A solid 80%, maybe 85% of the tension I was feeling drained out of me in an instant. I sighed the deepest, most mentally-exhausted sigh of my life, feeling like I’d aged 10 years in a day. I don’t care that even then I’d only be in my mid-20s, I still felt too old for this shit. I practically fell backwards, lying on my backpack and letting my head flop down over it. I didn’t have the energy to hold my neck up, so I just lay there, staring upside-down at the plains around us.
Even now, we weren’t out of the metaphorical woods. We were very much out of the literal woods – I couldn’t see a single tree anywhere, and in some ways that can be a whole problem of its own. Not the problem right now though.
Even though Alf was alive and breathing, he was still, in a word, fucked. Whatever those things had done to him was pretty severe. When I eventually mustered the strength to sit up and take a proper look at him, I gasped audibly. He was barely recognisable. His skin was white as a sheet, and seemed as thin and translucent as rice paper, like it would crumble at a touch. It was stretched across his bones, his muscles apparently having atrophied in seconds as they got him. The life had been squeezed from him like water from a sponge, leaving him weak and gaunt. The cold, draining touch they’d attacked him with had reached every organ except his heart, and that had been hanging on by a thread.
He’d certainly have expired in seconds if not for Tove, who’d performed the equivalent of magical CPR. She’d poured enough life back into him that his heart could keep going, eventually kickstarting the rest of his organs. It had been touch-and-go, but he was alive and that's what mattered.
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Oh, he also had a couple of broken bones. His left arm was very definitely snapped somewhere, and if his shallow breathing was anything to go by, he probably had a couple of cracked ribs at least. Frankly, I reckon he’d been afflicted with sudden-onset temporary osteoporosis when he’d been weakened by the shadows, but the actual damage definitely came from my rescue effort. Being right next to the blast, it would definitely have knocked him around good and proper. Better out here and hurting than in there and dead though. The fact he was still unconscious was probably for the best though. It’d spare him the pain for now at any rate.
Alf had it the worst, but none of us were feeling great. Those of us who were still conscious were also tired in a whole bunch of ways. Physically, mentally, and magically in each of our cases; Nalfis and I having expended pretty much all we could as we ran, and Tove having used the rest of hers on Alf. There were probably plans we should be making, and problems we should discuss, a fire to light, and a whole bunch of important things that needed done, but we didn’t have it in us to do any of that.
/-/
When I woke up, the low, golden light across the plains told me it was either dawn or dusk. I had no way of knowing which though, since I didn’t have my bearings, and I had no idea how long I’d slept.
The frowning face staring directly into my eyes also told me that we’d been approached while we were asleep. Lots of you have probably experienced the shock of waking up to someone right in front of you, and it’s terrifying. I snapped bolt-upright and opened my mouth to scream, trying to scramble backwards as my brain kicked in and yelled ‘DANGER’ at me. Thanks brain, I know.
The moving managed to cut off the screaming before it could even really begin. It reminded me that I was bruised and sore everywhere, and so the hiss of pain mingled with the start of the scream, so that the noise I made was more of a strangled, rattling “aaachchchch” sound, right at the back of my throat. I don’t know if it’s more embarrassing to scream in fright, or try to scream and fail, but either way I was scared and in pain. Yay for me.
