Chapter 10: ch. 10 Another Fear

The group went back into the large bar to have a drink and relax after a decent length of travel. They found a large empty table and sat down. All eyes were on Carth as he usually knew what the hell they were going to do. However Shela knows he needs time to harden himself up for the next time they talk to Collindore. Shela furrowed her eyebrows planning on how to help.

"Alright, we girls are going to look around for any side jobs, you boys try to comfort Carth and snap him out of…" Shela looked and his blank stare, remembering the last time she saw that look, "Look he just needs a good talking to and a plan. Let's go ladies."

With that Lilith, Eliza, Braith, and Shela left the table to go find some side work leaving Denz and Stun to snap Carth out of his stupor. 

Denz looked at their leader, he looked like he had seen a ghost. "Hey, ummm are you OK? This isn't like the Carth I saw back in Flotsam Village. Why now? You aren't scared of Stun, you're in love with Shela but you're scared of Collindore? What gives?"

Carth sat on that question as well, even before he asked it. Why was he not afraid of the other species but terrified of skeletons? Something about them keeps triggering his flight or fight response but for what reason? He does not know.

"I have no clue, their presence triggers warnings within me that I don't know why." Carth started saying, snapping out of his fear state, "it may not be something about them but something they can do or have done," the longer Carth sat on the question the more panicked he looked

"That's a weird way to put it," the bartender from before came to their table, "that's the first time I've ever heard someone describe their fear like that, my name is Randel. But as I say to all, face your fear before it faces you." The table shuddered at the thought. 

Stun leaned over to Denz, whispering a plan to him in his high pitched voice "I have a plan, but I'm not too sure if Carth is going to take it well." He only shook his head in agreement, "hey Carth, you just need to repair the sword, me and Denz here will do the talking with Collindore OK?"

Meanwhile the girls were wandering the city chatting to one another. Banter between Lilith and Braith were constant, while Shela and Eliza discussed Carth and their general opinion on him.

"You and Carth make a good match," Eliza said to Shela, "one strong soldier and one strong smith. He pushes you to be your best while still testing you constantly with whatever." 

Shela started to laugh, " that he does, that man made me think for once. He truly is something alright. Makes me think he has it all figured out. But judging his reaction with that skeleton I doubt he does."

Both the girls looked at each other with worry, this was going to be a long journey and they knew it.

"Alright I'll go see if Carth wants to start fixing the blade, you guys go on ahead." Eliza said, heading off to find Carth.

Eliza re-entered the bar to find Carth and Stun still in the bar with Denz nowhere to be found, "hey how bout we start fixing that blade. That should get your mind off things!" Eliza grabbed him by the arm and pulled Him up to get going.

Stun, Eliza, and Carth went to the local forge and rented out one of their stations to use to fix the sword, "all you have to do is fix this, I'll talk to him to make sure you don't have to." Stun said, trying to comfort him.

"Alright I guess I'll get to work, you want to assist Stun?" Carth said, looking around at the tools he had at hand. This place had machines unlike anything Carth had ever seen, "you can show me what these things do. You do know what they do, right?" 

Stun agreed and showed him the ropes, he may not know smithing, but he knows a thing or two about these inventions. There were a total of two Carth did not know about. The first was a large compressor, meant to flatten anything to a fine sheet. The other was the sand belt, sanding down things was quite necessary, and with the belt that spun the sandpaper made it much easier than manually doing it.

Carth began his work by looking at the weapon. It was shattered into three pieces. First part was the handle and part of the blade, next was a chip that went in-between the other two segments. The final part was the top half of the blade. All three parts were dull and rusted to the point that most of the blade was covered. He first unhinged the blade from the handle and looked to Eliza.

"Clean this up and order a new pair of leather bindings to wrap on the handle for better grip." Carth handed Eliza the lower half of the blade while he began scraping off the rust. He began by reheating the top and chipped part to fix dents, damages and reseal the parts together. Eliza handed him the final part after copying Carth’s movements with the previous segments.. As he wrapped up the repairs the door of the room opened.

"Greeting: hello, I am Collindore. Query: how is the repair of the defensive tool going?" Collindore said, walking towards Carth. Carth jumped back in fear landing next to the large compressor. "Warning:Be careful, that machine is-"

Before he could finish his sentence the machine creaked to life. It charged with a loud wirring noise with a like that flashed green. Before Carth could even move his hand out of the way the machine slammed down on what it thought was metal, only to crush Carth's right arm to a pulp. 

"AAAH," Carth screamed in distress and pain. He soon succumbed to it and passed out.  Both Eliza and Collindore with fear on their faces, Eliza more than Collindore rushed to his aid. They grabbed him and put him into a pack strap carry so as not to cause any more wounds until they got him to the nearest medical center.

"Fuck, stay with me you moron," Eliza said trying to rush him into the medical center as fast as she could with Stun and Collindore's help. Stun rushed ahead and paid for emergency line care when they reached the hospital, the staff of the hospital quickly got Carth into the back. Placing him on the bed the medical staff rushed to assist. The arm was crushed from the shoulder and was still lightly attached to him. Collindore rushed out the building to go fetch something he said was important. 

 Carth was out cold. The medical team cut the rest of the arm off due to it being near flat still gushing blood, meaning no chance to save it. They cut off circulation and bandaged the hole where his arm was. Though unconscious Carth writhed in pain.

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Collindore ran back in with a shiny case and gave it to the medical professionals, "statement: have this for the incident that occurred due to my lack of warning on my arrival."

Inside the case the doctors saw it was a high class robotic arm. Without giving it two thoughts they attached the arm to him. On the attachment side of the arm it had needles that attached to the nerves for clean control. The arm was quite minimal with a full palm and elbow motion a usual arm can do. It has a vein of the black liquid for clear motor control.  

A little while later a nurse from the facility came to inform Shela and the others of the news and rushed in to see how he was doing. The nurse explained the scenario they had been told on how his injury had occurred but left out the important detail of his arm that is now cut off and replaced.

"OH SHIT," Shela was the first to realize the arm, "how the hell is he going to handle that? He is horrified by skeletons. And now he has a part of them attached to him?" She looked at the doctor, " is there any way you can take that off?"

"Unfortunately no, the robotic limb has attached to the main nerves, if removed it can re-open any closed wounds and could cause him to bleed out. This was the best option, but all expenses have been waived by Collindore, so be glad it is of high quality." The doc said as Collindore stood on their left filling out paperwork and pulling out a large sack of money to cover the bills. 

Shela and Eliza sat there in shock, they knew no matter what, he was going to freak out. Eliza began explaining what events took place up to this point. Including Denz’s and Stun’s stupid plan to bring Collindore to Carth in Carth’s safespace hoping he would feel comfortable enough to here him out.

"So it was Stun's and Denz's plan to bring Collindore to say hi to Carth hoping he won't freak out?! What kind of plan was that?" Shela glared in the boy's direction. 

Stun spoke up with his high pitched voice "the original plan was to have Collindore meet with Carth after the repairs to show that he is not a thing of fear, instead we may have messed up a bit." 

The entire group sat there in silence, only the sounds of the medical workers were heard. Everyone had either scared or stern looks about them. Each one thought long and hard on solutions but ended up empty handed every time. Lilith stood up 

"Only thought I have is to hope he remains relatively calm enough for him to come to terms with it." Lilith said, looking towards Carth’s new limb, "Well let's just call it a night, shall we?" The group got up and agreed to check on him in the morning together to help comfort him while he tried to take in the horrible result of his arm.

"Ugghh, what happened," Carth blurted out loud placing his new hand on his face. But when it touched it felt cold and metallic. Carth froze, without opening his eyes he recalled the previous evening's events. Opening his eyes slowly he looked at his right arm. Frozen with fear and panic once again he looked at his new limb. Several feelings jolted through him, his vision blurred in and out. He tried to move it, nothing changed as it reacted just like his normal arm. This can't be my arm. I am not one of them, Carth thought. He tugged it with his left arm, comparing the two. He tried ripping it off lightly at first only to cause jolts of pain where it was attached. He sat there tugging at it as hard as he could but could not rip it off. I need to think in silence I need to think in silence, Carth repeated to himself countless times in his head. He got out of the bed, ripping and tearing at it with what strength he had only to have stronger and stronger pain jolt through him. Looking into a mirror set up in the room he saw the whole part of him that is now robotic, a part of them. In the corner of the room was a backpack containing his clothes and most of the things he brought with him. He grabbed them, left the room and ran out of the building. Some of the nurses tried to stop him but he had already got out the door bolting to the gates. Got to get away, got to think Carth screamed in his head. The guards let screaming Carth past as he bolted out of the area down the mountain

The group decided to check up on Carth thirty minutes later only to find out that he ran. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE'S GONE!?" Shela shouted at the nurse.

"He ran out before we could stop him, is he always that sporadic?" The nurse told them everything she saw up to the point they lost track of him. She did mention the odd way he was holding his robotic attachment and how he seemed to be trying not to use it. 

"Why can't he wait for us for one second! This is even worse than last time. Why won't he let us help him?" Shela looked at the group, all of them had various degrees of sadness, fear and worry written on their faces, "we have to look for him, he is going to get himself killed wherever he runs off to. You all know he can't fight worth shit!"

The more the group thought about it the more they got into a panicked state. They split off into two groups to go look for him, all asking around for any way to track his direction. The first group consisted of Shela, Braith, and Denz. The second consisted of Stun, Eliza, and Lilith, which up to this point said nothing.

"Excuse me miss? You were with a group when you came in, correct?" The guard standing at one of the gates tapped Shela on the shoulder, "one of your guys ran out this gate this morning, he's been the topic around the guards."

Shela suddenly went wide eyed in panic, "you mean he ran out of the city? He is out there right now in Okran knows where?! Denz go get the others, tell them he ran out this gate, we will meet back up here in three days."

With that said Shela bolted out with Braith hot on her tail to go hunt him down. A rush of fear and a swirl of anger mixed with sadness came over Shela as she ran, "he better not have gotten himself killed." 

Denz reached the other group in quick time, finding them asking some local merchants on the street asking about their friend, "Let's get going, '' guards at the western gate said they saw him leave through there. Shela and Braith went on ahead." 

They heard a running behind them, turning around revealed Collindore running towards them, "Demand: I will be going with the search party to locate Carth, I must apologize for the incident causing him to lose an appendage." Collindore already had a bag all prepped with all the fixings a skeleton needs, which is very little. 

"Enough chatter we got to catch up with them!" Denz shouted again, this time more urgent, "we can't lose any of them! We have to catch up with them and find Carth!"

Carth ran down the mountain as fast as he could. Somewhere quiet, got to get away, Carth’s head throbbed in pain, the only thing he could think to do was run. Running out of the mountain range Carth found himself back at the Floodlands. Keep going, Keep running, The rain picked up as he ran.he kept going for another fifteen minutes before he came to a stop as his adrenaline ended. Carth fell onto his back. He lay there still and closed his eyes hoping to feel the great embrace of death as he drifted into unconsciousness.