Through the skin of Elenya’s arm grew a flower. Purple, bulging and soon to bud. The rest of the hand was anything but pretty. Bruised and swollen, with something slithering beneath the skin.
Wretch felt a pang of dread. “That arm. It’s the one that was stuck to the tree.”
“It wasn’t more than a bruise this morning. I pulled out a root earlier but that hasn’t helped.”
Elenya shook her head. ”Shit, I thought it would go away, I really did. What do you think, Ratty?”
Wretch looked up to stare up at her, both his claws touching the hand. “First of all you are a complete idiot, we are talking empty desert. Second of all, we have to cut it off, then sear the wound.”
Elenya chuckled. “And if not?”
Wretch gave her a crooked smile full of sharp teeth. “Then I reckon you’ll have a fate worse than death.”
She shuddered, glancing at the tiny cave they had found themselves in. “I appreciate the honesty. Let’s go above the elbow, just to be safe. There is something beneath the skin.”
Wretch nodded. “Can you start a fire somehow?”
“Of course, all I need is two sticks and some string.” She said with a dull smile. From the outside, the rumbling of a storm crept closer, dusty winds blowing past the mouth of their hideout. Elenya tied a shoelace to each end of a stick, flexing it into the likeness of a crude bow, looping the string around a dried branch of wood.
“Help me with this part. I can’t feel my hand anymore,” she said.
He crouched down by a bundle of sticks and dried grass she had prepared. “Instruct me,” he said.
“Press down that part and move that like a saw.” She said and pointed with her right hand. “Faster, Ratty. Put some back into it.”
“All right miss Fireling,” He said lightly, though his lips were dry. A thin stream of smoke darted from the dry grass. Elenya crouched down without delay and blew at the smoldering bundle. A fragile flame sparked to life.
“That is handy to know!” Wretch said as they piled up some of the dried wood on the struggling fire.
“Now what? Elenya said, beads of sweat forming on her forehead. “I can start a fire but severing an arm isn’t my specialty. Well, it is, just not my own.”
“Unfortunately I have experience in that domain,” Wretch said, a memory welled up but he smothered it. His face revealing nothing but a moment of squirming skin. “We can use my blade, but we’ll have to heat it first.”
She gave him a look as he flipped up his Blinking Blade, laying the shimmering metal in the fire.
“Now we just have to wait,” Wretch said as he leaned his back on the sloped stone wall of the cave.
She sat down heavily next to him. It was quiet for a moment, the only noise was the whistling wind and crackling fire. Elenya broke the silence. “In the forest, what dream did you have?”
He knew this would come eventually, but was this really the place? Maybe they would never have a better one.
“I had yours.” He answered, inspecting the scabs from the forest.
“What parts?”
“Yenvograd, your crew, the riot.”
She produced a guttural sound. “Sorry you had to see that.”
That surprised him. Perhaps it was because they were hundreds of kilometers from the next human soul or that she had a budding parasite wiggling around in her flesh? But he had expected something more… violent.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Nah, but I slaughtered those folk like cattle.” She said in a grim voice, staring into the crackling fire.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated.
“I could have sided with the revolt and then the civilians would have lived or ran away, or just hacked down the door.” She said with a quickened pace, the strings of words practiced but never before spoken.
“It still wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“Then why do I feel like it is? I see their faces. It’s the first thing I see in the morning and it’s the last thing I see before I fall asleep,” she said without a hint of emotion.
It was quiet again for a moment.
“Why?” she repeated in a whisper. The growing fire cast long shadows on the cave walls as Wretch responded. “Maybe It’s because they mattered.”
Elenya answered without a tremor to her voice. Instead it was flat, cold and rehearsed.
“I run the different scenarios in my head, over and over. I can’t stop it. When I sit still too long, it comes crawling back into my head. Fighting helps, drinking helps.”
He glanced over at her, sitting crouched by the fire. Muscles that could crush a man’s skull like an egg, in the torn armor and the wild red hair falling over her face. She didn’t look weak or vulnerable. She looked desperate.
“We are miserable creatures in a cruel, bloodthirsty world, doesn’t seem sane to expect us to be perfect.” He said.
A lightning struck somewhere in the distance, and rain-drops peppered over the exit.
“But what do I know? I am just a rat,” he finished. Elenya burst out into a short cathartic laugh that bellowed in the tiny cave. It came so suddenly that his heart skipped a beat. She cracked her neck and spat on the ground.
“Enough with the yapping. Come over here, little Ratty and cut my arm off.”
“and If I refuse? Will you throw me down the spires?” He answered with a crooked smile.
“Head first, and that’s a promise.”
“Easy choice then,” he said and stepped forward to the now glowing blade laying in the crackling fire. She strapped her belt around the sick arm and Wretch offered her a bundle of torn cloth from his shirt. “Bite on this. It’ll help.”
“Just get this over with.” She said with a muffled voice through the fabric.
His eyes lit up with fire, giving his usual dark orbs a clear iris. His left arm squirmed, and an exoskeleton pierced through the skin in a grim display. In a matter of moments, a crab claw had replaced his left arm. It was heavy, almost too much for him to bear. He opened the pincher and slid it under her arm. Aiming for a few decimeters over the elbow where the tissue looked pale and healthy.
“Ready?”
She nodded, beads of sweat dripping down her face.
He flexed new-born muscles and the claw crunched against the arm. Elenya let out a muffled howl, her muscles straining and her nails scratching against the rock. The claw dug deep into the flesh. Thin streaks of blood running down her pale skin.
It wasn’t enough, and he put all his weight on the slick exoskeleton. An audible crack rang out from the arm. The plates of the pincher squirmed back into his arm. Morphing into the regular ashen claw.
“There, it’s broken. But I still need to slice the flesh.” His arm squirmed again, a razor thin, bone-white blade broke through the skin of his forearm. One of the new spoils of battle.
With a quick cut, he sliced around the bone and the arm thudded against the ground in a waterfall of blood. The bone-blade was sharper than he remembered.
Elenya groaned as she became paler by the second.
“Now for the painful part.” He said with a frown.
Through the cloth in her mouth, Elenya stammered. “What?”
He pressed the sizzling and glowing blade towards her stump. With a hiss, blood evaporated and flesh charred. Her entire figure twisted backwards in a cramp. She opened her eyes wide and her mouth gaped in a scream, but she only produced a gasp of air.
Wretch threw the blade behind him and wrestled her arm to keep it from dragging on the ground.
“It’s done!”
She shuddered furiously, and sweat drenched her clothes. Then she grew limp and her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
“Yeah, that happened to me too,” he said out loud.
Carefully, he placed her on the side so that any stomach content wouldn’t drown her. Outside, heavy rain and thunder shook the air. He removed his shirt, drenching it in rain and letting it dry over the fire. Careful to keep it clean.
From the storm, a cacophony of caws grew louder, and the rain raged and thundered. He gave it a glance. Not a natural storm, if there even is such a thing out here.
He wrapped the cleaned cloth around the wound, tying it as neatly as he could. When finished, he gave her a look, patting her on the shoulder. “There, there. You did well.”
Finally he placed the severed arm by the fire, watching it intently. A thin stream of blood still seeped out of the sacrificed flesh and an odd branch pulled away from the heat. Slowly, the skin blistered and charred.
“Come on, I know you are in there.”
Something burst from the flesh. A glistening vine slithering like a snake towards the unconscious woman in a trail of blood. The Blinking Blade flashed. The weapon pinned the creature to the stone, vines and branches reaching up its edge.
“Looks like we got you out in one piece,” he said with a cruel smile, throwing the strange parasite into the crackling fire. It squirmed in pain, the petals withering in moments.
That’s one problem gone. Now we are just two Firelings out in the wilderness, too far from any Gulschak for my liking, but no matter. Another chance to grow or die, and I’ll grow at a pace none can match. Not Grendel, not the professor. Not even you, Elenya.
From the exit, a cacophony of caws grew to rival the thunderclaps of the storm. Something was brewing outside.