I caught glimpses of life, but I was death.
I could not for the life of me fathom what had happened. I had turned into a demon, but I could feel nothing. I remembered even less. Then I'd passed out.
I was floating in a well of darkness, but I could see the stars reflected in the murky water. The sounds I heard were unnaturally loud, muffled, distorted, as if coming from an underwater loudspeaker.
I caught voices, strange voices with accents I didn't recognise. Was this what it felt like to be a demon? Was this what demon speech sounded like?
I was hollow. My fire, my earth… they were gone. They had utterly vanished. But I could tell I was not the creature anymore, the creature that fed on souls and magic. I did not feel human either. I did not live; I did not remember breathing or drinking or eating —I simply was.
I remembered a loud voice accompanied by a brief, blurry vision of hands gesturing animatedly. Voices, growing, layering on top of each other, arguing, drowning each other out until they became a hazy mix of sounds and shouts. Just once, I felt pain blast into my eyes, eliciting a demonic scream, then cool air filling my eyelids, brushing past my eyelashes, a cool breeze stirring my face, my eyes being forced open then snapping shut with exhaustion.
I was so tired.
The speed and brute danger of my trip had just caught up with me. I had been drowsy when the demon-turned-wolf had appeared, and I'd been shaken out of my stupor by adrenaline. After, it seemed I had fallen into a trance, a coma, deeper and heavier than before.
I was so, so tired.
My body just wanted to rest. Just once, I remembered blinking bleary eyes open, fingers twitching from a long while of being frozen in place, shouts of excitement and glee, which died down just moments later as sleep pulled me back in. I just wanted to rest, on a safe, comfortable bed and pretend this never happened. But my magic was gone.
I wanted to rest, to sleep and never wake up.
Or maybe I could pretend none of it all happened. That I was back home. But I knew my magic was gone. I knew home was many lands and a sea away.
I felt my chest knitting together again where the demon had blasted me, patches of soreness lingering, but still the flame and earth did not return.
I slept. I healed.
This was what the dwarves felt like. Slaving for eternity. Trapped in their own bodies, out of control and forever tired.
An endless nightmare. No beginning, no reprieve.
And certainly, no end.
Days passed. And I did not wake.
-----
In the invisible place where my soul drifted on the wind, that place of unconsciousness, I suddenly felt it. A wall pushing against the darkness, the death that was not ready to leave my body.
Acute pain ripping through my chest, two chains being hammered into my heart.
I felt the sensation of writhing on the bed they had put me on, curling up, stretching out, flailing, yelping incessantly as I could not scream. It tore through me, but even with the pain, I was sedated, I was unconscious, I did not wake. The pain continued, diluted, drawn out over hours or days, I didn't know, but agony all the same.
It washed over me like a flaming wave, setting my muscles contracting, my blood pounding. I felt tears streaming down my cheeks, sweat shining on my brow. I must've looked in a sorry state, but I did not care.
I was alive. I was death, I was death no longer, and I was alive. I had survived. Somehow. I had been revived.
But even though I was alive, weak and dark no longer, I couldn't get up. The force of the blow the demon had dealt me still pressed down on my body, pinning my limbs to the ground. To the rocky, damp ground, encased on all sides by a wall of stone. And I strained my muscles, trying, trying desperately to lift myself up off the ground, but my strength failed me.
So I lay. And I did not, could not get up.
Suddenly, like a bomb had been set off inside me, the power, the pain exploded into a million little bits that radiated outwards like a nuclear blast. I shrieked one last time, then went still.
I reached inwards blindly, feeling for the steady beat of my again-human heart.
And I felt the chain, the chains that connected me, that separated me, that held me here and yet drifted into space.
My magic.
My golden flames; my earthen dust.
They were back.
Dangling over me, in that place that was called rock bottom, there was a rope. The rope wasn't eternal like the ones that bound my magic to my soul. The ends were fraying. It hadn't been there before. And I knew that if I did not take it, I wouldn't get another chance. I grabbed at it, holding on with all my remaining strength. It wasn't much, but it was something. And I pulled.
-----
I jolted upright in the bed and looked around. I was surrounded by boys, all of them looking older than sixteen, who immediately stopped their conversations to peer at me. Wood planks, lovingly worn, covered the far wall and tapestries hung every few metres.
My brain gave what I suppose was the natural response to seeing something unfamiliar (and having boys gape at you while asleep was certainly new) after being addled for so long. I screamed and pushed upwards. My voice cracked halfway through, vocal chords straining from disuse, and I fought the urge to vomit.
As soon as I sat up, a bout of tiredness washed over me again, but I managed to stay up.
The room exploded into a commotion. "Shoo!" proclaimed a man maybe a few years older than me, with dark hair that fell over his eyes. Some of the men scuttled off, deep in conversation.
I gaped, opening my mouth and closing it like a fish. The corners of my mouth were bleeding.
"We'll ask questions later," he said. "But first, we need to do check-ups. How are you feeling?"
I swayed in my sitting position. All I wanted was to slump back down and let sleep pull me under again, but I managed to choke out, my voice sounding delicate, like it would crumble to pieces if I used it too long, "That was a question." One man on his way out of the door turned back and frowned. But the one who had spoken chuckled, and replied, "now is later, mm? You sound like you need some water," and with a knowing jerk of his head, he disappeared through the crowd and down a distant hallway.
Someone with kind brown eyes of perhaps about twenty-one approached. I couldn't decide if they were a man or a woman. Maybe they were neither. As they held their hands out, white light filled the space. Light as white as a dove, light as pure as sun on snow. At my surprised jump, they smiled, and the light receded.
"I'm a healer. My name is Kyte, but you can call me Kat. You're in the infirmary, but because one of our hunters found you—" they gestured to the horde of males around them, "—you're in the men's wing. Awkward, I know. But we couldn't risk moving you."
Blessed by Zakhia, the god of healing.
"Kat?"
They put up their hands. "I didn't ask for it, it just stuck. And in case you were wondering—I'm non-binary. Thought you might want to know, since you'll be seeing a lot of me while you heal."
"Oh. Okay."
They grinned.
I found myself smiling back at them, a tentative, nervous upwards curl of my lips. Perhaps it was the kindness, the purity and innocence that radiated from them, or maybe, after all this darkness, I just needed something good. Maybe it was that I hadn't smiled in so long that my mouth longed to feel the sensation again. The skin on my lips peeled away like an onion skin.
"You're all good," they said. "Your magic is back?"
I nodded almost undetectably. Even the tiniest movement cramped my muscles, setting my limbs on fire. I reached up to brace my aching neck, but my arm felt like it had been injected with lead.
The other guy who had greeted me upon waking came back with a cup of water in one hand, and I slurped it down gratefully. It wasn't just water. The guy smiled at me, and I saw that Northern brown skin and the sandy sweeps of Kaleveh in his crinkled eyes. It was honey bush tea. It tasted like sea salt and roasted sweet potatoes and cooking flatbread and the red dust roads on my tongue.
It tasted like home.