'Not dead.' Consciousness came back as swiftly as a scraped match bursting into bright yellow flame. Though instinct demanded he lunge forward, fly into a tornado of violence, he ignored his impulsive fight or flight response for two reasons. One, the pain he'd began to feel after teleporting from Raiaera was now a deep and throbbing ache, thick and heavy as molasses and just as nauseating to him. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before and he found himself briefly thinking of how he'd rather be run through with a dozen swords - at least that hurt until it didn't. The very thought of sitting up alone defeated him before he even tried, and his limbs stayed still and his eyes shut. Two, it was warm, and comfortable, wherever he was. There was a bed, he slowly realized, with cotton sheets and a thick wool blanket, and soft clean bandages. The nostalgic smell of a wood fire scented the room, along with the comforting aroma of brewing coffee, its thick earthy scent almost soothing the boiling pain in his stomach. As his mind continued to wake, slowly becoming more aware, his thoughts increasing like the search party's lantern lights in the hills as they hunted the Red Beast, somewhere, he recognized voices in the Salvar tongue.

"You know who he is. We know who he is. Why didn't you cut his head off, instead of the arm? I heard taking his head off would kill him." The voice was aged and feminine, husky and a touch scratchy, a quality only pipe smoke could imbue. It came from the foot of the bed.

"Aye, perhaps, but I've never stumbled upon any dying man in them woods and left him. Don't matter who it is." This one was heavy, male, and had an odd mixture of a mountain-range Alerar brogue and the harsher, stark dialect of the winter lands. Dan nearly gave himself away and almost let out a sigh, but maintained his steady, even breathing. One in the room didn't want him dead. Good. Because he wasn't sure he could even fight back.

"Who it is? It's the Red Beast," came the third voice, farther into the room, and the mocking inflection, arrogance of the tone, and the small clinks of metal under the words told Dan this one was some warrior. A guard maybe, or a passing deserter? "Do you know why they call him that? He's a berserker, a mindless killing machine. They say at the end of his battles, he's head-to-toe red, soaked in blood. I agree...you should have killed him. If he wakes up, who knows what he'll do? Gianna, please, you have to agree with me. We'd outnumber the old man and we could do what needs done. Think of Tilly. Do you think he cares about your little girl? She's meat to him."

"You see a monster." This one was Gianna, he was sure of it, and her voice was defiant, and had a protective quality that could only come from a mother. The tension that had been growing in his muscles continued to slacken, and instinct lowered to a small buzz at the back of his head, like an animal hiding in a small cave. "I see a sick, dying man that Gram found in the woods. I don't care what they say. I hear he's just a man looking for his daughter. You don't think I'd kill for Tilly?" The room went suddenly silent, and as her words hung in the air, Dan finally let out a small gasp and opened his eyes.

"I'm not gonna fucking die like a sick man, pillow pressed over my face. You gotta try harder than that shit." The calm seemed to swell like a pregnant thunderstorm, waiting for the stillest moment to unleash its hell. Dan's head twitched towards the sound of steel's whispering hiss as it came free from a scabbard. He heard the man in the back of the room rise to his feet with the creak of an old wooden chair and the chittering and clinking of chainmail.

"Don't." One word made the floor beneath them rumble lightly, and he heard glass shattering as it tumbled to the floor. The magic that slipped into that one word was thunderous in a way his hoarse whisper wasn't, echoing like an eagle's call through a deep canyon, crashing like stones in a landslide. Instantly, he heard two pairs of feet shuffling and stomping around him, but not drawing close to him, and when he felt the bitter frosty wind flash over him and heard the door slam, he knew the numbers had been dwindled. Maybe they were off to get the hangman? Or soldiers of the Ethereal Sway's church...pushing his worries out of his pulsing skull, he rolled his head on the prickly down pillow and looked at Gianna and Gram.

Gianna was a tall, slender woman with sharp, dark hawk-like eyes that softened as she bent over the bed, to check the bandages on the stump that now protruded out of his left side. Gram - he assumed it was the man that saved him - had acted quickly, and separated the creeping rot swiftly, without hesitation. The top three buttons of her blouse were undone, and Dan made no effort to hide his stare. Her coal black hair was shaved in an unusual undercut, pulled back in a ponytail, and hundreds of tattooed flowers dotted the side of her scalp, their delicate little vines twining around to the back of her head. She was not a soft woman, and her muscles bunched visibly across her pale arms as he tied the knots again that held the dressing in place.

Gram was the tallest dwarf Dan had ever seen. The underside of his square chin was not bearded; instead, it was marked with an unending pattern of thick and gnarled scars that Dan was sure were from burns, perhaps steam. He however had a thick, red handlebar mustache, and a collection of plain black iron rings dangling from his earlobes, beneath a mess of tomato-red hair he'd done his best to clumsily tie back. He was head to toe in heavy white and gray furs, and the saraelian could see the axe slung across his back. It was no woodcutter's axe though, and had a large, square, cleaver-like blade attached to a knobby haft of white wood. Not a spot of his blood was flecked on a single inch of the weapon.

"Burnt the arm. What was left of it. And the coat, too, don't wanna be walking round with that necromancer's mark on you." A bitter laugh bubbled up from his belly, and Dan choked it back down. If only it were that easy to get rid of a mark like that. He'd accept the burn of the flames if it meant an end to the all encompassing pain that was circulating through his body.

"Brought you back here to Geflen after that. Gianna's a good medicine girl, she stitched up your arm, dressed it. Old woman Mabel and Lukas wanted you dead. So, that begs the question...a man like you will recover from that, aye, so are you to move on peacefully? Or..."

"I'm not such the petty prick everyone understands me to be. I've never killed anyone that saved my life. Now though, I...I don't know. Something's wrong with me. Inside me. I need some time. I don't have the strength to go anywhere else. I...I can't go anywhere else. If you people let me stay here, recover, I won't even pick up a steak knife to hurt anyone. You have my word...on my daughter." Dan turned his eyes back up to the ceiling again, watching the light from the fireplace flickering above him.

"If he's here, it might not come down from the valley." Gram looked at the woman, but the saraelian didn't move. He was quiet for a while again, stroking a finger over a side of his mustache.

"Can't stay here. But if you got money, Beast, mayhaps we could find you a cabin. I believe there's one near my little hut."