Ashes Unwritten: Oblivion's Heir [Volume 1 Complete!]

Rae slumped, unmoving, against the bars of her prison. She'd done that for days now, unmoving, unseeing, and nearly unknowing, her body and mind as much of a prison as the cell she sat in.

It was gone. It was all gone. Reina. Her Fulminancy. Everything she'd fought for, everything that made her who she was, gone. Rae was a husk, a shell, no better than the monsters that had attacked her in the first place. She thought she might even welcome them back—because last time she'd dealt with the creatures, she'd still been Fulminant.

Such thoughts weren't uncommon as the days passed, as her sanity trickled away along with her will to live. She wondered if she had any sanity left at all these days. Rae had never considered herself to be particularly stable in the first place.

She told herself this story over and over again, as she sat there, unmoving: that she was nothing, that she was no one, that her powers had made her Rae as much as any characteristic she might possess. It wasn't exactly a lie, but her malaise and weakness certainly were. With her worst fears finally realized, it was easy to sit there in stunned shock—but it was also her way out.

The first day, the guards had yelled at her, screaming until her ears rang. The second, they'd dumped water on her, cold and bracing. The third, they'd beaten her until she'd passed out from the pain.

Rae hadn't responded to any of it.

As always, she found it strangely easy to dissociate from the woman slumped on the floor of her cell, beaten, battered, and bruised, but not yet broken. She was not that woman.

Not yet.

The guards grew bored. They began to relax around her, assuming her comatose and of no threat to them. They left her for dead, no longer bringing meals or water. She wasn't a threat, after all; her powers were gone, and soon she'd be dead, anyway.

So the next time they opened the door, ready to drag her out and have their way with her—an event they'd planned right in front of her—she struck.

The first guard dragged her out by her partially bound hair, and Rae's scalp screamed, but she made no noise. The guard had made a fatal mistake—he'd left her with easy access to his knife.

Rae felt her missing Fulminancy like a severed limb. But long ago, the knife had been her first friend. As she focused her eyes, the knife found its way home into her hands again, a welcome respite against the mind-numbing terror of her helplessness.

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She sliced at the man's arm and sunk the knife into his belly, gutting him the old-fashioned way. She disemboweled the second before he could even draw his sword. Rae stood then, surveying her work. Pain lanced through her body, and she winced, wishing her way out hadn't left her so stiff. Nothing could be done now, though, and well, she was out.

Mostly.

Holding her filthy sleeve against her nose to stop the smell, she carefully removed a few more knives from the corpses, stealing the gutted man's belt for good measure. She'd been left with her boots, at least, and she stashed a couple more knives in there. She didn't touch the swords. She was no Rowan or Arlette, and she planned to be nowhere near the striking distance of a sword.

Rae took off down the corridor, her steps a halting limp at first, lengthening into her full stride as the numbness and weakness of captivity wore off and adrenaline took over. She would get out of here and make them all pay.

It was all she had left.

The underground corridors were far from deserted, but Rae had been a thief long before she'd come into her powers. The motions came back to her, fluid and comforting, and though she ached every time she reached for powers she no longer had, she focused on survival. The rest would come later.

She slunk down a series of corridors, using side rooms and alcoves to hide, her steps always seeking higher ground. She could tell she was close to the exit by the smell alone—that familiar scent of the storm crackling overhead floated into the corridors as a light mist. She just needed to—

"The men are nervous, my lord," a man's voice echoed from down the hall. Rae froze in her alcove, gripping her knives. "The storm blew down one of the barracks last night—blew it clean off the foundations."

"The Drystorms did that too. Have you never seen a Gasp before?" The voice was dismissive, but Rae caught the nervous inflection in his voice. She thought she recognized it from somewhere.

"It was a stone barracks, my lord."

"I assure you, Captain, that we're doing everything we can to mitigate that thing. Unfortunately, I'm privy to very few of those meetings myself." Rae realized where she'd heard the voice before—it was the young council Seat she'd seen months ago at one of those awful balls. Redloch? No, this one was younger—the newest member of that dubious group. Still, where there was a Seat—

"I understand, my lord. I'll do my best to encourage the men."

"Thank you, Captain."

One set of footsteps jogged away from her position, while the other set continued to walk towards her. Where there was a Seat—

The man passed her. She dashed towards him and ran her blade across his legs, hamstringing him before slamming the butt of her blade into his temple. The man dropped. He wouldn't walk without assistance again, and even then Rae was unsure.

She flipped him over and pulled the chain from his neck, grinning. Where there was a Seat, there was a locket. Rae looped it around her own neck, patted the unconscious man, then jogged towards the exit.

Not a bad night, she thought. Even without powers.