The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 30 - Why Did it Have to be a Graveyard?

"Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow! OW!"

"Stop moving and maybe it won't hurt so much," the town doctor said to me as she shoved an object the size of a grape up my nose. Another fountain of blood jettisoned from the other nostril as I felt the bone slide around underneath my skin.

You could say whatever you wanted to about that selfish bastard, but you certainly couldn't say he wasn't a weak hitter. The bridge of my nose had been, in the doc's exact words, "Demolished" and I was probably going to be walking around with a slightly squashed sniffer for the rest of my days. Oh well, it had been broken before and this time I still had all my teeth so there was that to look forward to.

Sheira was sat by the window, peering out into the crowds as they sifted through the rubble for anyone who had gone missing. It was obvious who she was looking for, but something told me not to get my hopes up. For the last hour or so the two of us had been watching the door but it seemed that Shadow really had buggered off for good this time which, in hindsight, really wasn't a good thing. He was the most powerful of us all and he had that magic compass thingy so now we were minus one bodyguard/navigator. Wunderbar.

I didn't regret goading him into punching me though. Sheira spent a full five minutes screaming at me afterwards but I couldn't care. The only reason he'd actually struck me was that I was right, I was making sense and he couldn't handle that. He was a coward and he knew it. Still, punch or no punch I looked up hopefully when a frantic knock slammed against the door of pharmacy only to have Lillian practically fall into the room.

"Still not back?" She looked up at Sheira who shook her head glumly. Her shoulders sagged a little, but she recovered enough to walk over to me and examine my fractured nose. "Well, it could have been worse."

"Don't worry about it, it has been broken before. It's not like it's going to damage my rugged good looks." A snowball collided with the back of my head. Yeah, I probably deserved that.

Lillian sighed. "Well with or without your friend we still owe you a ride to the mainland. Once a truck frees up we can give you a ride out to Port Alderman and you can get a boat from there."

"What about everyone else?" I watched her as people with young children were piled onto enormous flatbed trucks and driven off.

"Evacuated," she said simply. "Even with everyone on hand, there is no way we can rebuild that stupid thing. Even so, there are still going to be some who won't be able to get out till tomorrow."

"You don't have till tomorrow," I pointed out. "There's going to be another attack tonight, with those poor possessed sods leading the charge, and you don't even have a fence."

"We're getting the families out first."

"What about you and Tulip?" Sheira said.

The mayor went quiet and studied the ground carefully. "I'm not leaving anyone behind, and I know she won't leave, not with Jasmine still missing, so we don't exactly have a choice."

The strong and fearless leader I met yesterday was as good as gone. She was broken, hopeless with nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. The only thing that was left was her dignity and pride and that had almost been stripped away, ripped from her by the woman she used to call family. She hadn't been the same since seeing Rose.

Sheira and I exchanged a glance. I knew she had been thinking, and she knew I was thinking too, I could almost hear the gears whirring around inside her head as the two of us poured over maps and bounced theories and ideas off of each other. While we both had varying opinions we had the exact same destination in mind. For a brief moment, we locked eyes and with a wordless nod, we came to an unspoken agreement.