshee had failed the promise she'd made her.

Every beat of Banshee's heart sent a new wave of that guilt-ridden grief pounding through her skull.

As Cryo's figure filled the doorway to Harpy's room and knocked on the doorframe, the music came to an abrupt stop.

"Oh!" said Chris, turning away from the piano. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise you'd be visiting."

Cryo stepped inside the room. Banshee slipped past him, flicking her gaze about the room. Aside from the piano and Chris, there wasn't much of note. The bare essentials for a bedroom, but it still looked lived in, even before Chris's pile of clothes had taken their place in the corner.

"How is she?" asked Cryo.

"The same," murmured Chris. There were worried lines all over his face, ones that looked like they'd been permanently etched there. Harpy's amulet was attached to a chain around his neck, hanging outside his shirt. "I've been praying that she'd wake up, trying to reach her, but... nothing. Sometimes she sits up, muttering about things that I can't understand like she's woken from a nightmare, but they're getting further apart."

Banshee approached the side of Harpy's--Gwen's--bed, kneeling beside beside the once proud Luminary. "What about Wyvern?"

Chris's shoulders slumped. "I haven't seen him since, well, the day I arrived. I wonder if maybe I've done more harm than good by coming here."

"You're the one she chose to give her amulet to," said Cryo. "You were important to her. I'm sure she appreciates you caring."

Banshee's heart hurt just looking at Gwen. Her skin was sickly, her sheets wrinkled like she tossed around often. Her hair was tangled and knotted, despite Chris's obvious attempts to help. She looked nothing like the Harpy that Banshee had found in the pit, the one that had moved in that perfect storm of Grief and Joy, of Shadow and Fury. The song that had been so loud and strong was barely a trickle of broken notes.

"Chris," said Banshee, never taking her eyes off Gwen. "What's she been muttering about?"

"Things that scare me to think what she's seeing," said Chris. "It's like she's fighting people, like she can't recognise them."

Some feeling drove Banshee to draw Grief from its sheath. With the blade pointed towards herself, she pulled out one of Gwen's hands from the sheets and placed the dagger's hilt in it.

Gwen's fingers twitched at the contact, like they were trying to curl around it but didn't have the strength. Her head tossed on the pillow as Chris exhaled sharply behind her, but not one of them made a sound.

One finger curled around the dagger. Two.

Gwen's head lifted off the pillow, her eyelids fluttering. Like a nightmare emerging, her mouth trembled, her other hand reaching over to clasp Grief's hilt between her palms, and a gasping scream echoed in her throat.