Page 29 of Blood Red Woes

Spreading my legs, I drop my hand from the shield and ready myself. The large crow cawks as it swoops down, talons outstretched. I wait until it’s maybe five feet away before reacting; have to beat it before it breaks the shield completely.

Rune’s magic courses through me, the tattoo on my wrist and hand glowing. That glow only grows in intensity, yellow turning to white when I bring both hands to the shield and slam into it with all I have.

It’s like an explosion. The shield surges forward, growing and expanding the farther it gets from me. A chain reaction, one moving in the opposite direction from the birds swooping into me. The force of the sudden push of power catches all of the smaller birds in its path and disintegrates them, and it knocks the larger crow back with a force so hard it can’t catch itself.The large crow is slammed into a nearby house, the stone wall crumbling from the force.

I breathe hard, and by the time the makeshift attack fades away, I feel like I can use a nap.

The large crow squawks as it tries to pull itself from the stone wall.

I walk over to it. I can’t leave it. A deep inhale leaves me as I summon a sharp bolt of magic. Like a lightning bolt, only piercing enough to penetrate skin.

I stop when I stand ten feet away from the big crow, and with a flick of my wrist, I throw it into the giant, crazed bird.

The sound it lets out is swallowed up by the way it turns to ash when it dies, leaving nothing in its wake but the hole its body made in the stone.

Huh. Wonder why they all do that. It has to be something involving the woes. Maybe the woes are the only thing keeping these twisted animals alive, like zombies, shadows of their former selves.

“You made good work of them,” Rune praises me, something which doesn’t happen often. Or, you know, at all.

“I try,” I say, moving to lean on the house near the broken stone. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Rune hums. “Yes, I suppose we make an awfully good team, don’t we?”

I grin, and out of habit, I look around. Not to make sure I’m alone, but because instinctively, I feel like I’m not. I feel like Rune is standing next to me, telling me that while watching me with a mixture of disdain and appreciation.

But he’s not. He’s still just a tattoo on my wrist.

Chapter Nine

After searching the rest of the village, I don’t find anything. I do decide, since the houses still have beds, to bunker there for the night before moving on. I eat some of the smoked meat and refill my flask with water from the river. Honestly, I’m exhausted. Maybe it was that expenditure of magic, or maybe all this traveling is just wearing me down.

Regardless, by the time I crawl onto an old, dusty, abandoned bed, I feel like I can fall asleep.

But I don’t. I lay there, wide awake, and stare at the stone ceiling. “Rune,” I say his name, knowing he’s there but wanting to hear him respond anyway.

“Yes?”

“What do you do when I’m sleeping? Or when we’re not talking?”

“I can’t do much, obviously. I wait. I wait while you’re asleep. And when you’re awake, on the rare occasion you’re not talking, I wait until you need me.”

I roll my eyes at him. Not like he can see it, but whatever. Acting like I talk incessantly. Come on. “You’d be bored out of your mind if I didn’t talk to you,” I tell him, knowing it’s true while also knowing he’s about to argue with me over it.

“Would I? Or would I simply enjoy the silence?”

“You had lots of silence while you were stuck inside that crystal—”

“Soul gem.”

“Whatever. My point is, you had a lot of silence. A lot of being by yourself. Even though it kind of sucks you’re attached to me, doesn’t it, I don’t know, make you a little happy to not be alone anymore?”

“I—” Rune draws out the word like it has more than one syllable, and it strikes me then that maybe he doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he never thought about it. “I don’t know if I can be happy, as you say, without being whole.”

I lift my arm and study the glowing tattoo on my wrist and hand. “Yeah, being without a body must suck shit. I’d go crazy if I was trapped as a tattoo on some random guy’s arm. Do you think your body is still out there somewhere?”

“It’s been a long time. I don’t know. It could be that, when the empresses locked me away, my body simply ceased to exist.”

“So then you might never be whole.”

---