Faylinn
The massive courtyard that once resembled a grey stone sea was absolutely decimated, nearly unrecognizable in its destruction. There were no words in any language that could accurately describe the devastation that was wrought from the battle. I was immediately grateful that I had a way to show Rohak rather than try to rely on pointless descriptions that would never fully encapsulate what I saw.
My boots crunched over loose stone, seemingly loud in the relative quiet of the courtyard. A few Mages and Vessels ambled about, covered in grey dust from head to toe. Some pulled their tunics above their noses in an effort to filter the dust-filled air, while others tied scarves or strips of cloth across their noses and mouths.
I took a deep breath and proceeded to hack loudly as dust settled in my lungs. It was thick and heavy, cloying even, as it stuck to my tongue and throat. I hawked and spit, clearing most of the grittiness from my mouth, but I could still feel a crunch if I clenched my teeth too harshly.
“Much of this has been cleared already,” Talamh said tonelessly as we picked our way over large black stones that could only have fallen from the Academy and splashed through residual puddles. “But there’s obviously more work to do.”
“Why haven’t the boulders been moved or the air cleared?” I asked, pulling my own tunic above my nose and mouth.
Talamh looked down at me with an exasperation I wasn’t used to seeing.
“We lost a significant number of Mages, Rune Master. We’ve been taking on the cleanup efforts in shifts, but we’re all dealing with the psychological effects aswell. Sol is also being extra cautious and stops Mages before they even expel three-quarters of their power.”
“She doesn’t want to risk burning them out,” I mumbled, and Talamh nodded a sharp ‘yes.’
“That’s smart,” I admitted as we neared the edge of the courtyard.
Talamh said nothing, and I took his silence in stride, simply using it to catalog the scope of work left to do. I tried to push some of what I was seeing down the Bond, but it seemed Rohak had blocked it for some reason.
I tamped down the disappointment of the oddity while trying not to take the block personally.
“Where are the bodies?” I asked, surprised at the lack of corpses.
“Solace’s followers were burned where they fell,” Talamh grunted, indicating a rather large scorch mark on the grey stone that was still visible. “Our dead were buried there.” He pointed to the only open expanse in the courtyard between the administrative building and the manor. “There was a small ceremony the day you and the General were found. We marked each person’s resting place as best we could . . .”
It was the most Talamh had ever spoken to me, and I simply let his words tumble. Perhaps he needed to talk—grief was a funny thing, and I knew all too well the feelings that became trapped when you watched a loved one die.
“Is that what you plan to do? With Tine?” I asked softly as we left the courtyard and entered Vespera’s First District. Despite the havoc in the courtyard, the streets here looked relatively untouched. There were a few burned-out storefronts and a collapsed building or two that Talamh and I combed for the dead, but I was shocked by its unscathed nature.
“He’ll be brought back home,” he intoned quietly as he called upon his Earth Magic to move a few stones out of the wreckage of one building. We found three dead in what was once an apartment complex and tagged their bodies for removal, but I was relatively shocked by the lack of death.
That all changed, however, as we neared the city’s gates.
It was clear that, while Solace’s sycophants had some type of restraint as they neared the courtyard, the same could not be said for when they first entered Vespera.
The buildings that framed the gates were obliterated—in some cases, not even stones were left where homes and businesses once stood. The wall itself sported a gaping hole wide enough abreast for a dozen men to pass through—the magical gates that could detect signatures and alert the guards were nowhere to be found.
“This . . . this is what I expected all of Vespera to look like,” I admitted.
My heart fell as I watched men, women, and children comb through the wreckage, searching for loved ones. A small boy sat in an empty plot, eyes vacantand bare legs littered with cuts and scrapes. With a quick word to Talamh, I cautiously approached the boy, kneeling in front of him before gently placing my hand on his knee.
He didn’t even react to my presence, simply continued staring at nothing.
“He lived ’ere in this brothel,” a scratchy, smoke-riddled voice intoned from my right. I turned my head slowly, hand still on the boy’s leg, to see a nearly naked woman leaning against a pile of rubble, lit tobacco roll clutched between two fingers. She lifted it to her chapped lips and took a long drag, igniting the ember with a quietcrackle, before expelling a bitter cloud of smoke.
“What happened?” I asked, thumb soothingly stroking the boy’s leg.
The woman rasped a throaty chuckle before it evolved into a lung-rattling cough.
“Solace, that’s what,” she croaked with a shake of her head. Thin tendrils of greasy, greying brown hair fell from her haphazard ponytail to frame her gaunt and wrinkled face.
“They’re all gone. Blown to nuthin’ by that first blast. No one saw it comin’. One minute we were all out ’ere, laughin’ and drinkin’. The next”—she snapped her fingers for emphasis—“gone. Jus’ like that.”
“How’d he survive?” I asked.
The woman took another drag on her roll before letting it fall to the ground, still lit and smoking.
