When she woke up in the Division’s infirmary, the tall hall was strangely empty. Beds lined the walls, including one with a memorial to the Ghost etched into the stone above it. Sparrow smiled at that, now knowing for whom it was named...
Yet the sheer emptiness of the place echoed, like dust dancing in a beam of sunlight or like the dull, black ache she also felt echoing inside of her. Shadow to light, light to shadow: it was like mourning, or the darkness between stars.
A healer she didn’t know came in to check on her later, briefly, taking her vitals and straightening the covers for her. Sparrow didn’t have the breath to ask any questions, even if she had wanted to. The silence, the emptiness, it all seemed to encourage sleep, for Sparrow to sink down into darkness and submit to...what was down there? Certainly not the Shadow, she thought. Althrasia had been defeated. Somehow she knew that, with all her heart, even though she hadn’t seen Althrasia die personally.
Why else would she be in the infirmary, though, if Althrasia had won?
Hours passed, or was it days? She flitted in and out of consciousness. She didn’t see the healer again. She knew, though, on waking a final time, that she had to report in to Commander Hale about the success of her mission. Tentatively Sparrow pushed herself to her feet and limped out of the infirmary.
Sparrow lingered in the great hall of the castle, standing before the great statue of Freeport’s leader, the Mogul. She was reluctant to face the commander, even though she would be returning in triumph, of a sort. Althrasia had been defeated. The Shadow and her undead armies were no longer a threat. The Singing City would be indebted to the Division, and perhaps would now accept the Mogul’s rule without compunction.
Yet at what cost… she didn’t want to think of it, of the rules the Mogul would bind the La’aln people to. So she avoided the thought, like she avoided her meeting with Commander Hale.
