Chapter 4: What they made

Dirt filled my mouth.

At first, none of it made sense. I just lay there, blind and confused, wondering if I’d rolled out of bed by accident. My brain started running interference, tossing up excuses, trying anything to avoid the truth it didn’t really want to face.

Then I tried to sit up. The earth pushed back.

Packed tight, above, below, all sides. Cold and damp and heavy, squeezing my chest, my legs, my arms. I turned my head, and soil slipped into my ear. That’s when I got it. Not in bits and pieces, but all at once.

They’d buried me.

I didn’t move. Just took slow, shallow breaths through my nose and let reality line itself up. The ceremony. Zevran’s face. Selene. Coran’s muffled voice. The figure in my room. The blade, cold first, then burning, and then nothing. Then dark and dirt and waking up in the ground.

Something twisted awake in my chest. Slow at first, then picking up speed, and pretty soon it was past any emotion I could name. I felt it radiate out from my sternum, my fingers curling on their own, nails splitting, stretching. Claws replaced them, black and longer than I’d ever managed in training. The shroud wrapped around me shredded, like it was nothing.

Fire lit up behind my eyes.

It crept forward, slow and relentless, pressure blooming until the dark wasn’t dark anymore. I could see every grain of soil, every root, every stone pressed into place. Even the tiniest things stood out in a silvery relief.

I punched my right arm up through the earth.

The ground fought back, stubborn, packing tighter as I forced through. Pain shot through my left side, the wound tearing open, and a sound, raw and animal, came out of me. Heat caught fire at the mark on my shoulder and rushed down my arm, into my bones, until strength I shouldn’t have had was driving me forward. My hand punched through into cold air.

I grabbed a root just under the surface and hauled myself up.

The forest let go in chunks, first my arm, then my shoulder, then my head. I pressed my cheek to the cool air, breathed deep, and just stayed there a moment, gasping.

Pre-dawn. Grey and thin. Strange trees.

Eventually, I pulled the rest of me out. Collapsed in a carpet of old leaves. My wound bled freely, my whole left side sticky and wet in the chill. Cracked clot gave way, blood soaking into my leathers. I clamped down with both hands, holding tight.

The claws faded away.

I blinked, and the world stopped shining silver.

I checked my belt. Knife? Gone. Pack? Gone. Even the blade in my left boot, gone.

I swallowed that.

Then I got up, shoved everything else out of my head except for east, and started walking.

The poison called roll again by midday.

I was tracing a stream, half-focused, when my legs just gave out. No warning, no build-up, I crashed down onto the rocks, flat. I let the pain run its course, waves washing over with nothing gentle about them. When the tremors stopped, I dragged myself up.

About an hour later, I found bitterroot. I crushed it, mixed it with water, forced the paste down, then chased it with more water. Waited.

When the poison surged back, about four hours later, it was just as vicious.

I stared at the mashed root, realization blooming cold in my chest: someone had made this poison just for me. They knew what I’d reach for. What I’d try. I sat with that for a stretch.

Then I got moving again.