Strength
Rionan was thrashing so hard in the bed next to Alianna that he nearly sent her to the ground.
Alianna sprang upwards in bed, her breathing hitched in fright, scanning in the dark for the unseen threat.
She could see nothing.
Hear nothing, except Rionan’s groans.
She wasn’t sure what time it was, or how long they’d been asleep.
But now, she could feel him trembling beside her, his neck straining against something she could not see.
“Rionan?” Alianna shouted, shooting into a kneeling position and shaking his shoulders. He tossed and turned violently, almost pushing her off of him, unresponsive to her interventions.
“Rionan, can you hear me? Rionan!” she shouted, shaking him harder. He hissed out an anguished sound. The sound was one of nothing other than torture and pain.
Alianna had no idea what was going on or what to do.
He continued to fight an invisible force, his body convulsing and writhing on the bed like a male being put through something excruciating. There was nothing Alianna could do to rouse him from this, no matter how hard she tried shaking him, how loudly she shouted his name.
“Thallax!” she shouted, still leaning over Rionan in the bed. She heard no movement around their tent, and remembered the sound shield.
Leaping from their bed as fast as she could, Alianna threw a blanket around herself and ran out of the tent into the night.
“Thallax!” she called out into the darkness, her feet flying across the dirt path as she wound in and out of tents. She could hear movement amongst the tents that she passed, voices groggy.
“Ulreah!”
Alianna raced towards the dying embers of campfires, not knowing where she was running, only that she needed to find Rionan’s friends. As she made to run around the tent on her left, she found herself colliding with a hulking figure in the dark, slamming into a body made of granite. Alianna let out a scream as she brought her fist up instinctively, the other hand clutching the blanket around her body, and sent the fist flying towards the unseen person.
They intercepted her punch, catching her hand in mid-air with a large, warm hand.
“Ali,” came a familiar voice. “It’s me. It’s Thallax.”
Thallax panted as if he had been running towards her, and she realised that he was shirtless. She stepped back swiftly, realising he must have been asleep and raced towards the source of the commotion.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice full of concern.
“It’s Rionan.” She grabbed his arm, and pulled him back towards her tent.
***************
Alianna was led to a quiet tent by Ulreah so that she could dress herself. Rionan had woken up about twenty minutes later. Absolutely nothing any of them did could rouse him from the night terror that consumed him so badly. Even the short pulses of electrical energy into his skin by Ulreah did nothing, other than make his muscles strain as he gritted his teeth.
She had refused to leave when he had awoken, despite her having nothing but a blanket wrapped around her, and despite the fact that Thallax and Ulreah both stood in their tent with them, averting their eyes from Alianna; out of respect for her or to avoid an explosive reaction from Rionan, she did not know.
They didn’t blanch at Rionan’s nakedness and simply threw a stray blanket over his lower half to preserve some of his modesty.
When Rionan had awoken, his eyes were wild, frantic, and his hands were balled into fists, clenching the sheets beneath him. He panted, a bead of sweat sliding down his forehead, as he met the eyes of his friends. Slowly, his face unknotted, his grip on the bedding loosened, and he realised that whatever pained him so greatly in his sleep had now passed.
When Alianna returned to the tent, Rionan was sitting, now clothed, with Thallax and Ulreah. Korva had been summoned to the tent, sleep gilding his eyes. From beneath heavy lids, he studied Rionan, while Thallax slowly moved a single hand through the air around Rionan’s face. Alianna could feel the familiar sensation of power pulsing through the air, while Thallax examined him in a way that she had not yet seen.
Rionan’s face was drawn, stony, and he looked paler than usual. When she stood behind Thallax, Rionan’s eyes remained fixed on the floor.
“What’s he doing?” Alianna whispered to Ulreah, who stood beside her, arms crossed, face hard with concern.
“He’s inspecting his feelings and emotions – both conscious and subconscious. Rionan permitted it, of course. We need to work out exactly what has caused this…occurrence. Has this happened to him before?”
