Different Together

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Khory looks at me, his eyes still wide, and tries to say something. His mouth opens and closes, and it nearly brings me to tears. The memory of him calling out my nickname rings through my head. Koi, he called, where are you going?

It was the last thing he said to me before it all went wrong.

When we were younger, he teased me, saying that my speech impediment made me look like a koi fish. My eyes would go wide as I tried to focus, and my mouth frozen open as I tried to form words. My cheeks always blazed when he said that, but it became a nickname that stuck even when speech therapy worked and I didn’t stutter anymore.

Only Khory calls me that.

I move to touch his face. He flinches at me, looking away to the wall next to him. I barely moved my hand, but I let it fall to my side. He’s not ready. He’s scared.

He looks around, taking in his new surroundings. When he died, he had been in front of our home, wearing his armor and ready to clock in for his guard shift. Now he’s naked and covered by a sheet, lying on the thin mattress the ramshackle inn provided. The room is dingy, and can use a scrub or six, but it was the cheapest option when I was looking for places to stay.

The staff also doesn’t seem to mind necromancy so long as they have proper deniability.

He opens his mouth again, then clears his throat. I wave my hand, and the pitcher of water comes towards us, pouring into the cup I hold up for it. When I offer it to Khory, he stares at it. There’s a twitch in his shoulder, a crease in his brow, and I realize what the problem is.

I scoot closer, moving slowly as I maneuver my arm under his shoulders and help him sit up. He winces at the movement but stays quiet as I hold the cup to his mouth. He drinks carefully as if still trying to remember how.

When he’s done, I lower him down again, watching. Waiting.

“Koi.” His voice is soft and ragged. Gravelly from disuse but undeniably Khory. He stares at the ceiling, blinking quickly. “I died.”
“Yes,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “But it’s okay now. You’re okay now.”

“No,” he says. He turns to me, and it looks like the simple movement took most of his strength. He takes a deep breath, eyes closed as he steadies his breathing. “I’m not okay.”

“Y-You are though,” I say. I can feel the frantic energy trying to creep into my voice. “You’re alive, Khory.”

He sighs. “I’m not me, Koi. My body… This body isn’t mine.”

“I…I don’t understand. I didn’t graft much before I brought you back.”

His eyes cut to mine, tearing away from the window he’d been looking at. “You brought me back?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting up. If there was one thing I could talk about easily, it was necromancy. “It wasn’t easy, but I managed it. It took me a year, though.”

His brows furrow, a deep frown etching itself onto his face. “If the Party finds out that you learned necromancy and then brought someone back, they’ll have your head and mine.”

“I— Wha— You—” I stare at him, baffled. Alive again for ten minutes and he’s already lecturing me.

“If you were dead set on doing something so stupid, you should’ve went to someone. Disguised yourself and kept your distance until it was done.”

“It’s a problem when I do it, but if I paid someone else to do it, that would be fine?”

“Yes,” he grits out, trying (and failing) to sit up, “because my baby sister is a healer and I don’t want her to be hanged over something so stupid when healers aren’t as common as run of the mill fighters.”

I cross my arms, fighting the urge to puff out my cheeks like a child. “You can be upset with me if you want, but I don’t regret my decision. If the Party finds out when I renew my license then I’ll deal with the consequences then. I worked for a year to get the right ingredients and proper practice to bring you back and make sure it was you who came back. And I succeeded. I don’t give a damn about the Party.”

He stops trying to sit up and lays still. His eyes are closed, but his frown is no less apparent. “You did fail, Koi. This isn’t me. At best I’m a shadow of myself.”

“Muscle atrophy is normal when coming back especially after so long. You had a significant portion of skin missing from your back, so I had to graft some of mine and that made the process take a little longer.”

“What did you do?” I roll up my pant legs, showing the sides of my thighs. Both are scarred from the skin I took to make sure Khory came back whole. His frown deepens and he looks away, blinking quickly. “Why would you do that? Why would you do any of this for me when you knew what it would cost? You’re mutilated and I’m a useless lump of flesh.”

“Ha!” I don’t mean to laugh, but the bark comes out as humorless as I feel. I tug my pants back down and lean against the wall next to him. “If you think this is bad, I won’t show you the other scars I got from this adventure.”

He’s quiet, looking out the window again. When he died, the leaves had just started to turn. I had been on my way to watch the elder tree in town change its leaves from radiant greens to breathtaking oranges and yellows and reds. I never got to see it though. The Gristiv attacked our home, killing my brother and half the town. The pig-headed Beasts were known for slaughtering towns in the name of survival, but we hadn’t been close to their settlements. There was no reason for us to have been in their path and yet I and so many others suffered because of them.

Khory went down before he had a chance to react. There was only one Gristiv, but they’re huge, densely packed with muscle, and much faster than they look. It looked at me with mild curiosity, then turned and left, moving further into town. I don’t know why it left me alive. I didn’t have time to think about that as I forced my legs to move, made the wobbling still as I sprinted to Khory.

He was already dead. I knew he was already dead, but that didn’t stop me from trying. From throwing every healing spell I could into his body. Watching his skin glow and regain its warm color only for the magic to seep out and into the ground, leaving him dull and colorless. Again and again, I slammed everything I could into his lifeless body with the smallest hope that something would stick. I left my mark on the ground in front of our old house. Every bit of magic I was able to use was infused into the ground, rooting and creeping down and down until every part of our town was overcome with faint blue and green light.

The last thing I saw as I hefted his body onto my shoulders was the elder tree growing higher and higher, blotting out the sun. Its leaves were vibrant shades of yellow and green.

The wind rustles the leaves on the tree outside our room. It’s not as grand as the elder tree, but the oranges and reds are just as beautiful.

When Khory’s eyes find mine, I can see the whites have gone red. My heart picks up before I realize it’s much worse than his soul rejecting his body and my stomach sinks into the floor. Khory is fighting back tears.

“What are you going to do, Koi?” His voice is so soft it’s nothing more than a whisper. “You’ll be on the run for the rest of your life.”

“I won’t,” I say, brushing his hair out of his face. “Everyone thinks Mansol was completely wiped out, us included. I refined a few glamour spells and kept myself hidden. Anyone who knows us thinks we’re dead and if they see us now, they’ll think we managed to escape and have been keeping a low profile. Which we have.”

“If anyone looks too closely at me, they’ll know.”

“Then we maintain the low profile. It’s not so bad, living this way.”

It takes a moment before he’s able to force out the words, “What if I’m never the same?”

I study his face as I have almost everyday since the attack. His dark, coarse hair hanging past large ears I teased him about relentlessly. A crooked nose from breaking it too many times training and insisting I be the one to heal it. I watched his once round and open face go gaunt, cheek bones I never remember seeing before stand prominent.

I hold up my hand, showing him a small scar that winds up the back of my hand to my middle finger. “Do you remember how I got this scar?”

He looks at my hand, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his mouth as recognition bubbles up. “You were being stupid and climbing too high on the elder tree. When you fell, your hand hit a rock.”

“What about the red streak in my hair?”

He raised a brow, still smiling. “You kept pulling on Silvia May’s hair when you were five and she cursed you to have hair just like hers.”

I snort. “In fairness, she was terrible.”

“She was,” he says, a real smile settling on his face. It was small, but it was there. “Why are you asking me this?”

“I never told anyone else what happened with my hand and Silvia May was so embarrassed, she kept her mouth shut. My brother knows those things about me. No one else.” I smile wide as his eyes water, tears finally breaking the dam. I keep my voice soft, tugging up my sleeve to wipe his tears. “You’re changed, Khory. I wouldn’t expect anything else, but I’m also changed from this. You’ll be different, and I’ll be different, and we’ll live. Together.”

“It won’t be that simple.”

“It never is.”

His hand twitches and he holds up his pinkie. I hook it in mine and press my forehead to his.

“Together?”

“Together.”

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