The Vile&Violent

[Slayer of the Rot]

Red sticky sinew, fused with sharp, angular gems and metals filled his vision, a mindless winding cackling deafening him before white dominated all, bile spewing unbidden from his bloody split lips as the old familiar teleportation lurch dropped him into the snow. His thoughts were like an apiary; buzzing, frenzied, and visually chaotic, but all with with one purpose, all barrels aimed at the same target - what?

Not everything was white. The eye that wasn't swollen shut gazed onto an impressionist's canvas of reds, magenta, greys, beige, and brown. Licking his bloody lips, Dan grimaced, every breath he took was fouled with the taste of his last meal before he went out to meet Godhand under Xem'zund's banner. He spat out a fleck of cartilage. Pork sausage, coffee, peppered bacon. A breakfast of victory, but it had been soured with cold magic. He could still feel the chill of it singeing the membranes in his nose. A simultaneous stink of pure peppermint and dank rotting flesh. Pushing himself up on his only remaining arm, Dan spat a thicker glob of phlegm into the cold snow under him, hoping to banish the taste from his mouth.

He didn't account for his new center of balance and flopped immediately to his back, his left arm nothing but a ragged stump terminating in a fetid sludge of fibrous reds and greys and blacks. It had been sheared away in fury by the necromancer Xem'zund, a bid to kill his only living soldier, and had missed by a fraction when Dan had refused to kill Godhand. He was still garbed in the longcoat of the Forgotten One, its red embroidered eye staring up at him, and he latched onto that, gripping at it with his remaining numb, white fingers. Blinking rapidly, he realized at once he wasn't breathing and pulled in a great greedy breath, then began rapidly sucking in air.

In, out. In, out. How hard had Godhand hit him? What was the incantation that evoked that blast? Why did he feel so god damn sick?

He had never been a fan of teleportation, even if it had its uses. You could get from point A to point B in an eye blink, but how were you to know you wouldn't end up with your eyes where your teeth should be, and vice versa? While he'd never suffered anything like that, he'd always felt a momentary confusion, but this was an intense scattering of thoughts. Someone had shaken his bag of marbles and then dumped them all over the floor. The pain was not helping - it was as frustrating as it was surprising. Mortal wounds were nicks and scratches to Dan, and it had not been the first time he'd lost an arm but Hromagh, how it hurt now!

Instinct kicked in. His breathing steadied as he ground his teeth together, wide eyes flickering wildly about. Snowflakes fell softly on his blood smeared, gray cheeks. He hadn't an idea of where he wanted to go when he'd triggered the Ether Band. He simply told it to take him away when he heard Xem'zund's rage, and away it had carried him, from the blood, and ash, and piss soaked battlefields of Raiaera to a silent, snowy knoll in Salvar. The green arms of the young pines on the hills reached down to him, as if in pity to the man making a mess on their hill, swaddled in soft frost. The world spun, and the snow came down in a spiral around him. Slowly, a thought dawned upon him as his trembling fingers traced the intricate scarlet thread work of his longcoat.

'I did this to myself,' he thought, 'I accepted it. Remember.'

Dan struggled through the pain, feeling the anger slowly pulsing upwards through the gut wrenching nausea. Another snowflake fell upon his cheek, and the melt that trickled into his bloody mouth washed away some of the vileness. Remember...what he'd accepted...it took him a few moments, but suddenly, it hit him like a warhammer wielded by a minotaur. Before the war, before he called himself Kross. Before he killed Cydonia, before he betrayed Skie dan Sabriel. He'd had a dream, a dream of ancient voice talking to him, wanting him. The voice of Xem'zund, and then his touch. The mark on his heart.

He spat once more into the snow, and this time, a long, sharp tooth fell into the blood and vomit, and Dan began to laugh.