Chapter 3: Chapter 3 – Alesander

Ales felt as though he was drowning. He felt weightless, hanging suspended in a deep, dark abyss that pressed tight all over him. He felt cold, despite the heat that prickled underneath his skin, numb despite everything pressing in around him, and as he sank further and further down, sounds broke through the heavy silence, rumbles that he recognised but couldn’t place. 
‘Ales.’
Voices. He knew the voices, but he couldn’t match a face to the sound. 
‘Ales, wake up.’
Down and down, further he went. A small line of light slashed across his vision. He knew that voice, but the name wasn’t coming to him. It sat just behind the wall of fog clouding his brain, a shape that he could make out if he could only reach out a little further. 
‘Ales!’
Ales awoke with a start, sucking in a huge breath that made his chest ache, and pain wrapped around his entire body, shocking away whatever lull he had been trapped in. His entire body burned, his skin on fire as blinding light stabbed into his eyes. He couldn’t move to block it out, he couldn’t move as much to see if he actually was on fire. 
Elsbeth stood over him, a soft, sad smile spread across her face. ‘You’re alright,’ she said. 
Ales tried to speak, but his tongue was dead weight in his mouth and his lips were too dry to open. She just reached down and stroked the hair from his forehead. 
‘You were having a bad dream,’ she said. 
The burning faded, turning to a gentle prickling that buzzed against his nerves. The fog in his brain wouldn’t pass though, and as much as he tried to remember what had happened or how he got here, it wouldn’t come. He remembered following Elsbeth into the hospital, the soldier who had gone completely mad, but everything beyond that was blank. He couldn’t even recall this nightmare. 
Elsbeth patted his hair back, then leaned over an kissed his forehead. Her touch was cold against his sweating skin. ‘You’re okay now,’ she said. ‘Go back to sleep. You won’t get much chance later.’
Ales closed his eyes, fighting to keep them open but losing the fight and giving in to weakness. When he did manage to force his eyes open again, the room was dark and Elsbeth was gone. 

 

***

 

Ales awoke to see Thea sitting next to his bed, hunched over with her hands clasped tight between her knees. She looked grey, deep shadows marking her eyes and a bandage had been taped to her temple. Weak beams of sunlight flittered in from the window above him, and though dozens of other beds lined the wall on either side, they were alone in the room. 

Testing his limbs, he found that he could move them, though the prickling across each of his nerves still spiked when he tried. He saw a table full of instruments on the other side of the bed, some of them bloody, joined with an oxygen tank, it’s cord running up to his face, and another cord, this one running into a small hole in his forearm. His brace was gone, the warped scars on his shoulder in full view, and he realised that while he wore no shirt, he could still feel fabric pressed against his middle that wasn’t the rough bedsheets. 

Ales turned back to Thea, who had her head bowed and hadn’t realised he was awake. ‘Did you hurt yourself or did you finally get tested for brain damage?’ he asked. 

Thea jumped out of her skin and swore, pressing a hand into her chest before cursing again and slapping him hard in the chest. ‘Don’t do that.’ 

‘Hitting the dying man, is that how it’s done out on the islands?’ he joked. When Thea didn’t react with her usual impatience, he frowned. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled. ‘That… that fucking rock. I don’t know what happened to it, but it took me out, the mad soldier is dead, you nearly died, and Elsbeth…. I….’ her face fell. ‘I’m so sorry, Ales.’

His chest tightened painfully, suddenly forgetting how to breathe. Her tone, the look on her face, all of it warned him of what she didn’t need to say. He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘I know it’s hard to take, and if you need me to go away, just say so.’

‘But… I saw her.’

Thea made to squeeze his shoulder, but paused at the scars and pulled back. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment.’

‘No. I saw her,’ Ales pressed. ‘She was here. Right here, where you’re standing right now. Before.’

‘The nurses said you didn’t rest properly,’ Thea mumbled. ‘Do you want me to go?’

‘No,’ Ales said. Though he didn’t notice her sitting back down in the chair. Elsbeth had been here, and she had told him something, but he couldn’t remember it. He didn’t want to believe she was dead. He didn’t want to believe it was only a dream. Yet, the knot in his chest grew tighter and deep down he knew it was true. He couldn’t think about what it meant yet. Not yet.

‘If it means anything, she saved your life,’ Thea said. She nodded at the tube in his arm. ‘The rock… or the piece of rock that hit you, it pierced your liver, and you lost a lot of blood. She signed as an organ donor, and that’s her donation bag giving you your juice back.’

Ales’ stomach twisted. ‘Don’t call it juice,’ he said. ‘That’s weird.’

Thea managed a weak smile. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Weird,’ he said. Even the simple motion of moving his mouth sent a shiver of hot prickles down his neck and chest. If someone told him ants were running through his veins instead of blood, he would have believed them. He lifted his arm, and when the prickling didn’t get any worse, he lifted the bedsheets and saw bandages wrapped around his middle. 

Thea pulled a face. ‘You don’t want to see what’s under there. It went straight in the side under your ribs. Looks awful.’

‘Why did you tell me that?’

‘Because I’ve seen you get weird around hospital stuff.’

Ales opened his mouth to argue, but decided against it. ‘I didn’t know you knew that.’

Thea laughed dryly. ‘You’ll live. The nurse is around here somewhere, let me see if I can find her.’

‘Where’s my brace?’ he asked, but she got to her feet and walked away without an answer. 

Ales flopped back down flat onto the bed, tracing the cracks in the roof with his eyes. Even when he wasn’t moving, he could feel buzzing beneath his skin, bugs that crawled under the surface and he squirmed despite himself. Something felt wrong. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that his body recognised Elsbeth’s blood as separate from his own, but just that thought made him sick to his stomach. 

Footsteps echoed through the space, and Ales didn’t turn, assuming it was the nurse coming to check on him. When a figure in a dark suit picked up the clipboard at the end of his cot, he sat up with a yell, the movement sending a wave of dizziness through him. The stranger wore black leather gloves and had a cane hooked under his elbow, with his parted, mousy hair a little dishevelled, and round spectacles sat over impossibly pale eyes. 

‘Alesander Belthaire,’ he read. ‘What an old fashioned name.’

‘Who are you?’ Ales asked. 

‘A friend,’ he said. He hooked the clipboard back onto the bed and studied Ales with an intensity that made him feel as if he was a mouse about to be torn apart by a hawk. The stranger stepped around to the side of the bed, and Ales expected him to take the seat Thea left, but he remained standing. The man then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out. ‘Perhaps a peace offering will ease your concern.’

Ales’ brace dropped into his lap, and though his relief was overwhelming, more questions burned in his brain. Yet, he picked it up and fitted it onto his shoulder anyway. It sat over his scars like a pauldron, the straps connecting to a second leather square that wrapped around his arm. As he pulled the straps tight and fixed the biggest across his torso, he knew the stranger was still watching him, but when Ales turned back, he was surprised to see the man patiently waiting, and not staring in some fascination like people normally did. 

‘What a situation you’ve found yourself in, Mr Belthaire,’ the stranger said. 

‘Just… um… just Ales is fine,’ Ales mumbled. ‘Who are you?’

‘You can call me Milo, if you like,’ the man said. He tilted his head, his eyes still unblinking. ‘Bit of a nasty wound you’ve collected there.’

A violent shiver ran through him, and Ales shifted back. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded. 

‘I want the next part to be an even playing field,’ Milo said. ‘So I dislike how you have been placed in the middle of our dispute without knowledge or training.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ales demanded. 

‘We don’t have time to discuss this,’ Milo said. ‘You need to leave this hospital. Lose yourself in the city and the crowds, and I will seek you out there.’

‘What?’

Milo reached into his pocket again and pulled out what looked like a stick of charcoal. With a surprisingly gentle touch, he lifted Ales’ hand and ran the charcoal along the back of his palm, marking his skin with a strange symbol. ‘That should keep you safe for now.’ 

He sighed, and his face fell into such a pained expression that Ales felt a twang of sympathy, though he had no idea what for. 

‘I hate for you to be left alone and untrained. But time is of the essence.’

Footsteps sounded out at the other end of the room, and Milo straightened, pulling his cane free and taping it against the floor. ‘We will meet again, Mr Belthaire. It appears we are out of time.’

‘Wait!’ Ales cried, the words kicking his heart into a rapid beat that thundered against his ribs. ‘What is going on?’

‘Preserve yourself, Mr Belthaire,’ Milo said. ‘Answers will come later.’

‘I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not going anywhere!’

‘Oh, of course!’ Milo chuckled as though he had forgotten his coat on the way out the door, then reached down and pulled the bedsheets back. Ales made a noise of protest, but Milo cut him off with a flourish of his cane, before snapping it up and driving it into Ales’ side. A fiery pain erupted across his chest and Ales screamed, doubling over as white hot coils wrapped around his torso. The buzzing under his skin turned into needles that stabbed into every inch of his skin, and Ales forced himself to breathe through it, his entire body tense as he waited for it to pass. 

‘What the fu—’

Milo was gone.

Ales glanced around desperately, gripping his side as the wound throbbed under the bandages. Pain pulled his lungs tight and his vision turned blurry as tears pricked his eyes, but he couldn’t see the strange man anywhere. Thea was the one to approach his bed with one of the nurses, and her vision soured when she saw Ales, as though he was the stranger barging in. 

‘What are you doing?’ the nurse demanded. 

‘Where’d he go?’ Ales demanded. 

‘Where’d who go?’ the nurse asked. 

‘There was a man in here just now.’ Ales knew he sounded frantic and a little crazed, but the needles under his skin were worse now, each one stabbing into his muscles and bones over and over, his skin hot under the bandages. 

‘I didn’t see anyone,’ Thea said. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Something’s wrong,’ Ales said. He couldn’t ignore it now. His entire body had come alive and was fighting against him, his insides churning twice as fast as they were supposed to. ‘I… I don’t feel good.’

‘Looks like shock,’ the nurse said. ‘It’s normal. Your body is going through a lot of stress.’ She nodded to Thea. ‘Check his stitches for infection. I’ll make sure he’s not rejecting the organ.’

‘You… what?’ He was starting to think the nightmare was still going, that this strange world where everything was a little off could only exist in some post-surgery delirium. 

‘Don’t be a baby.’ Thea pulled a set of gloves from her pockets and inspected a tray on the bed next to him, pulling up a pair of scissors. ‘Did you forget I’m a trained medic?’

‘Young man, you need to breathe,’ the nurse said. ‘Panic is only going to make this worse.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ Ales demanded. ‘What happened to me? What did you do to me?’

‘They saved your life,’ Thea snapped. ‘I already told you what happened.’

‘But… the man. He said I—’

‘There wasn’t anyone here, Ales,’ Thea snapped. She forced his arm back and began cutting away at his bandages. ‘You need to calm down, or you’re only going to feel worse.’

She was talking as if he was mad, and Ales forced himself to take a deep breath. The nurse grabbed his face and studied his eyes close enough to make him squirm. 

‘You feel nauseous at all?’ she asked him. ‘Dizzy, headache. Like you’re going to throw up?’

Ales shook his head. The nurse frowned and pressed her palm into his forehead. 

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‘How about hot and cold? Fever?’

Ales nodded. 

She swore. ‘I think you’re rejecting the donated blood.’

Thea made a noise next to him. 

‘What does that mean?’ Ales asked. 

‘It means we need to filter out what we gave you,’ the nurse said. She then turned to Thea and scowled. ‘What’s wrong with you, girl?’

Ales glanced down at his now bare chest automatically, bracing for a sight of gore and blood that was sure to give him the nausea the nurse had mentioned. Instead, he saw nothing. Only a single, thin white line ran along the bottom of his ribs, less noticeable than the marks on his shoulder, less noticeable than the marks on his knees from when he was a kid. 

‘What the fuck?’ Thea breathed. 

Ales turned to her, her eyes wide and her face pale. It had been Milo. Even though it was impossible and enough to almost kill him; Milo had done something to him. Carefully, with shaking fingers, he traced the line along his skin, but couldn’t even feel the difference under the scar. He turned back to Thea, knowing that his expression matched hers. 

‘Miss Sherrard?’

Thea turned, and Ales jumped as a woman in a constable uniform stepped into the room. She glanced at the scene and frowned. 

‘A word, please.’

‘I… no, hang on a minute,’ Thea said. ‘I’m busy here.’

‘Go,’ the nurse said. ‘I can take care of this.’

Ales bit down on his tongue, but Milo’s warning flashed through his head. If trouble really was coming, that strange man was his only link to understanding it, and he had warned Ales to run. Whatever this was, he didn’t have the stomach to understand it right now, and he definitely didn’t want Thea involved in this kind of mess. He forced himself to nod. Thea still hesitated, but slowly backed up and followed the constable. 

‘Are you calm?’ the nurse asked. 

Ales realised with a start that the buzzing under his skin had eased, and though his heart still pounded in his chest, something in the distraction of his healed wounds had brushed away everything else. Even his fever had eased into a dull throb in his skull. He glanced up at the nurse. ‘I feel better,’ he said. 

‘I told you panic wouldn’t help,’ the nurse said. She pressed her palm against his forehead again. ‘I’ll have to get the thermometer out to make sure, but you might be alright.’

Something pricked against his elbow, and he glanced down to see a broken hypodermic pressed into his elbow, the glass and liquid spilling over his skin and onto the floor. The nurse stared. The needle tip had snapped, the piece in her hand bent and warped beyond use. 

‘What are you doing?’ Ales asked. 

The nurses brow furrowed. She then grabbed Ales’ hand and ripped it up, and Ales cried out as his shoulder bent painfully in the wrong direction. Ignoring his noise of pain, she studied the mark on his hand. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘Let go of me!’ Ales cried. He twisted his torso foreward, throwing the joint of his shoulder back so his arm came out straight, causing the bone to pop. 

‘Who was the man in here before?’ the nurse asked. ‘You said someone came in here.’

‘I don’t know!’ Ales snapped. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Run, Ales.’

Elsbeth’s voice rattled through his head, and he shook it away, but when his vision focused, she was standing on the other side of the bed next to his, staring at him. She gave a small, determined nod. 

‘You have to run,’ she said. ‘Open your eyes.’

This made him pause. ‘What?’

‘Open you eyes, Ales!’ 

 The voice slammed through his head, echoing around the inside of his skull and he cried out as it screeched against the base of his ears. The nurse yanked at his arm again, but his brace caught the limb before it could be ripped out of its socket. Using the momentum, he twisted his torso further and tore himself free, the motion sending him spinning out of bed and onto the floor. His vision doubled and he shook himself, then spun around to face the nurse. 

He screamed. 

The nurse wasn’t a nurse anymore. She wasn’t human anymore. Her skin had turned ash grey, her face impossibly long and narrow, her joints sharp and too pointed to be natural. Her eyes were a deep, inky black, no iris or pupil in sight, and her teeth had turned pointed, her canines long and jutting out past her thin, colourless mouth. She hissed, then pounced. 

Ales scrambled to his feet, but the nurse moved in a blur of motion and caught his middle easily, throwing him backwards and onto the bed behind him. Ales hit the thin mattress with a thud and struggled to pull himself free, but long, clawed fingers held his arms in place. A spot on his forearm was freely bleeding, the hole where the tube had been ripped out. Driving her knee into his wrist, she ran her thumb across the welt then stuck it in her mouth. She then scowled, her entire face twisting into an ugly mess of cracks. 

‘You’re not much of a protector,’ she growled. ‘Where’s your master?’

Ales couldn’t answer. He could barely breathe. This was impossible. 

‘Where’s the other one!?’ the nurse snapped. ‘Where’s the sword!?’

‘Fuck, I don’t know!’ Ales cried. ‘Get off me!’

The nurse hissed again, and Ales skin buzzed, the prickles stabbing at him where the nurse held him down. He struggled, straining against the hole, his skin burning with the pressure. Underneath his panic, he felt his anger welling up. He didn’t believe in magic; not in disappearing men or ghosts or monsters, and he wasn’t about to get involved in anything that told him otherwise. His anger made his arms burn even hotter, a fire erupting across his chest, and he let out a scream of frustration. 

The nurse opened her mouth, her fangs dropping down over his neck. 

‘Get off me!’

The words escaped with a rush of heat that burst out of him as though his chest had exploded. The nurse flung off him and crashed into his bed, then gave a low growl. Cracks expanded out from under her dress, then with a pop that snapped against the bones in her face, she shook off the monster’s face and returned to her human one, though her face was still pinched in fury. Ales got to his feet, his breathing ragged. His hands shook violently and he recoiled when stars danced across his vision. No, not on his vision.

‘No,’ he whispered. 

His hand was glowing. White lines of light bounced out of the skin around his palm, the symbol on his hand glowing a soft orange. 

The nurse lunged again, and Ales threw out his hand on instinct, splaying his fingers wide. Another wave of fire ran through his chest and up his arm and when the nurse grabbed him, her arm stopped inches from his skin. She strained, but couldn’t touch him no matter how tight her muscles grew. 

This wasn’t possible. 

Yet it was happening.

He threw his hand to the side, throwing the nurse’s balance off, then turned and bolted out of the room. 

He almost crashed into another nurse coming down the hall, and every eye turned to him. His face burned and he hugged his glowing arm tight, trying to hide the mark. Feeling dizzy and like his skin had been turned inside out, he stumbled down the hall, trying his best to avoid the nurses and doctors that weaved around him, but things he didn’t see crashed into his sides anyway. He mumbled apologies, but his legs were moving automatically and he couldn’t make them stop. If the nurse was following him, he couldn’t turn to look without collapsing. 

He let himself into a staff office, and once he was sure the coast was clear, he moved to the lockers along the back room and found a jacket and shoes that were in his size. He thought about leaving money to compensate, but his possessions were gone, and he couldn’t find a paper to leave a note either. Someone had hung a stiff-brimmed hat by the door, and he pulled it low over his eyes before ducking out of the room again. 

Ales kept his head low and followed the familiar path towards the front door, out of the hospital completely. He didnt make eye contact with anyone, he didn’t stop when feet around him stopped, and when someone appeared in front of him, he stepped out of the way. Chatter and rustling and squeaking and beeping sounded all around him in a haze of white noise that he let fill his brain. If he didn’t, he would be left to think, and if he stared thinking, he wouldn’t have the strength to keep going. 

Still, images flashed to the surface, begging for his attention. Images of teeth and warped faces, of glowing skin and wounds that closed as though they were a hole in fabric being stitched back together. In the middle of all impossible things, a rusty old relic of the past, of things like Kingdoms and exploration and battles of honour, All of it rusted away in the history books. 

That had been what the monster wanted. She - it - had asked about the sword. Ales didn’t even remember what happened to it; he still barely remembered stepping into that room in the first place. Maybe because he had now been thrust into the maw of insanity, or much like the soldier, had gone mad from whatever grew around it. 

Ales skidded to a halt as the realisation hit him. The soldiers were dead. Elsbeth was… missing, and the nurses had only been doing their jobs when it all went to hell.

‘What are you doing?’

Ales jumped out of his skin when he saw Elsbeth had come up beside him, her face twisted into an unfamiliar mask of impatience, He realised he had reached the main room of the hospital, with the tall winding balconies wrapping around the floors above. In front of him were the large oak doors that led out of here, to where he could find somewhere safe.

‘Keep going,’ Elsbeth urged. ‘You have to. It’s not safe, sweetie, you’re alone and exposed, and if they find you, they will kill you.’

Ales turned to her. It was hard to look directly at her, as though her eyes had somehow become bladed since the last time they sat down to talk. As much as he tried, the act of meeting her gaze sent a horrible chill through him and forced him to turn away. 

‘Why are they trying to kill me?’ he demanded. ‘What did you do to me?’

Elsbeth’s face softened. ‘They think you have the sword.’

‘What’s so special about this thing?’ Ales asked. ‘And that doesn’t explain what’s happening.’

‘I know you’re scared,’ Elsbeth said. ‘But you can’t stay here. You have to keep going.’

‘What about Thea?’

Another impatient scowl flashed across her face, but it was gone before Ales could react. ‘As long as she’s not involved, she’s safe. She doesn’t have the sword either, and she’s not part of this. She’ll be fine.’

No, Thea wouldn’t have the sword, but she was the last person to see it, and one of the only people to leave that room in one piece. If they came after him with that same logic, she would be in danger, and like him, she would have no warning.

He had to go back.

‘Ales, don’t,’ Elsbeth warned. 

He took a small step back, then cursed and willed himself to grow a spine. Ignoring Elsbeth’s protests, he turned and rushed back into the wing of the hospital.

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