034.004

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Breath of Air

Spring Cleaning

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“How you doing today, Izsha?”

The old stables were quiet today. Brakkt had taken the other draken out for some exercise and a bit of hunting. Only the tiger-striped Musca and the still-comatose Izsha were around. The former had been… unexpectedly protective, not wanting to leave Izsha for much. Not even for a good hunt. It was sweet. At least, Alyssa thought so. Brakkt thought Musca was sick.

“Irulon is up and at ‘em. She’s still trying to translate her vision to proper words, but assures me that you are her very next priority. Even above herself.” If only because she thought Izsha’s issue was relatively easily solved in comparison to her own entanglement with the dragon.

Alyssa had taken up the task of keeping the stables clean and tidy. Brakkt had offered, but Alyssa felt like she needed to be doing something. With Irulon doing the magic side of things, Alyssa had to find her own way to help out. Physical labor looked good on her.

It wasn’t the most pleasant work to do, but it was work that needed to be done. Izsha’s body was still alive. At risk of using an analogy as bad as Tenebrael’s video game one, Alyssa saw the situation kind of like a car idling. There was no driver, but the engine was still running. To keep it running, it needed fuel. And, since it was burning fuel, there was obviously going to be some exhaust.

Thankfully, it wasn’t all physical labor. Magic helped out quite a bit. It wasn’t quite waving a hand and vanishing everything unwanted into thin air, but having what was effectively a power washer at her fingertips was nice. It wasn’t a real power washer. Not nearly strong enough. But that meant that washing down Izsha with it wasn’t going to cause any abrasions or injuries. Especially not with draken scales acting as armor.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Alyssa did one of her periodic checkups on Izsha’s soul. There weren’t any changes. Which was probably a good thing. It would obviously be better if Izsha was showing signs of recovery. Izsha getting resynchronized with itself on its own would have taken some burden off Irulon’s back. However, if there was change, there was the possibility that Alyssa wouldn’t recognize whether it was a positive change or a negative one. So long as the situation remained stable, she wouldn’t have to extrapolate information from her inexperienced sense.

“You’re looking good soul-wise,” Alyssa said in a hopefully not obviously-false chipper voice. She noted that there was some interaction between them, especially as she spoke. That interaction had been increasing a bit over the past few days. The very first day that Izsha had spent trapped inside its body, there had been hardly any interaction at all. Now, there was only a slightly below average level of soul-sharing.

So maybe there was a change after all. She wasn’t quite sure what that change meant, whether it was good or bad. But it was probably good given that other people shared souls. More importantly, Alyssa took it as confirmation that Izsha was hearing and understanding the world outside its body. If Alyssa ever found herself trapped like that, unable to move or even act, she would definitely want someone coming by on the regular, talking to her. Alone time was nice on occasion. Forced isolation wasn’t.

“There weren’t any fish in the market today, unfortunately. After asking around, it seems that the local river that supplies much of the city with its water needs doesn’t have year-round fishing. Only during specific migratory times. There is always a little, but it’s rare and expensive. So I’ve got a wrapping of mutton instead.”

For most of Alyssa’s time in the stables, Musca just sat off in the corner, staring or even sleeping. The moment Alyssa mentioned meat, Musca’s long neck stretched out as it perked its head up.

“Yes. I have some for you too,” Alyssa said with faux exasperation in her tone. “You skipped out on going with Brakkt just because you knew I was coming with an easy meal, didn’t you?”

Musca gave a low clicking trill from the back of its throat.

“Oh don’t worry. I’m not going to tell Brakkt how lazy you’re getting. It’s the least I can do for you spending time with Izsha anyway.”

Heading over to her bag in the corner of the room, Alyssa pulled out two fairly large hunks of meat, wrapped in some waxy brownish paper. She honestly wasn’t sure that it was enough meat for the full-sized draken. At least not for a full meal. But that didn’t stop Musca from jumping up, wagging her tail back and forth like a puppy begging for food.

Feeding Musca was easy. Just give the meat a twist, a flick of the wrist, and the dinosaur chomped it right out of the air. Content with how much it got, Musca returned to lying down, only masticating it a tiny bit before swallowing it mostly intact.

Izsha, on the other hand, was a bit more of a delicate matter. In the modern world, comatose patients received nutrients through intravenous drips or feeding tubes. As far as Alyssa could tell, no one had ever invented such things here. From the information she had gathered from Irulon, people who fell unconscious and didn’t wake… generally didn’t wake ever. Same with paralysis.

But Alyssa had a process. One that might save other people who had fallen into more usual comatose states once she spread knowledge of it a bit. There was a spell simply titled Grind. It was effectively a magical mortar and pestle. Applying the spell to a slab of meat would result in something akin to ground beef. Adding a bit of water to the mixture with a second application of the spell produced a fairly unappetizing meat slurry. The reddish-brown liquid was a bit thicker than water, but not so thick that a modified Draw Water spell—provided by Irulon after Alyssa described what she wanted to do—couldn’t affect it all. Using Draw Water, Alyssa basically just shoved it right down Izsha’s throat.

It was a bit of a tricky process. In a natural, passive state, the lower esophageal sphincter was closed. And at the upper end, the throat opened to the lungs to allow for breathing. The first time Alyssa tried this feeding technique, she was pretty sure that she had just about drowned Izsha in meat slurry water. Which, in her opinion, would have been a terrible way to go. Go again, in Izsha’s case. It took a bit of practice to guide the slurry through the esophagus correctly.

The lack of involuntary coughing was a good sign.

At the end of it all, the stables were clean, the draken fed, and Izsha got a bit of interaction. It took a few hours, but it was time well spent in Alyssa’s opinion.

“I’m going to head back to the city now. I’ll be back later in the evening, so don’t worry. There’s just… a lot going on. Always lots going on,” she added with a slight sigh. “I thought Brakkt said that he would be back by now, but… Well, I doubt anything bad happened to him with him being him and the other draken with him, but I might need to check in on him as well as everyone else.” Alyssa hesitated in leaving. She didn’t like to leave Izsha alone. Musca was around, true, but since holding up inside the stables, either Alyssa or Brakkt had always been present.

“Message. Brakkt,” Alyssa said as she pulled out and burned a spell card. “You’re a bit late, so I wanted to make sure that nothing has gone wrong.” While sending the message, she cracked open the worn-down door to the stables and peeked outside. The city wasn’t on fire, though the sky was. But the sky being on fire had become a normality of life. For the time being, anyway. There weren’t any members of the Astral Authority flying through the air. Closing her eyes, she saw droves of demonic souls, but they were off in the distance, still battling at Owlcroft. She couldn’t spot any in the city itself. So if something was holding him up, it probably wasn’t anything big. “Message me back when you get a chance.”

He probably was just enjoying being out of the stables, hunting with the draken. It made Alyssa feel a bit awkward, like she was some kind of nagging mother, but one couldn’t be too careful in times like this. Every single day, she woke up expecting the fight between demons and the Astral Authority to spill over into the city. Sometimes, at night, she was certain that she could hear thunderous crashes and blasts of wind that might have come from the Justice swinging its massive sword around. It might just be her imagination. Owlcroft was several days away even on draken. Then again, real thunder could travel for miles, so it was entirely possible that her mind was not playing tricks on her.

But Brakkt wouldn’t have gone off in that direction anyway. So the city would get caught up in any trouble well before he would.

No. He was definitely just out hunting.

Nodding to herself, Alyssa turned back to Izsha and Musca. “Alright,” she said. “I can stick around for a bit longer. Maybe I can—”

~No problem on my end. I just lost track of the time. We are already heading back. Sorry for worrying you.~

“Ah.” The pressure on Alyssa’s mind receded with the end of the Message. “Brakkt is safe,” she said, smiling to herself. “He’ll be back very soon.” Deciding that she might as well wait around for him, Alyssa took a seat on the large cot he had been using as a bed for the past week and a half. It was a fairly uncomfortable thing. Being suspended on some criss-crossing beams of wood helped keep him off the ground, but whatever wool or hide it had been made from was scratchy and itchy. The large blanket he used was a fair bit more comfortable. Hopefully he wrapped that completely around his body when sleeping on it.

True to his word, Brakkt returned in only about twenty minutes. Alyssa occupied the time just telling Izsha and Musca stories. Fairly nonsensical stories. Nursery rhymes and such. Really, just things to occupy the time and give Izsha something to listen to that wasn’t awkward silence. Given that she had been doing this for nearly two weeks, she was running out of things to talk about. Pretty soon, she was going to have to start pulling up The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on her phone and just reading from that while cleaning, feeding, and keeping Izsha company.

And she wasn’t even sure that Izsha would be interested in some human literature from a world away. Maybe she could find a novelization of Godzilla stories instead.

Or maybe a Land Before Time novelization would be for the best.

For now, her rendition of This is the House that Jack Built came to a close.

Despite not having much resemblance to human expressions, Alyssa was positive that Musca looked relieved with the interruption.

Ignoring the draken, both Musca and the others who were walking in with a bit of blood still around their chops, Alyssa walked up to Brakkt. “Successful trip?”

“You could say that. Got them all happy, exercised, and fed. And…” Brakkt wasn’t wearing his armor today, though he had brought it with him. Instead, he had a well-worn tunic and baggy pants. As he trailed off, he hiked up the sleeve of his tunic, showing off his arm.

An emerald green snake was coiled around his forearm from his elbow to his wrist. Its head rested on his hand, right between his thumb and index finger. Yellow eyes with a narrow slit in the middle stared up at Alyssa for just a moment before it tried slithering its body further up Brakkt’s arm to where the sleeve was still down.

Brakkt was just smiling, moving his other hand to brush it back down to his wrist.

“A snake.”

“A malachite viper. I didn’t know they lived in this region.”

“Vipers are venomous.”

“True. Malachite vipers are theorized to come from gorgon locks. It tends to use its venom defensively, turning aggressors into glistening sculptures that it can then derive sustenance from. Wouldn’t want to be scratched by this little guy’s teeth. It might be the last thing you do… Unless…” His eyes flicked over to Izsha, smile slipping slightly.

“No change,” Alyssa said, glancing back. “Irulon estimates that she’ll get to preliminary spell creation in two days. It might still be a few weeks after that before she produces anything truly usable. I’ve just been keeping both Izsha and Musca company, for the most part. It’s about all I can do at the moment.”

“I’m sure they appreciate it.”

Musca let out an irritated clicking noise from the back of its throat, prompting a small chuckle from Brakkt.

The chuckle died off as a more serious expression crossed his face. “While out, we did find an infected meandering about the woods.”

“You were east of the city? Right?” The direct opposite direction from Owlcroft. Closer to Lyria than the pit, though only marginally. At Brakkt’s nod of affirmation, Alyssa scowled. “I don’t suppose you noticed which direction it was moving?”

“Hard to say exactly, but more or less toward the city.”

“Or toward Owlcroft?”

Brakkt just shrugged his shoulders.

“When you killed it, did the pentagrams appear?”

“That was a part of the reason I was delayed in returning. After twenty minutes, nothing happened. We eventually decided to continue with our outing, but we checked back on it again on our way back. Nothing changed.”

“That probably means the true demon is too busy fighting the Astral Authority to take a break and collect the soul…” Which meant that there could be tons of infected souls just waiting to be reaped across the world. Any that had died in the past weeks. There wasn’t much that Alyssa could do about them, but this one… “I’ll head out if you’ll give me directions. Leaving the body as is would be asking for trouble. Either the true demon will come for its soul and leave pentagrams lying about or someone might stumble across it and wind up somehow infected themselves.”

“Alone?” His eyes shot to Izsha as he clamped his jaw in a grimace. “I—”

“It’s fine. Stay here with Izsha. Fela has been wanting to get out of the city anyway. I think she liked Lyria a whole lot more if only because people were less likely to approach her on the streets.”

“You’ll be alright with just the two of you?”

“Yeah. Neither of us are strangers to demonic infection or activity. And it is already dead. If things turn sour, we’ll run and hide.”

“It was only about twenty minutes out. By draken,” he added, looking around at the few he had taken with him. Dasca and Ensou were flopped over in some of the larger piles of hay and straw. Draken didn’t sweat. They just didn’t have the glands for it. Even still, they looked fairly worn out. Given how Izsha ran for practically a whole day when they fled Illuna, they could probably keep going for quite some time, but Brakkt’s eyes moved past them and on to Musca.

“I’ll walk,” Alyssa quickly said, noticing the direction of his gaze. Maybe she spoke just a little too quickly, but Musca still scared her a little. “I haven’t been doing enough walking since returning anyway.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright… We followed the eastern road until it split. From there…” Brakkt continued, describing in a fairly precise manner exactly where they had left the body. He suggested that Dasca accompany her to help find it, but Alyssa wasn’t too worried. Fela’s nose would be able to sniff the body out as long as they got close enough. In fact, if it had somehow moved or if the true demon took the soul thus keeping Alyssa from detecting it, Fela might be the only one who could accurately find it.

As soon as Brakkt finished, Alyssa sent a Message to the hellhound.

It was only a few short minutes before Fela bounded into the stables, tail wagging and rearing to go.

Twenty minutes by draken stretched out to a good hour by foot. But it wasn’t a bad hour. Fela complained about human children for a good ten minutes. Then she switched topics to human food and how much she enjoyed both the meat and, surprisingly, the milk of cows. Somehow, that led back to human children and how irritatingly innocent they were when they should really be scared of things with sharp teeth and claws.

They made it to the split in the road in fairly good time. It was just a quick twenty minutes more to get to the spot Brakkt had indicated.

Closing her eyes and looking around, Alyssa quickly spotted the corrupt soul. It wasn’t long before Fela smelled it out as well. Her ramblings groaned to a halt as the flames coming from her eyes intensified.

The corpse was lying in the middle of a small grove. It had only been an hour, but the grass around the body was… discolored. Much like how the land was closer to Owlcroft. There wasn’t that overwhelming sensation of despair or fear, but the sky was still on fire. At Owlcroft, the sky becoming as it was removed all despair from the pit. A similar thing might be blotting such feelings out here.

Keeping a careful eye on her surroundings, Alyssa slowly approached with a scythe in hand.

Three steps away, a flash of burning fire lit up the earth near the body. A pentagram was etched into the ground.

When the flash died down, the true demon stood in its place.

It was the same demon. Alyssa was mostly confident of that. But things had changed. The tight black leather outfit was torn and damaged. The scythe’s tip was missing entirely while the blade had clear dents and dings in it. Black hair poked out from holes in the demon’s hat, giving her a frazzled look. But her eye was just as bright and burning as it had been the last time Alyssa saw the demon.

For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Fela, a few steps back, let out a growl as she got lower to the ground, ready to fight or flee as necessary.

The demon swung her scythe directly toward Alyssa.

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