Chapter Three: Wounded
The old man was not alone, and now, neither was I.
His acquaintance was a great beast of a man, his neck and legs hunched awkwardly even in the hall. If the old man, who stood with a bent back, had held me up, perhaps I could have seen the top of the huge man's head, but even then...
His arms were as thick as my overweight hips, and his legs were covered in a rough hide, woven together to resemble plating, making him look like he had sprouted two tree trunks from his waist. His chest was bare, and the parts that weren't covered in bright, deep scars were rippling with muscle. He was like one of those huge wrestling stars, or body builders that pulled trains and other amazing feats. I briefly wondered at how any weapon had ever managed to leave such marks on him.
Then there was his head. His jaw was square, and his eyes huge and weary, more emotionless than the old man, but somehow full of a suppressed rage. He did not stare, instead his eyes and head slowly turned, as though he were constantly expecting somebody to give him another scar. Whenever he blinked, I swear I could hear a tiny thud, like something falling in the distance.
He had wordlessly passed me a cloth of some sort – a robe like the old man wore, which I thanked him for and promptly put on – which was when I noticed his largest scar.
It was on his head, like a huge chunk of the top back of his head had been ripped off, and hastily sewn back on. It was ghastly, like something I would see in a horror movie (though I always hated watching those). I wanted to turn away, to not have to look at it, but then he was gone.
He turned away from me, his hideous scarring less visible at his height, then knelt to pick up a thick bundle of rags. He glanced at the old man, who nodded at him, and the behemoth carried the lump into the room from which I had come.
The old man turned back to me when we were alone, then bade me follow.
"C'mon, I wager ye'll be 'ungry an' in nee' o' food, af'er yer miracle 'covery."
I followed him through the hall, past many other great stone walls. I saw that each boulder seemed to have grips for the giant to hold, and that our way was lit by the seemingly random and scarce spacing of torches along the wall, none of them more than burning lumps of wood shoved into holes in the walls.
"W-where am I?" I finally asked, having wondered on which question of many to ask first. I took to the old man's pace easily, actually wishing he would, or could, go faster.
"A grave yard," the old man said. "Must've been some mis'ake in pronouncin' ye dead, seein' as ye were buried, an' all. Still, yer out now."
"But..." I began. The response hadn't really answered my question, but I had so many more questions to ask. "Who are you?"
"Me? Nothin' n'more. I was the undertaker, 'fore I got too old. Ye can call me Dom, though."
"Dom..." I repeated.
"Aye, 's short for Domingo, an' wha' 'bout you? The scouts who brough' you said you weren' one o' theirs."
"I'm... Derek," I told him. I had changed my name after the incident with my father, and even over three years later, I was still adjusting.
Domingo chewed on the name thoughtfully, "Derek... That don' sound like yer from round 'ere. Where ya from?"
"I'm..." I paused. How specific did I have to be? I didn't even know where I was. "Sorry, but... Where is this?"
We stepped into an average sized room, larger than the one I had left, anyway. A table stood in the centre of the room; an old, oak table, with a simple rustic touch. Five chairs sat around it, though only two had backs, and one of those without rested unsteadily on three legs.
A woman sat on one of the backed chairs, her brown hair bedraggled and unwashed, with matching bloodstained brown robes. She was hungrily tearing into what appeared to be a bread roll from the otherwise empty wooden plate in front of her.
She didn't react to our entry, even as the old man fell into the other backed chair. He gestured to me, and I took one of the stools beside him, across from the woman.
Domingo spread his arms, "This is wha's lef' o' mighty Valla, o' course." The woman looked up, suddenly curious, then she saw me. I paid her little mind. Why did that sound familiar?
"You're...!" she began, shock and panic equal on her face, but Domingo interrupted her.
"Ye buried this'n too soon, Zama."
The woman, Zama, shook her head. "No! No, he was dead." She dropped what looked to be the last mouthful of bread to point at me accusingly. "You were dead!"
I looked at her properly, and saw that she carried a heavy wooden cane at her side, a glowing orb atop it.
"Clearly no'!" Domingo retorted hotly. "'E would've been dead 'ad 'e starved though!"
He grabbed her last bite of bread at that, and passed it to me. I was too distracted by Zama's reply to take it, though. He shrugged and ate it himself.
"He was stabbed in the chest multiple times – his stomach was ruptured, his heart had stopped. He had multiple arrow wounds to the face – one went through the left eye and pierced his brain. He had swallowed his tongue, restricting his airway!" she reeled off the list of injuries from memory, and I remembered that field again... So that wasn't a dream.
Zama's insistence gave Domingo pause, and he turned to me thoughtfully. "I don' see no scars," he said at length.
Zama gripped her cane tightly, "Even the best healers would have been able to do nothing... This isn't right..."
She was eyeing me warily, but suddenly I wasn't interested in that.
"Valla?!" I blurted.
The other two were surprised by my sudden outburst.
I recognised that name, but it was one I had expected to hear so little that it had taken me most of the elders' conversation to realise it. It couldn't be that Valla, could it? No, it didn't make sense. It was a place in a video game!
Yet, the evidence seemed to fit. This cave, and its furnishings, were certainly not from the technological era I was used to. Then there were those monsters – the ones that had attacked me. Their medieval weapons, the way they rippled like water. They were just like the Vallite soldiers from the game – the dead Vallite masses, animated by foul magic.
I felt dizzy. The room was spinning, and my eyes could no longer focus. I was going to throw up, I knew it.
Suddenly, I screamed out. Pain like I had never felt before seared my chest, like the swords that had pierced it were back, and I could only now feel them.
My eyes shot open. They had been closed? The woman and the man were both standing above me. I had fallen over?
They were saying something. Loudly, it seemed, but I couldn't tell what it was. They were moving so slowly, and my own blinks and laboured breaths felt sluggish.
A crash. The world returned to normal speed. Beside me had landed the woman's wooden cane, its tip fading.
"... natural..." the woman was muttering to herself, now not daring to look at me.
Domingo was staring with a mixture of concern and fear, "Derek?" he kept repeating. "Derek, can ye 'ear me?"
"Y-yeah," I finally answered, voice weak with uncertainty.
"Ya fainted," Domingo explained. "Zama tried ta wake ye wi' 'er 'ealin' staff, bu'..."
I glanced at the cane, then clambered into a sitting position. The other two kept glancing then flinching away from my chest, which still throbbed with a dull ache. I looked down, and immediately the feeling of wanting to vomit returned.
My chest was bare, the cloak having been hastily removed and lay next to me, but I wished with all my heart that it could return to cover this sight.
My chest was blackened, darker than the night, broken only by blistering patches of dark red. They bubbled even as I looked at them, and now that I had seen them, they wracked my body with pain. Most of my stomach flesh and sizeable male breasts of flab had been covered, and where plain skin met the painful blackness, it faded into a spider's web of pink and black.
"Wh-" I rasped, suddenly feeling a heaving feeling in what was left of my stomach. I turned to the floor instinctively to empty it, but upon applying pressure to the wound I gasped with pain, wanting to scream but too distracted.
Domingo and Zama returned me to my back, and I shuddered, though not with cold.
"What are you?" Zama hissed, her voice more accusatory than before, though it was not anger lacing her voice.
"Easy," Domingo warned, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder and looking at me with curiosity. "We saw ye faint, an' Zama tried to 'eal ya, bu'..."
He trailed off, gesturing to my strange wound, but I focused on something else. "Heal?"
Zama nodded here, collecting her staff and, it seemed, her senses. "Yes, I am the cleric on duty, so it is my job to look after any of our wounded survivors."
"Did this 'appen before?" Domingo asked her suddenly.
"When he was brought in? I didn't try. He was dead on arrival. Even Reth only wished him a good burial, as you well know."
Domingo nodded solemnly, then gazed at me again. "So wha' 'happened?"
"I... I don't know," uncertainty was back to Zama's voice. "It's as though... His body rejected the healing magic."
Domingo nodded, thoughtfully, then pulled a concealed knife from his tunic. It was a cruel, sharp thing, undecorated and with a curved blade. No kitchen utensil, I knew. It reminded me of knives found in military and history museums, near the old war axes, and hatchets, or surrounded by sarcophagi and rolls of linen.
He lowered it to the burned flesh spread across my stomach, and I started, trying to move away. I was too weak.
His blade sliced into me, and he began to peel me like a fruit. I felt nothing, the rest of the wound blocking out all other pain with its sharp throbs.
He kept going, still slicing and cutting me with practiced ease. When he pulled it back, he stopped. Even his breath was silent, and Zama's face went white.
I wanted to look, but Domingo suddenly continued his cutting, letting me see, and suddenly my fear mounted to a whole new level.
Under the charred skin, where I had expected to see only bone and blood, clean, fresh skin was rising, pulling itself taut over my innards, knitting itself back together wondrously. My chest no longer hurt so badly, now the feeling more like I had been punched heavily in the gut. It still hurt, but at least this was far more tolerable than before.
The flesh was off now, and I realised there was a foul odour in the room. The smell was of rot and pus. I wrinkled my nose, and Domingo guffawed at that. He was an undertaker, I remembered, and so these smells would be familiar to him, and familiar to the healer too.
I sat up, tentatively feeling at the newly healed skin. It was smooth, and my gut was gone. I had the flat stomach I had always wanted, but...
"How?" I asked simply, looking at the others for answers.
Zama shook her head. "Come with me. We should see if Shadya knows anything about this."