mind past a haze of pain in her head. She rubbed the grit from her eyes, but they burned terribly when she opened them. Her tongue felt swollen and she felt an intense thirst. She sat up, trying to work up enough saliva to swallow, her head reeling from the sudden movement.
She was in a dark room with only a sliver of dim light cutting through the black. She steadied herself with one hand while rubbing her eyes with the other until she could keep them open long enough to look around. In the dim light, she could see that she was in a small room formed from a natural cave. A stout wooden wall and door occupied one side.
Fighting to clear her head, she began to assess her situation. Her weapons and armor were gone. Her pack was missing as well. She was sitting on a pallet covered with straw. The only other items she could see were two buckets, one on either side of the door. She crawled to one, jerking her head back from the foul smell, then to the other. Cautiously she dipped her hand into the dark bucket and felt the cool touch of water. Slowly, deliberately, she slaked her thirst, taking care to remain silent lest her captors become aware that she was awake.
She sat back and closed her eyes, linking her mind with Slyder. He was perched atop a tree in the jungle looking down into a little village secreted in a box canyon. Several cave entrances surrounded the dozen or so huts at the center of the hidden community. Men were coming and going, many looked and acted like soldiers, though few wore uniforms.
She withdrew from Slyder and spent several minutes just breathing in an effort to quiet the hammering in her head. She assumed that the poison darts that had rendered her unconscious were responsible for the pain and dehydration she was feeling. After a few minutes, her head began to clear.
Muffled voices filtered through the door. She stood carefully, testing her legs and balance before attempting to take the few steps to the little slit in the door that was the room’s sole source of light. Beyond was another cave, larger and occupied by three men, all armed and wearing armor.
She stepped back and started whispering the words to her shield spell, calling on her anger and focusing her mind the way she’d done countless times in the past … but this time, something was different.
The rage wasn’t there.
She forced the spell and made a connection with the firmament, opening herself to the source of creation, but only for the briefest moment. The firmament called to her, beckoning with the promise of infinite possibility, and she wasn’t angry enough to resist.
It felt like she was falling.
She slammed the link shut, staggered by the implications of what had just happened. Without rage, she couldn’t defend herself against the pull of the firmament, couldn’t cast her spells.
She sat down and recalled all of the hardships that had been inflicted on her and her loved ones over the past several months. Worked at bringing them to the front of her mind so she could feel the injustices done to her, but try as she might, the anger wouldn’t come.
Her mind was clear but her emotional intensity was somehow blunted. She could understand the rightness of feeling anger for the things that had been done to her, to Alexander, to the world, but she couldn’t feel the anger the way she needed to. Without that emotional control, she was powerless as a witch.
She swallowed hard. First she’d been deprived of her connection to the realm of light, a gift of such magnitude that she considered it her greatest power, valued it above all things save Alexander’s love. Now her emotional control, necessary for a witch to access the firmament, was gone. The things she valued most were being taken from her, one by one. She felt Azugorath scratching at the edge of her psyche, promising power and purpose.
She calmed herself and thought of Alexander, thought of her love for him … but it too was blunted. Losing the anger was one thing, but losing her ability to feel the deep and abiding joy that her love for Alexander created within her was too much. She thought she would cry, but the tears didn’t come either. The pain of her loss was blunted as well.
She could still feel … just not intensely. Her eyes narrowed.