Charles' sight was fading. Both eyes were swollen mostly shut, and pieces of glass were embedded in the skin around them. The remains of his eyeglasses would have to be removed before they caused any real damage, but that would be up to the rescue team once they arrived in the Dethcopter. He'd have to trust that he and the band would be found soon. He couldn't think about his injuries right now. A deep, oceanic dizziness kept enveloping him as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He wanted to simply blame it on the blood loss or the fact that he'd been punched in the face repeatedly, but he couldn't help but feel it had something to do with what he just saw. Come to think, what exactly did he just see?
"Come on, stay grounded," He thought to himself. "Focus on sensations, on breathing…" He found it was more than a little difficult to focus on breathing with his nose and throat congested with coagulated blood. Somebody must have heard his labored attempts to breathe deeply and evenly – he felt a large hand running across the top of his head, and realized that he was lying across someone's lap rather than on the ground.
"Just calm down. Hang in there, help's on the way. Just… you know, try to relax." It was Nathan's voice. That was somewhat reassuring. Charles felt himself gently pulled onto his side. He pressed a weakened hand up against Nathan's body in some hope to keep himself steady, but nothing he did seemed to be any match for whatever it was setting into his body and mind. It came in waves, starting with noises – distorted groans and primal screeches which were somehow musical, albeit in nauseating keys of no Earthly pitch. Then came the visuals – subtle, but reflexively horrifying. Swirls of pale grey and deep red – human ashes stirred into thick blood in some sort of ritual. His body would twitch periodically, bringing him back to Earth for moments at a time. He found himself grateful for these moments; dizzy and painful as they were, they were better than the alternative. He felt his muscles vibrating, and Nathan squeezing his shoulder lightly in response. "Come on, you'll be fine." Charles coughed, clearing some of the sticky blood from his throat, making it slightly easier for him to breathe.
The hallucinations grew more vivid. They became tactile, seizing away the physical sensations Charles had been clinging to in order to keep his focus off the pain, dizziness, and delirium. He felt as though his body was being pulled apart, and the visuals he was experiencing started to flesh out more. What used to be mere colors and ideas became fully-formed imagery – the ocean and the cosmos; things that would usually be beautiful and awe-inspiring, possibly even comforting, except that there was something ineffably wrong about these particular manifestations. The water was filled with horrific, otherworldly creatures, and its color would swirl and distort into shades not occurring in nature. The planets in the cosmos were none Charles had ever read about or seen images of.
The sound of helicopter blades cut through Charles' delirium. He heard Nathan and the rest of the band muttering "Oh, thank God," and other such utterances to that effect. The wait hadn't been that long, but it was nerve wracking enough to have seemed long and drawn out due to the fact that the band had no real medical knowledge with which to even attempt to stabilize Charles. They'd had to rely on hope. Thankfully, he was still alive when the helicopter arrived, but he was in terrible shape. As the medics were preparing to load Charles onto the aircraft, Nathan set his hand on his shoulder, trying not to upset his injuries while still wanting to make sure his presence was felt. "Hey…I'm real sorry I couldn't get to that guy sooner for you. You're gonna be okay, though." At this point, it sounded like Nathan was trying to reassure himself more than Charles. "No…I'm in your debt. Don't worry, Nathan," Charles forced himself to rasp out weakly, before the medics took him away.
The pain medications that were given to him by the medics only seemed to enhance Charles' hallucinations. He was beginning to feel integrated into his visions; a part of them rather than an observer. He was able to make out a figure, and he felt as though he was pulled into a vortex by his viscera when he realized who it was. The tall man with white hair and nails like claws; the one whose eyes he saw bioluminescing as some sort of black substance exuded from his mouth. He was wearing some sort of strange armor. The screeching and groaning noises he'd been hearing grew to such a loud volume he thought his skull would cave in. More figures appeared. Familiar ones. Dethklok. His boys. Could this get any worse? Who the hell was that man, and the others who had attacked Mordhaus? Was there some sort of connection? How could he find out any of this without being intercepted? Lucid thoughts and questions pushed through visions of destruction – natural disasters, gods and demons in combat, the ocean drowned out by unearthly blood, the cosmos tearing and falling apart at the seams, and all of this repeatedly coming back around to Dethklok and the strange, armored, white-haired man with glowing, white eyes.
The ominous sounds of the machines Charles was hooked up to brought him back to reality. Something came to him – a way he could take the time to find out what was going on and who these people were with no one to intervene, and with no other tasks to get in his way either. He grasped the robe of one of the men who was caring for him. "I need you to kill me," he said.
The medic seemed stunned. "Kill you, my lord?"
"Have a death certificate drawn up. Have a funeral staged. There's something I have to do… I won't be able to do it if the world knows I survived tonight's events."
"Understood, my lord. Though, you will still need to recover…"
"Of course."
Charles' recovery had been difficult. Even while heavily medicated, he still woke up nearly every night in cold sweats, screaming in pain and fear. The hallucinations grew more intense, not less, and no drugs he was given could subdue them in the slightest. After about four days, he began to dream vividly in the first person, waking up horrified and sick when he would realize one way or another that it was not his perspective he was seeing from, but the white-haired man's. After a week's time, however, the hallucinations dissipated. His healing began to speed up. In a little over a month's time, Charles finally felt healthy enough to pursue the information he needed, albeit still consumed by an expansive sense of dread. He had an unshakable sense that absolutely nothing would be the same once he learned the significance of the attacks and the individuals involved in them. Grudgingly, he forced himself to accept this sense as truth.