91 FROST 120
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All things considered, this was not a bad place to be.
The woman suspected that she was steadily overstaying her welcome. Slowly, but surely, she must have been. It wasn’t like she could do anything to soften her presence, either. She took up space that could have gone to another tenant. Scholars of some sort trying to pry into the secrets of the Warrens. Secrets she didn’t think ought to be explored unless one had a wish to kiss Death full on the mouth. Entering the Warrens required the chaotic, deranged anticipation of someone who didn’t know any better or simply having no choice in the matter at all. She would have preferred to rot in a cell until the end of her sentence, but such had not been her lot. And now, she laid her head to rest on a decent enough bed and breathed through barely working lungs and took up space.
She did, of course, protest even though her body physically fell through her arguments of being okay. That she had a place to stay was even more out of the question when they glanced down at the bracers. Difficult things to remove. But that was beside the point.
Isabel was kind. Perhaps too kind. She tried to be understanding. She tried; really, she did. But there would always be a limit to how much someone could take the things the woman did. Isabel had spent several evenings talking in hushed tones about the things the ex-legionnaire had done in the mornings. How she woke screaming. How she stared at the stops on the walls unblinkingly, broke out into shudders that turned to convulsions. The moments of being unsure if they’d let a woman into their home, or something else. But most of all, she would always come back to the talking.
When Jieun had first visited her in her cell, their conversations were abrupt. Admittedly, it was all one-sided. The ghost in her head speaking as if she’d never died. And yet, she bore the image of her death well. The dwindling spark of life that the woman had witnessed while she held the other through her last, gurgling breath. The blood-splattered skin and clothes. She’d thought the spectre a creature summoned to torment her, another step taken to enforce the story of her guilt. But time had changed them and she realized that the other had been a saving grace. Her last grasp at sanity.
But no one else saw it that way. Isabel did not see it that way. She certainly didn’t see the croaking spells as any better. Perhaps it was that the woman was cognizant for the talking that unsettled her more than those. Her intuition, though, was spot on.
There was nothing to settle the soul about the woman anymore.
The days of her soothing any hearts were long gone. The honeyed voice she’d had before had been shredded by her screaming, waking terrors. The same that rang through the small house in this instance. She had not known when she’d fallen asleep but she awoke to the immense pain of her ankle being re-sprained. Or sprained worse. The healing had been slow, even with a short visit from a physician that she didn’t trust to hold that title. The splint he’d given her had been replaced by bandages only two days prior — and yet there she was at the landing of the stairs, clutching her ankle.
Her thoughts tangled together like twine shoved into a pocket. How had she even gotten to the stairs? The last place she remembered being was in the kitchen. A humble thing, with a little stove and a dining table and chairs to sit around the table. They’d splurged on the stove, Matthias had told her, so proudly. The tenants that used the upper rooms of the house used it on occasion, but were otherwise treated to dinner at Isabel’s hands. She liked taking in strays.
She may have taken in the wrong kind of stray now.
The woman rushed out of the kitchen to hover over her, horror draining the color from her skin. The ex-legionnaire felt warmth seep through her fingers — she was bleeding. This wasn’t just a sprain. The realization sent a fresh wave of pain through her body, as if remembered that this was supposed to hurt as much as it did. It felt like her leg had been dipped in flames and salted with venom and more. She sucked in a breath, as if to scream, only to curl further in on herself around the injured leg.
“We have to set it again.” There was a tremble to the woman’s voice, but not a stutter to the words. Not quite experienced, but able to remain calm in a situation like this. If she were thinking straight, the woman would have envied her composure. But she wasn’t.
She could just barely muffle the screams that tore through her throat with her shirt and the closed space of her frail body. A body that had turned brittle enough to break with a simple fall.
Are you sure you fell?
Jieun stood above her, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The ghost watched on sadly as the woman suffered and Isabel fretted over her. The ex-legionnaire’s eyes widened, body setting a new rhythm to its trembling. Her fingers brushed up against her own bone and her attention was ripped away from the ghost in her mind. Turned instead to her worsened injury by the pain of it.
Her gaze found Isabel, and maybe she shouldn’t have looked. The other woman was more than sickened by what she was attempting to fix. Muted instructions were given as she forced herself to keep her eyes trained on the ex-legionnaire’s ankle. Ripped cloth — from her dress?? — was pressed to the wound to keep it from bleeding. Red bloomed against the dark fabric in seconds, the cloth drinking up her blood without hesitation. The members of the Dead Legion she had been paired with wouldn’t have ever done something like this. No; they would have let her bleed out. Or, better yet: she would have become fodder for the creatures in the Warrens.
A shudder rippled through her at the memory, the image of sacrifices and wasted breath on her mind. She wondered if her companion in survivor’s remorse could share even that. Or had the Warrens claimed her? She blinked, stared down at the blood seeping into the wood. So much blood. All from something like a broken ankle.
But something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Isa—” The other’s name died in the woman’s throat.
The Wraiths were dastardly things, indeed. Conniving creatures of minimal wit that used it when the opportunity struck. A controlled sort of impulsiveness that capitalized on the vulnerable. Had it been something that the woman had done that had made it possible? A move she had made, a word she had spoken? It struck her, then, that somewhere in the pain — she’d responded to Jieun. The attempt to stare at anything other than the wild eyes that turned to follow the source of an imaginary voice; she’d heard it. Perhaps it had been difficult to overlook with such close proximity.
Her limbs wouldn’t move. She suspected Isabel was experiencing the same thing. That need to move, to run, to get away but the inability to make your body move the way you want to. Or it would be too slow, like in a dream. The hazy idea of movement numbed by the abject terror that coursed through your veins. She felt as if her blood had iced over, and taken to her body in the process. Held in place by the terror of the cold mist creeping from her lips before the convulsion started.
The woman’s head hit the floor with a force that surely did more damage than she would have liked. She was a puppet on tangled strings Her arms jerked back, eyes rolling as they tried to find Isabel with the new position the rest of her had taken. This might well have been a scene out of a copper dreadful that she and Jieun used to snicker at when they were younger. Such fantastical things they’d seem, so far removed from them. Because why would she have ever found herself so close to the pits of a hell like the Warrens?
But what terrified her more was the feeling that came as the wraith pulled itself from the cocoon of her body. The creature had been waiting for this. The creeping tendril of its being slipped from her lips like the sweet words of a song — and found their way to Isabel. A fresh dusting of terror like an evening snowfall had taken her. Still locked in place, no way to avoid the inevitable. The unfortunate.
The Wraith tried her on like a new coat. Wore her bones like a novelty shawl lined with the trappings of personage. A shuddered breath filled the silence, chased by the ghastly echo of distant groaning as the woman’s eyes rolled back and her body slumped forward.
All things considered, this was not a bad place to be.
The woman suspected that she was steadily overstaying her welcome. Slowly, but surely, she must have been. It wasn’t like she could do anything to soften her presence, either. She took up space that could have gone to another tenant. Scholars of some sort trying to pry into the secrets of the Warrens. Secrets she didn’t think ought to be explored unless one had a wish to kiss Death full on the mouth. Entering the Warrens required the chaotic, deranged anticipation of someone who didn’t know any better or simply having no choice in the matter at all. She would have preferred to rot in a cell until the end of her sentence, but such had not been her lot. And now, she laid her head to rest on a decent enough bed and breathed through barely working lungs and took up space.
She did, of course, protest even though her body physically fell through her arguments of being okay. That she had a place to stay was even more out of the question when they glanced down at the bracers. Difficult things to remove. But that was beside the point.
Isabel was kind. Perhaps too kind. She tried to be understanding. She tried; really, she did. But there would always be a limit to how much someone could take the things the woman did. Isabel had spent several evenings talking in hushed tones about the things the ex-legionnaire had done in the mornings. How she woke screaming. How she stared at the stops on the walls unblinkingly, broke out into shudders that turned to convulsions. The moments of being unsure if they’d let a woman into their home, or something else. But most of all, she would always come back to the talking.
When Jieun had first visited her in her cell, their conversations were abrupt. Admittedly, it was all one-sided. The ghost in her head speaking as if she’d never died. And yet, she bore the image of her death well. The dwindling spark of life that the woman had witnessed while she held the other through her last, gurgling breath. The blood-splattered skin and clothes. She’d thought the spectre a creature summoned to torment her, another step taken to enforce the story of her guilt. But time had changed them and she realized that the other had been a saving grace. Her last grasp at sanity.
But no one else saw it that way. Isabel did not see it that way. She certainly didn’t see the croaking spells as any better. Perhaps it was that the woman was cognizant for the talking that unsettled her more than those. Her intuition, though, was spot on.
There was nothing to settle the soul about the woman anymore.
The days of her soothing any hearts were long gone. The honeyed voice she’d had before had been shredded by her screaming, waking terrors. The same that rang through the small house in this instance. She had not known when she’d fallen asleep but she awoke to the immense pain of her ankle being re-sprained. Or sprained worse. The healing had been slow, even with a short visit from a physician that she didn’t trust to hold that title. The splint he’d given her had been replaced by bandages only two days prior — and yet there she was at the landing of the stairs, clutching her ankle.
Her thoughts tangled together like twine shoved into a pocket. How had she even gotten to the stairs? The last place she remembered being was in the kitchen. A humble thing, with a little stove and a dining table and chairs to sit around the table. They’d splurged on the stove, Matthias had told her, so proudly. The tenants that used the upper rooms of the house used it on occasion, but were otherwise treated to dinner at Isabel’s hands. She liked taking in strays.
She may have taken in the wrong kind of stray now.
The woman rushed out of the kitchen to hover over her, horror draining the color from her skin. The ex-legionnaire felt warmth seep through her fingers — she was bleeding. This wasn’t just a sprain. The realization sent a fresh wave of pain through her body, as if remembered that this was supposed to hurt as much as it did. It felt like her leg had been dipped in flames and salted with venom and more. She sucked in a breath, as if to scream, only to curl further in on herself around the injured leg.
“We have to set it again.” There was a tremble to the woman’s voice, but not a stutter to the words. Not quite experienced, but able to remain calm in a situation like this. If she were thinking straight, the woman would have envied her composure. But she wasn’t.
She could just barely muffle the screams that tore through her throat with her shirt and the closed space of her frail body. A body that had turned brittle enough to break with a simple fall.
Are you sure you fell?
Jieun stood above her, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The ghost watched on sadly as the woman suffered and Isabel fretted over her. The ex-legionnaire’s eyes widened, body setting a new rhythm to its trembling. Her fingers brushed up against her own bone and her attention was ripped away from the ghost in her mind. Turned instead to her worsened injury by the pain of it.
Her gaze found Isabel, and maybe she shouldn’t have looked. The other woman was more than sickened by what she was attempting to fix. Muted instructions were given as she forced herself to keep her eyes trained on the ex-legionnaire’s ankle. Ripped cloth — from her dress?? — was pressed to the wound to keep it from bleeding. Red bloomed against the dark fabric in seconds, the cloth drinking up her blood without hesitation. The members of the Dead Legion she had been paired with wouldn’t have ever done something like this. No; they would have let her bleed out. Or, better yet: she would have become fodder for the creatures in the Warrens.
A shudder rippled through her at the memory, the image of sacrifices and wasted breath on her mind. She wondered if her companion in survivor’s remorse could share even that. Or had the Warrens claimed her? She blinked, stared down at the blood seeping into the wood. So much blood. All from something like a broken ankle.
But something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Isa—” The other’s name died in the woman’s throat.
The Wraiths were dastardly things, indeed. Conniving creatures of minimal wit that used it when the opportunity struck. A controlled sort of impulsiveness that capitalized on the vulnerable. Had it been something that the woman had done that had made it possible? A move she had made, a word she had spoken? It struck her, then, that somewhere in the pain — she’d responded to Jieun. The attempt to stare at anything other than the wild eyes that turned to follow the source of an imaginary voice; she’d heard it. Perhaps it had been difficult to overlook with such close proximity.
Her limbs wouldn’t move. She suspected Isabel was experiencing the same thing. That need to move, to run, to get away but the inability to make your body move the way you want to. Or it would be too slow, like in a dream. The hazy idea of movement numbed by the abject terror that coursed through your veins. She felt as if her blood had iced over, and taken to her body in the process. Held in place by the terror of the cold mist creeping from her lips before the convulsion started.
The woman’s head hit the floor with a force that surely did more damage than she would have liked. She was a puppet on tangled strings Her arms jerked back, eyes rolling as they tried to find Isabel with the new position the rest of her had taken. This might well have been a scene out of a copper dreadful that she and Jieun used to snicker at when they were younger. Such fantastical things they’d seem, so far removed from them. Because why would she have ever found herself so close to the pits of a hell like the Warrens?
But what terrified her more was the feeling that came as the wraith pulled itself from the cocoon of her body. The creature had been waiting for this. The creeping tendril of its being slipped from her lips like the sweet words of a song — and found their way to Isabel. A fresh dusting of terror like an evening snowfall had taken her. Still locked in place, no way to avoid the inevitable. The unfortunate.
The Wraith tried her on like a new coat. Wore her bones like a novelty shawl lined with the trappings of personage. A shuddered breath filled the silence, chased by the ghastly echo of distant groaning as the woman’s eyes rolled back and her body slumped forward.
