Passenger

Chapter 24

Silence.

Dead silence. When the phrase came to mind, it made me feel sort of nauseous as to how ironic it was. Neb's jaw was hanging open in both shock and horror. Sarah's head was bowed, eyes staring into the fire. Krys had sat back and closed his eyes in resignation.

Rose had been changed. Just like Krys. She was down here to be some sort of...assassin? Warrior? Killer? And never once had it ever seemed like it. For years, she'd been as plain as anyone else, Avian or no...

And then, that day, for whatever reason...she snapped.

And she...killed me.

This wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault that she'd attacked me, she was being used. Rose had never told us, but why would she? It must have been horrible and traumatizing. She wouldn't have wanted to scare us. I couldn't blame her. If I had gone through what she had, what Krys had...I understood now why they didn't want to talk about it. I wouldn't want to, either.

Rose hadn't taken my life away. This Altrak was the one to blame there. Unable to do anything else, I clenched my fists to the point where my knuckles would have popped and my nails would have cut my palms. This doctor was the only real monster here, the only real killer. He deserved to die a thousand times over for what he'd done. I wanted to find him and get my hands on him, rip him to bloody pieces and throw him in the sea –

My stream of angry thoughts was cut off as Sarah suddenly got to her feet. "I'll be right back." She stated, turning away, before walking a distance off. "I need a minute."

I watched her walk away, then looked at Krys. He had opened his eyes to watch Sarah leave, and I crouched next to him, meeting his eyes. "I'm so sorry for what happened to you. You didn't deserve that."

"it's okay." Krys tried, and failed, to smile at me. "it's not your fault."

"that's not what I mean. It wasn't your fault either, Krys! This isn't right, none of this is right!" frustrated, I kicked at the air. "Altrak is the only here who's at fault! I want to find him and wring his neck so hard that it breaks in thirteen different places! He should get his wings cut off too, and maybe thrown off the side of an island so he knows what it's like –"

"Rachel." Somehow, Krys managed to cut me off with a word. I looked over at him to see he was smiling faintly now. "I don't want you to worry about it. There's nothing to be done about it now, so...let's just leave it be, okay? I want to leave it all behind me now."

I wanted to stay mad. But when you have someone like Krys asking you to calm down...well, it's hard to stay upset. "you're too forgiving." I muttered, exhaling heavily. "but I swear, give me even one more minute with a body and I'll make that guy regret the day he was born."

There was a momentary pause as Krys looked back down at the ground. In the distance, I heard a faint thud – likely from Sarah punching something.

I looked back at Krys. "scoot over towards Neb. I want to go check on Sarah." I told him.

Krys nodded slightly, moving to sit on the other side of Neb. The Gnoll patted his shoulder comfortingly as I floated away, searching for Sarah. It didn't take me long to find her, though I was limited on how close I could actually get. She was beside a large rock, which she was currently punching with a gauntleted hand. Her expression was unreadable as she attacked the stone relentlessly, and I could see Red Magic behind every swing as her fists slammed into it, cracking away at the rock.

To be honest, I wasn't that surprised. Punching things was always Sarah's stress relief. I used to joke that she just needed to replace her hands with some iron bricks at this point, she was bloodying them so frequently. But this time it was different, because she was angry about...me. Me and Rose.