The Tainted One

The Tainted One

Those touched by death

Carry a piece of it

Till their last breath

***

It was quiet as the first of the twin red suns set over the horizon to signal the coming dusk. A group of Seekers had set up camp near an overgrown stream in the Raylen Marsh. While most of the group ate dinner, a boy, no more than 17, laid on a makeshift bed. Wounds and scars were scattered across his body, his clothes were bloodied and ripped to near shreds. It was a wonder that he was even alive. The healer sat beside him and dressed his wounds as carefully as she could before she had to wake him.

"Rasha- Rasha, you need to wake up dear," she said quietly, beckoning him to gain consciousness as she let her essence trail against his. A few moments passed before he reluctantly opened his eyes. The boy winced as he slowly sat upright while the healer had already prepared his meal and offered him a flask of Torah. The group had initially found a massacre in the Vyrin Hills before they found the boy who had said little more than his own name since they took him in.

Rasha inched to reach out for the meal when he felt the pain throb in his side, to him it had felt like someone was clawing at his flesh from within and for a moment he could barely breathe. He held still and waited for the pain to pass before he took the bowl from the healer. None of this truly felt real to him, a small part of him still wanted to believe that his family was well and safe, that he hadn't become Tainted- but the markings on his chest and abdomen told a different story.

The boy ate quickly before lying down again, he held onto his chest as he curled into a fetal position and drifted between sleeplessness and exhaustion, barely conscious as the healer tended to the rest of his wounds.

The pain came and went in waves, small lulls giving false hope of an end. Each peak robbed him of his ability to speak, sending him crashing to the bare grounds beneath him. It's as though his blood had become acid, intent on destroying him from the inside out. All he could do was writhe, the occasional whimper escaping to echo off the marshland.

***

Rasha had snuck out of his village before night fell, he wanted to prove himself to be a man. In his village, there was a story, repeated for generations, of a great warrior king who was born on their lands. He had faced many trails, this warrior, but his final trial had him scaling the Hills of Vryin within a single night where he had to find the waters beneath the land, these waters were one of the few places where The Veil and Eudris mirrored one another. The warrior drank from these waters, after which he became a king known to all. Because of this tale, many men had attempted to complete this trail themselves, to find and drink the waters of the land but none were truly successful.

Rasha was young and arrogant. He believed that he would be the one to complete the trail and become known as a great warrior king, and so he left his village in search of these waters.

Before dusk settled, he made himself a shelter within the earth where he laid in wait for night to fall. He watched from afar as the lights of his village faded before he turned to face uphill. It was at this moment when he heard the screeching wails of the dead. Terror grabbed hold of him when he saw the frozen fog rush towards his village.

The hours that passed felt like mere seconds in his shocked state, he had stood still, frozen in place until he saw the dead return with flickering souls trailing behind them. Instinct tore at him, he needed to run away, to save himself from the disaster that followed the dead, but his heart kept him in place when he heard someone scream before he was met with a searing pain that settled within his abdomen. He had barely registered that he had been struck by the dead before he collapsed. Everything that followed afterwards was a haze. He could vaguely remember his village, the cries and the newfound stench of rot and decay. He knew that his mother had sent him and his sister away, told them to run towards the marshlands but he couldn't remember anything else.

Whenever he tried to remember the pain clawed at him from within, pulling at what little tethered him to the living realm.

***

Rasha woke without warning, eyes flung so wide that each iris could be seen as near perfect orbs that flashed between shades of red and grey. It was the sound of breathing that woke him, he looked around him and finally noticed the group of Seekers.

He sat up slowly, warm blood gushed out of his wounds. He pressed against the bandages and winces as he tried to stop the free-flowing surge of blood that trickled down his side. He once heard that a person was supposed to stop bleeding by putting pressure on wounds but it did nothing for him. At the sight of his own blood, he saw flashes of mangled flesh and echoes of screams within himself, a vague memory of dark crimson and a metallic scent pushed at the corners of his mind before it faded.

First confusion overwhelmed him, then panic set when he realised that he could not see his sister followed soon with a soft lull from the healer's essence that beckoned him to sleep once more.