Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 99: Heartfire

Toren Daen

I groaned, shifting uncomfortably. I felt something soft under my head, but the rest of my body felt stiff as a board. Each movement made me ache in protest.

I opened my eyes, blinking stupidly. There was a bedroll under my head with a roughshod blanket laid over my chest. My body ached fiercely. It was the ache of overuse; the afterburn of a sprain. My body creaked as I slowly pulled myself to a sitting position.

The second thing I noticed was the pulsing that thumped in my ears. It was like a bundle of hearts beat in a disjointed chorus, but it wasn't exactly. I wasn't just hearing this with my ears, but my own heartbeat as well.

I hazily tried to decipher the flows of sound as they reached my ears. I counted them internally as I slowly pulled myself from the haze of sleep. All the beats seemed to come from in front of me; a subdued staccato. As my ears adjusted to the sound, I gradually began to sift through the different tempos. There was one... two.... six, seven...

I looked across from my little sleeping position. I was under the open sky, bright rays of warm sunlight washing over my body and banishing some of my aches. The sources of the heartbeats revealed themselves to me.

Hraedel was sitting numbly on the edge of a cookfire, staring blankly at a bowl of food. He was missing a few fingers, something I hadn't spotted before. Jared and Alandra were similarly subdued, wrapped in each others' embrace. Gone was their bickering and squabbling. Now, there was only a strange solace they took in each other. The hearty shield had lost his eyepatch, revealing a deep scar that covered a closed eyelid. His beard had been singed to the roots. The auburn-haired sentry looked the best of anybody I could see, even though she was covered in myriad cuts and bruises.

Bered and Numar were on their own bedrolls, moving fitfully in their sleep. They were each burned in several places, and I knew they would bear scars deeper than physical from this zone. They were boys playing at men and had been thrust headfirst into the struggles of adulthood.

Sevren was staring up at something out of my sight with a forlorn expression, his white hair brilliant once more.

And Darrin was sitting with someone's body on his lap.

Seven heartfires I can hear, I thought blearily, realizing that was what my new djinni-phoenix body was registering. But there are eight people here.

A fresh wave of adrenaline coursed through my body. I lurched from my makeshift bedding, scraping my hands and knees on the concrete beneath me. I distantly realized I was on the observatory at the peak of the Empire State Building, but that didn't matter.

I stumbled my way toward Darrin, who was holding Dima's body. While everyone's lifeforce beat in a subdued staccato, I could hear nothing from Dima's soul.

Mages cried out in surprise as I barrelled my way straight to Darrin. He looked up at me with a hard expression, but I ignored it, falling to my knees in front of the two. I laid my hands on Dima's body, hoping against hope.

For a long, painful moment, there was only a void. An empty expanse echoed back at my attempted call.

Then I felt it. A weak, weak heartbeat under my hands. Darrin gave me a stern, cold look as I laid my palms over his ex-lover's body, but he restrained any response. The ascenders slowly crowded around me as I tried to make use of my new powers.

My own lifeforce had a deeply sonorous beat. Every thump seemed to rattle my bones with its power, cascading with energy words could not describe. I meshed myself with that rhythm, acting purely on instinct.

It's just like my music, isn't it? I thought a bit headily. I need to show what I feel; get them to sympathize!

And so I reached out with a limb I didn't know I had, caressing the heart beneath my palms. My hands glowed orange-purple as my lifeforce responded in turn.