The Healer ✔

Chapter Eight

It was another two days of walking before the group found anything of interest. Two days of fighting with monsters and each other. Two days of trying to stretch out the limited food they had. Two days of Elora answering the many questions her companions had about Nowhere, about where they were going, what they were going to do. She was more exhausted than she had ever been in her long life.

The first night she detailed her entire trip in Nowhere, including her father taking Nyal's body for a while. She talked about seeing Gaizma again, after explaining who he was, a lengthy conversation in of itself.

She had voiced her concerns about facing off against Gaizma to Nyal only on the second night. Ragen and Mikhail had been asleep and Nyal had been on watch. She had woken up in the middle of the night, finding herself unable to fall back to sleep despite being tired.

Overcome with exhaustion (at least, that's what she said happened), she spilt all her problems to her closest friend. He reminded her so much of Corpius, and she told him as much. He had only smiled at her and asked what he was like. It took her back to when she was young, only just born. Those first few years after her creation was full of fighting and friendship.

She'd found friendship in Corpius and the other warlocks, but especially Corpius. She had loved him, and he had loved her, but they never did anything about it. They couldn't, not during the war due to the constant fighting and the threat of death. Not afterwards because Elora had taken on a new role, the Gate Keeper. She hunted down any ties to the Zlohiel that were left, protected the Key and the Gate. Corpius wrote his books, ran the Guild, protected the kingdoms that were left. All in all, they were too busy. And before she knew it, Corpius's time was up and she was alone.

There had been plenty of fighting in Gaizma and the other Zlohiel. She had had her first run-in with the powerful dragon not long after she had been created. He had taken charge of all the dragons, but not all the Zlohiel. He had told her there was no chance of her winning, but she had won that fight by a small margin.

At the time most of them ran rampant, every single one thinking the realm belonged to them. The had joined together to some degree during the war, only because they didn't want to get wiped out by the warlocks.

Each species had their own leaders, some even had more than one. Gaizma had liked to think he was in charge of all of them, but at the time she knew they were only doing it to get rid of a threat. She knew that when it was all over, they would be fighting among themselves for who got the title of supreme ruler.

There was so much fighting, so much death. It wasn't the greatest introduction to the universe. Immediately thrust into a war, she had had to protect the remaining Healers from being killed by the dragons. At the time they were the biggest threat. If they were taken out, then the rest of the Zlohiel wouldn't be a problem. But the Healers kept dying and fights got worse and everything grew stronger, including the enemy.

They did win, eventually. She didn't tell Nyal about it though, he already knew the story. Instead, she told him more about Gaizma, who he was, what he had done, why he had come to power. There was still some even she didn't know, only because it had happened before her time and no one had the time to fill her in back then.

The dragon had killed his way to the top, showing that he was much more powerful than the rest. They followed him like he was a God come to save them. It didn't matter what he did, who he killed, where he went, the followed him regardless.

He was their biggest threat and he had been out to get Elora constantly in the first war. He had known she could stop him, and he hadn't wanted that. They fought every time they saw each other, both barely making it out alive. He had been the last thing she had seen when she opened the Gate, his roaring face as he realised what she had done.