Acéin
Chapter 4: Hurt
Rating: R
Disclaimer: The characters of Masters of the Universe are property of Mattel.
Everything hurt. No, 'hurt' had not a strong enough meaning for what he felt. This was pain on a level he had not felt in years, as close to agony as he could get without going over its edge. It felt like his entire body had been torn open. He could not even move had he wanted to risk the further explosion of pain, his body felt too heavy and beaten to fight gravity.
He could not speak or make any sound whatsoever, his mouth feeling drier than desert sand, making his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth and leaving his throat painfully raw and closed feeling. It made his breathing more difficult than it was already. Not that it could have been any easier to breathe with his chest feeling so heavy and his very lungs feeling squeezed as if by two enormous hands. Gods, he couldn't breathe! He couldn't move. He couldn't feel anything but pain racing along his nerves.
But he could hear still and had been hearing the gentle buzz of voices all around him since he first stirred into a hazy form of consciousness, though at first he made nothing of them except the hard to focus on droning that marked there was anyone near him. When the voices solidified into understandable words, it happened very slowly, phasing in and out of reality and hearing. It was some of the other Defenders, talking in low voices that belied the heat of their words, the anger and rage making itself known plainly in their tense growls though the reasons for this anger varied with the different conversations.
There were at least three small groups gathered around him, but he was having trouble focusing enough to identify which ones were talking for certain. Someone with a very deep voice, perhaps Stratos or Duncan, were discussing the battle, another was declaring that Snake Mountain should be stormed and besieged once and for all, he had no idea who was saying that. Still another person, a woman that could possibly be Teela, was simply arguing with someone, more than likely Adam.
He was trying to gather enough strength to open his eyes when something cold and moist suddenly touched his arm, startling him out of his concentration. What was that?
It left for a moment only to be replaced by warm fur that brushed over his hand, rough whiskers grazing his skin as that something snuffled rather loudly. The cold thing brushed against him again, blowing hot air over his fingers this time. It was a nose. Cringer. That made sense if Adam was here, the furry coward was always in the same area as the teenager.
The pain exploded several times higher than before and remained an inferno, choking off his thoughts of why the big tiger was nosing around him in a crimson miasma that swallowed him abruptly and whole as it became nigh impossible to breath. It felt like the two hands squeezing his lungs had been replaced by a mountain range and was slowly crushing him, forcing the ability to breathe from his power. His heart was going to pound out of his chest at any moment; it laboured so hard to pump oxygen-rich blood through his body it couldn't do anything else. And his skull felt like it was being squeezed like an overripe melon and would soon burst while the rest of his body was either growing numb or bright white in sheer, overpowering agony.
Gods he hurt. He wanted to scream. He wanted the pain to stop by any means necessary. He wanted to lose consciousness if it would help. At this point, he even wanted to die, wishing he could force the words out that he was hurting, that he could tell the others, even if he could do no more than moan but his throat felt sealed shut.
There were six in the room with him, standing near the bed and looking down at his still form with saddened expressions when a fastly intermittent, quiet droning began to permeate the air, at first going unnoticed. The conversations continued for some time, the speakers unable to hear the machine.
Anger laced their conversations, anger and perplexity ruled their minds and sadness their hearts. Why had Mekanek been seemingly targeted out from the rest of them? Why was he attacked with so much brutality and so little remorse while the rest of the Defenders escaped with little more than cuts and bruises? What sort of grudge did Tri-Klops have against him?
"Is that machine supposed to be making that noise?" Adam asked Teela suddenly when the beeping began to permeate the air, putting a blanket on the various conversations. He could not tell from which machine the noise was coming from but he could only assume it was not a good thing to hear.
A healer and two assistants rushed in at roughly that moment, the assistants hurrying everyone out while the healer studied the readouts of the many machines. Just as the door was pushed closed in their faces, the blonde prince saw the doctor inject something from a large syringe into Mekanek's arm. He also saw Cringer's tail disappear under the bed.
Oh no… he had forgotten all about his pet, forgotten that he was in the room with the rest of them. Maybe no one will notice him; Adam did not really want to clean out the stables again. But this could turn very badly if Cringer did something that hurt Mekanek or worse.
"What's up, Adam?" Teela asked quietly, "Is something wrong?"
He gulped and turned to face her, his ice blue eyes wide and concerned as he looked at the fiery haired girl that was nearly his sister, "Cringer's still in there," he whispered harshly. Wincing at the way her emerald eyes widened and the shocked expression that crossed her face, he half expected her to hit him with her staff right there in the corridor with their fathers and two other Defenders looking on.
"What?" Teela whispered so harshly she squeaked. "You let your cat into that room? Why in the world was Cringer in there anyway?"
"There's no rule that friends can't visit. Cringer's a friend, if it wasn't for Mekanek, I probably wouldn't even have him. Besides, he's clean, I bathed him just after the battle…" Adam trailed off when he happened to glance past Teela and found that his father and her own were glowering at them in that angry way he knew meant that they had heard everything or just enough and weren't pleased.
This wasn't fair, why was the lad beaten as he was? He's only a boy, his heart kept repeating though his mind knew with a certainty that Mekanek was a grown man of thirty-four. It had been a long time since that day a sixteen year old Stratos had found a swaddled infant on the ocean cliffs outside the Tylwyth Teg city of Knockaine. He had taken him then to protect him and had promised himself to do his utmost to keep that baby protected.
I've failed too many times in that regard. He's been let down too many times…
Stratos sat heavily on a bench in the corridor with his forearms resting on his knees as he stared down at his bare feet, his grey eyes occasionally watering and running over. His tears had already carved a path down his lined cheeks in the day since the battle. This was his fault; somehow he knew it was, his long ago promise broken yet again.
Dimly the older man heard the children whispering urgently to each other but paid them little heed. The door had opened and one of the assistants rushed out before any of them could stop and ask her what was going on. It sent a fresh wave of worry and despair coursing through his veins as she disappeared around a corner, her hard-soled shoes tapping harshly on the stone floors.
Something was wrong… there had to be something wrong. What else was there to explain it? Had Mekanek become worse? Oh gods, that was it, it had to be. He was getting worse.
For several moments after her departure, no sound was uttered by the warriors gathered, the hallway silent as a crypt. This was wrong. They should not be waiting out here, with no knowledge, while a friend, the closest thing he had to a son, could be lying alone in a room with Death hovering over him. No one should have to die alone; Wulfric would want his friends, his family, with him if it came to that.
The old warrior gazed around at the others, from the chastened worry on Adam and Teela's faces to the stiff upper lip of the agitated Randor, Duncan, and Ram Man. These people were Wulfric's family, the only family the boy had ever truly known through his harsh young life.
The bench shifted as someone sat down beside him, from the dark green of the cuisse and the brown leather of the cross-gartered hide boot that came into his vision plane he could assume it was Duncan. Assume he did because he never looked up again to confirm it.
A moment passed in silence before the tactician spoke. "Are you going to be alright?"
Stratos snorted. "That's something you should be asking Wulfric, not me…" He trailed into silence for several seconds, his mind defeated and whirling, "I should have looked after him better… when I found that boy, I promised I would protect him and I have yet to get that part right." He sighed in defeat of his shortcomings and continued staring at his feet so that he missed the mystified look Duncan shot him.
"What? What do you mean, you found him?"
He looked at the young man out of the corner of his eye― young? When had forty-six become young to me? Arching a grey brow, the Avian king sighed again and leaned back, closing his eyes and resting his head against the cool stone wall.
"Exactly the way it sounds, I found him newly born on freezing cliffs over the Ocean of Gnarl." Daring a glance at the man, he was surprised at the look of befuddlement on his face, "you never knew?"
From the way his dark eyebrows were trying to reach his hairline, Stratos could only assume he had not. Strange, but he presumed that the older Defenders would know something of Wulfric's life before them as they had known him for nearly twenty-five years. Apparently he was wrong.
"I… knew he was an orphan, not that―" He trailed off and snapped his gaze to the door across from them. Stratos followed and leaned forward to stand quickly as it opened and the small, nervous healer crept out, firmly closing the door behind him.
As one, the Defenders converged on the old man who backed up and widened his brown eyes at the sudden closing in of four larger than normal warriors and two more normal-sized teenagers. For a moment, Stratos was afraid he was going to faint from fear. Perhaps they should back away from him and give him room to breathe.
"You're with the patient, yes?" He spoke quickly, his nervousness making itself very known.
King Randor nodded and the healer, perhaps just noticing the royal presence, bowed low. "Yes. How is he?"
"Stabilized, but I'm afraid he can't be allowed visitors until tomorrow at the earliest and from then on, the number will be limited."
He didn't like this; it made his stomach flip over in dread. "What happened?" He asked quietly.
The healer hesitated for a moment, "well… he was experiencing difficulty in breathing and the painkillers given to him had worn off, waking him up. He's not going to feel very well when he next wakes up but he should be able to breathe. It's all we know for certain at the moment but a nurse is stationed inside to more closely monitor his position. If there are any changes whatsoever, you'll all be the first to know."
"Thank you," the king murmured as the healer left them when a buzzing began to sound from his robes.
"What are we supposed to do now?" Adam asked in the silence that followed.
Randor sighed, "Prepare ourselves for whatever Skeletor and his forces may do next, there's not much we can do."
"That's it?" The young man nearly yelled in his indignant anger. "Why aren't we doing anything more? I mean... Mekanek was nearly killed by those creeps―"
"And the rest of you were injured," the Ard-Righ interrupted with a sigh, "Son, as much as I share your sentiments, to attack Snake Mountain now would by foolhardy and would only lead to more casualties as well as a stronger risk that someone could lose their life. Would you want that on your conscious? Revenge is seldom a good reason to run into a war, Adam."
The prince looked down at the ground, his face flushed in anger. Stratos knew the look well, the boy still wanted to seek vengeance for the injuries but he would do as his father said. It was amazing how alike father and son truly were.
Though Randor at his age would have gone ahead with the attack, consequences be damned. Thank the gods he has so much of his mother in him…
As the group began walking down the corridor, the Avian king spared one last glance at the closed door. He prayed the boy would be all right soon.
"Oh, and Adam?" Randor's words jerked him out of his thoughts, "Get Cringer out of there."
End chapter 4.
Glossary of terms:
1. Tylwyth Teg: it means, literally, 'the fair family' though I am using it as a race name for Mekanek's kind. They are an elfin race from the northern continent of Eternia. More on them in later chapters.
2. Knockaine: the capitol city of the Tylwyth Teg, located on the coast of the Ocean of Gnarl, in the foothills of the Mystic Mountains.
3. Ard-Righ: literally, 'high king.' A title of power.