#uurrrrhg

[cat-with-a-keyboard]

Repost Because I’m an Idiot

Here, have the fic AGAIN because I’m an idiot who deleted it. SORRY SORRY!

Night had fallen over the cottage where Arkt was staying. He had offered Gertrude a place to stay, and cast a spell on Kim’s body; preserving it perfectly until Gertrude could give him a proper burial.

Sleep would not come to her. The images of Kim, crumpled and broken at the foot of Saratha’s pedestal haunted her, and his last words echoed through her mind. His cry of fear, and then....

Nothing.

Gertrude felt…empty. The rage and pain she had felt when she saw Kim’s lifeless body at Sarantha’s feet had all but vanished; leaving her cold and empty, full of pain and nothing else.

Is this what grief feels like? she wondered numbly, staring her friend’s corpse inside it’s shimmering shield. He looked almost peaceful beneath that shimmering, delicate-seeming wall.

Gertrude’s eyes were hot, and burned like live coals in her skull, but she could not weep. She had cried for Merzul, for Melvin, for Vanmiria, for Callisto, even for Narathzul’s death at Arkt’s hands. Now, when Kim lay dead on an old table in a cellar, she could not even summon a single tear to ease the aching loss.

He was gone. Kim was gone, and she could do nothing. All her experience, all her power, and she couldn’t save the one person she had left.

I’m so sorry, Kim. I’m so sorry. I should be dead instead of you.

She didn’t even notice the soft, cat-like footsteps behind her; or maybe thought it was Arkt.

When a robed and veiled woman stepped from the shadows, for a moment she didn’t even notice.

It was when she walked through the shield that Gertrude took notice.

The veiled stranger walked through the shifting wall of woven magic, taking as little notice as if it was simply air. She bent over Kim, and spoke, though her words were inaudible to Gertrude.

Gertrude threw herself against the barrier, shrieking an unanswerable challenge. The veiled woman regarded her calmly, and the shield suddenly vanished. Unable to stop herself, Gertrude fell forward onto Kim, who stirred and groaned. She screamed again, in fear or pain or joy, she couldn’t even tell. Everything whirled together in a state of err and confusion.

The veiled woman watched with amusement as Arkt ran down the stairs, half undressed. He skidded to a halt when he saw her, and she might have smiled beneath her mask.

“Take care of them,” she said. “It will not be easy for either of them.”

And then she vanished, leaving Arkt to deal with a near-hysterical Gertrude and a very confused Kim.`