A Sea of Blood and Magic

Chapter Six

Faces all around me, mouths agape in silent screams.

Their hands grasped at my skin and slid away.

They were nothing and nobody. I was only the song.

#

The shift of grit under my face was the first thing I felt.

My eyes were too heavy to open, so I listened instead of looking around. Waves crashing against what sounded like shore. The call of seagulls. Wind moving through trees.

No voices. No gunfire.

Clenching my fingers, I winced as my knuckles protested the motion. My nails dug into sand. When I swallowed, my throat punished me with a recalcitrant ache. Something stirred in the region of my diaphragm, like it was trying to get out of my body.

My chest felt as if it were on fire. Seeking relief from the burn, I flopped over onto my back and groaned at the sunlight turning everything pink through my eyelids. The ground seemed to heave beneath me, my body's effort to restore its equilibrium after so long at sea.

"You need to get up, Kharis," I tried to convince myself in a whisper. My body was having none of it.

Where was Nik?

Fear forced my eyes wide, and I gasped at the brightness of the sun. Rolling back to my stomach, I raised myself up onto hands and knees and looked around.

I was on a steep hill, made up of sand and palm trees as far as I could see. And I was all alone.

Forcing myself to stand, I almost immediately fell back down again. After a moment, I managed to stagger to a nearby palm tree and brace myself against it, still squinting against the sun. It seemed harsher here, more clear, although that was likely nonsense.

"Nik?" I tried to call, but speaking felt like I had swallowed razor blades. I coughed, which hurt worse.

It finally occurred to me to try listening for him. My ears sloshed internally, probably from seawater, but I managed to hear through the distortion.

Nothing. I'd killed him.

I started crying, but the effort proved too taxing, and I passed out instead.

"She hardly seems worth the effort." The man's voice, lazy and amused, caressed my ears with a faintly musical quality. The new thing trapped within my form trembled in what felt like recognition, an awareness I didn't share. I tried to open my eyes but they wouldn't cooperate.

The voice that replied made me freeze like prey trapped in the gaze of a predator. I would have thought more than one person spoke, except no two people could enunciate so perfectly in sync. The cells in my body seemed to contract in fear even as my heart sped up, and a wild excitement stirred in the pit of my stomach while I listened. "Our cause is worth it, but surely you must see the possibilities with this one as well as I."

"Yes, yes, but really, old friend, must you make such a mess while executing your schemes? My poor ears haven't suffered a cacophony like that in ages."

Something that felt like snakes slithered over my arms and legs. I dared to crack open my eyes the tiniest bit. The "snakes" were, in fact, vines, growing too quickly. Tiny green orbs appeared on them.

"Destruction has ever attended my presence."

I wanted to see the speakers more than I wanted anything, even to live, because I was pretty sure that to see the owner of the second voice would kill me, but my body had better self-preservation skills than my will. I lost consciousness again.