Expanded Horizons: Beyond the Blue

Flammability: Chapter Five

Clare could just hear faint voices, as if from half a world away, complete gibberish in the distance. Slowly, she could feel sensation returning to her body, a sharp pain in her abdomen and soreness all over. As she regained motor control, she moved her hand to touch the source of the pain, a wet spot whose origins she slowly came to remember, and the stranger who had saved her for an unknown price.

She opened her eyes, barely able to bear the brightness bringing her back to the world of the living. As she slowly blinked back to the real world, she could just make out a shape leaning over her, a very familiar shape that reminded her of the man she once loved more than the world. Her vision and hearing started to clear, and she could see and make out the sound of her son.

"Mom?!" he said frantically.

"Johnny," she whispered, a smile creeping onto her face.

"Mom! You're back!" Johnny grabbed his mother's arm and hugged it tight to himself. He knew better than to fully embrace her with a wound still present, but he wanted her to know how happy he was to have her back.

"I'm okay," Clare replied. "But what matters is that you're alright..."

"Mom, what happened?" Johnny asked. "I don't understand. The last thing I remember is being out with my friends, and the next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital, and they tell me you went on some crusade."

"I went for you," Clare said.

"What?" Johnny replied, entirely confused. "I... I don't understand."

"There was only one way to save you, and I had to get to the monks high in the mountains. They were the only ones who had what I needed to save you."

"What about everyone else?" Johnny asked. "They said people came with you."

"We... decided that, that we'd had enough of their silent tyranny," Clare said half-heartedly. She couldn't tell her son the truth. Not yet. "They were the ones who did that to you, and they owed me a way to get you up. So we went and took it."

"Everyone died," Johnny said.

Clare looked eyes with her son, trying her best to calm the worry clear as day in his eyes. His mother had led the expedition, started a small war against a clearly superior force, and he wasn't sure if they might come back, or have friends, or something else terrifying would happen. Clare knew it was all okay, though. They were all gone, everyone there was gone, and she was the only one who knew what had happened.

"They sacrificed themselves for the good of everyone," Clare said. "I was lucky and escaped."

"The man who brought you in said he would be back to talk to you," Johnny said. "I haven't seen him at all since, though."

"That man..."

Clare thought about how to proceed. That man, that being, whatever he was, had taken out the rest of the monastery after the monks had killed most of Clare's men with ease. She didn't see it herself, but she knew the order was no more, all the monks had died, arrayed against whatever terrifying magic the stranger had come to bear. The sentry's response to his presence was enough to tell her what the end result would be.

"That man saved me. And you. And he has great power."

"Who is he?" Johnny asked.

"I'm not sure," Clare said. "But I know I will see him again someday, to repay what I owe. But it was worth it." Clare put her hand on her son's cheek. "Any deal can be made worth it, as long as you make it so."

"Without the order nearby, we're safer, right?" Johnny asked. "Everything is going to be okay?"

"Everything will be okay," Clare said. She glanced out the window. "And if we can find him again, we can make everything even better."