BLOOD
The first thing he noticed was the taste of blood.
Oh, it wasn’t the primary thing that he noticed, it was just the first. Like, the feeling of his leathery bat wings screaming hot needles right into his brain – they were probably broken and shredded, but he didn’t look right away. Oh, and the several puncture wounds through his gut, through his forearms, through his thighs and calves; they were quite vocal as well. Then the bleary, dizzying reality that appeared when he opened his bloodshot eyes, that was a concern as well.
But really, he tasted the blood first, and that struck him odd in a remote sort of way, because with the laundry list of life-threatening injuries he had somehow accumulated, he thought that the taste of blood would be further down the queue, a concern to be sure, but less so that say, his body being wracked and ruined.
Blood always tastes different. You know you’re tasting blood, you can taste it’s metallic-ish tang (he’d always heard something about the ‘coppery’ taste, but he neglected to ever stick his tongue to a copper piece, so it wasn’t exactly in his frame of reference – needless to say, it had the hint of metal to it, but it wasn’t exactly overpowering or anything. Just the suggestion), the sensation of it’s viscosity as opposed to your spit – you just know it’s blood.
So there he was, tasting his own blood, as the pain seemed to barge in on his senses at once, like a group of drunks stampeding towards a tavern door. His eyes were open, but instead of contemplating on the bizarre environment around him, he did a sort of exhale – cough, like when you get the wind knocked out of you. Blood sprayed the dirty cobblestones like phemgy sneeze in front of a mirror. Moaning in agony, he attempted to move, but his body wasn’t going to have any of that. His wings – deep purple demonic looking affairs – were now crumpled and shredded. The skinned flesh sang a dull stinging chorus, it seemed, by merely being exposed to the air. His left arm, pinned underneath him, felt like a chunk had been taken out of it. The right, nesting against his chest like that of a palsy victim’s, was a flayed horror – something had gone through it, alright… A crossbow bolt, maybe? Or a sword? He couldn’t even look at his legs, but he could feel the blood pooling around him.
Something bad happened to him alright. And even through the maelstrom of agony, he could still look at this objectively – like the pain was faint and distant, like it was far away. Something bad had happened, and for the life of me, I don’t know what happened.
But even though he couldn’t really put a finger on it, he knew that he had been like this before, many, many times. And the first thing one does, when you wake up and find yourself covered in gore and your body is ruined, is to survey your surroundings. Maybe you just passed out from the pain, and your opponent is looming overhead, the blade ready to make the final cut. Maybe, and this was unlikely, you were in a battle, and even though you fell, your friends pulled through and now you’re just waking up, and your friends will be right there, and they’ll make everything all right. Or, perhaps you’re in an environment in which, while you’re not in any immediate danger, you might be in a dungeon or some such affair, and you really should get along and escape.
Looking around, from his vantage point, it seemed that, yes, he was on a cobblestone street. Buildings, check. There, a town. Okay. Several pairs of feet. Okay, inhabited, and it didn’t look like they’re rushing towards him. That was better. They weren’t coming towards him with the intention of succor, either, so that was sort of disappointing, but really, life just doesn’t hand you good things out of hand. It was to be expected.
“Oy, berk! Yer messin’ up the walk!”
Grunting and sputtering, he began to turn in the direction of the voice. A tall figure, silhouetted against the murky light (of day?). Hands on the hips. Not holding a battle-axe or anything over his head like he was about to chop wood. Okay, he thought. I can work with this. The black silhouette rumbled again.
“Wuzzit, some basher bobbed you right proper, eh? Lessee whatcha got on ya!” The black figure hankered down, the hand outreached to take whatever there was to offer.
Pain or not, the instincts honed by years on the road (training? What instincts?) weren’t going to allow him to take this… lying down, as it were, and even though the action of his mauled right arm to shoot out and clench around the figure’s throat like a manacle nearly made him retch from the effort, the involuntary reaction was impossible to halt. The figure gasped, then choked on his own surprise.
“Get your… hands… away from… me…” he rasped, in a voice that sounded like nails dragged against a stone wall, which, in another circumstance, would have pleased him to no end. It’s hard to intimidate anyone with your voice alone – oh, you hear the bards and ministrels sometimes talk that way about a hero or a big bad guy, but in practice, whenever you try to do it, you just sound pathetic. It’s worst when people laugh when you’re trying to sound tough. But this voice was appealing, it sounded tough, like the guy whose throat it came from was a massive warrior ready to hack his way through the throngs of whatever around him, instead of a guy crumpled and broken on the street.
The figure clutched at his arm, the fingers trying to dislodge the hand clamped around its throat, then clambering down like spiders to the shredded skin and the gaping hole in his forearm.
The pain was exquisite.
No, don’t misunderstand. It wasn’t erotic or anything, although he had heard of some people being aroused by that sort of thing. No, this was the pain that evacuates the contents of your stomach like a dragon breathing fire… this was the pain that makes you pass out… then wake up again because it’s PAIN PAIN PAIN knocking like a tax collector and no, you can’t be sleeping when there’s all this nice PAIN to feel, be a sport and feel this PAIN.
A scream that sounded and felt like rusty razors forcibly being vomited up welled from deep within him, and his fingers lost purchase on the figure’s throat. The figure fell back, holding its neck and coughing, back and back out of his vision until everything was a white hot curtain of agony. He drew his arm back to his chest, maybe his ribcage would just open up and consume the offending limb, get rid of it, because hey, things just weren’t working out anymore, and it’s be great, you know, if you could just take this thing off my hands – HAH, that’s a joke, don’t ya know.
“Sodding barmy!” the figure screamed from somewhere off in the distance, and from that great and mythical land, its boots were coming in for visits, slamming into his ribs over and over until they broke and drove more shards of bone into his lungs and other nice barely functioning organs. But thankfully, that was nothing more than a murmur in the great, throbbing crescendo of pure white pain.
And even that went away, as the white sheet began to grey, then finally turned to black.
Anara looked down at her charge with a mixture of horror, pity, a little bit of disgust, and a twinge of resentment, because she could be in Release-From-Care right now, and that burg was a lot more inviting than the Lower Ward. And a lot less polluted. Also, the ‘not-having-demon-winged-elves-brought-to-your-door’ issue never really came up, which was nice, because she really didn’t enjoy having demon-winged elves dropped at her doorstep, much less demon-winged elves that looked like they’d gone toe-to-toe with a balor.
Really now, she thought, this was just ridiculous.
And the racial stereotyping. This was supposed to be an enlightened city, not some Prime backwater where you can postulate “Doy-uh… this here’s a elf! Better take’im to wunnah dem elf clerics! Aye, ayup!” or some other such nonsense. Just because she was an elf, and just so happened to be a cleric, doesn’t mean everyone has license just to bring this poor soul here just because he happens to be an elf. That’s so… provincial. There were plenty of clerics – Sigil, City of Doors, hello! So many damned priests of a million, trillion powers out there, and nobody stopped to help the bloody mess who is now, at this very moment, soiling some of the church’s finest linens? Oh, never mind, he was soiling them days ago, when they brought him in. Now he’s just soiling some linen a parishioner brought in to help out with the cause.
Although she was surprised that the locals even figured him to be an elf. She could envision the intellectual challenge this wrought in the people who found him in the Hive, Sigil’s poorest and most wretched area. Alu-fiend? Fiend? Tiefling? Frankly, it was some sort of cosmic coincidence that a Cipher was walking past the scene at the time, otherwise they would have simply robbed him blind and tossed him to the Dustmen, who would have in turn left him to the tender mercies of the crematorium. The Cipher, some druidic fellow who looked simply beside himself for probably being in Sigil in the first place, had to fight off some angry Hivers – one githerazai in particular, who was kicking this poor basher mercilessly, just to bring him here.
When asked what the race of the sod was, the Cipher simply replied “Some sort of elf with wings, because fiends usually don’t get the snot kicked out of them by beggars.”
So that was several days ago, and even though Anara was less than pleased to have him here at her little parish, she did tend to him, the magic of the goddess flowing through her, mending his horrific wounds. But still he slept, and it became apparent that this was no pedestrian mugging or assault in the Hive, as evidenced by the sheer amount of tissue damage that this elf had sustained. Frankly, she mused as she watched his chest rise and fall in shallow breaths, he shouldn’t even be alive.
What’s more, there was no cryptic mutters and fevered dreams, trashing about like a maniac, moaning something about a great and terrible evil, or even some girl’s name. None of that stuff. He simply slept.
He was no fun at all.
Really now. This had all the traits of some hackneyed hero-esque epic tale that the bubbers and bards in the taverns would sing about, or the storybooks about heroes and such. Mysterious stranger, bearing several grievous wounds, has no name, etc, etc… The least he could do is be important, on some special mission to thwart some evil, or have some long lost love he was trying to find. But no – he merely slept. Not that she particularly couldn’t empathize, he was in a rather bad state when he was dropped on the chapel’s doorstep, but that part of her that wanted some adventure, some romantic whiff of air in this city of stink and disappointment, and this berk wasn’t delivering.
The nerve.
She was past chiding herself for uncharitable thoughts. This city, she had learned, beats optimism and joy out of you, replacing it with either bitterness or the grim sense of expectation. Sure, it was the City of Doors and all that, but it was also a city of murderous slime only barely held in check by fascist boys on a power trip and the Lady of Pain – not exactly hope-inspiring. And seeing this basher, all torn up and ruined, only reinforced her desire to go away, anywhere. Couldn’t they have gotten another priestess up from Elysium? Would that have been so hard?
Was it a crime to want to enjoy life, and not spend it in a place where it’s spent, used up, and thrown in the sewer? Oh, she wanted to spend her days communing with her Power, dipping her feet into the River Oceanus, being perfectly happy and perfectly suited to where she was… Laughing with friends, feeling the perfect breeze caress her skin…
No. Apparently, it was a crime to want that, and now, she reasoned, this was her penance. To live and try to spread the word of the goddess in this goddess-forsaken city of filth. Gods, the very air was laden with filth – how could you not breathe it and have it become a part of you? Every thing here was ruined and corrupted and it was worthy of nothing less than her contempt. She’d heard how the Abyss and Baator and the Waste were nothing more than the complete epitome of evil – no, they were caricatures, overblown and overwrought, of what true evil was.
She didn’t need to go through some portal to see what hell was like, all she needed to do was look out the window, and there, she knew, there was hell.
Hell was the rich man profiting off misery, walking over the bodies of the oppressed to get into their sedan chairs so they won’t get their feet dirty. The bubbers drinking their lives away, doing swan dives into a bottle or a mug of urine they call ale… Hell was the mother of a Hive child leaving it in the trash to die because she can’t feed the six other children off the money she gets by whoring herself. Hell was all factions running around with their petty little schemes and secret wars while what really mattered – the people around them – were dying and killing each other and cheating and lying to each other. Hedonism, greed, self-pity, immature nihilism, egoism… They try to make meaning out of existence by picking some metaphysical concept that really only amounts to territory gained or lost out here on the planes. They act so enlightened with their philosophies, but they ignore the crap and shit and filth they make of other people’s lives. She hated the factions, she hated the city, she hated everything in this city. And as a priestess of a goddess of healing and forgiveness, she felt guilty for this deep-seated hatred of everything around her, but she reasoned that she’d be even more in err against her goddess if she didn’t feel, or if she didn’t care at all. But she knew what true evil was, and that was what the humans called inhumanity, and it was right outside her window.
Occasionally, it would strike her that her irritability with people, like the demon-winged elf’s condition (what with the soiling of the linen and such), would be considered part of the problem with people. And she would feel guilty and go check the elf’s wounds, attempting to make up for the negativity she felt towards him by cleaning his wounds and changing his clothes. But even that exercise in self-criticism just got her more irritated, since the helpless sod couldn’t really go to the privy or anything – thankfully, he wasn’t eating anything since he got there, so the messes didn’t continue.
But with every heaping helping of loathing she felt for everything around her, the stranger did remind her of one thing – not something she could have put into words, but if the words did occur to her, it would be in the form of a very vague analogy. The stranger wasn’t entirely unattractive in his present state – sure, the hellish injuries he sustained certainly took their time in leaving his person, what with the large masses of purplish-black contusions and abrasions that covered his skin. Even the demonic bat-wings sort of just… fit, despite their ruinous state. And she reasoned, given enough healing time and the blessing of the Goddess, he would be nursed back to health, and he would look even better. He would look the role of the romantic, mysterious stranger. Since mortals such as she tend to equate what is pleasing and beautiful to the eye with goodness, even though more than enough proof existed in the multiverse to contradict that thought process, she believed it. And certainly, something that would destroy beauty would be considered by most folks to be ‘bad’. So here was goodness, brought low by evil. The good was still there, but evil had taken its toll.
Herein lay the analogy. She was the messenger of what could be universally thought of as a benevolent and good deity, so by extension, if she was the priestess, the messenger, she must also be good, or some derivative thereof. And the evil was the world around her, this wicked city that rubbed her raw, opening wounds in her as she saw the injustice and inhumanity and barbarism that mortals inflicted upon each other.
And, like the stranger here, it was making her ugly and wounded and maimed. Maimed in her heart, because the ugliness that surrounded her was worming its way into her heart, hardening her to the world and making the pristine white sheet of purity and faith that she attempted to aspire to become grey and spotted with malice and disregard. This city, this evil that surrounded her, was taking its toll, like whatever exacted a bloody price out of the stranger here. Her wounds just weren’t as obvious.
Oh, she thought as she changed the bandage on his arm, how I would love to take you back to Serenity, my goddess’ realm. He would be healed and her assumptions proven correct, for in the healing presence of her goddess, how could he not get better? And she would be away from this cesspool of filth and corruption and ruination. The elf maiden petitioners would flit amongst the verdant wood, whispers and sighs echoing the passions and feelings of their Prime Material counter-parts, the goddess’ faithful. Corruption and hate and malice could not survive in Serenity, for there was nothing to feed off of. She would be in her silken, almost ethereal gown, and feel the grass caress her bare feet, her hair would be nourished by the River Oceanus and would have the gentle fingers of the sweet breeze run through it like a mother lovingly stroking her daughter’s tresses. Everything tasted better in her goddess’ court… Never a chill breeze, nor do the harsh rays of the sun burn through the gentle canopy of the forest, only the sweet gentle wind whispering through the jade ethereal twilight where only love and commitment and a subtle joy resonated through every living being.
As she closed her eyes, remembering the perfection of her goddess’ realm, she failed to see his eyes open, revealing liquid pools of blue. The eyes looked out of the beaten face, studying the Elven priestess for a beat, then taking in the room around the two of them.
The chapel was not large, and to his fevered senses, there was a feeling of remembrance… a feeling of familiarity strained through the amnesiac veil that had befallen him. One thing was for certain.
He was in Hell.
Images cut across his vision. Images of stones that fairly pulsed with raw energy… A red-haired human woman, battered and bloody and grim, expulsing every ounce of magical energy out of herself as balls of destructive magical flame incinerated everything around her… Demons, shredding his body as he fought his way through them, a magical blue blade discharging arcs of power as he cut a swath through them… and then, dying – or more accurately, the absence of life. And then waking up on that cobblestone street, destroyed and utterly defeated.
He was dead. It was the only logical conclusion… He remembered a flash of burning light, and that was it. The Big Black, the end of everything. This must be his after-life. And here he was, in a familiar temple, being bandaged by an elf maiden while a cacophony of noise rumbled through the walls.
Although he couldn’t piece the images together into any coherent picture, he reasoned the light and the battle and the woman were pretty much the last thing he saw before he was disintegrated and sent here – wherever that was. By the look and sound of it, though… It didn’t seem to fit any traditional mold of what someone’s just reward would be. The ache and the pain and the fact that every part of his body seemed to be in some state of extreme disrepair all pointed to the conclusion that this must be some sort of punishment, some sort of hell that he couldn’t remember being told existed. But if pain was bad, and even in his addled state he could agree to that sentiment, and not feeling was good, then he must be in a place where pain is the state of being. After all, whose just reward would be pain unless their reward was Hell?
Well, if this is hell, and I have no reason to believe that it isn’t… it doesn’t mean I should be staying awake through it, he thought. And those blue eyes dimmed and closed, falling backwards into the deep black sea of oblivion.
Anara didn’t notice, so deep in her reverie, the nostalgic wave made her completely ignore her patient’s state of consciousness. She finished wrapping his arm, and stood over him for a bit, wondering what he would look like at Isha’s altar, completely healed and purified in the goddess’ divine light. Then she turned and took her customary place by the window, looking out over the city she despised.