Quickburned

Alone

Five years or so ago...

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Bzzz....

A horsefly landed on Caleb's hand.

He stared at it.

The creature rubbed its legs together, the bristly hairs making tiny scritching sounds over its shiny green carapace. It cast long spindly shadows over his skin as it skittered up the red-washed length of his arm, undaunted by summer heat.

Bzzz...

The horsefly buzzed away and circled back, landing again on his wrist with a flick of delicate wings. He stared at them, tracing the veins through the translucent membranes. Everything else seemed trifling to the point he didn't bother to note it—the rank stench of rotted iron and ash in the air, the scorch on the painted wood steps on either side of him, the numbness of his rump.

The horsefly bit him.

Caleb came back to himself with a yell. He jumped to his feet, shaking his arm to dislodge the vicious creature, and nearly fell down the steps he'd been sitting on. He stood there for a moment after it had gone, panting, taking stock.

Town. He was in town, his hometown even—Clearstone. The steps he stood on belonged to the temple. It was dead silent. The air was full of smoke and haze, and the square marked by wide swaths of black burn marks. He choked on the taste of copper.

It was evening. It should have been dawn. At least a whole day, vanished into nothing. What day was it? Last he remembered was riding into town with his gang at his back and the promise of a fight before them.

And a fight he'd had, judging from the state of his hands. He peeled blood-glued fingers off one by one from a flamepiece he'd been holding. White ridges showed against the red from where he'd been gripping it so hard, the etchings on the flamepiece's grip pressed into his skin.

It wasn't his. Wasn't one of his gang's either.

His knuckles were scraped and bloody - that made sense. Caleb always preferred using his fists - a brawler, not a swordsman or a gunslinger. If there'd been a fight, he'd've been in it swinging.

His arms were covered in gore, all the way up to his rolled shirtsleeves. He couldn't tell if it was his, or someone else's. He didn't feel terribly hurt - tired, certain, and his skin was tight in places with what felt like new burns. But not injured, really. Maybe he was still in the state where he ought to be hurting but it hadn't set in yet.

Made no sense. Caleb scrubbed at his head, realized even his hair was sticky with... foulness. What in the hell kind of fight had he been in?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The sound, a background constant, finally penetrated through to his wits. Caleb turned. Shit.

Bent backwards over the stone plinth before the temple was the ruin of a man. It was his blood, dripping off the broken curve of his skull and puddling into the pale dust of the square, had been making the sound. Black smoke rose gently from his skin, curling in wisps towards Caleb when he moved. The corpse was clothed in fine silks and an overabundance of gaudy, expensive jewelry - the kind someone wore with no taste but for impressing and intimidating folk with wealth.

The barrel of another flamepiece, a match to the one Caleb now threw at the ground before the corpse, rose from the body's wrecked face. The butt had been smashed clear through the bone, over and over. The gore covering his arms made grisly sense.