Chương 7: Not Enough

She hit the yard and stopped short. Rain, hard and cold, driving sideways in the wind. Every part of her wanted to get dry, get warm, get inside. Her fur went flat and heavy within seconds. Too many people. Too much noise, voices stacking over voices, boots slipping in mud that hadn't been mud an hour ago. She stayed anyway. The smell was what kept her there. Mud. Wet wool. Blood, thick enough to taste even through the rain, spreading into the puddles across the yard.

"Healer! Somebody get a healer, now!" Daven's voice, cutting over the rain, hoarse and cracking at the edges. He stood near the gate soaked through, blood on him that wasn't all his own. He was trying to do six things at once. He hauled one man toward the door himself before someone pulled him off it. He counted faces as they passed him, fast, losing count, starting over.

"Is that everyone? Somebody tell me that's everyone." Nobody answered fast enough. He asked again anyway, like the asking itself might make it true. She'd never heard him sound like that. This was a different kind of loud. Even his hands looked wrong, opening and closing on nothing, like he'd forgotten how to hold something steady. She crept along the fence line instead of crossing the yard straight on, low to the ground, ears flat, fur already soaked through and heavy, hating every second of it and moving anyway.

Garr was already moving too, faster than she'd ever seen him move, shouting something short and hard toward the door Bram had just come running out of. He grabbed a passing shoulder, checked a face, shoved the man on toward the healers without slowing his own stride once. She passed Flint on her way through. He had someone's arm slung over his shoulders, dragging them toward the door, his own face streaked with rain and someone else's blood. He didn't see her.

Thorn came through the gate last, the new one's weight slung across his shoulders, moving fast for the door instead of stopping, both of them soaked through and streaked red. His steps didn't slow once, not for the mud, not for the crowd near the door. She followed the smell straight through the chaos, low and quick, the rain the last thing on her mind now. They got him through the door and down onto the floor near the hearth, out of the worst of it at last.

Thorn dropped to his knees beside him immediately, both hands pressed hard against his side. She almost didn't know him. The smell told her before her eyes did. Under the blood and the mud there was still a thread of him left, faint, the same scent that had trailed after him every morning he'd crossed the yard toward her, hopeful, hand already reaching. She pushed through the crowd gathering around him. Only once she was close did she let herself look properly.

His chest worked too hard, too fast, nothing about the rhythm of it right. One arm sat wrong against his side. Blood soaked through the blanket someone had thrown under him, spreading slow across the floorboards. His eyes were open, but they weren't finding anything, moving slow across the ceiling like he was looking for something he'd lost. Thorn's hands didn't stop pressing. Big hands, the kind that looked like they could crush stone without trying.

Right now they wouldn't stop shaking, no matter how hard he pressed them flat against Corin's side. His voice, when it finally came, cracked clean in half halfway through the word.

"Stay with me. Come on. Stay with me." Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. He said it over and over, voice climbing thin and high in a way she'd never once heard out of him. Whatever calm he usually had was gone. There was nothing left holding it together now. She didn't reach for him the way she usually reached for things, no batting, no testing, no curiosity in it at all.

She pressed herself in against his side instead, low and still, and didn't move, her fur still dripping onto the floor around them both. She stared at him too hard, the way she'd once stared down a mouse hole, willing something to happen. She didn't have a word for what. [SYSTEM] Status Window Name: Corin Race: Human Age: 19 Class: None Condition: Critical The words sat there the same way her own name had sat there once, plain and unhurried. She didn't understand most of them.

But she understood the shape of that one now. Corin. She'd never had a word for him before. Just the smell, and the hand that kept reaching no matter how many times she bit it. [SYSTEM] Territory member critical. Attempt intervention? She didn't understand those words either. But something in her chest pulled toward him anyway, the same pull that had once dragged her out a gate and down through a rusted grate.

She stayed pressed against him and did the only thing she knew how to do, the thing that had eased Ren's shoulders and quieted Garr's hand. She stayed still. She stayed close. She didn't leave. [SYSTEM] No applicable skill found. Insufficient mana. Intervention failed. Nothing happened. No warmth left her. No answer came back. Whatever she'd carried out of that room under the city, it had nothing to give him. [SYSTEM] Skill Acquired: Futile Wish A wanting wish with nothing behind it. Grants no effect.

For half a heartbeat she was back in that tunnel, teeth closing on something that fought her, hard and solid, a thing she could actually reach. She'd bitten her way out of worse than this once. There was nothing here to bite. Something in her snapped, quick and hot, sharper than anything she'd felt down there. Every part of her wanted to do something the way she always could, claws, teeth, weight, speed. There was nothing here for any of that. Nothing to bite. Nothing to outrun.

Nothing her body had ever learned how to do against this. A hunter with nothing to catch was just an animal sitting still. She knew what she was for. Mice went quiet when she was near. Rats learned to stay in the walls. Even the thing under the city had gone down under her teeth in the end. Here, none of it counted for anything. Her claws were good for wood and rope and a hand that reached too slow. They weren't good for this. Foolish. All of them.

Walking out that gate again and again, and it never once gave any of them back the way it took them. She'd gone under the city and come back better than she left it. Why couldn't they. The hate came without a shape to it, without a place to land, and that made it worse. She stayed anyway, pressed in against him, because staying was the only thing left she knew how to do. A healer shoved through the crowd and dropped to their knees on his other side, hands already glowing faint and pale.

People pulled back to give the healer room, shifting and stepping around them both. Somewhere in the shuffle she lost her place against his side. She didn't push back in. She backed away instead, one slow step at a time, out from under all those legs and knees until there was nothing of him left to press against. She didn't follow the healer in. She turned the other way and shoved through the crowd of legs without picking a direction. Only away.

She ended up wedged under the stairs at the back of the hall, in the dark, breathing hard, tail lashing against the wall behind her. The space was barely big enough for her, dust and old cobweb catching in her whiskers, the wood pressing close on every side. Her own heartbeat was the loudest thing in the dark, fast and uneven, nothing like it had been under the city. She didn't know what she wanted. She only knew she couldn't sit there and watch it happen, whatever it was, again.

Her claws found the wood beneath her and dug in without her telling them to. There was nothing here to dig into. Just old wood, and her own claws, and nothing on the other end of either. The warmth under her ribs had gone thin. Not from hunting. Not from running. Something had left her back there, pulled out of her the moment she'd pressed in against his side and nothing came of it. Less of it now than before. She could feel the gap where it used to sit. Voices moved through the hall without her.

Urgent, then less urgent, then quiet in a way she recognized, though she still didn't understand why quiet came in different shapes. [SYSTEM] Territory: The Guild Hall Registered members: 211 The number sat there again, uninvited. The shapes were different than before. She didn't look at it long. There was nothing in it she could smell or touch, and right now there was nothing in her that wanted to try.

She stayed under the stairs a long while, until the anger burned down to something colder and worse, something closer to the feeling that had chased her out the gate that first night, before any of this. She crept back out eventually. She didn't go far. Sound reached her first. Fewer voices than before, and quieter, the kind of quiet that comes after the worst has already happened. From the shadow of an overturned bench she could see the shapes still gathered by the hearth. Blankets. Low voices.

Someone's hands moving slow and careful over a face wrapped round and round in white cloth. She didn't know if the chest under all that cloth was still moving. She didn't go any closer to find out.