The Rivers Collide

[Witchblade]

Yeah... I finally started working on my novel. This is the first scene from it, and it's just a scene, not a chapter or anything so it's short. I just wanted to get some opinions on it. And yes, it is a fantasy novel.



Scene One
His Choice


To say that he had been born a patient man would be a lie. Patience had been hammered, cut, beaten and tortured into him by the sadistic thing known as time. That cruel son of a bitch that it was and he was pretty damn sure time had enjoyed instilling every little bit of it in him too. He supposed that it had paid off in the end and given him the fortitude to look through moulding and dusty piles of books that most people considered crap and he was almost ready to agree with them. Or at least he had been until he’d finally found something that afforded him a glimmer of hope and resurrected a few emotions within him he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope was another cruel bitch though and the last time he had let her get under his skin he’d nearly gone insane. Needless to say, this time he was being more cautious as she reared her ugly face within the depths of his mind. And by cautious, he meant he was smashing the side of her skull into a rock in a gory and graphic display of blood and bone and brain matter.

Shame it was just a figment of his fragmented mind.

Then again, his days of smashing skulls in was long over. It tended to happen when one finally started to regain their sanity, albeit slowly and painfully. The problem with regaining that very precious sanity was in the end it wasn’t worth it. You were always littered with guilt over your past deeds and tormented in your sleep by faces that just wouldn’t leave you alone. And brown eyes, always the same damn brown eyes. He hated brown eyes. He could spend a lifetime trying to erase them from his mind and they would never go away, and he knew this because he had tried. A lifetime just wasn’t enough.

A lifetime is just enough.

A lifetime was perfect.

The deep and rhythmic thud of boots echoed around stone walls and gradually found their way back to his ears. It was like a heartbeat, steady and constant and never seeming to cease whatever meanderings it needed in order to live. They had a purpose, no aimless wandering today. They strode through the dank, underground hallways of some ancient temple worshipping a bunch of Gods that no one gave a shit about anymore. They were leading him towards something and it damn well better be there or there was going to be Hell to pay and at this point in his life, he didn’t care who paid it. He was damned anyway.

Sadly, his heavy footsteps were followed by much softer footfalls that tread lightly on so called hallowed ground.

“Sir, sir please.” It was such a whiney voice, protesting to him to listen to it. But he didn’t. Instead he kept moving forward, watching the shadows cast into the deep crevices along the walls by flickering torches. It was such meagre lighting. “Please, I’m begging you!”

No you’re not, not yet anyway.

He could see the large frame of a door up ahead. The wood was dark and damp looking, worn and cracked and perfect. Absolutely perfect. It was the only beautiful looking thing in this place.

“What you seek is not a trinket to be played with.” It was a different voice, deeper and maybe a little more commanding. But if they thought that he was going to listen to them, they had another thing coming.

A hand reached out and grabbed onto his shoulder. He could feel its touch burning through the layers of his clothing and into his skin, trying to stop him, trying to stall him. Barely even turning around, he shrugged the hand off his arm, knowing that if it touched him again he was going to break it. He hated temples, he hated the Gods and he hated the believers. Those remnants of things long since passed. They clung to beings of higher power believing they could solve all their problems, but if they really existed, they didn’t care about those lower than them. No one did. You had to learn to fend for yourself or be swept away in the current of life, because no one was going to save you.

He stopped when he reached the door. His hand rose from his side and ran the scarred tips of his fingers across the warm, wet wood. Pieces of it fell away at his light touch and became bits of rotting wood in his hands. He pushed on it, surprised by how easily the door moved and the creaking sound of rusted and unused metal filled the air and his ears. It was something to replace the silence after the footsteps ended.

The room was dark. No torches burned within it, no candles dripping mountains of wax upon the floor casted the soft glow of their flame throughout the area. The only light that could be seen filtered in through the now open doorway and allowed the briefest glimpse at a room no one had glimpsed in possibly hundreds of years. No one, no one but him now.

He raised his left hand and snapped his fingers, exciting the air just above his palm so that it burst into a bright, red and orange flame. Gentle heat covered his hand, but never burned him and the small trick was just enough to allow him to see most of the room. As his eyes scoured everything within it, he heard two sharp, intakes of breath come from behind him. The believers, they were getting a glimpse at something they’re not supposed to. Would their souls be thrown into an abyss now, or cast into some kind of purgatory, or perhaps their very eyes would be burned from their sockets and their tongues cut out.

Stepping forward, Dryden swept the rough, dome shaped room and everything it possessed. It may have held more at one point in time, but it appeared time had won the battle here. He could see the remnants of tapestries along the wall, threads that clung to wooden poles and piles of rotting linen upon the damp floor. Whatever they had depicted was long since gone now, shame, it may have given him some kind of clue towards this relic of his. There were nooks and shelves carved into the very walls themselves, filled with small trinkets and crystals and things that appeared to be of no use to him. He didn’t have the time to examine them either; the believers behind him were growing restless. Their whispers reached his ears as they discussed some kind of method of stopping him. As if they could. So, he ignored them.

Moving through the room, Dryden saw something in particular that caught his eye. A small altar set into the stone with two distinct objects sitting upon it. A mirror and a small crystal on a tarnished and silver chain. Both looked horribly dirty and when he picked up the mirror to look within it, no matter what angle he turned it upon, it would not reflect his image. Grabbing the crystal, he slipped it into his pocket and then began examining the altar. Words were carved upon it, faded and barely noticeable as the years ate away at them. He could only make out part of what remained.

...longs to be...

He didn’t know what it meant.

“That is only to be used in dire circumstances!”

His grey eyes found the old face of the believer, ancient and tough and weathered by years of hardships that perhaps someone like Dryden understood more than the old man realized. He was the commanding voice, the one the younger man beside him could possibly never accomplish as he glanced around the room so fearfully.

“I see no such dire need for it here.” He continued.

Dryden merely smirked, “I am the dire circumstance.”

His eyes trailed back to the mirror and absently his thumb wiped at the grime in the corner, revealing the silvered surface beneath it. The framing around the mirror was simple, twisting metal that was meant to protect it and look beautiful all at the same time. And it did, to him at least. Beautiful. As he continued to wipe the dirt from its surface, his fingers began to brush across imperfections. Cracks that spread throughout the surface like the intersecting web of a spider. Along the side of it he noticed the most significant thing of all though, a chunk of the glass missing. Just a small triangle of jagged glass that kept this from being complete.

At least we have something in common.

Placing the mirror back on the altar, Dryden reached into the same pocket he had placed that small necklace. It may prove useful considering its placement. Wrapping his calloused and scarred fingers around the cloth bound object within, he pulled it out and then allowed the piece of material to fall to the ground, revealing the shard of glass and the product of a few years of searching. Placing the shard into the empty section, Dryden picked the mirror back up and watched in amazement as it began to repair itself. The cracks in the glass slowly grew inwards towards the epicentre of the fracture. Even the sides around the broken piece began to mend and leave behind a flawless surface.

Once the mirror was complete he watched as his face appeared in the glass, tired looking. There were dark circles under his eyes making them looks bruised and his cheeks were sunken a bit from his recently poor diet. The scars along his chin and his eye didn’t help, plus his hair had gotten long and strands of it were falling into his eyes. Basically, he looked like shit but he didn’t really give a shit.

Behind him, the reflected image gave him a split second of warning before something hard struck him in the back of the head. Stumbling forward, Dryden experienced a second or two where his world went black and became nothing more than a sea of pain. But he was stronger man than that and a blow to the back of his head was not going to bring him to his knees so easily. It did however extinguish the flame hovering above his left hand, casting them into darkness once more. At this point in time, he would have turned around and grabbed the man by the neck, snapping it like a twig. He would have enjoyed watching the life leave his eyes. He would have, if a soft glow hadn’t begun to radiate from the mirror in his right hand.

It stopped them all as three pairs of eyes watched the glow grow brighter and brighter. So intense it became that Dryden could no longer look at it anymore. It seemed to fill the entire room though, covering everything in a blinding white that forced him to squeeze his eyes shut. And then everything seemed to shift and change. The floor beneath him disappeared, the air around him no longer existed, but instead of suffocating he just didn’t feel the need to breathe. It was like he had no lungs and no heart, no arms and no legs. Nothing. He couldn’t even feel the mirror against his finger tips anymore. He definitely didn’t see it as it slipped from his grasp and fell to the hard, rock ground his feet were no longer touching. There it shattered and broke into an incalculable amount of pieces that no one would ever be able to put back.

[Skie and Avery]

It started out really confusing, but I guess that's to be expected when you only have a scene. The writing started out jagged and strongly train-of-thought at first and then began to flow as you wrote. One thing I would watch out for is minor grammar mistakes. You used a period in one place where you needed a question mark. The writing was really descriptive and at most times pretty eloquent, but then you'd toss in a sentence that was more contemporary and didn't really feel like it fit. "Basically, he looked like shit but he didn’t really give a shit." is a really frank sentence in the middle of writing that isn't really being narrated with such a blunt voice. As far as the overall story that I got a glimpse of, it looks really interesting. =( I was frustrated that it ended there. I wanna know what happens!

[Witchblade]

Thanks for the comments guys, including all the ones I got over AIM. :p

Scene two is a little longer and I'm still working on the other half of it. Some of the actions and dialogue just isn't sitting right with me right now, so I shall entertain you with the first half of scene two while I edit it. Comment away, over AIM in here, I don't care. Just don't mind the spelling and grammar mistakes, I've only gone over it twice so I doubt I got them all.


Scene Two
This Blade



Sensation came back to him abruptly when his ass slammed against the hard ground, followed by his back and then his head. If the trip itself hadn’t disorientated him enough, then knocking his brains around within the confines of his skull had certainly done the job. He felt dazed, like his head was floating around twenty feet above his body and leaning slightly to the right. Not to mention the world wouldn’t stop spinning no matter how much he wanted it to. His insides felt like mush and his muscles were clearly not responding to his commands. He told them to move. He told them to get the Hell up and off the ground, but they didn’t. Instead, he just groaned and managed to roll onto his side.

Ugh, what a trip.

Though it took his muddled head a little while to realize it, Dryden eventually figured out that he wasn’t in the underground temple anymore. The sun and the trees and the chirping, happy birds should have given that away rather quickly, but he never accused himself of being the sharpest blade. This was wrong though. His research had not mentioned anything about taking him anywhere. No, it was supposed to help him ‘bring about the discovery of The River Crosser’ or something along those lines. He couldn’t quote it word for word, he wasn’t a freaking historian.

Falling onto his back once more, Dryden stared up at the bright expanse of blue hidden in the thick canopy of trees far above him. The forest smelled much better than the dank, stale air he had been breathing below ground. Damn that mirror and wherever it sent him.

The mirror.

He couldn’t feel it in his hand anymore.

He tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but all he managed to do was detach his head even more from his shoulders, or so it felt. The sensation made everything go black and spotty as he landed on dried leaves and snapped dead twigs beneath his weight. He could hear rustling nearby though. Turning his head, Dryden felt his eyes widen as his gaze fell upon the figures of the two believers from the temple. They seemed just as dazed as he was by the entire experience, though the older man was managing to crawl his way to his feet, tripping over his robes the entire way.

Pushing his body to work, Dryden slowly began to pull himself up, even though his legs felt as if the very bones were made of something squishy and unstable.

“Where is the mirror!?”

He was stunned by the words, the very same ones he was going to shout at the believer. He had been certain they had taken it from him.

“I should be asking you that very question.” Dryden growled out.

Deep, blue eyes narrowed on him, as already deep wrinkles around the man’s face became crevices that cut through the contours of his skin. Despite the fact that he must be feeling the same things in his body, the man began walking towards him. Instinctively, Dryden reached for one of the blades sheathed at his side. His fingers had just barely wrapped around the worn and familiar leather hilt when the man was already upon him, rather fast for someone so old.

The believer drew a dagger from within his robes, a curved blade that was meant to intimidate more than anything. He knew believers weren’t very well trained in their use, nothing compared to the skill he had. But that didn’t appear to slow the man down. He came at him fast, attempting to plunge the cold steel into his chest and end this entire exchange in one simple movement. Slamming the back of his hand into the man’s forearm, Dryden deflected the blade and sent it careening off to the side and harmlessly away from him. Then he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the man’s neck. He could feel the pulse of life below the flesh, pumping blood erratically through his veins. His heart was probably beating like the wings of a bird within the cage of his ribs.

“Where has the mirror taken us?”

The words were calm, too calm from such a man who currently held the life of another in his hands. When the believer didn’t answer quickly enough, Dryden lifted him from the ground. The muscles in his arms began to strain and bulge but they did not giving in under the weight. The old man followed with a rather predictable move. His free hand grasped at Dryden’s hand, trying to pry it from his neck while his right hand rose and attempted to stab him once more. As if he hadn’t already learned his lesson the first time. With his free hand, Dryden wrapped his fingers around the frail wrist of the man and twisted it back until he heard bones snap and crack and the air fill with the sound of the old man crying out. Unable to sustain his hold on the blade, it fell from his lax fingers and onto the forest floor. That sound, that cry of pain, it brought forth a sick and twisted sense of pleasure in him, one that he hated and one he loved.

As his fingers tightened around the believer’s windpipe a sharp pain erupted in Dryden’s side, cold and crippling. He felt something slice through the flesh, pierce muscle and finally embed itself deep within the organs underneath. His eyes widened, his grip loosened and the old man fell from his hand and back onto the forest floor, coughing and grasping at his neck. Dryden’s gaze locked onto the scared and shocked face of the young believer just to his left, standing there, still holding the dagger that was still in his side as thick blood began to flow down the handle and touch his fingers.

He had forgotten about the younger one. How stupid of him.

Taking a step away from the man, Dryden cringed as the dagger was pulled from his gut and a sick, sucking, wet sound resounded throughout the area. Grasping at the wound, he felt the blood begin to freely flow over his hand.

Damn, he had forgotten how much it hurt to be stabbed. And by a whelp of a boy too, how pathetic was he?

Dryden watched as the older man got to his feet once more, straightening his robes and picking up his dagger from the ground, trying to regain some of the dignity that he had taken from the man. As Dryden reached to pull his knife from his boot, the young boy charged at him again. Releasing his hold on his wound, he grabbed his arm before he could reach him, twisted his body around and jammed his shoulder under the man’s armpit. Then, leaning forward, his pulled the boy over him, flipping him over his back and slamming him into the hard ground.

Before he could walk over and crush the believer’s throat with his boot, another sharp pain radiated out from his back. Crying out, Dryden stumbled forward and fell to his knees. A hard blow to the back of his head made the world blur, but he fought against the blackness as he hit the ground. It was losing battle, one compounded by the blood loss slowly sapping the strength from his body. He closed his eyes even as he willed them not to. He couldn’t believe that all of his years of research, all the time he had spent on this, all the plans he had were slowly unravelling and slipping through his fingers because of two believers. He...was so...pathetic...

------------------------------------------

There was just something so calming and peaceful about the forest. She wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps the gentle rustles of the wind through the canopy of leaves high above her, creating the shimmer of sound and movement of dancing leave sin the bright sun. Or perhaps it was the smell of the woods around her, still damp from the rain last night. Maybe it was both, or maybe it was just being away from the busy, day to day life she was so used to, trapped in a city and a society so focused on time they let it pass them by without truly enjoying it. She didn’t know and honestly didn’t feel like analyzing it. She just wanted to lean back and feel the wind slither passed her clothes and send chills up her sweat slicked back.

Behind her, Tempest could hear the loud steps of her two best friends crunching down on leaves and twigs alike. They had fallen behind, a bit out of shape and unable to keep up with her. But she didn’t mind. As much as she enjoyed their presence here, it was nice to have a few minutes to herself and just get lost in everything around her. If she could stay in this moment forever, she would. If she could hold this close to her heart and pull on it in moments when she needed something to build her strength for her, she would. If she could remember these feelings...she would.

“C’mon, Stormy! Wait for us!”

Tempest rolled her eyes as a smile spread across her face. Turning around, she could just see her friends making it up the last few feet of the rocky hill. They could probably use a few minutes to rest their sore feet, that being said she wasn’t about to give it to them. She also wasn’t about to stop and let them catch up with her. Where would the fun in that be?

“Aw, what’s wrong guys; can’t keep up with me? Are you too out of shape?”

“Ha ha!” She heard Connor call back sarcastically, “That’s so funny my sides are hurting from laughing so hard. Can you hear me?”

She smirked, “I’m sorry, the laugher must be drowned out by your heavy breathing, either that or your constant complaints.” Tempest knew that Connor was probably boring a hole in her head the side of a football field at the moment. Shame there was all those branches and trees obscuring his face. “I’m sorry, what did you just say Connor? I didn’t seem to catch it, want me to wait for you to get a little closer?”

“Shove it!” He growled at her.

Adjusting the straps of her rather heavy knapsack, she turned and began walking once more, her steps sure on the now slightly rocky forest floor. Hiking was nothing new to her; she used to do it all the time and had been missing it lately. Who would have thought that she’d be hiking around in a foreign country though, dragging two of her friends by the feet while they protested and complained the entire way? She was just more than surprised that she was tackling the forest so easily considering how long it had been. She wasn’t as out of shape as she’d first suspected.

Keeping to the small, rocky hill, Tempest began searching the area for the next deer trail that she could follow. It was much simpler than trying to cut her way through the trees, plus it made it much easier for her to find her way back to the cabin. If they were even going back to the cabin tonight. She might just decide to stay out in the woods all night and set up a small camp. It was a very tempting idea to sleep surrounded by nothing but nature, with the stars high above her and the fireflies dancing in the trees.

As she glanced to the right of her, her eyes caught something her shrugged off for a few seconds, until she passed by a few trees in her way. Then she felt her heart stutter within her chest as her hazel eyes widened and her feet stopped mid step. Feet below her, at the base of the hill was what looked like the body of a man lying rather haphazardly on his stomach. Immediately she turned and began racing down the side of the hill, her shoes sliding on the loose dirt and stones as she held her arms out to keep her balance.

Landing on the ground with a thud, she quickly straightened herself and rushed over to him, slipping out of her knapsack in the process. Not caring about the cumbersome item as she practically dropped it to the ground. Reaching the man’s side, Tempest quickly came to a sliding halt and then fell to her knees. Her first instinct was to roll him over, but when she reached out to grab him by the shoulders she stopped. If he had fallen down the hill and broken anything in his spine or neck, her moving him could quite possibly make it worse. And paralyzing him was the last thing she wanted. Reaching into the pocket on her shorts, she grabbed her cell phone and flipped it open. No service. Shit. Of course there was no service, why would there be service in the middle of the woods, people only get hurt and need medical attention all the time!

[Witchblade]

Scene two - Part Two
This Blade


Putting it back in her pocket, Tempest began to ring her hands as her mind raced over what options there were for her. The problem was that trying to think and not panic at the same time was rather detrimental to the entire process. Basically, she blanked and couldn’t think of anything. After a few seconds though, she reached around to the side of his neck. Her fingers felt around, trying to find the veins there and feel the beat of life but it wasn’t easy. At least he still felt warm, but then considering how warm it was today that didn’t mean anything. Finally, she found his pulse. Reaching up with her other hand, she rested it against her own neck and compared the two; after all, she wasn’t a damn paramedic. His felt far weaker than hers, which meant he was probably dying. Screw paralyzing him, she needed to roll him over and see what was wrong with him.

As carefully as she could, Tempest grabbed him by the shoulder and the hip and began pulling him towards her, rolling him onto his back. As she did so, she felt something wet and sticky. Pulling her hand away she looked down to see it covered in the bright, red blood.

Oh, fuck.

Looking down at his pale face, she began pulling up his rather odd looking shirt to see if she could find the wound. Of course, it was then she noticed the belt around his waist and the two swords that were sheathed there, resting against his black pants and looking like they belonged nowhere else. She found herself staring at them for a few seconds, holding his shirt in her hand and part way up his stomach. Then she heard the calls of her friends, following by tumbling stones and a few curses that should never be repeated. Tearing her eyes away from the swords, Tempest looked up to see Connor and Lee approaching her.

“What happened?” Lee asked before she had even reached Tempest.

Her friend was quick to help when Tempest may have just sat there, looking like a lost puppy, with great big large eyes asking for someone to give her some kind of direction.

“I’m not sure,” Tempest said back to her. “I just found him like this.”

As Lee kneeled down next to her, Tempest pulled the man’s shirt up the rest of the way and searched his blood encrusted torso. Her eyes found the small wound along his side rather quickly as there was still small amount of blood seeping out of it. It didn’t look very serious; in fact it was barely two inches in length, though it could be far deeper than that and all the blood around it made it kind of difficult to tell.

“What should we do?” Lee asked, her brown eyes searching Tempest for the answer.

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be sitting here on the verge of panicking.”

Just what were they supposed to do? Getting him out of here seemed like the most logical thing to do. The man clearly needed more than just a band aid, which Tempest had in abundance and quite a few on her too. She also had some pretty damn strong pain meds if he wanted needed them. Knock him flat on his ass kind. But she got the feeling he was drifting somewhere in a painless dream at the moment anyway, so he probably didn’t need them. Might not even be able to swallow them to begin with and he couldn’t hear her if she offered anyway.

Blindly remembering that putting pressure on a wound stopped it from bleeding, Tempest laid her hand over his side, pressing her fingers against the blood. She could feel some of it trickle out and coat her palm in the sick feeling thick liquid but she didn’t her best to put the thoughts aside. After all, if she were injured she’d be damn appreciative if a stranger did this for her.

“Why the Hell does he have swords on him?” Connor questioned from behind her.

“Maybe he’s a medieval warrior transported to our time by some mystical and magical means beyond our ability to understand.” Tempest said to him rather bluntly, the first thing that came to her mind. How she could make a joke out of this situation she had no idea, but she still found the slightly humorous and sarcastic words pouring out of her. “He’s probably some crazed woodsman intent on proving to the world that he can survive without modern crap, you know, a tree hugger or whatever.”

Both of her friends remained rather silent and she could practically feel their eyes just looking at her as if multiple heads had just sprouted from her shoulders.

“Okay, I give up.” She said, “I don’t know.”

Pushing against his wound a little harder, Tempest stiffened slightly as she heard the man groan and shift as if he were starting to come around.

“We need to get him to a hospital.” Connor said to her. His form came into her line of sight as he paced to the other side of the man. Reaching into his pocket, she watched him pull out his cell phone and sighed.

“There’s no service out here.”

He flipped it open and checked anyway, maybe thinking his cell phone was special. Jamming the thing back into his pocket, she watched as he forced his fingers through his brown hair, surprised his didn’t rip out a chunk of it in the process.

“All right, let’s get him back the cabin.”

“What? Why?”

“Because we have a car there and there’s a better chance of getting some kind of reception at the cabin.” He did have a point. The only problem was the cabin was about two hours from here and with them having to quite possibly drag this man with them it would take even longer.

---------------------------------

There were voices. He couldn’t completely understand what they were saying though, some of the words just made no sense in his mind and he began to wonder if he was hallucinating. Then he felt the pressure on his side and the cry he thought was going to pour forth from his throat turned into a barely audible moan. Damn it, whoever was touching him really needed to stop because it really fucking hurt. Not to mention he’d been having a rather nice dream, but the sudden and sharp pain made him forget whatever it had been about. Then he started wondering why he was in pain to begin with and the whole stabbing thing just came flooding back to his mind. Yeah, being stabbed would definitely do it.

“All right Connor, help me get him up. The sooner we get him to a hospital the better.”

Hospital? He had no idea what a hospital was, but it didn’t take much for him to put two and two together. After all, there was only one place that a person was taken to when injured; a healer’s. And like hell if he was going to let them take him there. Healer’s asked questions and expected answers and he was tired of giving them. Besides, these two wounds were definitely not going to kill him.

Opening his eyes, Dryden found himself staring up at quite possibly one of the most beautiful women he’d seen in a long time. It was a kind of untamed beauty, mark by her unruly and curly haired which seemed to find a way out of the thong she had tied it in. The soft red colour of it made her skin look even paler than it probably was and that made the dark circles under her eyes stand out as if they were bruised. Perhaps she too understood something about many sleepless nights.

She turned her head back around to face him and when she realized that he was awake and watching him, she started. It was rather cute really the way she tensed and her eyes grew slightly bigger allowing him to see the beautiful mix of blue and green and gold that they were. Before she could part her lips to say anything, Dryden spoke.

“No healers...” His voice came out in a bit of a whispered groan. Damn, his throat was dry.

It was as if the words confused her for a moment. He couldn’t be sure but she took a few seconds to actually answer him. “But you’re hurt, you need to go to a hospital.”

He smirked as he slowly began pushing himself up. It was harder than he thought, which meant he’d lost more blood than he’d first assumed. But that was fine, he was fine. “No, I don’t. I’ve lived through far worse.” He did appreciate the thought though. It had been a long time since anyone had ever cared about his wellbeing. That being said, he didn’t exactly want someone to care to him. That led to other things he couldn’t deal with anymore, things he didn’t want to think about.

“Like I’m going to just sit here and take your word for it. You’re going to the hospital.” Her voice was becoming far firmer.

“I said I don’t need a healer.” He growled as he finally pushed himself into a sitting position. Reaching over, he wrapped his hand around her small wrist and pulled it away from his side and then pushed his shirt down. It stuck to his skin in a sick feeling, saturated in his own blood. He tried not to think about it. “I just need some water and a place to sleep.”

Her eyes narrowed on him slightly and he swore they darkened in colour. Turning his gaze from hers, Dryden realized there were two other people around him as well. A second female kneeling beside the first and looking at him wide eyed, as if he was some kind anomaly. He didn’t exactly appreciate it. There was also some scrawny looking man off to his left. All three of them were wearing strange clothing too. He’d heard of women donning pants when they travelled and he honestly didn’t blame them, but he didn’t see the practicality in the extremely short pants they currently had on. They barely covered half of their thighs and would provide no protection against bugs, the elements or the forest. All they did was show off a lot of skin that most women only let a few privileged men ever see.

“Well,” she said to him with a bit of annoyance, “isn’t the injured party becoming rather demanding.”

As he watched she pulled towards her a rather large bag and then grabbed a clear looking bottle from the top of it. Handing it to him, Dryden looked at the thing for a moment before he attempted to open it, only it didn’t seem to possess a normal stopper like most water skins. And the outside was hard but flexible, yet it seemed far stronger than glass. Eventually he managed to get the top off and then pull out some kind of tab. Bringing it up to his lips he squeezed on the sides and almost choked when a stream of water hit the back of his throat. Coughing, he swallowed it and tried again, drinking down half the contents of the bottle before handing it back to the woman.

“Thank you.” He said a little softer to her.

She put it back in her bag and then looked to one of his friends, “Help him up, let’s start heading back to the cabin so Mr. Doesn’t-need-anybody’s-help can get his rest.”

The young man walked over to the other side of him and knelt down, slipping his arm over his shoulder as his arm snaked across Dryden’s back. Surprisingly, despite what he looked like, he was actually able to support Dryden’s weight and lift him off the ground. A rather caustic comment was o the tip of his tongue at that moment, but since he doubted he could walk properly without the help it went without being said.

“Please tell me we’re taking him to a hospital.” The man grunted as he began leading Dryden through the woods. He was moving slow thankfully, giving Dryden the time he needed to get his bearings under him. It would be far easier if there weren’t so many dead sticks everywhere catching his feet.

The fiery little female stayed next to his left, possibly in case the man needed any help carrying him while the other one walked slightly ahead. Hopefully she was choosing the easier way to drag his ass back to their camp.

“No, he doesn’t want to go to the hospital, so why bother taking him?”

“Gee, I dunno, Stormy.” He spat back at her, “Maybe so that he doesn’t die? That sounds like a pretty damn good reason for me. Like I want some random jerk off’s death weighing on my shoulders.”

“What do you want me to do?” He could see the frustration in her eyes, making them come alive. “Hit him over the head and drag his unconscious ass into the emergency room? I’m sure that’ll just go over great. Yeah, hi, I found this random man in the woods but he refused to come with me so I hit him over the head and possibly caused irreparable brain damage. Perfect. I can see it now.”

Dryden laughed bitterly; she really was just as wild and fiery as her looks. “I swear on my soul, I will not die.”

“Like that makes me feel better.” The man muttered as he adjusted the weight Dryden was putting on him, stretching the skin along his side and sending a fresh jolt of pain through him. He got the feeling this was going to be a long walk.

“At least this deep in the woods, if he really does die we can really easily bury his body without any questions asked.” The words sounded like they were a jest to Dryden, but the look on her face almost made it seem like she was being serious. Almost. Just what had he gotten himself into?