Chapter 13: 13. Unraveling

Reshid had a niggling, insistent feeling that he was forgetting something important. He hurt. His entire soul hurt. But that wasn’t it. No, it was as if he’d left the house with all the candles burning. He needed to go back somewhere, to take care of something. But back where? To do what?

His eyes snapped open.

There were lights high up above, like tiny burning suns. He heard a sound like rain, a snapping sound from the nearby trees, followed by several heavy irregular thumps nearby.

What happened?

With effort, he turned his head. People were down on the ground all around him and stones were raining down from the cavern’s rocky sky. Most were small bits of gravel and pebbles. Others were larger. As he watched, a fist-sized rock landed on a downed figure nearby with an audible crunch. It didn’t flinch—already dead or unconscious. Reshid curled up in terror, unable to move any more and having nowhere to run in any case. A bit of gravel bounced off his back.

The sound stopped in seconds, ending in a dense cloud of dust that settled slowly onto ground from above.

For a moment, he thought that everyone else was dead. Maybe his healing abilities had protected him. Without really thinking about it, he began to draw in essence from the grass around him to replenish himself. Then he heard a soft groan over to his left. He looked, and could see movement in that direction through the dusty gloom.

Had part of the cavern collapsed? They were supposed to be moving. Hasan had given orders… with a flash, clarity returned. Geoffrey!

He tried to jump to his feet, heart pounding, but his body refused to cooperate. Everything hurt. He needed to find Hasan, Idrin and his friends. He needed to make sure they were alright. Had the lich heard what Geoffrey said before he attacked? Where was he, anyway? What was he? Had he just called on the power of a god?

Far too slowly, he gained his feet, looking around. Everyone within thirty paces of where Geoffrey had stood was on the ground. A few were starting to move, but most lay still—at least for the moment. The man himself knelt on top of a still form, less than ten paces away, ramming a knife into it over and over. Hasan.

He raised his knife once again to strike, but then flinched, dropping the knife. He looked around wildly until his eyes locked on Reshid. Snarling, the cultist rose, his eyes oddly bright, as if reflecting a bit too much light. Reshid stepped back, looking for a way out. He couldn’t run and his allies were down. He didn’t even have a weapon.

All he could do was heal people. Could he get someone else to help, maybe? It wasn’t a plan, but it was something. Reshid put his hand down on the grass, drawing small wisps of essence from all around. Drawing in power came more easily to him now, but he still felt the need to touch his source.

Geoffrey was moving toward him, stepping over downed bodies, black blood covering the blade he still held in a reverse grip. There wasn’t much time. Could he get help?

Someone was starting to stir just a few steps away, groaning. Reshid rushed over, tripping over his own feet to land in a heap next to his intended protector. It was a tall woman that he didn’t recognize. She didn’t have any visible injuries, but she still wasn’t quite conscious. Frantically, he infused her entire body with life. She gasped and her eyes opened wide, then she sagged back down to the ground.

From behind him, someone screamed.

Whirling around awkwardly, Reshid saw Geoffrey lit up in flames, flailing frantically and shouting. A second later, the fire went out all at once, replaced by a glowing shimmer on the human’s skin. It didn’t hide the burns. His clothes and hair were charred, and angry red marks covered his face and hands.

Looking beyond the man, Reshid saw that Idrin was up on her hands and knees near where Hasan lay, her gaze burning with literal incandescent fury.

She surged to her feet and bounded toward him with an inhuman, metallic-sounding screech. Geoffrey took a step back, holding up his hands in a warding gesture. Idrin struck at him, her hand wreathed in a fire so hot that Reshid could feel its warmth. The impact was blinding.

Idrin was knocked back by the impact, landing in a heap several paces away. Geoffrey held his ground, but he didn’t escape unscathed, either. The sleeve of his right arm was burned completely off, and the skin was blackened. He snarled, then turned and fled into the trees, cradling his arm and limping awkwardly.

The sudden silence, broken only by the fading, irregular footfalls of the fleeing man in the woods was jarring after the sudden violence. In the distance, Reshid could hear gunshots and shouting as the humans fought. He hoped their part of the plan was going better than the revenants’ had. They needed to free the prisoners and get back out into the woods before the lich got close enough to block their escape. If they didn’t hurry, they, along with Charlie and Em, would end up stuck between the lich’s camp and the lich himself.

But there was nothing he could do about that here. It was a risky plan, but risk was ultimately a relative thing. They couldn’t confront the lich directly, and they needed to slow him down. He needed to trust the others to take care of themselves and focus on his own role here.

Heart still pounding, Reshid rose to check on Idrin, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. The woman that he had healed stood behind him.

“Worry about Hasan, healer. I’ll look after Idrin.”

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Right. Hasan might still be alive—unalive… whatever.

Reshid hadn’t really thought of his revenant patients as being undead before, but now he wondered. What could a man with a knife do to a stone elementalist? How vulnerable was Hasan, really?

Kneeling down next to him, he realized that Hasan wasn’t breathing. He was staring up at the sky, eyes open—but he wasn’t dead. No, he was changing.

Before, Hasan’s stone arm had looked almost like that of a statue. Now, it had a rougher, craggier appearance and was thicker than before. As Reshid watched, the skin on his chest seemed to crust over with rock, starting at his wounds and expanding outward. Hasan was somehow overdrawing stone essence from the world around him, forcibly attuning it to his soul to help him recover. That was supposed to be dangerous. Embracing greater power like this meant, in a way, diluting your own identity, your soul.

Quickly, Reshid placed a hand on the injured man’s chest and tried to seal his wounds. It didn’t work—or at least not properly. Only two of the ugly punctures, one near his more human arm, and another low in his gut, closed up. The rest almost seemed to open wider, joining into long cracks that seamed through the petrifying torso.

He blinked once, then sat up abruptly, pushing the healer back. He looked around, taking in the scene with no expression on his face.

“Idrin,” even Hasan’s voice sounded rougher, less human. “Get to the wights and report the attack. Tell them the humans have a guardian. That should, at least, give us a good excuse for not catching them when they make their exit.”

More revenants were moving now, with several up on their feet, checking on those around them alongside others who had returned from the woods to investigate. Reshid joined them and checked on one revenant after another, infusing them with a little of his essence when he thought it might help. It had only been minutes since Geoffrey’s attack, but revenants were hardy creatures.

Still, not everyone would be getting back up. Those nearest to Hasan had been hit hardest, and not every attunement offered extraordinary protection from injury. Two former slaves that Reshid recognized by sight lay dead, alongside one of Hasan’s officers, an air elementalist who had spent time training Em.

Reshid wasn’t a young man. While he had lost large parts of his memory, he knew he’d seen his share of death. He had buried friends, parents, and a daughter in the crypts himself. He’d even lit a pyre for a heathen from the Tkari Plains on the road once. In middle age, he’d witnessed war and picked up the pieces after the soldiers had withdrawn, leaving only bodies and ruins in their wake.

One would think that a revenant’s corpse would look much the same as an undead revenant who was still moving around, but they didn’t. They were missing something. Corpses were things, and revenants were still people. Alive, in their own way, just different—both less and more than a human.

As Reshid worked, the recovering revenant force got back to work, squads forming up and deploying into the woods to make their show of force. After a few minutes, Rory and one of the other medics joined him, checking on anyone who was still on the ground, or who looked dazed. There were a few minor injuries—bruising, a concussion or two, but most were just stunned. With Reshid’s help, nearly everyone was up and moving in minutes.

Before long, Reshid and the medics were left sitting alone with the two bodies. He wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen when a revenant was killed. They had come back once, right? Would they get back up? Could they use their power to compensate for injury—trade in some of their humanity to help them recover, like Hasan had apparently done? And why had they died while nearly everyone else recovered quickly?

Maybe Idrin would know, or Bartholomew. When he’d asked Rory, the man had just shrugged. There was still so much that Reshid didn’t know or understand. Odd, that. On the surface, surgeons and doctors had to study at a hospital for years before they were allowed to practice their craft. Even village healers started their working lives apprenticed to an experienced healer. What would one of them be able to do with a power like his?

The smell of smoke broke Reshid from his contemplations. Looking up, he could see it rising from the direction of the camp. Had they set fire to it? The sounds of fighting had abated somewhat, but shots were still being fired every few seconds. Worryingly, though, nobody was approaching their. Where was the human contingent?

Rory settled down next to Reshid.

“I don’t like this.” He was out of uniform. In fact, all the medics were. Originally, they were meant to join the fleeing humans to help manage any wounded and to support the freed prisoners. Rory had seen the writing on the wall—they were preparing to better blend in among the revenants.

“They’re not coming, are they?” Reshid asked, with a sinking feeling in his gut.

Rory nodded toward the camp, expression grim. “Look at it. That smoke isn’t rising from just one spot. It’s coming up in a line—I doubt there’s anywhere for them to get through.” He sighed. “I don’t know what we were expecting, fighting a sorcerer like from the stories.”

Reshid didn’t know how to feel. He should do something. His friends were over there! But they couldn’t expose themselves. They couldn’t fight a lich, they probably couldn’t even take on his minions, really. Darkest Depths, he couldn’t even take on a ghoul, really.

Still, this wasn’t the end. Ghouls didn’t kill humans when they could avoid it—they were too valuable. People, especially regular humans, uncorrupted by an attunement, were a resource to them. Surely, Hasan would have a backup plan. Wouldn’t he?

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