The Lowest Healer and the Highest Mage by Hiyodori

Author:Hiyodori
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

21 Days Left

I didn’t sleep well that night in the tower, the night after Wist said she’d bond me (if I would have her). The dreams of death were unusually detailed and gruesome. Each time I startled myself awake, my mind raced off in a different direction.

At one point not long before sunrise, a vision of having nails hammered into my skull started to leak sideways into reality; I woke with an ice-pick headache behind my right eye. I lay curled in the darkness begging it to subside.

The spiking headache felt like it took forever to fade. In reality, it was probably a matter of minutes. My room still didn’t have proper curtains, but Mori had helped me tack some towels over the windows to mute the moonlight. As agony ceased stabbing the back side of my eye, I began to smell ozone, a powerful hint of incoming rain. The towel-curtains stirred. Had I forgotten to shut a window? I couldn’t even recall shoving them open.

I shambled over to find the windows tightly locked. Yet the towels kept puffing like sails. The wind touched me, too—chilling my nose, running fingers through my hair. It was an outdoor wind inside a sealed room, a wind from nowhere.

Goosebumps pricked my arms. I went to my stack of pilfered clothes in the corner—the clean stack, hopefully, although I kept getting them mixed up—and dug out a sweater and jeans.

When I opened the door, the ozone scent grew stronger. I found Fanren poised in the hall outside my room like a guard dog. Though not typically an early riser, he too was more or less fully dressed, glasses and all. I asked him how long he’d been there.

“Couple minutes,” he said. “It’s raining in the kitchen.”

“The ceiling’s leaking?”

Fanren shook his head. “Regular rain, normal in every way. Just indoors. Come take a look.”

Mori stood waiting outside the kitchen with an armful of umbrellas. The cat named Turtle crouched miserably by Mori’s feet. I borrowed a red umbrella and opened it up as I stepped inside, barefoot. The kitchen was more than raining—it was pouring like a tropical monsoon, so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think. I beat a hasty retreat. The umbrella wasn’t very effective protection.

“Mori came and woke me maybe twenty minutes ago,” Fanren said.

“You heard the rain?” I asked Mori. “Isn’t your room much higher up?”

“I woke up with a headache.” He put his hand near his right eye. “A short, stabbing one. It went away fast. But it got me awake enough to notice something was wrong. My room smelled like a flower shop. And there were little green lizards all over the ceiling, looking down at me.”

“Where’s Wist?”

The two of them exchanged glances. “Not sure,” Fanren said. “Not in her room.” He tapped the earring he usually used for communication. “Agent Manatree isn’t responding, either.”

A sick sensation began to expand in my ribcage. The indoor wind and rain, the inexplicable scents—they bore a powerful tinge of magic. In fact, magic was the only logical explanation.

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