Chapter 142: A Little Light in the Gray Dust

The fourth day after the explosion began with Noah nearly wrenching his neck.

​He was sitting on a fragment of a concrete pillar, trying to buckle his boot with his left hand. Suddenly, a distinct sound came from the left—as if someone had violently snapped a dry branch. Noah jerked violently to the right, throwing his mangled right arm out in front of him. The wounds flared instantly with sharp pain.

​On the side he was staring at, there was nothing but gray dust and a couple of empty crates.

​"Fucking hell..." Noah rasped, slowly lowering his arm.

​"Sorry, Noah," Darwin said, picking up a ladle and wiping it against his filthy trousers. "My hands are shaking. It's freezing."

​Noah stood up, cradling his right arm. Albert had stitched it, but everything beneath the bandages still throbbed and itched incessantly.

​He headed toward the "Green Zone." It was quieter here, and the air didn't reek quite as strongly of burnt plastic. Albert was just changing Count Wayland's dressing. The count looked pale, but his breathing had grown deeper.

​Noah shifted his gaze to Elyria's cot. She was covered with a patch of soft moss.

​Suddenly, the scent of fresh-cut grass momentarily displaced the smell of ozone and dust. Elyria's cot trembled. The grass growing beneath her makeshift bed began to lengthen, wrapping its green stems around the frame's legs.

​"A-choo!" a shrill sound rang out.

​Elyria sat up abruptly, casting the moss aside. Her hands immediately flew to her face, and she sneezed again—so violently that it hoisted her a couple of centimeters into the air.

​"Ew!" She wrinkled her nose. "What is that stench?"

​Noah froze. His lips twitched involuntarily into the ghost of a smile.

​Elyria spread her wings. She looked around.

​"Look at the state of you all," she grumbled, taking flight and hovering right in front of Noah's face. "Your arm? What happened to your arm? Gross, Albert, what did you stitch it with?"

​"Whatever I had on hand. Just be glad we're alive at all."

​Elyria flew over to Noah and perched on his left shoulder. "Spill it. And none of your usual 'we won, but everything is terrible' nonsense. Where are we?"

​Noah let out a sigh. "The city's gone. Iron overheated the Heart. It blew. Right now, this is a camp... if you can even call it that. Forty-odd people living in mud and ash."

​Elyria hopped off Noah's shoulder and drifted slowly over to Iron. She hovered above his chest, placing her palms against his forehead.

​"Iron..." she whispered. "You idiot. What an idiot."

​"What's wrong with him?" Albert asked, setting his bandages aside. "I'm a doctor; I see wounds. But you... you clearly see something else."

​Elyria closed her eyes.

​"Everything inside him is... jumbled up," she said, choosing her words carefully, trying to explain magical mechanics in layman's terms. "You know how when lightning strikes a tree in the forest, and it hollows it out from the inside? On the outside, the bark looks fine, but the core is gone. His mind... it's in there," she tapped a finger against Iron's forehead. "He's trying to find his way back, but the signals aren't getting through."

​"Will he be able to walk?" Walter asked, stepping into the tent and stopping near the entrance.

​Elyria turned to him. "Hey. Walk?" She gave a bitter laugh. "Right now, he can't even twitch his pinky finger. He needs time to regrow the pathways inside himself. Alright, enough! Stop moping. Standing around with sour faces isn't going to make him jump out of bed. Where's Darwin? I smell something horrific. Is that what he calls food?"

​She darted out of the tent.

​Outside, Darwin was just ladling a gray lentil stew into tin bowls. The people in line stood dejectedly, heads hanging low.

​"Hey!" Elyria hovered right in front of a startled Darwin's nose. "You're planning on feeding them that?"

​"E-Elyria?" Darwin dropped the ladle back into the pot. "You're awake!"

​"Of course I'm awake!" She flew over the pot, peered inside, and grimaced in disgust. "You need ginger root and at least some pine needles for an energy boost. And salt! Where is your salt?"

​"There is no salt," Darwin shrugged helplessly. "There's nothing at all. Just this flour and dry lentils."

​"Slackers," Elyria scoffed. "Noah! Get over here! You're going to help me forage for proper roots. I saw a raspberry patch that survived behind that hill."

​By evening, the camp had transformed. Elyria had forced Darwin to recook the stew, throwing in some aromatic herbs. The taste remained an acquired one, but at least it smelled like food instead of burnt dust.

​Once darkness fell, she returned to the tent and curled up tightly on Iron's chest.

​"I'm staying here," she announced to Noah and Walter. "I'm going to nudge his mind in the right direction."

​As she lay on Iron's chest, Elyria snored softly in her sleep. With every breath she exhaled, a tiny spark of green light seeped beneath Iron's skin, reaching out to feel for any surviving threads of his nervous system.