I stared at Marcus' corpse in horror. It worked. That spell had worked and his body had healed. But he was still dead. Still standing in front of the counter, holding out his hand to accept the bet he had just... morbidly won. I didn't understand why his fingers had just... snapped like that. When I'd touched Hadley he still felt human. I didn't understand why Livia couldn't get her hand back. It was like he'd been turned to stone with a layer of flesh. I didn't understand anything.

  Something was missing. His time has been rewound to well before his death and he hadn't so much as flinched. It took all the focus I had to cast that spell. The only thing it earned me were stares and open mouths. I was taken away from myself again. Floating behind my body, watching it gape at Marcus. 'Come on Mars. How many red things in the room?' I asked myself. Two earrings. One ribbon. Fourteen bottles. I took a deep breath.

  "What did you fucking do??" a man yelled at me and I shook my head as I came back to the moment. "What did you fucking do to Marcus?" the wide-eyed man demanded, and I realized he was shaking me by my shoulders.

  "I- I don't... I didn't" I protested but his eyes had grown bloodshot and he wasn't listening. I pulled away but he reached for me again, until Livia grabbed his wrist with her good hand and stopped him.

  "She didn't do anything, you idiot! This happened before her... whatever that was. Can't you see she was trying to help?" she reprimanded. But the man didn't seem to care at all. I hadn't seen him speak to Marcus once but... I had only been in town for a couple of days. I didn't know what to do and I fell over while trying to back away from him. There was a time when I wouldn't have been fazed at all. When my confidence as a powerful mage would have carried me through and I could have frozen his hand in time until he calmed down.

  As I was in that inn, however? Right after my most powerful spell completely failed a second time and left a man dead... I felt so, so small. So what if I knew time magic? It did about as much good for me as it did for Marcus and Hadley. And this man was just... he just wanted his friend back. It didn't help that I blamed myself at least as much as my assailant did. Fortunately, Livia was no longer the only one holding him back. Others from the bar had joined in on pulling him away from me. They threw the near-rabid man back, and another man pulled him into the corner. Their conversation sounded heated, but I couldn't quite make it out.

  I tried to calm my rapid, short breathing as the room spun around me. 'What am I supposed to do now?' I thought while the walls closed in on me. Part of me wanted to run. To pretend there was nothing I could do about what I just saw. Whatever was happening in that city had nothing to do with me, and all I had to do was leave. Camilla wasn't there; that was obvious. If a beautiful flora mage lived in the city, people would know who and where she was.

  But... it was that kind of thinking that led me to the life I was living. Turning a blind eye. Telling myself it wasn't my problem, or it wasn't a real problem. And I knew there was a clue about Camilla in that garden. Then again, maybe I was just playing that old game of 'claim the guilt'. I was a stranger. Yeah, I was technically a powerful one, but not in any way that mattered. It really wasn't my fault if this killed the city. No more than Marcus or Hadley were my fault. I didn't know what was happening, and I didn't know why. What could I do about it?

  After failing to save two people, however, the iron chains had already settled around my neck. So I was asking myself what to do. For the city, for Camilla, for anyone. "Are you alright," Livia asked through a pained groan, and suddenly the obvious answer came to me. She was holding her good hand out to help me up while her broken and bruised wrist was clutched to her chest. All the wondering about how to do something to help. All that lamenting my failure to do so in the past... and I had been focused on myself while an injured woman protected me, the master mage.

  I had to file away the self-loathing and disgust at the realization, or I would repeat the mistake. Instead of taking her hand, I whispered my spell again. This time it was smaller and covered a shorter amount of time. It still danced across her wrist, however, and before she had finished jumping back in shock, her bruising was gone and her bone was healed. I helped myself to my feet, using a stool as a crutch. Livia stared at her hand in awe.

  "Sorry," I finally said, "I don't know why it didn't work for Marcus... I tried, I did, it just..." I trailed off while she stared at me.

  "Sorry? What are you sorry for, that was amazing! I’ll admit I haven’t seen much magic, but what I have was nothing like that. How did you do it?" she retorted, still examining her newly healed wrist. The praise stabbed me like a knife to the chest and I looked away, sniffing as I forced back the sickly memories they inspired. Instead of answering, I looked past Livia, to the dead man standing at her bar. Then I looked around the room. At least three people were gone.

  "Did someone go to get the guards?" I asked and a few people looked between each other before one awkwardly half raised a hand and answered. Livia looked at me and her face fell. Her brief excitement at my small miracle faded as she was brought back to the situation at hand.

  "I think Cal did," she offered.

  "How long ago?" I asked. Livia looked at the haunting body of her friend and shivered. She couldn’t take her eyes off the body and answered me without making eye contact.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  "Right after... it happened, I think," she guessed. I glanced at the clock. I didn't know how—it felt like only moments—but a quarter hour had passed since the last toll of the clock. I slumped. It was too late to stop it then; they would be there any minute. So, I just sat back down at the bar. It was all I could think of. I wasn’t alone in helpless restlessness, apparently, as Livia went back behind it while we waited. At some point the man who attacked me stormed out, furious and grieving.

  It was a strange silence. A room full of people, slowly taking their seats and returning to their drinks while a corpse stood with it’s arm hovering over the counter. None of us knew how to respond, but for the rest of them, this is what they had been doing for days. As I watched Livia, I realized she didn't seem surprised. She was upset, and she was holding a tempest of emotions back, but she wasn’t surprised. In a moment of insight, I realized why.

  Livia had never thought Marcus was crazy or lying. She'd never thought there was nothing to worry about. But she did work behind a bar, and even while the world crumbled around her, she did what bartenders do. She sold the illusion that everything was going to be okay. And once the guards came and collected Marcus' corpse, she would start selling it again.

  "Can I get a shot," I asked, breaking the silence before anyone else. She nodded and retrieved a glass for me, filling it with... something. It didn't matter. It was all the same. I was after the dull mind and the numb heart more than any particular flavor. We all sat there together. Drinking in the quiet. With the quiet. When the guards showed up, they did what I expected. They unceremoniously pulled the body from the building. They didn't even speak to anyone. No one asked what happened, and none of us offered an explanation. Because everyone knew.

  The guards still wanted to hide it from the city at large, but the trick they used on me wouldn't work here. There were too many of us. Too many witnesses. So they did the next best thing. They ignored us, and trusted anything we said would be disregarded and ignored. Not that it made much difference. Th gate was closed either way. No one was leaving Beddenmor one way or another. Then, after they left, there were a few more moments of quiet. The air trembled around a shocked and broken group of friends while I watched from the outside. But no silence can last forever. Not in a room of the living. So, eventually, people started whispering to each other. Then chatting. Then joking. Like nothing had happened. It all made me feel so sick. It all reminded me so much of home.

  I looked down at myself and closed my eyes. I ignored the growing noise and I drowned out the world. Just for a second. After a heavy breath, I left a coin on the counter and walked out the door. Livia didn't even look to see where I was going or if I had paid enough. She was recovering more slowly than the rest. The part of me that was still alive—however real it was—wanted to do something. Wanted to take the weight of this and use it to leverage my actual guilt off of me, at least for a moment.

  So I didn't just leave. I left quietly, and I found the wagon with the guards who had taken Marcus. They moved slowly, and they were easy to follow. "Another one in a public place," grumbled the driver. His partner spit in the road and sniffed.

  "The fourth one today," he confirmed. I crept along behind them and tried to get closer as the conversation grew more relevant. "I don't know what the Mayor is playing at, but we need to figure out what is happening. There are more of these every damn day!"

  My eyes widened. This meant the frequency was increasing. It wasn't just one an hour. I just couldn't figure out why, or how, any mage would do this. More importantly, I had to know why my spell had failed. It was true, that spell had never done anything but bring me trouble and pain. But it was still mine. It was the thing I accomplished that no one else could. If even ‘Undone’ was worthless... so was I. So I had to know.

  I wondered if that was why I was following them. Was it guilt that didn't belong to me? Was it the desire to prove that, this time at least, I hadn't failed? Was it pure magical curiosity? I didn't know, at the time, but I was compelled to find out what was going on. Then, after a while, it connected itself back to my actual concerns. Because I recognized where we were going. We were headed straight for the garden that could lead me to Camilla. My heart started beating faster as they turned a corner and the gate presented itself down the road.

  I hid behind a nearby tree as they searched their surroundings. I watched with an aching heart as they retrieved the body, wrapped in fabric, and carried it to the garden gate. When they opened it and carried him inside, I began preparing another spell. This one was powerful in a different way. It had a wider reach which made it hard to cast while whispering. With ‘Still World’, I could stop time around me. I couldn't travel far, maybe thirty paces at most, and I couldn't move anything while it was stopped. But for this, it would work.

  After a few minutes, the guards returned from the garden, greeting their peers at the gate. Just before they closed it, I released my spell. Blue sparks tore through the sky in all directions like lightning. It should have been too obvious, but I was the only witness to the extravagant spell. The world had stopped the moment my aura left my grimoire. I was alone. Well, more alone than usual, anyway. I couldn’t breathe and had little time to think about it. As soon as I saw the guards freeze on place, I dashed from cover and through the gate, diving into the nearest concealment I could find.

  As I barreled into the brambles, I was forced to release the spell and, as quietly as I could, gasp for breath. I had made it. I’d earned a few scrapes jumping into the thorny foliage and everything hurt, but I had made it. I held one hand over my mouth to prevent my tired lungs from undoing my small success, staying ducked where I was until I heard the gate close.

  Finally, I emerged from my hiding spot, brushing foliage from my clothes and pulling a few angry thorns from my skin. I had made it. I was in the garden. The same garden I had happily taken the excuse to ignore. It wasn’t worth it. The world immediately spun away from me again. I was watching myself react from the outside. Because I wasn’t alone. The garden was full of quiet visitors. Or victims of the Quiet, rather. They were piled in the center of the once beautiful garden like some kind of sick bonfire. There were dozens of them. More than a hundred, at least. Still, empty corpses. Tucked quietly away in what should have been a place of comfort. Out of sight, and out of mind. My stomach fought between despair and anger. I recognized this treatment. I’d been discarded in much the same way. These people had been brought there to be ignored.