Past midnight, and it was dark outside. Dreary and silent. It slled of sulfur and ashes that hung in a dreamy haze across the streets, blurring the distant lights of the moon that tried to seep through the fog. Not a single soul out here on this beautiful night, just the low hum of the wind and the clanking of the wooden planks.
Valens walked with a spring in his step, feeling the cold weather on his thick coat, taking in the sight of the mining city like a tourist out for new sights and new adventures from his otherwise simple life. Not much of that simple was left anymore, truth be told, and yet soone once told Valens that new was always better.
What do we have here? I wonder.
There was a certain eagerness to it, the sort of devious satisfaction to breaking the rules, to do what seed inappropriate at first glance, and he wouldn’t have a bunch of sacred warriors dictate how he should act in this world. He had crossed that line long before he ca across the Sun’s Church’s fad Templars.
No, he was due so information here, and information he would get even if it ant treading a dangerous line. Looking around him, though, there was scarcely anything that spoke of any danger right now.
Shadows here, shadows there, and shadows still.
Occult magic was fascinating to witness just as it was dreadful to feel. The possibility that anyti a man or a woman could fall victim to its practices wasn’t sothing entirely present in the Empire as it’d been long since forbidden along with Warmagic.
Banning a practice is simple, but how you can erase it from existence is another question.
He thought the Inquisition's ever-loud propaganda played a part in that, which seed to be missing in lton Kingdom. They rather preferred to hide the truths than to address them directly, and that in turn could work against the intent they were aiming for.
The wooden shacks were silent and dark as Valens trudged from between them, reeking of days’ worth of sweat and piss. He peered up at the church with its pointy tower and the golden sword cocked on top of its tip still gleaming in the dark ahead, then back at the inn he’d left behind in the main square.
“Not much sense in that, isn’t it?” ca a rough voice from before a wooden shack. Valens perked at the middle-aged man sitting by a worn table with an ashtray over it, a smoking pipe laid beside it. He had both his legs stretched over another chair, boots worn and trousers torn, a face full of creases, eyebrows bushy, and a an stubble that was sowhere between brown and gray.
“Sense in what?” Valens asked as he paused.
“You walking about in the dead of the night, in a town you don’t belong. That’s a fool’s business, I’d say.” He reached for the pipe and squinted an eye down at it, then brought it up to his lips and sucked at it for a while. He puffed out a pair of circles before he waved a hand at the empty chair by the table. “Sit down, will you? You don’t see many Healers here in Brackley.”
“You’ve got sothing to say to , sir?” Valens said as he regarded the man. A Level 56 Miner with an aged face. His legs had been aching from the looks of it.
“The na’s Harlow,” the man said. “If you value that fancy coat and fancy smooth skin under it, then sit down, Healer. This bloody night’s no good for anyone.”
Valens arched an eyebrow at the man. He seed as good as any source to see what was wrong with this town, so he sat down, the legs of the chair groaning, and offered his mild interest to the fellow.
“Heard your lot is better than those Priests.” Harlow pulled the pipe yet again and sucked another deep breath from it as Valens winced against the sight. Or rather, the man’s frequencies. Strong he might be, but whatever it was in that pipe had done so work on his lungs. “You don’t happen to carry anything that might be good for these legs of mine, do you? These bloody hangers always be stinging during the nights.”
“You could try not smoking for a change,” Valens said.
“That, I can’t do.” Harlow rattled out a raspy chuckle. “You see, this is my baby. You don’t leave your baby rotting in so chest.”
Valens paused when the man fondled the wooden pipe as though it was a precious gift. “That’s not the only smoke you’re sucking at, is it?” he asked a mont after. “Heard it’s hard work in the mountain, with so heat and fire in the mix, surely?”
“That mountain is one tough bastard. Give him an axe or a sword, even a Warrior couldn't break through those walls, I tell you that.” Harlow winced slightly as he rubbed at his legs. “We work the heat round ‘em for days to soften the scabs, then drill our way through when it’s balmy enough to break. Looks like so twisted monster’s flesh when we’re done with it.”
“A monster’s flesh?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve been at it for thirty years and never seen one co alive. Just an old saying,” Harlow snickered at him. “But if that ain’t the job, eh, Healer? What’s the difference between hacking at a mountain and killing the dwellers of the Tainted Father? Not much, I’d say. At least this way, the kids think they’re doing so good in the mines.”
“Do they know all the glory that cos with it before they pick the class?” Valens asked.
“They know they’re gonna get paid and get paid so long as the machine keeps working,” Harlow said gravely. “And it doesn’t look to be stopping soon. What, you think being a Healer’s better than this? In lton of all places?”
Valens was taken aback. “I didn’t say that.”
“You sure looked like you were thinking about it.” Harlow narrowed his eyes on him. “It’s easy to miss the little things when you’re high on so horse and riding out into the wilds, young lad, but soone has to dirty their hands to make sure the fires are burning and there’s enough heated water for everyone.”
“You misunderstood . It wasn’t my intention to look down at your work here. I was just curious.”
“Aye,” Harlow said. “You’re not from round here, then?”
“Not around anywhere close to here, either.”
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“Makes sense. You’re a Healer, after all, eh? They don’t much like your kind here,” Harlow shook his head. “Reckon so stories stick with people.”
“Seems so.”
Harlow went silent for a minute, gazing absently at the pipe while Valens eased his back to the chair. It was strange sitting here and listening to a man’s babbling. Strange that he didn’t have to check every little thing around him to see if trouble was coming at him soon. Here, in the dark, it was silent.
“I miss taking a good shit.” Harlow puffed out a thick trickle of smoke and laid the pipe down the table. He gave Valens a knowing look. “That’s the thing most people don’t understand. You get old, and it’s not just your legs that start giving in. It’s everything in your body. Like a rotten shack too old for its own good, you start crumbling bit by bit every day, and you can’t pick ‘em the pieces and put ‘em in place like when you’re young. Then you find yourself stuck in so town, stabbing at the walls and the stones, too tired and spent to care for all the dark work going round. Why should you care, eh, Healer?”
“Depends on the dark work, I’d say.” Valens pulled the coat tight when a wind picked up hard from the street and slapped against his cheeks. Sothing sinister was there inside its currents.
“Reckon it’s so sickness,” Harlow said. He might as well have been speaking about a pair of crows cawing at nothing in particular from the way his voice carried no urgency, just the idle chatter of a man who’d seen too much to be rattled by one more misfortune. “A dozen already dead after we found that tunnel, and another dozen close to kicking it by the church’s basent. I've heard a bunch of Templars are supposed to be checking ‘em now, but a little too late, if you’d ask .”
“Sickness?” Valens echoed. That wasn’t what the miners in the inn were saying earlier the day when they were just checking in.
“Reckon they told you it’s the shadows, eh?” Harlow seed to have heard his thoughts as he scoffed at him. “That’s the habit of us folk here in lton. We tie lot o’ things to damned shadows. This one’s not it, though, or else I’d be a drooling beast out for fresh blood by now.”
“What?” Valens scowled at him. “You’re sick as well?”
“Didn’t you hear anything I’ve been saying? I’ve got the Hack, alright, but this one’s different,” Harlow said with a dose of fatigue in his voice. He then reached for his legs, slowly removing his boots, wincing through the effort of it. What was revealed under his socks were a pair of bloody feet with half the toes rotten and the other half missing. “Started a month prior, right after we dug that tunnel. Can still walk about as I used to, but it gives the shivers, alright. It eats away everything. Makes a bloody soup out o’ you. Quite the sight, eh, Healer? I don’t fear no death, but this, I can do without.”
Breath caught in his throat as Valens gawked at the bloody sight. The stench of the necrotic tissue splashed across his face like a foul wind. He reached almost involuntarily with a hand, only to pause when Harlow gazed at him. He gave an “Oh” before he nodded at the man. “That’s indeed not sothing you’d get by working around the heat.”
“Guess not.”
“Why not speak of it right away, then? You’ve barely half of your toes remaining.”
“Thought o’ doing a test on you. You’ve failed.”
“Eh,” Valens blanked. “What?”
“Can’t bla a man for doubting a Healer, can you?” Harlow grinned. “And I’ve told you it’s easy to miss the little things when you’re high on so horse. Gotta say I’m disappointed, but not surprised.”
“You’d shown this to the Priests?”
“They’re no good,” Harlow said. “The church would’ve done sothing for the boys if they had a cure. A dozen dead by the mines, I’ve told you. We buried the lot not weeks prior.”
“Interesting,” Valens muttered as he focused on the Resonance. He should’ve felt the necrotic tissue through his sound vision the mont he’d laid his eyes upon the man, and yet even now he could barely feel anything.
“What, this?” Harlow pointed a finger down his feet. “You’ve found these stubs of mine interesting? You’re an odd one, Healer.”
“Can I do a check on your legs?” Valens said as he reached for the man’s leg.
“You’re lucky. Another day, and you’d be too late for that.”
“Why?”
“I’ll get ‘em chopped off. The Priests think it can give a couple more days.”
“Right,” Valens said. “Might as well get on it, then.”
The mont he laid his hand over Harlow’s legs his skin prickled with an invisible cold. Lifeward oozed silently through the man’s skin, down his thighs, and into his feet while painting a clear picture in Valens’s mind.
There were multiple clots around the veins, and the lungs had certainly seen better days. They looked like a pair of rocks coated with ash, squirming weakly at each breath, barely squeezing out enough air for Harlow to breathe.
His feet were covered in calluses, blood flow hampered by the clots. A wonder how he could still sit here, enjoying his pipe on a night as though he wasn’t a breath away from a stroke. Then again, the muscle tissue and his general fra suggested the stats had done so work to keep him alive. That was the interesting side of it, as a normal man would’ve been long dead without the Endurance.
This isn’t the result of flesh eating bacteria or a Frostbite. The clots have nothing to do with it either. His flesh is devouring itself. The cells are killing each other.
Through the minute rhythms of Harlow’s Resonance, Valens could see a fundantal difference that shouldn’t have been there. It was coming from his chest cavity in the form of scattered rhythms that seed to be turning his body against itself.
Well, not all of his body. Not yet, at least. Right now, it seems like it focuses on the feet.
When Valens tried to trail this odd rhythm to the chest cavity, he lost the frequencies around sowhere under the rib bones. Just like his own, Harlow’s chest cavity was too dark a blank that lacked even a single tune of Resonance.
This doesn’t make any sense. You can adjust the frequencies in a way that would fit a man’s healthy rhythm or make him sick by psychically altering his body, but you can’t change a man’s Resonance without simply tinkering with his body.
If the assumption was that the chest cavity was this blank space in which the core of the System resided, and even a Resonant Healer couldn’t pry into its mysteries, then by logic, no one should have had the ability to do anything to its core function.
Wait… That’s not entirely true, is it?
They had skills here, Gods and occult practices that defied what Valens thought was common sense. He couldn’t think of matters as though he was in his old world. He had to manage an open mind and consider the other possibilities.
So, is this a skill that can sohow affect a person’s fundantal core? His very own Resonance?
If so, then even if he cut off the necrotic tissue or chopped the legs off, then he would be only slowing down Harlow’s inevitable fate. The foreign rhythm of his hampered Resonance would simply start eating his knees or his waist when there would be no feet to devour.
“Leave it,” Harlow slapped his hand away, reached for his socks, bloody with holes in them, then put them on slowly without as much as flinching at their touch against his skin. He strapped his boots back after that, mumbling sothing along the lines of death and relief, and clasped the pipe tight in his hands. “Better to chop ‘em off than be eaten alive. At least I won’t be alone.”
“Your Priests were right,” Valens said with a shaky sigh. “There’s… nothing they can do to stop this. Nothing I can do, either. You’re—“
“I know these old bones of mine better than you, Healer. Save your breath,” Harlow said with a humorless smile.
“You’ve ntioned the others. Do they keep the ones in serious condition down the church’s basent?” Valens asked. The more cases he could see, the better chances he would have at understanding this sickness or whatever it really was.
“Aye. They’re keeping ‘em there to relieve ‘em of their sins before death cos knocking on the door,” Harlow said. “Us folk who still have a breath or two in ‘em, they let go.”
“I understand.” Valens picked himself off the chair, dusted his coat, and gave the man a simple nod. “You’ll be at the church tomorrow, then? I’ll see you there.”
“Don’t be a fool, Healer. You don’t expect the Priests to welco you like an old friend, do you?” Harlow shook his head. “This ain’t your trouble. Stay away.”
“That, I can’t do,” Valens muttered. “If there’s a sickness in this town, then best I check the others to see about it.”
“Stubborn fool, are you? Go on, then.” Harlow smiled through his set of yellowed teeth. “About ti we had sothing other than this sickness to hear about in Brackley.”
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