Kasyn hoped no one would bother him as he made his way home. For a brief period of time, after the fight with Jerlinzia, he’d felt good again, like his old self, but the worry and fear began to encroach upon him yet again.

“You don’t need to check on me,” he called back to the healer he noticed following him.

“I should at least clean your wound. The last thing you want is to have it begin to fester.”

“I’ll take care of it myself. I have a salve at home.”

He really didn’t want to be bothered right now even though he knew the healer was right. Even with his salve the healer was likely to do a more thorough job.

“I really must insist,” the healer pressed as he caught up with Kasyn.

“Fine,” Kasyn agreed, if only so he didn’t have to waste more energy on arguing. He was just so tired of it all. Everything was too much for him lately and all he wanted was to be left alone. So, the sooner the healer finished his work, the sooner Kasyn could get rid of him.

The healer stayed quiet during the rest of the walk back to Kasyn’s home, for which Kasyn was grateful for since he didn’t think he would be much good at conversation at the moment. Besides, what would they talk about? The fight? That was the last thing he wanted to talk about right now.

His home was clean, mainly because he spent so little time here recently. So much of his daily life was consumed with restoring Yomichi that he’d hardly done more than arrange the furniture and put away his meager belongings. There was no food in the house but he wasn’t hungry.

“You can sit there while I get things prepared,” the healer said, pointing to the only chair in Kasyn’s home.

He sat while the healer got a small fire going and set a pot of water over it to boil. He placed some herbs into the water and after they’d boiled for a minute, he began soaking strips of cloth in the hot water.

“Could you remove your shirt, please?” the healer asked.

Kasyn obliged, exposing the torn flesh where Jerlinzia’s bolt had caught him. It was a glancing blow, scoring his ribs but failing to penetrate any of his vitals.

Holding a wet cloth in a pair of tongs, the healer began to scrub at the wound, blotting away the dried blood and cleaning the area around the wound before moving onto the injury itself. The hot cloth was a bit too hot for comfort but Kasyn forced himself to remain still while the healer worked.

“Sorry about the heat,” the healer said, having noticed Kasyn’s discomfort. “It shouldn’t last too long. One of the herbs I use has a numbing effect so you shouldn’t be bothered by it for too long.”

Sure enough, the area around the wound began to lose feeling and by the time the healer got to scrubbing the wound itself, Kasyn could hardly feel the pressure on his side.

“You live here alone?” the healer asked after a while.

“Yes.”

“Any family? Siblings, parents?”

“Not here,” Kasyn grunted, not really wanting to have this conversation, or any conversation for that matter. “I came as part of the soul tithe.”

“I see,” the healer nodded as he began stitching up the wound. “Wife and kids?”

Kasyn opened his mouth to reply but then stopped. That part of his memory was foggy. He thought, at first, that he ought to say yes but he couldn’t quite be sure. Instead, the image of a large tree loomed in his minds eye and he felt suffocating roots entwining about him.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” the healer said after a few seconds of silence.

Kasyn stopped trying to remember whether or not he had a wife and kids and the constricting sensation faded.

“My wife was a holy warrior for the Tower of Light,” the healer said after some more time passed. “She asked me to leave the city before the attack, though she didn’t tell me that was why she wanted me to leave. I didn’t know what was going on but chose to stay. I imagine she’s dead now. She was always too busy for us to have children, which I’m grateful for now. Sometimes life’s funny like that.”

Why was the healer telling him this? Kasyn looked down and saw that the wound was stitched up and clean. He put his shirt back on but the healer just sat himself down on the floor opposite Kasyn’s chair and kept talking.

“Akumu allowed the Tower of Light to have a standing army because they went and fought in the wars of other nations, you see. My wife had quite the collection of scars from battle, but her faith always protected her from the worst of it. She only got to come home between wars so even though we were married for almost nine years, I think in total we only got to spend about three of them together. We used message spells to check in with one another, or write letters when she was too far away for magic to reach. I wish I had kept more of her letters, now. They’re really all I have left of her.”

The healer was crying and Kasyn had no idea what to do. Was the healer expecting Kasyn to comfort him? Was he supposed to say something?

“I tried going to war once,” the healer cleared his throat and wiped his eyes, “so I could spend more time with her, but I wasn’t cut out for it. Too much horror, you know? I couldn’t sleep at night, and when I’d go to work on the injured my hands would shake too violently for me to do anything. I was a total wreck. So I came back here and worked as a local healer, treating the usual ailments and missing my wife, but happier than I was when I was at the war front. It’s not for everyone, you see? War, conflict, and the like. Some people handle it just fine, like my wife, and others just fall apart like I did. What I’m getting at, is maybe you and I are alike in that regard. Maybe the life of a warrior isn’t right for you. Maybe you’ve already done enough for the city and you should take a step back.”

It was as though the healer had pressed down on Kasyn’s chest, forcing all the air out of his lungs. How could he do that and just abandon Zeter and Damarys? And yet, he desperately wanted to do it. The very thought of going into Chikara Wa filled him with dread and made his hands shake. What was more, the things he’d seen and heard in the cave beneath the chapel of the Tower of Light kept haunting him with fears about what all that might be about.

“Akumu grant me strength,” Kasyn sighed.

“I just want you to think about it, okay?” The healer said as he got up. “If this is something you really have to do, then do it. If I’d been the only healer available then I would have stayed in the war, but there were others who could take my place and I was happy to let them do it.”

Was there anyone who could take his place? He had the black chain, but maybe Zeter or Damarys could wield it instead of him.

Without waiting for any more of a response, the healer left and Kasyn was alone in his house that felt too big for just himself. It was empty, a void that called out for people who were just on the edge of his memory but whose substance were hidden from him.

Firelight cast twisting shadows on the walls that, for a moment, could have been the shadows of people he once knew. Kasyn called out to them, extending his arm to catch them but his fingers closed on nothing. For a long while he sat in the dark room, crying for people he could not remember and wondering what he’d given up for the black chain that now bound him to this city and his god.

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