A coward and a liar

She stumbled through the tunnels, dazed and off kilter. Nothing about what had occurred was normal and the series of events preceding it - finding an old lover friend in a strange place, reunited again under uncertain circumstances - now seemed like a faraway fairytale. Fable distantly felt grateful for having survived the encounter, but even so, she was left with the same question she'd been perusing before all of this had happened: what next? What now, what now? Was it enough to just live to survive another day? Everything felt cold and faraway. She floated outside of her body, watching with consternation as her unexpectedly frail body see-sawed across the pathway. Occasionally she'd run into the side of the cave wall and walk like that for a while, shoulder to the wall, painfully scraping along. It felt better that way.

Ahead she heard the wet sounds of someone vomiting. The noise was unmistakable and had haunted her for different reasons for some time - once the royal family had eaten their fill at the feast, the first signs of the poisoning had been profuse vomiting followed by the mass hysteria and bloodshed that ensued after. Fable shuddered, but the sensation of repulsion somehow pulled her back to herself. Grounded her. Her own stomach roiled at the thought. Fable stepped forward, digging her claws into the ground with each paw, trying to really feel the dirt beneath her. Everything still felt like a dream that she was simply passing through, but the soil was real.

When she rounded the bend, adrenaline roared in her ears. Noor. She had lived. Fable stood still for a moment, jaw slack, blood rushing to her head. It roared in her ears until she felt like she'd pass out. In a good story, she would rush to Noor's side and sob, checking every inch of her over for wounds and promising they would make it out of here together - but this was simply their story, and life was never quite as beautiful as fiction. It was ugly. It hurt. It rended things limb from limb right in front of you. Fable stumbled blindly forward, blinking rapidly to try and focus past the blood in her ears and strange sensation that was still floating somewhere outside of herself, drawn to Noor like a moth to an open fire. Finally, she stood before her, shaking. Her voice was all rough sawed off edges, her throat mangled from all the screaming she'd done. "I told the others that I was with... to tell you I was looking for you. If I didn't get out."
"Speech"