Arc 7: Chapter 27: Vera
The sound of humming lured me from my sleep.
It was a woman’s voice, low and pleasant, improvising an off-key tune. The canopy of a forest whispered around me, and not just in a poetic sense. There were voices in those rustling branches, constant and just at the edge of understanding. They didn’t sound sinister. It was just the Wend talking to itself.
But that humming, that wasn’t any spirit or spiritual echo. I cracked a sore eye open and found Delphine nearby. She looked to be mixing something in a little bowl, and very much seemed the witch in that moment.
“You didn’t kill me,” I mumbled during a lull in her song.
She spoke without turning around or stopping her work. “How do you know? I could be a necromancer on top of everything else.”
I hm’d in response, closing my eye again. “Where’s Vicar?”
“Getting a sense of our surroundings. Maybe he ran off to find the wizard without us, but he’s stayed this long. I imagine he’ll be back. You’ve been out for a day, or so Renuart tells me. I can’t tell time in this place. You were… possessed, I guess is the best word for it. We performed an exorcism. A shoddy one, but I worked with the tools I had. Whatever that demon put in you, it’s out now, but it’ll have left a scar on your aura. I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for that.”
“…Shit.” It was all I could say in response. A whole day. Lias would have been warned by his familiar. We’d lost our chance.
I couldn’t bring myself to feel angry over it. Instead I took stock of myself. I wore nothing save for my trousers, which had been cleaned. The rest of my clothes and my armor lay nearby, also scrubbed. Delphine had used my Briar cloak as a blanket to keep it all on. I was covered in bandages, some of them stained, and everything felt numb. Probably more of whatever drug the doctor had given me before I’d blacked out. The worst wound seemed to be on my chest, which was wrapped in many layers of bloodied linen and felt hot, infected. Where had Delphine kept all of this?
“Your cape bit me,” the doctor said.
“Sorry.”
She shrugged, then turned and offered me the bowl. Some of her fingers were wrapped in new bandages. “Drink this.”