epilogue
The ethros, Remilino, wears an impassive face. “Your friend’s condition is unfortunate,” he states. An understatement if ever there was one.
Sybele moans behind the stitches that keep her mouth shut, her eyes closed, her limbs torturously sewn to her body.
”Help her,” Thrush grates. His voice is dangerous.
The ethros begins, and the party watches as he casts a succession of odd and unique spells, beginning with divinations and ending with a sequence of abjurations and evocations.
To no avail.
“Please,” Thrush whispers. “Please...”
“There is one more thing I can try,” the ethros announces, “tomorrow, once I can prepare the proper magicks.” He turns to Thrush. “But the odds are against you.” And he turns on his heel and walks back towards the painted room. Back towards his death pilgrims.
***
Sybele’s eyes have run out of tears. She aches, her head feels bloated with blood from hanging upside down, her limbs are weak and shaking. If she could only pass out, even for an instant! If the agony would let up, just for a second! A small whimper escapes her shut mouth. If only she could... just... die. Just end it...
She has no idea that she’s hung there for days. It seems an eternity. Then, suddenly, as if a great weight had been lifted from her, she feels it all stop. The pain recedes to a rational level and she can faintly hear her friends talking- what are they saying?
Suddenly she lifts, twists, rotates. Sybele’s head swims; she feels as though she’s spinning. What’s happening? It feels as though she’s upright... her head feels light, she doesn’t understand... but she’s so weak, can barely groan. She’s dying.
A voice she doesn’t recognize says, “I will do my best to remove the stitches without killing her.”
Horbin: “I can heal her-“
“Not until I release the spell. And I cannot do that until the stitches are... safe.”
Then Sybele feels a knife digging at her thighs where they’re stitched together. She jerks, whimpers. Delirious, her head lolls to the side, and at last her consciousness lets go. She swims down into a blessedly painless darkness. She sighs. She’s content. She could stay here forever. It’s safe here. Ohhh, the pain- she doesn’t want to think about it- but it’s too late. She jerks back into consciousness, a splinter of red-hot agony in her calves where someone’s slowly excavating the stitches.
She tries her best to hold still, but when he comes to work on the stitches on her face, she can’t help but let the untapped depths of her tear ducts flow.
And she passes out again.
***
“Now,” the ethros says at last, nodding to Horbin. The knife in his hand is crimson with Sybele’s blood, but he has managed to do minimal damage to her, save for one eye.
And Horbin the Holy steps forward, placing his hands upon his friend, and the power of Dexter flows through him; and her color deepens, her wounds close, and slowly her breathing steadies. And Sybele opens her eyes.
Anxiously, Thrush cries, “Are you all right, honey?”
Sybele takes a deep, shaky breath. And nods.
And our heroes’ victory is complete.
THE END
of To War Against Felenga....
but not of our heroes’ adventures!