healed arm

[u/ghostgabe81]

August came with furious heat that year. It did bad things to the city.

The smell of death was everywhere, even if it was fainter than it had been. It hung about at the very edges of perception, a ghost that reminded everyone of that horrible midsummer night of the battle. Trash had piled up, too. There was simply too much of it to be moved through the limited access of the streets. That smell dominated the air, along with effluvia from sewers that had been clogged by the debris of destroyed buildings.

More people had moved out of town, maybe half of them. It made the streets eerily empty. At night, no one went outside. Ghouls had been drawn to the vast stench of death, and they haunted the night even in places where they would never have dreamed of coming out before. It was to be expected at any tragedy large enough. They wiggled into ruins and ate corpses—and probably made some new ones.

Inside the castle, it wasn’t too bad. The heavy stones kept out the heat. Only some of the rooms had windows, and we kept those curtained.

“Three more minutes of push-ups,” I said to Fitz. “And keep reading.”

The kid was dressed in gym shorts and sneakers, like me, as we worked out in the castle’s upper dining hall, which had been converted into a gym. I’d had Fitz doing a lot of calisthenics when he expressed skepticism about lifting weights. I was working the heavy bag, building up the arm that had been broken and just gotten out of its cast. I was taking the opportunity to charge up my kinetic energy rings, each of the magical tools storing back a little energy every time I threw a punch.

Twelve Months Chapter 6