◦ The Price of Surviving ◦
AMBIENCE | PROGRESSION
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The silence of the room was perhaps the most deafening silence Cecil had ever heard in his short, bitter life.
Faintly, somewhere else in the estate, a clock ticked. It was a windy day outside; the pine trees rustled quietly and few birds chirped. It was the sort of winter afternoon that was startlingly clear and startlingly cold, delineated by pale sunlight and tiny, puffy clouds. The average person would have long ago gone outside to enjoy the wind and the birds and the sunshine.
Cecil sat inside, staring at his hands, eyes unfocused.
Inside his head played the same scene, in a loop.
"FASTER! FASTER, GODDAMNIT—SHIT, RUE, HOLD ON, HOLD ON!"
The air was stiflingly hot and stunk of death, salt, and copper. Sweat dripped off Cecil's brow as he stared at his hands, trembling and streaked with sand and blood. Between them lay glowing javelins of purple energy, vibrating and spitting as he tried to touch them. Beneath those lay the dying body of his brother, who was wheezing weakly as blood poured from open wounds.
"CECIL, HE'S ALMOST—HE'S—YOU'RE THE SORCERER! FIX IT!" Corathella shouted, desperately holding a torn strip of his own shirt to one of Rue's wounds, teeth bared and eyes wide in an expression of true terror. Outside, the ground rumbled as two Mages tried to rip each other to pieces, indistinct cries and bellows echoing dimly in Cecil's ears as he stared at the glowing spears that were stabbed through Rue's torso. He tried again—he reached out and grasped them, then yelped as they seared his hands, shocking him with a current of magic like electricity. It was no use.
Corathella heaved a breath in and out, murmuring in Ibeth to Rue, tearing another strip of cloth from his own shirt to dab Rue's forehead with. Rue stared into the middle distance, eyes already alarmingly glassy, forcing out breath after rattling breath past his lips.
Cecil had seen that look in a lot of different eyes, at this point.
Alister. Mirabella. Ayas. Eloi. Jorraine.
A Yanar whose name he would never know.
Another brother, behind the bars of a cell, alive but on borrowed time.
A handful more, unnamable, yet unforgettable. You don't really forget that look. The death stare. It's usually accusatory.
You did this.
Rue made a choking noise, and Cecil tried not to sob.
It was always in these moments that he would remember the previous ones. Leaping towards Mirabella as a Cahal stabbed her through the torso in a dingy sewer storeroom. Screaming in pain as someone threw Oma across the room, his arms behind his back, unable to help. Watching in horror as Cal disappeared from view amidst a sea of burning leaves, weaponless and exhausted.
Trying fruitlessly to remove magic stronger than he had ever encountered from Rue's body before he succumbed to his injuries.
It was always just that close.
Cecil's hand slipped, and one of the spears jolted, stinging his hand. Rue made a weak noise of pain, falling even more limp. Corathella grasped the Apostle's wrist and said, "Rue? Rue!" with mounting panic, putting a hand to his pulse point. The look he shot Cecil would have been heart-wrenching if the Lector's vision wasn't already blurry with tears.
"DO SOMETHING," was Corathella's final, ragged plea, desperation carrying his broken voice just far enough. Rue wasn't making any noise anymore. The sand beneath his body was now the texture of clay, and redder than the low desert sun.
Cecil closed his eyes and asked, why me?
Why was he destined to be the witness? The griever? And who decided what was fair and what was cruel, anyways?
Why should Cecil be the last one standing, over and over again?
He opened his eyes and the world blended together into one smear of memory and sensation—Anathema fighting for their life, and the lives of their three friends; the smell of death and tragedy hanging high on a jasmine wind, dancing with the devilish carrion birds who squalled and cried as they circled like hungry lions, certain of death's success. He looked down at the spears, and at Rue, and Cora, his brothers, two people that had seen him through the worst, who deserved far more chances than he had ever earned—
And then he decided that it was someone else's turn to be the survivor.
This time, he got a better grip.
When Anathema dragged themself back to where they had left the three Manathar, Corathella was holding Rue in his arms and whispering quiet reassurances, trembling, adjusting the manifold makeshift bandages that crisscrossed the Apostle's torso as sustaining healing magics poured from his russet fingers. Rue was breathing shallowly, eyes unfocused, fingers wrapped as tight as they could around Corathella's own. Cecil was sitting beside them, barely conscious, curled around his blackened, burned-up hands.
The spears had disappeared.
The clock was still ticking. The birds had stopped, by now; Cecil knew their schedule. The pine trees would rustle into the night, and the crickets would come out, and after long enough everything would fade again.
Too close.
It had been too close.
The memories swirled around his head, weighing on his tired shoulders, pulling his spine into a hunch.
They had all gotten out, but what was it worth? A new nightmare? Another memory to relive the next time Cecil stared death in the face?
He did not know anymore. He was tired of death's flirtations. He wanted to sleep. But he couldn't stop thinking about what might have happened if he hadn't put one foot past that inevitable threshold.
The fine winter's day had begun to segue into a fine winter's evening, and still Cecil sat in his room, staring at his bandaged hands, wondering at the price of surviving.
