Page 139 of Seer Prophet

And Then

Sunlight flashes overhead, peppered by shadow, then banded by it.

The flickers confuse Loki at first.

He feels far away, distant. Everything is quiet. Inside his head, it is quiet. He floats somewhere, looking down on a body and face he scarcely knows.

Then, some part of him snaps back.

Pain explodes through him, through every nerve ending, every synapse.

It devastates him, blanks his mind.

His head hurts, his back, his side. He groans, feels something wrong with his shoulder. He writhes on slick, muddy ground that won’t allow him purchase.

If he stays here, he will die.

He knows this, in every fiber of his being.

Yet he can’t make his body work.

He feels his skin. He moves muscle and bone… that is something. That is life. The reality of his aliveness brings a whisper of relief, but it’s quickly overshadowed by pain, by the sickness that comes with the pain, the pounding in his head, the bile in his throat. The thick, mechanical motion of shadow and light confuses him, worsening the nausea in his gut.

He lets out a groan, feeling hands on him, hearing the deafening whir of rotors.

Someone grabs hold of him, hoists him up.

The abrupt change, happening so fast, brings a wave of panic.

That panic washes through him, deeper than the shadows can manage, and then––

* * *

––Lokigasps, feeling as if a long breath had gone by.

Not much time.

No time at all, really.

But now there is a ceiling overhead, not simply sky and those dizzying, sickening, whirring blades. He gasps as pain shoots up his leg and his shoulder. He feels hands on him again, but they seem to be acting with purpose.

He recognizes Kalgi’s face, then Illeg’s… that large seer, Rex…

The names come to him, absent of meaning.

They come absent of any context.

He fights to breathe. He feels that moment stretch, lost in a silence that makes his breaths deafening in his own ears. He can still hear that dull heartbeat of blades, thudding through the sky overhead, pulsing and whining under the air, the same air they shove and push into a thick eddy to bring the vessel upward.

His nausea returns. His stomach plummets.

The pain worsens around his head.

He sees Illeg with something in her mouth, a tube of what might be glass or plastic. Her eyes meet his, a grim apology, and then she slams the needle into his leg.

He lets out a shriek of pain and then––

And then…

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