by Eric Vall
The moment the circuits connected, I flew straight back into the wall with a jolt of electricity shooting through my arms and down my spine. The stonework of the cave had no effect on me, though, and I realized Haragh had swiftly softened my landing.
“Did it work?” I mumbled. Even my fucking teeth hurt after that one.
“He’s breathing,” Shoshanne informed me, “he’s alive.”
Haragh pulled me to my feet, and Cayla and Aurora were by me in an instant.
“Are you okay?” Cayla demanded as she stroked my cheek.
“Can you talk?” Aurora asked shakily.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, “check the elf.”
I stumbled forward to the table with my two women holding me up on either side, and we found Shoshanne back in action with five different substances laid out on the stone table.
The healer instructed Aurora to melt a strange lump of what looked like tar in a little tin dish, and the half-elf used her Ignis Magic to melt the tar into a pool of oil before she helped pry Dragir’s eye open to pour it in.
The smell of burning rubber filled the chamber, and the sizzling sound that accompanied it made me cringe and look away.
The view wasn’t much better, though.
Blood pooled all over the floor and splattered up the walls of the cave in a few places, and I looked down to see my legs and arms were stained a deep red. Dragir’s blood was caked to my face and neck as well, and I shook my head as I realized it looked like I fucking murdered him in there.
“At least he’s alive,” I muttered as I stepped around the lump of discarded flesh on the floor.
“Yeah, but in what condition?” Haragh mumbled.
I would have berated him, but I knew it hadn’t been a shit remark. Haragh had a solid point.
Dragir had been out longer than I could guess, and his blood had already started to heat before we got the rune removed. For all we knew, he was better off dead at this point.
So, none of us responded to Haragh’s question.
We just waited beside the table while the elf continued to breathe on his own, and I kept my eyes glued to his as I willed them to open again.
“Where’s Deya?” I asked.
“Right there,” Aurora said blankly, but she didn’t move from the table.
I dragged my eyes away from Dragir to find Deya sprawled out on the cave floor near the entrance, and I realized the beautiful elf probably walked in, saw me and Dragir out cold, and dropped on the spot.
“Godsdamnit,” I sighed, but Cayla stopped me before I could make my way over.
“I’ll get her,” she assured me. “Help Shoshanne.”
I nodded and let the princess work on bringing Deya back around, and then I grabbed Shoshanne’s bag myself. Three Tiorlin berries scattered across my palm as I dumped one of the glass vials out, and I pried Dragir’s mouth open to drop them in.
Shoshanne nodded her agreement and returned her palms to his chest to assist with his breathing, and when she began trying to coax him back to consciousness, the elf’s head turned ever so slightly.
“There,” Haragh said abruptly, “the fucker moved.”
I quickly undid the shackles and dropped them to the cave floor, and Haragh caught Dragir’s other arm while we both worked to pull him up to a seated position.
“Wake up,” I ordered. “Open your eyes.”
Dragir’s head lolled back, and he smacked his lips.
“Now!” I commanded. “Open your eyes, damn it. Move your arms.”
The arm in my grip only managed to slump lazily, and I was about to panic when a snort worked its way out of Dragir’s slack lips.
I furrowed my brow at Shoshanne, and the healer clamored to come around the table. She took Dragir’s face in her palms and pulled one of his eyes open with her fingertips, and the pale pink and serpentine irises lolled side to side.
“Dragir,” the healer called, “can you hear me? Nod if you can understand me.”
Dragir’s chin dropped limply to his chest.
“That’s a nod,” I decided.
“I agree,” Shoshanne replied. “Keep him upright for me.”
Haragh grunted and propped Dragir against his broad arm while I tried to hold his head in the proper place on his shoulders. Then Shoshanne returned from her healer’s bag with three different little glass vials with various shades of murky liquid inside.
“What do those do?” I asked.
“Umm … ” Shoshanne said as she measured out a small dose of one of the liquids. “They’re medicines. They work in different ways. Do … different things. Here, tilt his head back.”
Shoshanne poured a dose into Dragir’s mouth, and his brow twitched in response. Then she grabbed the next vial and dumped the entire contents in, and the last liquid was used to fill the syringe once more.
When she injected the medicine straight into Dragir’s neck, the elf lurched, and his eyes finally flew open.
Dragir shot to his feet and swayed out of control, but I managed to catch him before he toppled straight into the wall of the cave. Then he let out a slur of Elvish, and as he stumbled in my grip, he sounded like a drunken lunatic.
“Sit down,” I grunted as I tried to steady his stance, and Dragir dropped straight to the floor.
Haragh rolled his eyes when I lost my hold, and then he grabbed the scruff of the elf’s shirt to hoist him back onto the table.
Shoshanne helped lay Dragir out, and as I shifted him to straighten him out, I finally glanced down at the wound on his leg.
Blood trickled from the exposed sinew on the man’s leg, and a jagged swatch of flesh about five inches wide was torn away. It was obvious the cutting hadn’t been finished when Haragh ripped the rune off, because the skin at the bottom had caught and torn straight down to Dragir’s heel.
“Holy shit.” I cringed as I looked at Shoshanne. “Can you do anything about that?”
“Let me get him conscious first,” the healer muttered. “Then I’ll worry about that. Either way, he’s an elf. Hopefully, he’ll heal pretty quickly.”
I nodded and came around to her side of the table.
“What can I do?”
“Kiss me,” the healer said with a smirk, and she tilted her lips up to me.
I gladly did as I was told, and as I wove my fingers in Shoshanne’s curls to hold her against me, she moaned lightly into my mouth.
“I love you,” the healer sighed when I grinned down at her. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t thought of the wiring. I completely panicked.”
“Hey, it’s not everyday I make you kill a guy and bring him back to life,” I chuckled. “That kind of shit takes practice.”
Shoshanne shook her head, and as she turned back to her work, she gestured to my face.
“Blink carefully for a few minutes,” the healer instructed, and she began measuring out a dose of some yellow powder.
“Why?”
“Your eyes are swollen from the heat,” Shoshanne replied. “It’d be a shame to damage them anymore.”
I patted my face and found my eyelids were at least twice as thick, but the searing pain had fully subsided at least.
“Damn,” I mused. “I can’t believe we’re all alive.”
“No shit,” Haragh scoffed. “Why you’d all risk your lives for a piece of shit elf is beyond me.”
“Dude,” I mumbled, and I shifted my head toward Cayla and Deya.
The princess was still trying to revive the beautiful elf, but the last thing Deya needed was to wake up to an angry tirade about Dragir after she’d walked in and found him dead.
“He’s not a piece of shit, he’s Deya’s brother,” I told the half-ogre, “and he’s got a bloodline you wouldn’t even believe if I told it to you. Not to mention, he knows more about rune magic than anyone in Nalnora, and he saved my life during the battle at House Quyn.”
“He also kept Deya from being abducted for nearly seventy years,” Shoshanne added, and I
nodded my agreement.
“The only reason he had that rune on him to begin with was so he could brutally murder the elves who brutally murdered the mother of his unborn child,” I told the half-ogre.
“Who happened to be half-elf,” Aurora clarified.
Haragh raised his brows. “You’re all fucking with me.”
“Not at all,” I assured him. “I’d risk a hell of a lot for this guy.”
“I would too,” Cayla chimed in from the floor. “He ran straight into that army of possessed elves just to help Rhys get his son back. That’s loyalty.”
“Which is fucking rare in Nalnora,” I snorted.
Haragh let out a low whistle and looked back at the bloody elf splayed across the table.
“Alright,” he allowed. “Maybe he’s not a complete piece of shit.”
Dragir mumbled incoherently, and I only hoped it was a comeback. At least it would mean he stood a chance of recovering.
“Give me anything useful to do,” I begged Shoshanne as I returned to her side. “I hate standing around doing nothing.”
“Wake up Deya, then,” Shoshanne said. “Tell her Dragir’s alive.”
I eyed the passed out elf propped up in Cayla’s arms, and the princess sent me an uneasy look.
“But is he … you know?” I asked quietly.
I couldn’t bring myself to say my worst fears.
“I think he’s okay,” Shoshanne admitted as she furrowed her brow. “He’s pretty heavily drugged, but the systems of his body seem to be functioning properly from what I can tell. I need Deya, though. She can tell us if his words are even coherent. That’s very important.”
The healer handed me a vial of smelling salts, and I nodded as I quickly rounded the table to kneel beside Cayla and Deya.
The princess had the beautiful elf resting against her, but she hadn’t managed to wake her up yet.
I stroked Deya’s pale cheek and tilted her head up, and as I trailed the salts beneath her nose, I saw her pink lashes flutter lightly.
“Deya,” I tried, “Dragir’s awake, you need to come and talk to him.”
The beautiful elf gasped as her violet eyes flew open, but the second she saw me, she grabbed me by the arms and stared in horror at the blood all over me.
“I’m fine,” I assured her, and I carefully helped her to her feet. “We’re all fine, but you need to talk to Dragir. He’s speaking, and Shoshanne needs to know if he’s okay.”
Deya nodded blankly and let me lead her to the tableside, and her hands began trembling the second she saw her brother.
“He does not look okay,” she said, and her voice hitched.
I looped Deya’s hand in mine to keep her calm, and Shoshanne explained everything that had happened.
“There are a lot of things in his system right now,” the healer told her, “but his heart is beating strong after Mason used the wiring to wake him. I need to know if you can understand any of what he’s saying when he speaks. He’s mumbled a few times so far.”
Deya crinkled her brows with worry, but she stooped closer and tried speaking to Dragir in Elvish.
The man’s head tilted a little when he recognized her voice, and after she spoke to him for a minute, he finally mumbled a response.
“He says he cannot feel his body,” Deya said, and she looked at Shoshanne nervously.
“That’s okay,” Shoshanne replied gently. “Tell him the rune is removed, and we need to bandage his leg. Keep talking to him and try to bring him around.”
Deya nodded and relayed the message, and her lilting Elvish even soothed my own nerves at last. The sweet elf spoke for several minutes with Dragir, and as she did, he slowly became more responsive. His speech was badly slurred, though, and he still couldn’t open his eyes all the way.
I saw Deya smirk in amusement several times during their conversation, and when Dragir chuckled lightly to himself, she shook her head and straightened up.
“Well, I have never seen him like this,” Deya admitted as she squeezed my hand, “but he is speaking clearly. I can understand him just fine.”
“What’d he say?” I asked curiously.
“I would rather not repeat it.” Deya blushed. “It was about Aliasa.”
“Rhys’ wife?” I chuckled. “Tell him I’ll have her here in fifteen minutes if he wants.”
Dragir snorted without needing Deya to relay the message.
Then he managed to raise a wavering arm to beckon me closer, and I leaned down low to catch his words.
“Your turn,” the elf mumbled.
I furrowed my brow. “With Aliasa?” I clarified. “Rhys would fucking kill me.”
A long, exhausted sigh fell from Dragir’s lips, and he shifted his leg in response.
“Oh,” I chuckled, “you mean the runes.”
Then my gut dropped, and my mind fully wrapped around the fact that I was about to waltz into a triple branding after going through all of that just to remove one rune.
I turned to look at the juicy sinew exposed from the top of Dragir’s shin to the base of his heel, and then I considered the blood bath we’d made of the chamber.
“Well, shit,” I sighed.
Chapter 2
Dragir was sitting up on the stone table, and his head hadn’t gone slack on his shoulders in nearly an hour, which was a huge improvement. He didn’t say much of anything while Shoshanne continued to track his recovery, and from what I could tell, his body was making a pretty solid comeback.
Initially, Dragir had been having trouble moving his limbs properly, but after he explained the intricacies of his rune a bit to Shoshanne, the healer decided it was most likely the nerves in his spine that had taken the most damage when the rune turned on him.
Luckily, he was an elf, and since the rune didn’t get a chance to finish the job, his body’s ability to heal was saving him almost as much as Shoshanne’s many vials of medicine were.
Now, there was just a vague look in Dragir’s eyes while he stared up at the ceiling, and Deya had taken Aurora with her to put together a reviving meal for him.
To my surprise, Haragh hadn’t thrown out any underhanded insults since Dragir came around more fully, and I was glad to see the elf didn’t sneer in disgust when he sat up and saw the half-ogre still propped against the far wall of the cave.
“Dragir?” Shoshanne prompted, and after a good five seconds, the elf slowly turned his head to look at her. “Drink this.”
Dragir’s head wobbled a bit when he nodded, and a lopsided grin came to his face.
I watched him drink down the tonic, and when his arms dropped limp in his lap again, his gaze drifted right back to the ceiling.
“So, how are you feeling?” I asked.
Dragir shrugged and turned to the healer. “What is this drug called?”
“Which one?” Shoshanne asked.
The elf started chuckling quietly to himself and nodded.
“Okay then,” he sighed. “Mason Flynt, we will begin.”
“You sure you don’t wanna wait a bit?” I asked as I eyed the dazed look of him.
“No, this is good,” he assured me. “I feel fantastic.”
“No one is doing anything until you have eaten,” Deya announced, and she came into the cave with a platter balanced on one of her slender hands. “I am willing to have Shoshanne force you to eat this, so I suggest you do not complain.”
The beautiful elf placed the platter of cooked fish and jungle fruits in front of her brother, but I noticed she didn’t bring his favorite, highly alcoholic drink. He honestly didn’t need anything else in his system at the moment.
Dragir took a deep breath, and then he swiftly shoveled a mound of food into his mouth without brushing the plate away this time.
“Damn,” I mused. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat before. Maybe a bite of bread once.”
“So fucking hungry,” Dragir mumbled through another massive bite.
Deya was practically giddy as she watched her br
other finally eating something she brought him, and within five minutes, the platter was completely spotless. Dragir let out a long sigh of approval, and then he shifted to lower his feet to the floor.
“Slowly,” Shoshanne warned, and she came around the table to hold him by the arm.
He winced a little when he put weight on the heel of his bandaged leg, but another hazy smirk came to his face anyway.
“I feel fantastic,” he sighed again.
Deya giggled at her spacy brother, and I rolled my eyes.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I decided. “Look, we’re not in that big of a hurry. Why don’t we give you the day to kinda relax and get all those drugs out of your system. Then we can worry about the brandings.”
“No,” Dragir said matter of factly. “We will do it now. Bring your metal magic, metal mage.”
The elf headed toward the door of the cave, but a guard of House Quyn came in all of a sudden, and the moment he saw the bloody cave, he halted on the spot.
Dragir swayed and waited for him to speak, but the guard only scanned the scene, including the blood splattered all over me. Somehow, his anger seemed to settle on Aurora though, and I realized he was probably one of the few who hadn’t fought beside us yet.
He drew his sword as if he thought he should defend Dragir, but when he raised it toward Aurora, he didn’t even get a chance to speak.
Dragir’s expression darkened immediately, and he tore into the guard with a stream of angry Elvish.
The guard jumped and lowered his sword.
Then, at Dragir’s order, he dropped his weapon on the floor, and a moment later, he was forced to keep his eyes lowered to the ground.
Once he’d finished mumbling the message he came to deliver, Dragir sent him packing without even allowing him to have his sword back.
The moment the guard scuttled from the room, I heard Dragir chuckle to himself, and I stared as his smirk spread into an actual smile.
“It is nice to yell at someone and not want to kill them at the same time,” he mused. “So much less complicated.”
Aurora started laughing at the look on his face, and Dragir shrugged as he gestured to the discarded Halcyan sword.