- Chapter 030 -

  The Hero That Wasn't

  Pain was the world. It was the sky above and the ground below, a universe of white-hot agony with a single, sputtering star of consciousness at its center.

  He remembered Tori's face, a pale, drawn mask of concentration floating above him. A warm, red-tinged light pulsed from her hands, a dull, insistent pressure fighting a losing battle against the sharp, screaming agony in his chest and shoulder. He remembered the taste of blood, coppery and thick in the back of his throat.

  The memory dissolved into a blur.

  Another island of lucidity surfaced in the sea of pain. The street was crowded now, the earlier silence replaced by a low murmur of shock and the sharp, authoritative voices of what was probably the town Militia. He saw them, their grim, professional faces a stark contrast to the chaos. He saw them haul Alex away, a steel frame of dead weight, his limbs dangling unresponsive for the earthshattering blow he failed to dodge. He saw another group carefully, gently, lift Silas onto a stretcher, the hero that wasn’t.

  The world faded again.

  He was moving. The sky was a jostling, a rapidly moving canvas of a late afternoon blue. He was on a stretcher of his own, the rhythmic sway a nauseating counterpoint to the stabbing sensation in his ribs. He saw the underside of balconies passing overhead, the curious, upturned faces of the townsfolk a blurry, silent blur.

  Tori was walking beside him, a steady, determined presence, no snarky comments, just a face of panic and strain. Her hand was still over his chest, the healing light a constant, draining glow. He could see the deep lines of fatigue etched around her eyes, the faint tremor in her hand, the sheer, frustrating effort it took to hold his broken body together. He could see the limits of her magic, stretched thin and fraying at the edges.

  It was in that moment of pained clarity that he tried to shift his weight, a small, instinctual attempt to ease the pressure on his back. He felt the movement in his arms, his shoulders, his hips.

  But below that, there was nothing. No sensation. No response.

  He tried again, a specific, focused, a clear demand from his brain to his foot. Wiggle your toe. The signal was sent. The instructions simple, clear.

  The response was an absolute, terrifying silence. A severed connection.

  He couldn't feel his legs.

  The journey to the infirmary was a fractured nightmare. Moments of searing, conscious agony bled into brief, merciful darkness, only for him to be dragged back to awareness by the jostling of the stretcher or a fresh spike of pain. In the black spaces between, the unwelcome dreams clawed at him. The silent, glowing eyes of Taz, the cracking of stone, the feeling of falling through an endless, empty sky.

  Echos from a television broadcast, the smell of pasta, the streets he would never walk through again.

  A fragment of conversation pierced the haze. Two voices, familiar, urgent, frantic.

  "...Silas is fine. Winded, bruised... but fine. He's already on his feet, refusing treatment." That was Valerie, her voice tight with a professional calm that couldn't quite hide her astonishment. "How he's not a broken mess, I don't know."

  "And him?" Tori's voice, strained and weary.

  "Not good. Multiple fractures. The spine... from what I can feel, the damage is severe, his lower back down. It's bad, Tori. Really bad."

  The world swam back into a semblance of focus. He was in a room, the familiar clean, antiseptic scent of the infirmary filling his senses. He was on a bed, the ceiling a smooth expanse of dark wood above him. Valerie was at his side, her usual professional composure now grim with focused intensity. Tori stood on the other side, her face pale, her healing light sputtering like a dying candle.

  Valerie took charge, her voice a sharp, clear command that cut through the fog of pain. "Tori, I need you to keep him awake. Just for a little longer. I know you're running on empty, but I need you to try." She met the other healer's exhausted gaze. "Your magic, your Heart of Dreams. It can push a mind to sleep, but it can also pull it back from the edge. Keep him with us."

  Agony, more pain than ever before struck him, Valerie had done something, or her magic had, and the pain was at a level he never thought possible.

  A new voice, frantic. Tori's. "Valerie, the pain... it's going to kill him before the injury does. We can't do this to him."

  Valerie's voice, sharp as a scalpel. "Then do something! Give him a dream? Anything to dull the edge, put his mind elsewhere! Now, Tori!"

  He felt it then. A familiar, gentle pressure at the edge of his awareness. A pull toward the memory of warm sand and a cool sea breeze. A promise of peace.

  The promise was a lie.

  The gentle pull became a violent shove. His mind, a raw, exposed nerve of agony, recoiled. The beach was gone, consumed by a nightmare of splintered bone and screaming sinew. He felt the foreign presence, the intruder, and his pain became horrors of broken and fused bone, and hunted the presence down.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  A scream, sharp and real, tore through the room. It wasn't his.

  He saw Tori stumble back from his bedside, her face pure terror, clutching her head as if she'd been struck. She was gasping, tears streaming down her face. She had felt it. Just for a second, she had felt what he was feeling.

  "I... I can't," she choked out, her voice trembling. "His mind... it's… it's already too late. It's just pain. It won’t let me help!"

  Through the red haze, he saw Valerie’s face harden, her expression settling into one of grim, absolute resolve. There was no other way.

  Valerie turned her attention to Mark, her eyes, usually so calm and analytical, now held a deep, profound seriousness. "Mark," she said, her voice low, clear, demanding his full, fractured attention. "What's about to happen is going to hurt. A lot. I'm not going to lie to you."

  Briefly she turned, probably towards the distraught Tori, her tone more contained than it should be, “Just do what you can.”

  She held up her right forearm, and the intricate tattoo there, a pattern of what may have been a map of some kind, precise, intersecting lines, bloomed with a soft, clean light. "My Heart is the Heart of the Surgeon," she explained, her voice a steady anchor in his sea of pain. "It allows me to mend tissue, to guide bone, to work with a precision that goes beyond what the eye can see. But it is not a gentle magic. It is... effective and necessary."

  She took a slow, steadying breath. "I'm going to have to go in. I'm going to have to set the bones in your spine. And you are going to feel it."

  He screamed.

  It wasn't a choice. It was a raw, primal sound torn from the deepest parts of him, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony as Valerie’s magic sank into his flesh. It wasn't a cutting pain, not a tearing or a burning. It was a deep, internal violation, the sensation of an invisible, infinitely precise force moving through his very core.

  He could feel it. He could feel the broken shards of his own spine. He could feel Valerie's magic, a network of fine, sharp points, grasping a single piece of shattered bone, lifting it, rotating it with agonizing slowness, and nudging it back into its correct alignment against another. He felt the sickening, grinding scrape of bone on bone, magnified a thousand times by the magic that was both his torment and his only hope.

  He barely even noticed the changing of faces around him, additional staff called in, not to swap with Valerie, but to hold him as she worked through his screaming agony.

  Hours blurred into a single, unending moment of torment. He was vaguely aware of Tori at his side, her voice a distant, desperate murmur, a weak current of energy constantly pulling him back from the black tide of unconsciousness that promised some level of peace.

  Then came a new kind of pain, a searing, white-hot flash as Valerie began to fuse the newly-set bones. It felt like liquid fire being poured into his spine, a wave of heat that radiated outward, setting every nerve alight. He felt his internal tissues being knitted back together, a thousand tiny needles stitching him from the inside out.

  Why could he feel everything… Why…

  Through the red haze, Valerie’s voice was a distant, steady metronome marking the passage of his torture.

  “Hold on, Mark. You’re doing well.” A lie.

  “Thank you, Tori. Keep him with me. Just a little longer.” Another lie.

  “Almost done now. Just one more.” A lie that had been repeated a dozen times.

  And sometimes, in the brief lulls between the waves of agony, her voice would drop, losing its clinical edge, filled with a profound, weary empathy.

  “I’m sorry, Mark. I know this hurts.” She’d pause, the invisible forces inside him steadying for a moment. “But it’s better than you being cold and dead.”

  There may have been truth in that, had he the ability to form a coherent string of words maybe he would have agreed, but it was agony on a level he imagined no-one should ever endure, or should ever be expected to. He wanted the pain to stop, he wanted to beg them, but all there was left was more cries of pain that came as dry coughing screams.

  He woke to silence. Not the ringing, pain-filled silence of the last few hours, but a deep, dreamless quiet. The world was blessedly, beautifully numb. The searing agony was gone, replaced by a profound, disconnected lack of sensation from his waist down. He lay there for a long moment, simply reveling in the absence of pain.

  Then, the fear returned, a cold, sharp spike in the quiet. He held his breath. He concentrated, the simple, desperate demand from his brain to his foot.

  Wiggle your toe.

  He watched, his heart a frantic, hammering drum in his chest, as the thick blanket at the end of the bed moved. Just a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch. He did it again. Another twitch.

  A ragged, shuddering breath escaped his lips, a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. Relief, so pure and overwhelming it was almost as painful as the agony that had preceded it, washed through him.

  "That's twice you owe those girls your life, boy."

  The voice, a low, familiar rumble, pulled him from his daze. He turned his head, his neck stiff. Sitting in the chair beside his bed, a silent, patient sentinel, was Silas. The old man looked weary, a dark bruise covering his jaw, but his sharp eyes were clear. He offered Mark a slow, deliberate nod.

  "I know," Mark rasped, his throat raw. He shifted slightly, a dull, phantom ache echoing in his spine. He met the old man's gaze. "Why did you do it?" he asked, the question forming from the cold, clear memory of the Jade flash. "You choose to lose?"

  A low, rumbling laugh started deep in Silas's chest, a sound of profound, ancient weariness. "I was hoping no one saw that," he admitted, a wry, tired smile touching his lips. He ran a hand over his bruised jaw, the smile fading as he did. "Even that little display… it cost me more than you know." He looked at Mark, “In truth that oaf was no more threatening to me than the Ash-Sprite that sent you here the first time.”

  His face turned sad beneath another laugh, “Had history played a different game,” he raised his hand, a splitting Jade washing over his Heart of the Miner, “Boy, I moved the mountains themselves, I could have ended him by accident.” Another sigh, a strong and steady Jade washed over his shoulder, “And now… I could have crushed his very sense of self, dreams are dangerous… maybe less so to you I think.”

  His expression turned serious, closing the door on any further questions. "My mistakes are not your responsibility, boy. Pay them no mind."

  He pushed himself to his feet with a quiet grunt, his large frame filling the small space. He walked to the door, then paused, his hand on the latch, his back to Mark.

  "A word of advice," he said, not looking back. "Give the girl some allowance. Some understanding." He glanced over his shoulder, a final, cryptic piece of counsel in his ancient eyes.

  "She is not a child of your Earth. Her story is different to yours, but in too many ways the same. Consider her request." And with that, he was gone, leaving Mark alone in the quiet, numb aftermath, with more questions than he'd had when he'd woken up.

  Chapter Summary: