BleedingTears
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Arcanist - Chapter 20
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:49:45 +0000 UTC“What does the Bloodsong say?” Master Eldras asked, one hand over his chest and the other tapping an expectant finger on the tip of his nose. He seemed not all too bothered that the patient who was lying over the stretcher was about to drown in his own blood.
A bullet had caught the man below the chin, carved a bloody path through the sinews and got stuck there, half of it likely snapped off by one last, desperate effort.
Valens glanced at his Master, and then down at the patient, stretching a hand out toward the pair of Wards placed near the bullet that pulsed with mana. When he touched one of them, the Resonance filled his mind with a gurgling, sloshing set of frequencies that lacked any sort of rhythm.
“I need some crystal water!” he demanded to the pair of assistant healers watching intently from the back. One of them bolted forward, swept a bottle of pure water from the counter and presented it almost vehemently to him with both palms supporting the heel of the bottle.
Valens reached out to it, and cursed when his Warded fingers trembled as he took it. He shaded it with a mighty frown, a foolish part of him hoping Master Eldras hadn’t caught his small slip even as the other, more experienced part knew how keen the Chief Healer’s ears were. His command over the Resonance was such that even an ant crawling beyond the shutters of the tent sounded like the march of a wild elephant to him.
“Steady,” Master Eldras said. A single word, which proved enough to force Valens to focus back on the operation.
He washed the wound with crystal water, and wiped the Wards’s surface to get a clearer song this time, handing the emptied bottle to one of the assistants. He then grasped the Wards with both hands and closed his eyes.
The Bloodsong came right away.
It painted a rather disturbing picture in his sound vision. One that made little sense. The bullet had torn a good part of the main artery feeding the brain, lodged there into the blood flow like a set that blocked off the greater part of the stream. Most of the blood that should’ve gone up through the artery was now spurting out in waves that clouded the Bloodsong even though he’d just cleaned the wound.
By all means, the man should’ve been dead. In the brain and the body both, to Valens’s thinking. And yet his chest rose and fell in small waves. Breath wheezed weakly through his lips, like how air might leak out through a tiny hole in a giant air balloon.
“How is this possible?” Valens muttered, fascinated by the discovery. It seemed, rather strangely, that once they fixed the torn off sinews the man could be whole again.
“How, indeed,” Master Eldras said, a small smile gracing his lips. He motioned for Valens to step back, and checked each Lifesurge - ring shaped Wards - on his fingers before giving him a look. “Watch,” he said.
Valens breathed in deep and opened his eyes wide, fearing that if he blinked even for a second he might miss out on something important. Books and cadavers of all kinds only taught him so much. He’d learned more in his single year of service here in the field than the eight long years he’d spent in the Institute.
As always, Master Eldras worked with practiced efficiency and such ease that left the pair of assistants sighing round his back. Valens himself was spellbound as he caught the minute changes happening in the Resonance as Chief Healer stitched those arteries back with precision.
It took him perhaps a touch longer than five minutes to fix the broken tissue back to smooth. The new skin had a rosy, healthy glint about it. Nothing, not even a single tear had left on the side of the man’s throat. The bloody bullet itself had been removed and placed in a plate.
“Exquisite work as usual, Master,” Valens said, and bowed his head in genuine respect. The assistants nearly clapped, only to remember where they were and instead settled for a bow of their own.
Valens then thought, almost involuntarily, that perhaps he would never reach this level of mastery in his lifetime. He was fourteen years old, and by all means considered a genius amongst his peers, having studied under Master Eldras for long years. Everybody knew the Chief Healer had taken him under his wings even if Valens kept his surname a secret, but little did they know this came with its own problems.
His Master expected more from him. So much more than was perhaps reasonable. He wished for Valens to go beyond what he’d himself accomplished in a lifetime of success, and Valens knew he had to do it.
He owed a debt to this man that he could never hope to repay.
But how could anyone contend with such control? Such expertise and mastery over the field that had been witnessed only once in the past hundreds of years?
“Thank you, gentlemen, but I’m afraid we’re not done yet,” Master Eldras said, and gazed deeply at the patient’s now still face.
Valens arched an eyebrow at those words. The work had been nothing short of perfect, every cut and tear had been fixed with impeccable focus. The patient’s breathing was coming out in deep, long sighs. His chest rose and fell in a constant rhythm. What more could have been done? The man should wake up at any moment now.
Except he didn’t.
Master Eldras gestured for him to check the Wards. Valens then smacked himself mentally. Of course, there was always the chance of invisible damage in a race of seconds. The brain might’ve died during the operation.
When he checked the Resonance, though, he didn’t get the expected scattered, gapped rhythm. Instead he got a strong, thumping one that had no audible holes. In fact, it had been strengthened, bolstered by Master Eldras’s life mana waves back to how it should be.
Why, then, did the man refuse to wake up?
Valens searched his Master’s eyes for an answer.
“Some men are of different quality than others,” Master Eldras said, his voice deep. “These are men dedicated to their mission, stubborn men that tend to go against what we know as common sense and march with a perseverance so strong that they can deny the very concept of death.”
“That’s…” Valens swallowed. “I’m afraid that doesn’t make any sense, Master.”
“I’m aware of that fact, Valens. That’s why I’m infatuated with this field!” Master Eldras chuckled. “We Magi tend to seek tangible answers to every question that has ever been asked, or has yet to be asked. That’s why sometimes we have trouble understanding what governs a man’s heart. Love. Hate. Stubbornness. Can you hold these things to the same ground as trees, rocks, or the very earth upon which we stand?”
“I… don’t think so?”
“Well, you don’t, but we all know that they’re unmistakably real!” Master Eldras said. He stretched a hand out to the patient and pointed with a finger the man’s heart. “And now, we have one such specimen here. A stubborn patient who doesn’t know when he should be dead, or alive.”
“He’s alive,” Valens answered instantly. “The Resonance—“
“I know what the Resonance says, Valens,” Master Eldras said. “The real question is, does this man know that he has managed to accomplish something many deemed impossible?”
Valens eyed the man. He had a peaceful expression on his face, and yet the side of his mouth was tight, as if a part of him still fought a desperate battle somewhere deep in his mind.
“Perhaps he’s too lost in his own mind?” was Valens’s answer, though he said with all the doubt in his heart.
Master Eldras flicked a finger into his face. “That’s right! There is your answer!” He then clenched his fist and pulled it high. His eyes glinted mischievously. “Now, let us give that brain the good news, shall we?”
“What—“
Valens couldn’t finish his words as Master Eldras brought his fist down and slammed it hard into the man’s chest.
The patient jerked up with a gasping, wheezing breath. His eyes went round and turned, and he shook and trembled. Master Eldras patted him on the back, but his eyes were fixed on Valens.
“And you,” he said, his wrinkled face starting to melt and drip in big droplets to the ground. “Perhaps it’s time for you to wake up as well, don’t you think?”
An armored fist crashed through the white walls and shredded everything in his vision. His chest roared with pain, the Resonance screamed in his mind, and a rasping, rotten breath splashed across his face.
“Wake. Up. Val!” Nomad hauled his hand up in the air, fingers curled painfully tight in a fist that oozed with strength. Valens’s bones almost groaned on their own as they expected another crushing, crumbling force to break their cage.
“He’s awake!” came the woman’s voice, tired and weak. “Stop it, or you’re going to kill him for good!”
“Awake?” Nomad’s emerald eyes blinked down at him. “Then why the fuck didn’t you say something?!”
“I-I—“ Valens tried to speak, but choked on his own spit, spattering words that didn’t make any sense. He tried to lift himself up, only to slump back down when his whole body rattled with brutal pain.
“Fix yourself first,” Nomad said to him, then Valens saw him release a long, weary breath.
He first reached for the mana well within his chest. A small trickle, with new drops dripping down from the roof of the pool. Not enough for a Lifesurge. Nothing to ease the pain around the hole in his stomach.
Fingers trembling, he tried to jerk himself in a position that’d allow him to reach for his thigh, winced when a sharp pain jabbed at his core the moment he shifted. His vision was a blurry, messy set of lines that spun in mad circles.
He gasped when his index finger brushed against one of the gemstones. He pulled it free from the veins and focused on it. Lifemana poured into the drained well. Valens hastily managed a Lifeward to check the damage, and blinked when he felt the flesh stir round the edges of the hole.
His body was trying to heal itself, though it was painfully slow and inefficient.
A Lifesurge accelerated the process. He locked his emotions with teeth clenched, and re-attached the broken veins before moving onto the deeper parts of his body. Lifemana threads consumed the little rotten worms that lay senseless across his blood flow, and nourished his broken bones.
There was no damage around his heart, which came as a relief, and allowed him to finish the operation with a large stitch over the hole. The skin grew in a visible rate under the flush of Lifesurge threads, leaving only the dried streaks of his own blood.
The thought came instantly the moment he let the threads dissolve.
He was in deep need of a good shower.
A hot one, preferably.
“That was a good trick,” Nomad said, emerald eyes gazing deeply at him. His helmet was gone. The chestpiece had a long, deep tear running across it. But what really caught Valens’s interest was the crack that nearly split his skull open, barely visible under the thick wave of green fog. Bits of it crunched as the fog worked around it.
“I saw that tendril go through your head,” Valens muttered, still slightly shaken as he leaned back to the cold wall. The pain might’ve gone, but his mind kept replaying every part of the fight with gruesome clarity.
He should’ve been dead. Gone for good. And yet looked like somehow something stubborn in him had managed to clutch onto life.
“The Everfog protected me,” Nomad said sourly, and waved a hand as if he didn’t want to talk about it. Then he pointed at the woman lying a few paces behind them, eyes bleary and face deathly pale. “Can’t say the same for our mad friend, though. Think you can help her?”
Valens scowled the moment he saw the woman’s state. Her recently recovered armor was riddled with holes. Her blond hair was spattered in wet, thick clumps round her scalp, blood dripping down from their tips. There was barely any breath left in her body, but her blue eyes still carried that stubborn glint.
Still alive.
“Give me a hand,” Valens said and took Nomad’s hand to get himself up. He walked over with shaky, hesitant steps, his feet feeling strange against the ground. They were still bare. He liked it that way. The cold touch around his skin told him he was alive, still breathing.
A Lifeward and a set of Lifesurges had consumed half of the lifemana inside the gemstone. The other half went to the woman’s battered body. Valens clicked his tongue when he felt how strange her blood felt around his surges. It was boiling hot. Dangerous. Perhaps that was the reason why she immediately came to herself when he was done with the operation.
“Thank the--,” she muttered, voice hoarse and heavy, before closing her mouth shut. She then stared across the pair of them. Her gaze lingered on Valens as she sighed out a long breath. “I’ve not yet decided whether you’re a gift or a curse.”
Valens glanced at Nomad.
Nomad shrugged. “You shouldn’t have told her that you’re a godless bastard. That’s why she doesn’t know what to say.”
“Eh? A simple thank you would’ve been enough.”
“You don’t thank a Priest for healing you here in Melton. You thank their Blessed Father who granted that Priest the gift of healing,” Nomad said, one hand resting on the sword’s handle. “You know, divine grace is given, not taken and all nonsense. Which makes you an oddball, if you’ve been fair about that godless part, that is.”
“I’ve not lied.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You were getting at it—“
“No, I was just saying.” Nomad winked at him and hauled the sword back to his shoulder. “Now, if our mad berserker is all healed and well, can we continue on? I’ve been delayed enough already. My Heartstone’s about to explode.”
“Celme,” the woman muttered as she rose slowly to her feet and checked the holes around her armor. She then nodded at them. “That’s my name.”
“Bah!” Nomad rolled his eyes at her. “And I was just about to forgive you for not telling us that you were a damned berserker! But now? You’re making my bones rattle with that grateful look on your face. Lose that.”
Celme’s lips twitched. “I know my way around stitches. Want me to fix that crack in your skull, undead?”
“My Lord’s fog does that for me, thanks,” Nomad snorted.
“Can you, just…” Valens rubbed his neck tiredly. “Please? Just now I had a terrible beast nearly ran me through. I can use a moment of peace.”
“Then we shall provide it unto our precious healer,” Nomad said, and clapped him on the back before leaning closer to him. His face grew serious as he whispered. “About that trick you used against the Ward…”
“What of it?”
Nomad gave him a heavy glance before shaking his head. “Forget it. Just a stupid thought… Anyway, it's still better for you to try not to use it around too many people. They don’t like anything related to myths and legends around this part of the world. Especially the old ones.”
Before Valens could ask him why, he raised an armored hand to the air and motioned them forward. “We move!” he growled and bounded away.
“Get up, healer,” Celme said as she followed Nomad, glancing over her shoulder. “We might have to rely on your strange… abilities on the way.”
Her sharp gaze pierced into Valens’s eyes one last time before she joined the undead. That left him alone back there, all confused and restless until he decided to shake himself off.
I’ll get my answers when I get out of here.
Before that, though, he remembered getting some notifications during the fight.
Right… There were a lot of notifications.
…….
