† The Infection

‘I think I am ready,’ she told Alaric.

The man looked at her over the top of the ancient scroll he was reading. Nenya’s tiny head poked over the top of the scroll too. ‘But are you?’

‘What do you mean? I said I was ready. I have mastered healing. Even you said you have never seen anyone progress so quickly.’ It was true that she had worked hard to master the skill of Healing. In actual fact, it was not much more magical than healing the natural way was: the cleric only acted as a guide for the healing by providing his or her patient’s body with a blueprint of health and well-being, then fuelled the accelerated healing process with mana.

‘You have mastered the techniques of healing. But I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to boast of a student that has mastered the skill of healing.’ Alaric remarked mildly, returning to his scroll. ‘You haven’t seen even a ninth of the emotional side of it.’

‘Emotional? How hard can it be? If someone is injured, I’ll heal him.’

‘There are cases where things are too far-gone. If someone has lost too much blood, you cannot help. If someone has lost an entire arm, you cannot re-grow the limb for him. For all these cases, what will you do then?’

‘Surely I’ll know when I’ve reached the limits of my power. I want to help people!’

‘But will they let you help them? We are pagans. Heathen pagans and witches with powers we bartered for from the devils with our souls.’ Alaric smiled bitterly. ‘Do you think they will let their sick and injured near you?’

She still did not understand. ‘If I can heal them, why wouldn’t they?’

‘You are still naïve, girl. I know what you are thinking of. You are thinking of Ezek again.’

At her brother’s name, she tensed, the guilt coming back again, followed by hot irritation at Alaric’s knowing look. ‘Test me, I’ll prove it to you that I can do it!’ Once she spoke, she immediately regretted doing so, but she set her jaw. How would he know if she wasn’t ready if he didn’t test her?

There was a small silence. Alaric’s green eyes were unfocused for a moment, before he snapped back to attention. ‘If you wish,’ he set his scroll down, his voice wry. His eyes were sad as he looked at her. ‘I don’t want to have to do this, but as I have said before, we all need to bow to the powers that be, and I have my instructions.’

He withdrew a crystal that reflected light in rainbow hues from the folds of his robe and placed it on the floor. With his Kage staff, he sketched a sigil around the magic stone, which started to glow with the soft blue of mana. In a flash, the stone was consumed, and a thick wooden door sprung up from the sigil.

At Alaric’s gesture, she grasped the doorknob, twisting it to open the mystic door and went through it.

‘Guard the door.’ With one last glance around the empty cottage, Alaric followed his student through too, Nenya staying behind to keep watch on the portal.

They came to a battlefield, intense with the heat of hellfire and crimson with spilled blood. Broken bodies lay scattered around an altar of broken reddish stone, strewn carelessly by a giant hand like mutilated ragdolls from a grotesque toybox. The parched ground below their feet was soaked in lifeblood, the air saturated with its metallic tang and the smell of ozone where lightning, despite common saying, had struck the same place more than twice.

The battle still raged, the men fighting for their lives. Only this time, the battle was against the dread lord Death, his dark presence ever stalking the field. The men that still breathed drew ragged gasps of the searing air into their lungs, choking on the fumes of their own blood as they struggled to cling onto life with bloody nails.

She stared, shocked and mind-blank at this devastation.

‘This girl fancies herself a Cleric! She wants to help you!’ Alaric called out, his voice loud over the rattle of dying breaths.

‘No! Alaric!’ But the man was gone, back through his own mystic door that sealed up and vanished into thin, red-tinged air.

She screamed as a bloody hand reached out to grab her by her ankle, the hand belonging to a spearman that she thought dead. The warrior’s heavy chain armour was blackened with soot, the tough links ripped apart like so much cotton. Metal links from his destroyed chainmail helm were embedded in his scalp too, visible where his hair had been scorched off.

‘Help… me,’ the living corpse croaked.

She reached out to hold him by his shoulder, only to have her fingers meet a sickeningly wet mass of mangled flesh and splintered bone. She recoiled then, but the dying spearman grabbed her by her wrist, desperation and hope giving him one last spurt of energy and agility. ‘Help.’

Left with no choice, she forced her fingers back to the tattered stump that had been the spearman’s arm. She was a Cleric, a healer; most of all, she had to prove herself. She tried to heal, struggling to draw on her mana while her mind raced to see this broken man before her whole and unhurt, but the tang of blood in the air and the raw flesh under her fingers made her mind scream in revolt… Nothing happened. There was too much blood lost, and too much trauma in her patient’s mind for him to recover completely.

‘I can’t… I’m sorry.’ She whispered, tears coming to her eyes.

‘End it for me,’ the spearman begged, his grip on her wrist loosening as his strength ebbed. ‘Kill me.’ Nausea slammed like a giant hand into her, the dying man’s words reminding her of Ezek. Had he not asked for death too? ‘Go on, kill me!’ It was his fault, none of hers. She could not be blamed for giving Ezek what he asked for.

But even as she backed away from the spearman, even more dying men crawled towards her, using the last vestiges of their fading strength to claw their way to her. She stopped running now, brought to her knees by the torment around her and the pain she felt coming in waves from them. She felt sick, a pressure against her ears making her dizzy.

A man on the ground before her reached up to grasp the front of her robes, hauling himself painfully onto his knees; he had no feet, only pathetic jagged stumps of useless tissue. He held a hand over his stomach, trying to keep his intestines where they belonged, but the stinking gory mess just kept slipping out through his fingers.

‘You were our last hope.’

‘Please, let me go,’ she pleaded, her hands scrabbling on the ground behind her.

‘You came in our time of need. We did not expect hope, even after we had destroyed the cursed Zakum.’ The man whispered, his voice cracked and hoarse.

‘I cannot help you, I cannot heal, I cannot help you,’ she wailed in a hysterical tone, her mind spinning with distress and despair. ‘Please leave me alone!’

‘You were our last hope. Why won’t you help us?’ The man whispered his last accusation, before his hand slid down the front of her robes in a bloody trail, lifeless now as its owner surrendered to the dominion of death.

Alaric returned for her two hours later and found her curled up into a foetal position, surrounded by a ring of corpses. He picked up the swooning girl easily, and brought her back to his cottage. Even hours after she had jolted back into consciousness, a silent scream tangled in her throat, the Priest did not mention a single word of her ordeal.

He did not need to. The trial made her believe all his words, when they themselves could not persuade her. She had been too confident and too naïve, and had thus dug her own grave.

But she had also gained the strength to climb out of that grave, where others would have simply buried themselves alive. Shame of her failure and arrogance only drove her to work harder; she would not accept her fears of being worthless. She seldom spoke and smiled even less frequently.

But one thing did not change about her. Most of all, her drive to master the skills of Healing still came from the small hope that had awakened in her the day Alaric offered to teach her to heal: perhaps, just maybe, if she could heal Ezek, her family would forgive and accept her.

Then everything will truly be well again, like the complete healing of a grievous wound that left no trace of any scars.

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Links to earlier parts:
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Author’s Note (1): Whee for blood and gore. :X The original story impressed me most with the battlefield scene, so I took this chance to make it bloodier and gorier.

Acknowledgements: I cannot claim to be entirely original. This story is inspired by a short story of the same title by Gary Jones, as published in Sword and Sorceress VII. This author has merely taken a good yarn and rewoven it into a richer, Maple-esque tapestry. Of course, Wizet, you can’t sue me either.