Echoes of the Achaeans sneak peak! Coming soon after a battle near you!
CW: blood, injuries, fainting.
She had seen him injured before.
Bruises blooming beneath skin. Shallow cuts. Blood smeared and drying at the edges of linen. Things that could be washed. Bound. Forgotten.
This is not that.
He enters with men at his shoulders.
Not supporting, but close. Too close.
She stays where she is. She will not rush. She will not crowd him like a child startled by thunder.
The armor comes away slowly.
It sticks. Squelches.
The sound it makes— bronze peeling from blood-wet cloth— is sickening. Wrong.
And there it is.
A puncture beneath his ribs. Clean through armor.
Her mind accepts it immediately. Her body does not.
Heat slams into her face, bright and suffocating. Her ears burn. Her scalp prickles. The hut feels sealed, airless.
She keeps her gaze steady. Strong. She can be strong.
The wound wells. Not smeared. Not dried.
Welling.
Dark red pushes outward in slow pulses, thick and alive. It gathers and spills, slick and purposeful down the plane of his abdomen.
She stares a heartbeat too long.
The smell reaches her fully: Copper, salt and something opened. Something raw. The heat vanishes.
Cold pours into her limbs as if a door has opened beneath her ribs. Her fingers tingle sharply. Pins and needles creep across her palms. Her vision brightens too much, then dims.
She knows this.
Her pulse feels heavy. Dragging. Too slow and too loud all at once.
No. Shit. Not now.
She inhales carefully through her nose.
‘Regulate,’ she tells herself. She has done this before. A split lip. A butchered deer. Her own blood beading from a cut.
‘Sit before you fall.’ She locks her knees.
For a moment, she believes she can endure it.
One of the aides presses cloth to the wound. It darkens instantly.
She swallows. Her stomach flips hard enough to hurt. Her scalp burns.
She presses her hand, without thinking, to her own ribs. As if checking. As if she might find herself opened too.
‘Childish.’ The word lands sharp inside her.
‘If you had been born here,’ she thinks wildly, ‘you would not falter at the sight of this. Women here wash their sons’ bodies after battle.’
‘You cannot even remain standing.’
The buzzing begins in her ears, a sound thin and metallic. The edges of the room soften. Lamplight blooms into halos.
Her heart does not slow.
It sinks.
Each beat roaring in her ears.
She can feel surrender approaching. She knows it well, that awful, persuasive softness that says ‘lie down, it will be easier.’
No. Not in front of them.
Not in front of him.
She takes one careful step back. No one looks.
Good.
Another. And another.
Her hands tremble now, subtle but undeniable. She folds them together to hide it.
The wound pulses again. The aides murmur.
His voice cuts through them: Steady, irritated, alive.
She clings to that sound. Then the gray threads inward across her vision.
Too fast.
She cannot slow her heart. She cannot stop the cold sweat breaking along her spine.
She knows the exact moment it tips.
She turns, picture of composure and walks as though to fetch water. She makes it beyond the partition.
Just.
The ringing crescendos. Her sight narrows to a tightening oval. Tiny white sparks skitter across it like distant stars.
She reaches for the wooden support beam and misses.
Fine. Sit.
She sinks before gravity can claim her. Her skirts bunching, palms braced uselessly against earth. Down. Down.
The cool floor presses against her cheek.
Everything goes quiet.
🏹🦉🕊️🌷
It returns in fragments.
Not thought, but sensation.
The dirt is hard beneath her hip. Her cheek is cold. Something rough presses against her palm.
There is a sound. It’s low and indistinct, like voices heard through water.
Her ears ring. Not loudly. Just a thin, needling whine that seems to live inside her skull.
She keeps her eyes closed. Moving feels dangerous.
Memory comes slowly. Not as narrative. As image.
Bronze split open. Red.
The viscous drip.
She inhales too sharply and the world tilts again. Nausea rolls through her, weaker now but humiliating in its persistence.
Stay down. She listens.
Voices separate themselves gradually. One lower than the rest. Even. Controlled.
Elora has an illness called Wyvern Fever which is caused from her being around Wyverns too much. It makes her act erratic sometimes when she's hungry and she becomes carnivorous✨
