Chapter 67: Chapter 67 – Unmaking A Monster

“Georgio,” Theo calls out to the other man and waves him closer. “Go around to all your people, we need to have everyone checked by a healer. Syr has found that the monsters attacking us are spreading disease and we need to be sure that it isn’t going to spread.”

“What are the symptoms?” He tugs at the side of his moustache, his foot tapping at an uneven pace.

“Anger, rage, numbness,” I explain. “It’ll make us kill people, just like they did.”

His eyes open wide, nodding quickly.

“We’ll check, but we only have one healer with us, and he’s not exactly trained for dealing with disease, not to mention how many people we have with us at the moment,” he says, shaking his head before rushing off to get things organised.

“Nadia, your duty is guarding Syr,” Theo turns to us. “You two are going to join the injured strangers in the locked room, but the guards will be ready to let you out when you call for them. You’re still injured, can you handle it, Syr?”

“I can do it. We have until morning, probably. I’m not bleeding anymore, I can heal the rest later,” I nod. If I pace myself carefully, I should be able to at least deal with the sickness. The fever spreading through my own blood is nearly entirely gone now after just a little magic.

“Stay conscious,” he warns me, looking me over one more time. “We might need you to do your thing if everything goes bad for us. We can’t risk having you out of the picture, not at the moment.”

“Okay,” I nod. Nadia stands close to my side, gripping a pair of axes tight while watching the shadows for any monsters or threats.

“We’re going to be down here for a few days,” Theo says. “Try to settle in and get some rest where you can. Nadia, you’re in charge of Syr and the people locked up in there, so deal with the situation however you have to.”

“Understood,” Nadia replies quickly.

The tunnels are much too bright, for the dark night that we’ve fallen into, and my mind turns back to Namor. The crazed young girl we locked in that small room, she’s probably gnawing on the stone to try and get free, but at least she’s probably going to survive.

If the people we saved start attacking each other, then we’re going to see some of them die. I won’t let it happen.

Nadia and I walk as quickly as we can, and I try to pretend that I’m not limping. Predators notice things like that, and we’re still not sure if any of the smaller monsters from under the ruins survived in here.

The warm lights that deny the night above us, brighten as we step into the large ‘farming’ room, where the dangerous mushrooms fill out small fields. So many different colours and shapes under the warm lights of the fake sky, makes me feel uncomfortable. This place isn’t somewhere that I belong.

There’s movement deep inside the verdant gardens, but I can’t quite make out the shape of whatever it is hiding in there.

I relax when we get to the safety of the glowing halls leading to the locked room. A guard stands ready before the doors, looking around worriedly.

“We’re going in,” Nadia says.

“I sent someone to get your team,” the guard says, twisting around to get the door but hesitating to activate the switch. “Something is happening inside, but… I don’t think I can handle that many people.”

“Open it,” Nadia says, drawing her axes and standing a little ahead of me. I lift my long adamant sword and counterbalance it with my heavy shortsword in my other hand pointing it back the way we’ve come. If things get hairy I might have to drop my long sword but that’s fine.

The stone door slides open, and I shove them back with the blunt end of my sword. A few squeeze by, but Nadia controls them. It takes a little more force to get through the door and inside, past the panicking people, but the guard quickly forces the door closed after us when we’ve made it.

“Help! They’re turning! They’re becoming monsters!” A young woman shouts, clawing at us and pointing to the far end of the room where a few people are leaning against the wall, cutting at their own flesh where patches of fur are growing from their bloodstained injuries.

The more injured people were sent to the healer and are currently under guard, but those with simple scratches or small bites were sent in here with the rest. Now, they’re hissing and moaning as they pull and scratch at their injuries where fur is now sprouting from their skin.

“Syr? Is this part of what you were talking about?” Nadia asks, watching them worriedly.

I shake my head, pulling thoughts from Grey’s mind. Seeing this stirs up relevant memories, letting me know what’s going on. I take a long relieved sigh as he shows me what’s happening.

“It’s different,” I say. “It’s a separate thing. I can deal with it, but it’s not that dangerous.”

Looking down at my arms, I see a few tufts of hair growing around where the bites dig into me, they’re still so small that they’re difficult to notice if I’m not looking. I’ll have to heal it before it spreads too far into me, but it’s not that dangerous.

“Everyone! I’m here to heal you!” I cry out over the shouting and yelling. There are only about twenty people in here and they just won’t calm down at all, a few even rush at me, desperate for my healing magic.

“Line up!” Nadia shouts, shoving them around with the blunt parts of her axes, to get them into place. “Be patient. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“I… I’ll help,” A woman nervously steps up to us, still looking at the ground. “I’m Raini, I helped my father do healing, I can’t… I’m not good with the magic, but I can help.”

I wave her to my side.

Dropping my longsword and sheathing my shortsword, I draw my dagger and look over the injuries in the first boy. A kid half my height, with a small spot of fur growing around a bite wound on his ankle. He’s splattered with blood, but it looks like only a little of it is his.

“What’s wrong with them?” Raini asks, kneeling beside me. “I’ve never seen this before. It’s-”

“It’s two things,” I say, stopping her short.

I touch the boy’s leg, about to heal the raging sickness that’s spreading through him but I stop myself short and think it out a little more.

“One sickness makes you stupid and angry. It makes it so you can’t feel any pain anymore so that you can fight like… you saw.

“The other one won’t hurt you, it just covers you in fur and makes you look like the… ‘monsters’. If we don’t fix it now, though, we can’t ever fix it.”

She stares at me for a moment, blinking in a daze before whispering to herself. “She’s an elf, of course, she knows these things. She’s not as young as she looks.”

“So, we cut off the patches of hair to stop the second disease, while they’re numb. Then use magic to heal the madness disease,” I explain.

There are only five people here that need my help, so I have the power to help them all just fine.

I press my knife against the patches of fur and start cutting, tossing the bloody patches of fur to the side. I don’t need to do this perfectly, just so long as I get most of it, there shouldn’t be any problems.

After a few more cuts, I stop the bleeding and leave the mangled flesh as it is. Anna would do a better job at this, but depending on how things are going with the rest of the mercenaries on the road, she might be doing the same thing right now anyway.

I flush the madness disease out of the boy with waves of magic and leave him with the scars of his attack. No one comes to sit with him when he stumbles to the wall and stands there alone. He’s not the only one suffering right now.

I need to focus.

Cut away the fur, stop the bleeding, and heal the fever spreading through them. It’s easy, and soon enough Raini starts helping me with it.

Once I’m through the first group, I look towards the rest of the people gathered here.

“I need to check you all,” I say, Nadia at my back with her axes ready keeps them all in line. “You might not know that you’re sick, we have to be sure.”

The people are worried and nervous, but none of them steps up to offer themselves first, so I have to step forwards and grab the nearest woman. Flushing my healing magic through her, I can sort of feel that it’s just flowing back out without sinking in, so she should be fine.

I spend hours checking over them all, then checking again. One young man was hiding a bite under his shirt, afraid of what the others would do to him if they found out, and just scared and a little out of his mind. After cutting out the hair and healing the fever, I leave him with the rest of the wounded people.

Raini knows enough now that she can tell if there’s any trouble, so they should be fine. If there are any vampires, or friends of vampires, here with them, then I can’t really tell from a look.

“Syr?” Nadia asks as I walk for the door. “Where are you going?”

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“I’ve checked them all three times over,” I say. “There are others that need our help.”

She pounds on the door and calls out to the man on the other side, her axes still in hand.

“Thank you, are they going to be okay?”

“They’ll be fine,” I say, nodding to him as I walk away.

There’s still one more thing that I have to do. One more person that I have to save now that everyone isn’t about to murder each other.

“Syr, where are you going?” Nadia is right beside me. “If you’re going to try and heal the creature we brought down, then you should get some rest first. We should have Lothar or Theo with us, too. Just in case.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not waiting. She needs help, and I’m not going to leave her like that.”

I’ve healed myself a little more while I was working on the others, and I think I know how best to heal the madness that’s affecting her. It’s a weird thing to heal sickness, and practice can make it a little bit easier, but that’s not enough. I need to get her in position to be healed, I need to be fit enough to hold her down.

“Syr…”

“Everyone is dead,” I spin on my heel and meet Nadia’s eyes. “Her parents are dead, her village is gone, and everyone she’s ever known is up there killing and being killed. She’s…”

She’s like I was.

“I’m not going to leave her alone in there.”

I should’ve just fixed her when we first brought her down here, but I was still figuring everything out. I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly. I should’ve fixed her already.

When I get to the door, I put down all my weapons. I even leave my dagger behind just in case it slips in the coming struggle. Strengthening my body, I prepare for the fight that is to come. I need to heal her from the rage sickness that the vampire infected her with, and then, I have to stop her bleeding and help her to heal properly.

“Are you sure about this?” Nadia asks, her expression twisted up and her voice weak. “I know that you want to help her, but if we take a little more time we can take measures to make this safer for all of us. The girl included.”

I bite at the inside of my cheek, glaring at the stone door. What she’s saying makes sense, but I want to do this alone. I don’t want to see the others tossing her around and fighting her like she’s a monster. I was doing that same thing just minutes ago, but I didn’t know then what I know now.

“Fine,” I admit, rolling my shoulders and stretching. “We’ll go get Theo.”

Nadia smiles, suddenly relaxing. Adeleya and Theo will just tell me straight when I’m doing something stupid, but Nadia is different. She still sees me as the girl who survived the massacre of Cildr, and she still treats me more gently than she should.

Nadia leads us away, her collection of weapons rattling on her back as she gets us moving at a speed just short of jogging. Breathing slow and calm, I take my twin shortswords and follow her. There are still monsters around, and we can’t be too careful.

The trip is uneventful, and we find Theo helping the guards keep order around the healer working on the more wounded people.

I explain what I’m wanting to do, and what I want his help with, stuttering now and again as I try to speak too quickly. I’m still tired, stressed, and worried. It’s getting to me, and if I did this alone, then I could actually get myself hurt.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Theo says to the healer and the other guards. “You have this in hand.”

The sweat-stained healer nods, waving him away.

Theo didn’t even hesitate.

All I have to do is ask and my team will come to help me. They’re not the same as Rea was, they hate parts of me, but they’re still willing to help me just like that.

We rush back to the room where Namor is being kept and I drop my weapons again as I get ready to step inside.

“Don’t hurt her,” I tell them. “I want to do this myself, but it’s safer to have you guys with me in case I mess up.”

“We have your back, Syr.” Nadia nods, waving around a long wooden staff. “If you can’t heal her this time, then we’ll work together to force her back while we escape. Just shout if you need us.”

“Syr,” Theo says, bringing me to a stop as he hesitates at the door. Apparently one of the researchers taught him how to use the door switches. “We have your back. Just focus on healing her.”

It feels like he was going to say something more, but I can’t really be sure. Maybe I’m just misreading him.

“Okay,” I nod quickly.

I direct as much strength as I can into my muscles. I can’t stop Namor from biting me, my strengthening isn’t enough to protect me against her attacks, but this way I can hold her down. “Open it.”

Namor growls from across the room, her blood-filled mouth opens to show us a series of broken teeth. Grey’s memories flash up in my mind, and I see the same girl innocently playing about in the forges with her brother. I see her running about in the fields, wearing a crown of flowers.

“Namor,” I say her name but she doesn’t react.

She charges me, and I rush in to meet her halfway. She jumps high and I slide low, but we grab at each other as we pass by. She sinks her claws into my shoulder, pulling herself down to bite me.

Nadia grunts, her staff thrusting in and scoring Namor across the side of the head. I twist around, grabbing her legs as she hits her head on the ground. I pull her down and roll on top of her, forcing my healing into her.

It’s not enough, and she’s already recovering from the blow to her head. Sinking my fingers into the wide wound in her shoulder, it starts bleeding again, but my magic sinks in deeper.

I focus my healing on her fever, on the twisted sickness consuming her mind. She’s not like this, that vampire did something to her, it did something to all of them. The sickness and fever were easy to heal for me and the others because they were from fresh wounds, and we only had a little in us.

Namor has been consumed by it.

“Syr!”

“I’ve got it!” I force my healing magic into her mind, while wrestling to hold her arms down. Anna is better at healing because she knows how æther and magic move, how to make it do what you want without letting it run loose.

I can’t do the same but I’m not as bad as I was. I need the magic to focus on curing her fever and clearing up her mind, so I need to draw a path for it, the same way I do when carving out an æther channel in something. I need to direct it exactly where I want, giving it exactly the purpose that I want from it.

She snaps her head up, sinking her teeth into my shoulder. Nadia forces her staff in between but it doesn’t stop her, simply getting jammed into my shoulder as she bites down hard.

“Namor,” I whisper near her ear, forcing the healing through her. “Everything is okay. You’re not alone. Everything is going to be okay.”

My magic floods into her, slowly destroying the parts of her that don’t belong. I grit my teeth, as hers grind against my bones. I grunt to keep from screaming in pain and keep working on healing her. The magic slowly cures her, and her eyes slowly become hazy but she still doesn’t let me go.

Theo is here by my side, squeezing his fingers in and pulling her off of me.

“You’re going to be okay,” I whisper, running a hand over her head as she slowly loses her strength and passes out. “You’re not going to be alone.”

Grey, her father, howls at the midnight moon as the rest of his tribe move out into the far distance where they’re almost certain to die.

 

Author Note// Fighting off a fever and need some good chill books to read to help me get to sleep. Give me a few suggestions in the comments, or DM me or something. Thanks for reading as always.

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