Demons and Gin
Groaning, he sat up. The ground rocked, but this time from exhaustion, not drink. His arms hadn’t felt this tired, this sore, since he was an apprentice, a teenager practicing sword drills under the eye of a tough master. It was strangely pleasant.
“I did care. I always cared. And who knows,” he found the wall again and let it help him to his feet, “you might not die yet.” He looked down at Taasha’s cut dress, the bleeding gashes beneath it. “Although, if you die now and the demons take your soul, you will deserve it.”
She looked away from him, tears running to join her blood on the cobblestones, and said nothing.
His feet uncertain beneath him, Ralanous teetered to the centre of the alley. A black mark, a smudge like the remains of a fire, was all that was left of the circle. His flask lay within it. Gingerly, pressing his hand on his knee as his back protested, Ralanous bent to pick it up. It sloshed a little as he replaced the stopper; it was not as empty as he had thought.
“Demons can be fought, Taasha.” He looked down at the flask of gin in his hand, shook it for just a moment. The sound of it, the feel of it, made him thirsty. “Even if you believe they own your soul.” He dropped the flask back onto the cobblestones, wincing as it rang a piercing note through the alley. He could feel the beginnings of a bastard of a headache.
“But you’ll need to get up and be alive if you want to fight them.” His shaky feet carried him to Taasha and he tried to catch her eye. She continued to look away, stubborn to the last. “Or you could stay there and bleed. Your choice.”
Ralanous turned away from Taasha, from the remnants of the circle and her splattered blood, and left the alley. He would go home. Not tonight, he would sleep off the drink in the cramped attic he had been living in for the past three years first, and then he would leave the city.
He couldn’t quite remember the way, but it was sure to come to him. He would find his teacher’s tower, the orchard he had played in as a boy, the yard where he had wielded his first sword, and finally take the old man up on his offer. He would return home, and rest.