Tessla sucked down a lungful of cirweed smoke and wondered what it would feel like when she died. Since she presently had nothing better to do, she stared at the dim light of an afternoon sun seeping through the prison’s window, exhaled past the stem of her emptied pipe, and sat up to place her head in the swirl of smoke. The smoke seeped into her, filled her lungs, and crept into the deepest recesses of her flesh. It numbed pain and neutralized the poison of Athos’s curse. The poison tried to curl past the smoke, failed, and retreated to lay quiescent within her cells.
With the help of the cirweed, her poison damaged body began to heal. Torn tissue became firm. Leaking vessels sealed, and rotting flesh became almost pure. The pain lessened, stopped. Swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, Tessla stood and walked three steps to reach her prison door.
Trelsar called. It was time to leave.
“Please,” she whispered to the solid oak door. “Let me through.”
Placing her palm against wood, she repeated her plea. Oak shifted and stirred. Wood grain flowed until a crack formed. With a satisfied nod, Tessla turned her body sideways and slipped through. Behind her, wood groaned, and the door became whole.
Tessla grunted when she saw the blond guard, Lexos, standing halfway down the hall. Fate had dictated he was almost always on duty when she chose to leave her cell. She gave him an empty smile.
“You can’t go,” he protested. “It’s my job if you do.”
Tessla looked deep within his pores. There were things in there, tiny things that ate and grew and multiplied in ways she didn’t understand. She sometimes saw their like within septic wounds. Further in, she saw the small size of Lexos’s soul, light yellow and overcast with gray muddy hues.
Pulling the soul-sucking pipe from her mouth, she slid it into her pouch. “I’m sorry. I won’t return.”
“You have to,” he insisted.
“Kiss me,” Tessla offered and smiled when he stumbled back.
He didn’t try to stop her. Neither did the other guards when she walked past the front desk and out the door. Not surprising. Nobody ever dared stop Trelsar’s Assassin when she followed her god’s will.
When her feet touched the walkway lining Yylse’ main street, Tessla stopped. She stayed still for several moments, breathing in the stench of human waste and dust and animal sweat. From high overhead the sun peered, a small pinprick of light lost in the wasteland of empty dark. To her, the sun’s light barely showed. She lived in perpetual twilight, seeing shadows where others saw faces. She recognized people by the texture of their souls.
Around her, humans walked along the boardwalk and in the street. Delivery wagons beat garbage and animal feces into the dirt. Deep within her body, Athos’s corruption stirred and surged, but the remaining cirweed beat it down. Blocks away, a life she sought flickered.