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Everythingsnappedshut.
Or zipped shut. Like a latex suit.
Ack!I flailed.
Auryn’s hands reached for me. His touch burned. Magic snapped and seared up my arms and across my back. “Helena.Helena.”
The name was a corset andsqueezed.
Soft, cool hands closed on my flailing arm. “Little one.” Dekka’s hands gently gripping my other forearm. “Let it pass.”
Her hands held my arm, but other hands,insideme, pressed on my soul.
The strange jumble of sensations dispersed.
Things must be dire ifDekkawas at my bedside.
Dekka withdrew her touch, and Auryn’s fingertips moved at my temple. His touch was starlight. Akoni and Keon approached the bed. But almost right away, A’ka appeared with one of her doctors and shoo’d everyone out of the room.
By the time A’ka got the goo drained from the bed, toweled me off, and I was generally animated again, the headache and weird corset feeling had passed. A’ka had me sit on a chair and handed me some tea to sip.
“What do you remember?” she asked.
“What time is it? What day is it?”
She told me: six days from when I’d gone inside K’Dol.
A few strands of A’ka’s red hair escaped her tidy braid. She had little clusters of earrings all along the curve of her very-human ears, an ornate arrangement of cuffs and tiny chains and equally tiny bells and bits of colorful glass. They tinked very softly with her movements. “They brought you here when they couldn’t wake you. As far as can be told, you have been, essentially, asleep.”
“Asleep?” I’d beendozingwhile the world had been trying to end and evenDekkahad been fretting?
A’ka tilted her head. “Your brain activity has alternated between patterns that, more or less, match deep sleep with periods of REM, although those patterns are a mix of both human and dragon patterns, even though your form has remained human. Your brain scans also showed significant neural activity, and your magic was active. Lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, if you will.”
The grimoire. My brain must have been overwhelmed with doing inventory of the grimoire. A distant thread of knowledge worked its way up through my brain, like a memory, butnota memory. Something about a Chaos dragon went into a torpor-like state after consume-forging a grimoire. Just a little scrap of information.
She did not ask what I’d been doing. “How do you feel?”
“Fine, I think. Confused. Am I all here?” I twisted my leg around. Ugly scar on my calf from Auryn’s venom rotting through me? Still there. Toenails, toes, kneecaps, hair, teeth, eyeballs…
“Yes.”
“And the portal is…”
“Gone.” She took my teacup.
I tucked my hands between my knees. “I didn’t mean to.”
A’ka gave me a gentle smile. “Of course you didn’t. And no one knows but the Wyrms. There’s no reason to tell anyone else. Topside is closed, and access to that channel and the portal has always been restricted. Additionally, the air supply infrastructure in the tunnel was damaged. No one is going there.”
Damaged? “I… I killed all the plants. Along with whatever else I did.”
A’ka set the teacup aside. “Helena, my brother never had the courage to push himself. He never had the courage to accept responsibility for whatmighthappen. Mistakes happen. And sometimes those mistakes cause damage, and sometimes they cause injuries, and sometimes they cost lives. But sometimes the alternative—doing nothing—is no better, and sometimes it is worse. Sometimes we do not get to choose a good outcome, but just the least terrible one. And it is an unfair and terrible responsibility to find ourselves holdingthatpower in our hands.”
Tears ran down my cheeks. Iwasn’tgoing to cry.
A’ka’s gentle voice continued. “There is a lesson my teacher imparted to myself and to Dekka when we were training together. It’s a lesson for all Ethereals. When you push, and when you court peril, you ask yourselfwho.”
Some tears fell off my chin onto my hands when I turned back to her. “Who? Not why?”
