Shades of Grey

JZASACH— DECEMBER 1843

I ran so fast that the surrounding landscape was nothing but a blur.

“Grey?” Forma shivered in my arms, still wrapped tightly in my cloak.

“Ssh, don’t speak yet,” I cautioned as I held her closer, trying to shield her from the frozen rain and driving winds.

Stopping for naught and yielding to no impediment, I continued through many forests and obscure woodland roads until I crossed through the Jzasach gates, arriving back at Farrah’s guest house faster than the eyes of the nearby citizens could register. In a flash, I kicked open the door to the closest bedroom, set Forma down on the large bed before removing my sopping wet coat from around her in an attempt to get her as warm as possible.

I then easily moved the bed closer to the fireplace and lit it straight away. I followed this by igniting every torch in the room and moving them as close to the bed as possible, surrounding Forma in a circle of heat. I finally brought the covers up over her as tightly as I could possibly make them, hoping that the near inferno I had created for her would combat the cold of the melting ice on her body. It was here that the magic on my legs finally broke and I collapsed to the floor in exhaustion, wondering if I had done enough for her.

“Is she alright?!” gasped Farrah behind me. I looked to her as she stood in the doorway, her face ashen in shock.

“She’s very cold...” I said in a shell-shocked trance, not quite comprehending how close Forma was to death.

“I’ll bring in more candles,” she said decidedly, promptly leaving the room in a hurry. I smiled at her keenness to help.

“Grey?” Forma asked cohesively in my head as her tremours began to slowly subside.

“Yes?” I asked sharply, pushing my dripping hair out of the way as I gripped her shaking hand. I stifled a guilty sob: touching her skin was like touching an ice sculpture.

“Tell Loria to hurry up! We’re going to be late for History!”

I frowned in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Forma’s eyes then opened to reveal thick cataracts over her confused pupils: the werewolf poison was making her hallucinate. She was reliving a memory from school.

“No, Forma, you have to hold on. Stay with me!” I urged, moving her hair out of her face. “You’re delirious!”

Her eyes then began to drift together.

“So…tired…” she barely managed to utter. “Combat training…practice parrying…have to shift into something else…faster…faster…smoother…”

I began to panic as her words became steadily more arbitrary and inaudible. Confusion and delirium were the more dangerous signs of both hypothermia and werewolfism.

“No. Forma, you have to stay awake! Come on, you have to stay with me!”

She frowned in resentment.

“But I’m so tired…and it hurts so much!”

She then let out several dark coughs. I choked back more guilty tears as I placed my fingers over her forehead and noted (with only the minutest hint of relief) that her temperature was rising.

“I know, but you can’t sleep just yet!”

“Well, what am I…supposed to do?” she countered, her continuing shivers turning into dark convulsions as the poison worked its way through her system.

“Tell me a story,” I urged.

“I’m a terrible story teller,” she countered, punctuating her sentence with a brief cry of pain.

“Then tell me the migration patterns of the Magorgian Beast. Anything, just keep talking!”

She did. She fought bravely to stay awake. I did my best to create as much noise as possible, slipping off my great metal boots and full-body bandoleer with cacophonous fervour while she recited the migratory patterns of the Magorgian Beast, the Aquoca and the Incendila and recounted the famous Hunters who discovered each. I watched as she recited the information through her shivers, which were slowly fading as her body temperature began to rise. After about three or so long hours, her colour was somewhat back to normal and her convulsions had become nothing more than occassional twitches. I felt a greater sense of relief sink in: she would live.

“Alright, Forma,” I said softly, brushing more hair out of her face before I crossed the room and sank into a chair next to the fire place, eager to keep an eye on her for as long as possible. “You can sleep now.”

“Thank God,” she barely managed to articulate before drifting off into a well-deserved slumber.

The next day I awoke in the chair, in exactly the same position I had been in the preceding night. I looked over and saw that Forma was fast asleep under the covers, the candles that Farrah had promised stationed dutifully around the bed.

I stood up and put my hand against her pale forehead, checking her temperature and ensuring she was still breathing. When I was satisfied with its relative normalcy, I quietly left the room and allowed her to slumber in silence.

I walked out into the early morning twilight, staring at the rays of pink, blue and purple that shone over the geodesic construction of Jzasach. I leaned against the porch and slipped off my hat and mask, dazedly reflecting over the last several hours.

I had seen such strange things: Rodag in my early memory, the animate trees in the forest, Forma as a werewolf, Lanek and an insane queen Grey ruling a people who imprisoned Hunters and employed Creatures while taking advice from Evan the Vanguard…

Had I really just seen my worst nightmares incarnate? Why would I fear my own child and why had the monster I had seen the queen give birth to resembled a Graylight Dragon? Did logic have any prominent role in the world that I had entered? And since the world had been my own head, what did that reflect regarding my sanity?

I rubbed my temples as a dull throbbing began — I was tired and dehydrated. I had spent the night sleeping sitting up next to a blazing fireplace and my body was showing signs of protest, especially after the physically trying day I had endured beforehand.

“How is she?”

I looked up and saw Farrah standing at the foot of the porch stairs below me. Her eyes were soft with worry.

“She’s asleep now,” I replied. “She’ll be fine.”

Relatively speaking, I added to myself.

“That’s good,” Farrah replied quickly. There was a beat of silence and I felt her studying my stoic expression. “What happened?” she asked carefully.

I inhaled slowly, trying to decide what to tell her and deciphering what was clearest in my memory.

“The Witch Queen froze Forma in a block of ice and sent me on a quest to recover her,” I reflected flatly.

“What kind of quest?” Farrah pushed.

“A difficult quest,” I reasoned in a forceful voice. Farrah understood and changed the subject.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that the curse is gone. It ended this morning. It was rather amazing, actually,” she said with an excited smile. “The magic wall around the outside of the city is gone as well. Several young men ventured out earlier and returned with supplies from nearby cities.”

“That’s wonderful,” I replied without any fervour.

There was an awkward beat of silence and I could tell that I had offended her.

“What’s wrong?” Farrah asked.

I frowned, trying to decide whether or not to tell her that the worst of the Jzasach curse now rested on the recuperating Maisling inside my temporary lodging — and that it was my fault.

“Nothing,” I replied, turning away from her. “I’m sorry…I suppose I just—”

“Grey?”

Farrah and I both started at the sound of the third voice and raced back inside the stiflingly warm bedroom. Forma was awake and trying desperately to pull herself up to a sitting position, but the combined thickness of the down comforters along with the warmth in the room made it difficult on her weak body. Overcome with relief to see her awake, I raced to her side and knelt next to the bed. I took her limp hand and gripped it with solicitous fervour, taking care to blow out all the candles when I saw the deep sweat that had broken out over her.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

Forma gave a quiet chuckle.

“How d’you think I feel?” she replied telepathically. “Bloody awful. That’s the last time I take a stroll inside your head.”

I chuckled once at her characteristically snarky response.

“I’m sorry,” I consoled fruitlessly. “Stupid question.”

Farrah’s sense of discomfort was nearly audible until she made it so and excused herself.

“I’ll be in the house if you need anything.” She then left the room and ran up the steps to the main house.

Neither Forma nor I said anything for a few moments. Forma focused on taking deep, wheezing breaths and I moved several strands of stringy hair out of her face before I began listlessly tracing the prominently visible veins in her arms with my fingers. I held my head in my hand as I thought bleakly of how her current state of intense weakness was entirely my fault. She clearly saw this and took my restless hands in hers. I shuddered at her clammy, limp touch. She looked at me with clear, tranquil eyes completely devoid of all poison-induced confusion.

“Grey, relax. I’m perfectly healthy,” she said.

I snorted in derision — she could barely speak above a hoarse whisper.

“Except for that little problem that will arise at the next full moon!” I shot back frenetically.

She struggled to give a casual shrug.

“Oh yes, that… Well, we will deal with it when it comes. There’s no use worrying about what we haven’t experienced yet.”

I sat up, taken aback at her cavalier attitude. She was so passive about this, so serene…and I felt so scattered and accountable. How could she not hate me for what I had brought upon her? I sat back and leaned against the bedpost in a shocked, opprobrius stupor.

“Grey, I have a feeling I will be saying this every month for a very long time, but you must not blame yourself. You could not have foreseen what trickery Natara would implement!” Forma struggled to articulate, reading my thoughts exactly.

“But if I had seen, if I had brought it to light then I could have prevented it...” I stammered in a guilty rage.

“Grey, stop it. We’ve both been through a lot in the last several months. This is just another obstacle to face in the many more years of obstacles we will undoubtedly encounter. And there are cures for the werewolf curse. Perhaps one day we shall find a friendly wizard who will remove it! Then you’ll feel foolish that you were ever guilt-ridden about something you couldn’t control. I’m just glad it wasn’t you or we would have had a much bigger problem on our hands.”

I smiled up at Forma and leaned against the footboard, staring at the flickering fire as my thoughts once again returned to all I had seen.

“Tell me what happened,” Forma asked, seeing the dark weight of thought that had formed on my face.

I did. I told her everything and she listened intently, nodding and gasping in the appropriate places until I had finished.

“Wow…” she remarked. “That’s…quite intense…”

I nodded and ran my fingers through my hair.

“Forma, what could possibly be so wrong with me that I would think up a world where Hunters are imprisoned, Creatures roam free and I give birth to a monster?” I inquired.

“Well, you didn’t do it on purpose,” she said gently. “It was all in your subconscious, so perhaps it’s the world that you fear will come to pass, should you fail against Evan. That was what your mother said it was, right?”

I raised my brow, impressed at her ability to educe meaning from such a fantasy, especially after her ordeal.

“That was very insightful,” I remarked.

“Well, I have my moments,” she replied with a weak laugh. “It’s either that or you’ve gone completely off the mend.”