Morwyn danced in the fragile space between wakefulness and sleep for what seemed an eternity. In the rare lucid moments when she was awake, the pain that wracked her body made her wish for either death or the sweet relief of unconsciousness. She still felt the pain in her dreams but it was dull, distant pain, a pain in her soul, not the ache of cracked bones and torn flesh.
Her dreams were fragmented, indistinct impressions rather than sensible narratives that she could follow. A face here, a smile there. A pair of hands as they wove a shirt or sharpened a tool. Her own hands lifting a bottle to her lips. The pages of a book obscured by shadows in the light of a weak candle that fought against the encroaching night.
She was dimly aware that she was still alive and, though time held no meaning for her, she could feel her body weakening. Every now and then she would startle awake unable to breathe from the crushing pain in her chest but could now feel the gentle hands that soothed her, restrained her movement, opened her mouth to drip tinctures under her tongue that sent her back into the soothing darkness of sleep. In those moments of semi-consciousness she was aware of jostling movements that made her battered body scream in protest before the medicine banished all her cares.
Morwyn awoke as she'd done so many times before with a moan of pain, her blurred eyes unable to make anything out in the dim light that filtered through the canvas of the tent above. Her throat was as parched as old bones and when she attempted to cough all that came out was a dry grunt that sent a stabbing pain through the left side of her chest. The soft hands that saw to her every need held a bowl close to her face and carefully spooned cool water between her cracked lips. Morwyn rejoiced as the liquid soothed her mouth but it threw her into another fit of coughing, this time more violent. The pain in her chest exploded to life and she gasped feebly for air but couldn't seem to get enough.
“Morwyn, can you hear me? Are you with me right now?” Hazel's ragged whisper was like a rope thrown to one who was drowning. Morwyn clutched onto it and struggled mightily to pull herself out of the haze of sedatives and pain. With a great effort she managed to raise her right hand a few inches off the cot. Hazel immediately dropped the bowl of water and clutched Morwyn's hand tightly to her chest, her other hand probing painfully against Morwyn's left side. She looked quickly down to Morwyn's mouth and her eyes grew wide.
“The scroll. We need the scroll, quickly! Dammit, she's breathing blood again. The rib isn't set, she must've driven it back into her lung with the coughing.”
“Are you certain?” someone replied in an even tone. “She's barely coherent and I've seen a scroll fail under pressure before. There are only a handful-”
“I don't care if we have to use every single one of them!” Hazel shouted abruptly, her voice breaking with emotion. When Morwyn flinched away from the sudden noise Hazel settled herself down with a few rapid breaths before she continued. “I won't lose her like this. We have to try! They're useless to the rest of us anyway and I am at my wit's end. Nothing else has worked!”
Morwyn tried and failed to blink away the tears of pain that blurred her vision, so she screwed her eyes tightly shut and turned her head slowly to one side to push them out. Even that small movement made it feel like her spine was being hammered on a blacksmith's anvil. She heard the shuffling of paper and muttered curses, and when she finally managed to open her eyes again she saw a piece of unfurled parchment held above her face in Hazel's unsteady hands.
“Please,” the halfling begged as tears fell freely down her cheeks. “Please, Morwyn. I've done all I can but... but it isn't enough. I need you to try.”
Morwyn struggled to draw breath and coughed several more times as she choked on her own saliva. This time she could taste the blood in her mouth and the left side of her chest was on fire. Whoever was assisting Hazel turned her head aside with a firm touch to let the bloody drool drain from her mouth as she fought for air. The darkness threatened to draw her back into its comforting embrace, but the snapping of fingers next to her ear brought her back to the agony of the present.
“Come on, you can do it,” the second voice encouraged. She realized it must be Eronir. His tone was steady, particularly in comparison to Hazel's. “I'll read the words just like I did before so you don't have to. Just follow along and do whatever else it is you do to make these things work.”
Morwyn screwed her eyes shut against the pain and nodded while drawing shallow breaths through her nose. She couldn't get a full breath and the left side of her chest didn't rise. It felt heavy and she knew that it had to be filling with blood.
Eronir began to read from the scroll and Morwyn struggled to follow along, fighting to make each word count. The incantation was only half of it. She had to reach out and harness the magic contained within the words or it was no different than reading a letter. She grasped feebly for the magic but it was just out of her reach and felt slippery and indistinct. The opportunity was slipping away. If she didn't gain control before the incantation ended, it would be too late. She had to bridge the gap, to force the magic into her mind, to channel it through her...
The same way she channeled the frost.
A fresh wave of blood flooded into Morwyn's throat and she could no longer speak as it filled her mouth and dribbled down her cheek. Hazel began to panic and shout but Eronir kept on reading, his voice ever steady. The words themselves faded into the background as Morwyn focused on the well of power within her. Rather than releasing her hold on her own power, she called out to the healing magic imbued into the scroll, beckoned it to join with her own so she could redirect it. She could feel it edge toward her, but didn't heed her the way she needed it to. Her head swam as each passing second without air allowed the darkness at the edge of her vision to creep ever further.
With a desperate surge, she reached out with her mind and ripped the magic free from the scroll by force. She felt it try to scatter and dissipate back into the universe as the scroll violently burst and sent scraps of parchment flying throughout the tent accompanied by startled shouts from Hazel and Eronir as they leapt back in surprise.
She couldn't let the magic escape or she knew she would die.
Morwyn opened the well of power within but rather than channeling the frost outward, she attempted to do the reverse and draw the soft golden light of the scroll's magic within herself. Both sides of the struggle tried to deny her control. The blue frost fought to escape its bounds and the golden healing magic fought to avoid containment. Her body twitched and seized as she attempted to gain control over the opposing forces.
She wouldn't let this be the end. No matter how much her pain made her wish for death, to give in and allow the darkness to consume her, she would not heed the siren call. Morwyn put everything she had left into her mental effort and yanked the golden light within the well, slamming the barrier closed behind it. The two magics were like oil and water inside their containment, pushing away from each other and unable to mix for a time, but eventually settled into an equilibrium.
Morwyn was nearly blind from lack of air by the time she'd wrestled control of the new magic within her, but she was able to heave her right shoulder and flop her right arm across her bandaged, sweat-slicked chest and channel the golden light back out from her core, down her arm, and into the rest of her broken body. The frost tried to force its way through as well but she held it in check with an ironclad mind, her grasp on the old magic far more intuitive than that over the new.
The familiar warmth of healing magic coursed through her in a tidal wave, soothing the excruciating pain to a dull throb as it worked through her bones, flesh, and organs. She felt every pop and crack as her broken ribs reattached, the bones of her forearm fused back together, and her twisted spine rearranged itself properly. The blood within her lungs melted back into her veins as her furiously pounding heart drove it through freshly spliced veins. For a terrifying heartbeat she still couldn't draw breath. Her eyes shot open and she gestured wildly with her right hand at her chest.
Hazel made a mad rush to her side and slammed the heel of her palm on Morwyn's abdomen just below her sternum. She gasped and sputtered and spit out blood as she was finally able to pull in the first crucial breath after her ordeal. Morwyn's head swam with euphoria as the air filled her chest. She couldn't get enough of it and laid her exhausted head back down on the pillow. She was dimly aware of a hushed conversation between her companions but was too focused on her breathing to pay it much mind. She heard Eronir rise to leave but Morwyn only caught the movement of the tent flap close behind him when her eyes finally fluttered open.
“Welcome back,” Hazel said, her voice low and hoarse. Morwyn groaned and pushed herself into a sitting position as her throbbing head began to clear. Her entire body ached fiercely but it was nothing compared to the stabbing, shooting pain from moments before. She accepted the fresh cup of water that Hazel held out for her and swished some in her mouth, spitting the bloody water onto the flattened grass beside the cot before drinking deeply. When she'd drained the cup she set it down gently on one of the crates stacked nearby. She turned to thank Hazel but what she saw in the halfling's face made her blood turn to ice.
There was no relief in Hazel's expression. Her eyes were rimmed red from crying and dark circles beneath them denoted a significant lack of sleep. Her mouth was set in a hard line but one corner twitched as she fought to restrain emotion. She said nothing as she retrieved a damp cloth from a nearby bucket and set about cleaning the blood from Morwyn's face in silence.
“Hazel...”
The halfling finished wiping the blood from her chin and neck and met Morwyn's eyes with a stony glare that made the words die in her throat.
“Don't you dare ask what's wrong,” Hazel hissed. “If you have to ask, I'm going to lose what's left of my mind.”
Morwyn held her breath for a long moment then bowed her head, the bloody strands of her loose hair hiding her face. Her pulse had finally slowed after her brush with death but now it began to rise in a different sort of panic.
“Hazel, I... I got in over my head. I'm sorry.”
The halfling yanked out the dark green ribbon with which she held up her red curls, tugged her wild mane back into a smooth ponytail, and tied it up once again. She scooped a handful of water from the bucket and splashed it onto her face with a shiver. Morwyn sat in silence but couldn't help peeking out from beneath her hair to watch as Hazel dried her face with a clean towel. The pain in Morwyn's body was overshadowed by the ache that clutched at her heart to see Hazel in such distress.
“Sorry doesn't even begin to cut it, you know that, right?” The heat in Hazel's tone began to rise as she threw herself down on her chair and fixed Morwyn with an angry stare. “I've run myself into the bloody ground for the last week with you teetering on the brink of death. It was all I could do to keep you from choking on your own blood. I thought I'd lost you a dozen times or more, it was that close. And for what? So you could play the hero?”
Morwyn flinched as Hazel shouted the final words. Her stomach dropped as a sudden wave of guilt and shame crashed over her. She wrung her hands on her lap, unable to speak, but Hazel wasn't finished. She was just getting started.
“The others told me what happened with the giants. What in the name of the all the gods above and below made you decide to do something so utterly insane?”
When Morwyn wasn't forthcoming with an answer, Hazel rose from her chair and moved closer, standing beside the cot as she jabbed an accusing finger at her.
“As you lay dyingin my arms for days, I did everything I could to bring you back. Every herb, every potion, every medical technique I thought might work. But there was nothing, and I mean nothing that I could do for you besides prolong the inevitable. I even prayed to the gods to bring you back to me so I could strangle you myself for being so reckless!” Hazel held a hand over her mouth and her shoulders shook as she sobbed.
Morwyn broke from the paralysis that held her fixed in place and struggled to shift her legs from beneath the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed. She reached out a uncertain hand to take Hazel's, half expecting her to pull away, but was surprised when Hazel allowed her to do so. Morwyn squeezed her tightly, as much to give her comfort as it was to keep her own hands from shaking as she fought against the despair that was creeping over her.
“I have no excuse for what I've put you through,” Morwyn whispered as she stared down at the ground beneath her bare feet. “I don't know why I pushed things the way I did instead of being more cautious. It was foolish-”
“Foolish?!” Hazel shouted suddenly as she yanked her hand from her grasp and started to pace back and forth. Morwyn withered beneath the fury in the halfling's voice. “It wasn't just foolish. Foolish is putting your boots on the wrong feet in the morning or eating too much and upsetting your stomach. What you did was bloody reckless beyond reason! It's infuriating how casually you throw yourself into danger!”
The women both turned toward the entrance of the tent as one of the flaps began to rise and Argoth stooped to enter. Hazel snatched a knife from atop her work station and brandished it at the orc.
“Anything that comes into my tent without permission is getting cut off!”
Argoth's eye grew wide and he backed off without a word, tying the flaps shut behind him as he left.
Hazel slammed the knife back down on her folding desk, her chest heaving. Morwyn hardly dared to breathe. Terror stabbed its claws into her and dug deep, scraping against the walls of old hurts she thought long buried. Hazel whipped her head to face her, fear blending with the rage in her shimmering eyes.
“You're the only one that could've pulled it off the way you did. It was so idiotically brave that it makes me think that half the silly legends I've read might be less dramatized than I thought. Hells, the only reason you're even sitting here for me to yell at is because you brought yourself back from the brink of death with some magic that I have no way to understand. You just performed a gods-damned miracle on yourself in front of my very eyes after everything that I did failed. And do you want to know the worst part?”
Morwyn, disassociating from herself and feeling like a passive observer to the scene, could do no better than give a weak nod.
“You. Shouldn't. Have. Had. To.”
Hazel punctuated each words with a finger jabbed painfully into Morwyn's sternum. The words hung heavy in the air between them and Morwyn knew them to be true. She wanted to explain herself, to say anything that might pacify Hazel's justified anger, but her mind was blank as she retreated within herself.
For the first time since she'd begun her tirade, Hazel's expression softened. She reached out and brushed Morwyn's hair from her face with shaking hands and cupped them gently to her cheeks, forcing Morwyn to meet her gaze.
“I need you to be honest with me about something. I need to know before I can truly let myself be hopeful about you... about us. I know I said it was silly to be concerned with your age when we could die any day, but I worry that you took it too literally. So tell me honestly, dear. Do you have a death wish?”
The words twisted in Morwyn like a dagger to the gut. Partially because she feared she would lose Hazel due to her recklessness and partially because she couldn't immediately deny it. She stared into Hazel's emerald eyes, pleading for her to understand what she couldn't put to words. The soft adoration was back in the halfling's gaze, though it was tempered by uncertainty and fear. Morwyn knew she needed to hear her say it.
“No, I don't,” Morwyn managed to croak out. “I've always thrown myself at my problems head first or run from them. Now I've got something worth fighting for and I'm so very tired of running. That leaves me with one option. I don't want to die... I just don't know what else to do. I don't know how else to live.”
Hazel stepped between Morwyn's knees and slipped her arms around her neck, pulling her tightly to her chest. Morwyn could feel the halfling's racing heart against her chest as she sank into the embrace. She wrapped her arms around Hazel's waist and held on to her for dear life, burying her face in her neck as the tension fled her body and left her feeling as weak as she'd ever been.
“You are worth so much more than merely your sword,” Hazel cried softly into her ear as she stroked Morwyn's hair. “Not just to me, but to everyone else here. I want... no, I need you to know that.”
Morwyn clutched the fabric of Hazel's dress with desperate fingers and took several deep breaths. Her cheek, wet with tears, slipped against Hazel's skin.
“I'm trying.”
Hazel pulled back from the embrace and gave Morwyn a firm kiss on the forehead then a softer one on her cracked lips.
“I'm sorry if I frightened you,” Hazel said, her voice choked with emotion. “I mean every word that I said, but I lost control of my temper. I'm still here. I'm just worried about you. I don't want to lose you at all, but especially not to your own foolhardiness.”
“I know. I'm sorry for giving you cause to worry.” Morwyn ran a hand down Hazel's arm and gave her hand another gentle squeeze. “You should get some rest, you look like you've barely had a wink in days. I'm out of immediate danger, that I can promise you. The magic has done its job.”
“Oh, bollocks. I was so relieved it worked the first time, I completely forgot. Should you use another healing scroll?” Hazel frantically searched through the unusual disorder within her tent. She picked up Morwyn's bandolier and began to go through her scroll cases. Morwyn watched on for a moment as she pondered the change she'd sensed within her core in the aftermath of her endeavor. Though difficult to detect and drained to an infinitesimal speck, a golden spark remained deep within the well. It pulsed with a soft warmth despite the swirling vortex of frost that nearly obscured it. She held up a hand to stop the halfling.
“I'm fine, I swear. I feel better than I have any right to. And I'm not sure how it's possible, but I don't think I'll need them anymore.”
Hazel gave her a curious look then rolled her eyes before collapsing onto her small cot with a groan.
“I'm too tired to even ask what you mean by that. Regardless, you best believe I'll be checking you head to toe when I wake. If I find so much as another bruise on you, I swear to the gods I will end you myself.”
Knowing it was no idle threat, Morwyn unlaced the front of Hazel's bodice and helped her slip free of it then tugged off the halfling's boots and stockings and placed them neatly beneath the cot. She laid a blanket over her and left a gentle kiss on Hazel's temple.
“You won't, though I look forward to the examination. I'm sure you'll be thorough.”
Morwyn finally allowed herself a small smile when she realized that Hazel was already fast asleep. She deserved every second of rest, so Morwyn decided to leave her to it in peace.
She judged it to be twilight as the weak light within the tent had grown dim in the time since she'd woken. Morwyn groaned with the effort of retrieving her trousers from the neat pile of clothing beside her cot. She was momentarily embarrassed that, other than the dried blood on the bandages wrapping her chest, both her body and her clothes were clean. Another uncomfortable thing she'd inadvertently forced others do for her in her wounded state.
She resolved to take better care of herself for Hazel's sake and to keep her from having to wash the blood and filth from her body ever again, even if she still couldn't convince herself to do so on account of her own worth. It was a start.
Morwyn winced with pain as she unwrapped the numerous bandages from her body and slowly dressed. It didn't surprise her to see the extent to which she'd been bandaged since she'd felt every bone knit and every wound from compound fractures close, but it did sink home the reality of just how close she had come to the end. She knew she wouldn't have stood a snowflake's chance in the hells of surviving if Hazel hadn't been the one to attend her. Though she left her armor behind, Morwyn buckled on her baldric and belt. The familiar weight of the sword, her constant companion, made her ache but brought a small measure of comfort.
Not her only worth, but it was still a part of her.
Morwyn gave Hazel a parting glance before stepping out of the tent and into the chill night air. Rennock and the caravan guards awaited her on the other side.