The world was falling apart and all Keldava could do was huddle in her cave of cracked stone and jagged metal and whimper, Devini clutched against her chest like a safety blanket and constant shivers wracking her sick form. It hadn’t been that bad while Element was with them, at leas then she had someone to reassure them and Element knew the building well but the library was old and weak, not the safest place in sections at the best of times.
Keldava had been rooting around some of the side rooms when part of the building had collapsed. It had happened suddenly, one second everything seemed as secure as an old human building could be, the next a massive piece of rock was crashing through the ceiling and everything was falling. Keldava had ended up in a hollow clear of rubble about three times her own size, propped up by a thick metal girder. There was a way out, a small passage that would be just big enough to crawl through, but Keldava was too scared –and more recently too weak – to try.
Keldava hadn’t been eating much even before she had left Arte – too caught up in her own troubles to hunt properly – and she had eaten literally nothing the past week. Devini had done better, managing on small scraps and rainwater but Keldava could barely move without painful hunger pain from her stomach. Even worse the gash on her shoulder had become infected. The wound itself was imflamed and full of pus, Keldava could barely move her shoulder without increasing the ever present pain coming from it and a sickly, sweet but unpleasant smell filled the air. The wound felt like a parasite, sitting atop her shoulder and draining all Keldava’s energy.
Keldava wished she had never left. Her family had turned against her but there were others in Arte who cared and surely Skye’s anger would fade. Whatever Arte had been like it was better than this, dying in a tomb of human rubble, far from her family and alone except for Devini’s quiet mewls of distress as Keldava grew weaker and weaker.
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