The last Demon

When breathing hurts, your chest burns, your lungs crackle and your throat is torn from coughing. Is there any point breathing? Or living? Why not just give up? Let your weary eyes close for the final time and sink into oblivion.

In a way, isn't that comforting?

No more pain, no more suffering. Blissful silence and peace forever.

Robert wished he could do that; he wished his body would let him die. Anything would be better than this.

He lay on a rumpled blanket that used to be white, years ago, before the countless bodies that had lain on it before him.

His legs were strapped together, perhaps so he wouldn't hurt himself, or someone else. Not that that was likely, with the state he was in.

Whenever he thought back to how he ended up here, his blood pressure would spike and his heart would squeeze dangerously, shooting pain up his left arm and throughout his whole body.

So, he didn't think about it. He didn't think about his dead friends, His desolate village, His sickly mother. He didn't think about those things.

As he lay there, glazed eyes dully staring at a patch of the tent ceiling that mould was beginning to creep across, he heard the tap, tap, tap of footsteps.

'He's here again.' Was the only thought Robert could muster, dredging it up from his murky mind.

The footsteps stopped in the distance and a nasal man spoke.

"Partially dilated pupils and a swollen chest, skin is beginning to bruise. The patient has 2 days at most," a cold detached voice spoke, as though he was commenting on the weather.

Tap, Tap, Tap, the footsteps grew closer stopping nearby this time.

Once again, the man spoke, robotic was the best way to describe him.

"Fully dilated pupils and the chest has begun to collapse; the skin is bruising to quite a severe degree. The patient has half a day at most,"

Tap. Tap. Tap. Each footstep brought death closer. Robert imagined that this is what the grim reaper would sound like.

The footsteps stopped beside him, and he could just about make out that it was a pair, although he couldn't turn his head to look at them. He didn't have the strength. Even then, he could remember what the doctor and his assistant looked like.

A tall, rail-thin man with short grey hair. His cheeks were gaunt, and his eyes were sunken. He had the nose and bearing of a vulture. And if he was a bird of prey…

Then his assistant was the rat he preyed on. Short and stocky, with beady eyes that twitched at the slightest movement. The man's stomach bulged grotesquely, and a casual observer might suggest that the doctor was fattening him up.

As you might think, the pair weren't pleasing to look at and it seemed the rest of the world agreed. That's why they were here.

Behind the frontlines of the cauldron, a roiling battleground where hundreds of armies crashed against each other amid sunken mountains and shattered ruins.

But even then, the world deemed this pair unworthy of running something as prestigious as an infirmary on the frontlines with casualty rates of over 50%.

No, they were relegated further away, buried deep and out of sight. In a place with an even worse survival rate than the front lines themselves.

They ran the FDH, the Field Disease Hospital. Although many people entered it every day. Not one other than the doctor and his assistant had ever left.

You might think this is due to their incompetence, but their skill as a doctor is not the issue. Among soldiers, the FDH has another name, Limbo.

Because everyone who enters there is already dead.

And the reason for this is nothing to do with the doctor that runs it. The fault lies squarely at the feet of the disease that everyone here has.

Ether Blight. It can't be cured or healed or staved off or… you get the point.

What's scary about Ether Blight is that anyone who isn't a magic user and is exposed to a high enough degree of processed ether can get it.

Where do you find the highest number of magic users?

The Cauldron.

Robert was still kind of pissed that he managed to survive his first battle, that he didn't even want to fight in, and ended up being killed by his own mages healing spell that went awry.

I say killed, but he should be so lucky. For some reason, he just wouldn't die.

"Do you think he's still alive?" squeaked a scratchy voice that made you wish he would just cough.

"Hm, He should have died yesterday, with the state his bodies in," Replied a nasal voice. The doctor presumably.

The other person laughed, a high-pitched yip that made Robert wince, "You said that yesterday too!" He exclaimed.

"SHH! Let's just find out, shall we?" The Nasal man responded sharply.

Robert felt the world go dark as a big gaunt face loomed over him, blocking his fascinating view of the mould.

His vision was blurry but there was no way he wouldn't recognise that hooked nose. It had lent over and examined him every day for the last week.

'The Doctor,' He thought dully.

"Hm… that's strange," the doctor said, puzzlement in his tone.

"What is it?" the assistant asked, his high-pitched shout like an excited child.

"His pupils have begun to focus again… and the bruising on his skin is decreasing. Strange, very strange indeed." The doctor muttered.

Robert heard the assistant make a high-pitched whoop of delight.

"Yess! Isn't this exactly what we wanted to happen, maybe now, we can finally go back to the citadel!" The man shrieked, piercing Robert's ears.

Smack. "SSs- Why'd you hit me?" Moaned the assistant.

"Shut up! Why do you have to start screaming every time something happens? That's why we got kicked out of the academy to begin with you know?" The doctor shouted furiously.

The assistant snickered, his squeaking laughter bringing his impression ever closer to a rat, "I thought we were kicked out because of your… less than humane experiments…"

"…" The doctor had no response and simply turned back to Robert, placing one clammy hand on his neck.

"Hm, his skin is still burning, and his heartbeat is erratic, feeble even. If we wanted to increase his chances of recovery… we'd need to take him somewhere…" The doctor's hawkish gaze swept over the filthy room.

Bodies and mud lay together in an unholy harmony.

"Cleaner." He finished.

"Fat chance of that happening, even we can't leave this place, never mind some surf," The assistant snorted.

"Yes, but even if he doesn't make it, we can learn from this. What was different about this particular patient?" The doctor asked, standing up and looking over at his assistant whose eyes were practically glowing with smug satisfaction.

"Remember when you told me the highest dosage, we could go to was one-fifth of a vial?" The assistant asked smugly.

"I remember," The doctor muttered, eyes narrowed.

"Well, I gave him a full vial!" The assistant exclaimed.

"What!? Are you serious?" The doctor shouted, narrowed eyes now wide open.

The assistant nodded violently, grinning ghoulishly with crooked teeth.

After a moment's pause, the doctor frowned and brought out a wad of crumpled paper covered in scribbles and diagrams.

"Hm… I will need to make some new calculations, he muttered. Walking off absentmindedly into the back of the tent where a piece of fabric had been hung up, making a temporary laboratory.

His assistant scuttled after him, leaving Robert there, with a lot to think about.

…

Time didn't so much pass as it did crawl. Minutes stretched into hours that never seemed to end.

In the tent, there was no day or night, so the only way to tell how much time had passed was through the dew that built up on the roof of the tent every morning.

'It must be morning,' Robert thought glumly as water droplets splashed down onto his head and quickly evaporated.

His skin wasn't bruised or blistered anymore, and his chest had returned to normal. But that didn't mean he had healed. Far from it.

Overnight, it would seem his disease had progressed. Something that had never happened before because no one made it past the first stage of ether blight.

The water evaporating off his skin wasn't an exaggeration. It sizzled when it landed there as steam rose off him.

Not only that, splitting pain was aching on his forehead and lower back. It felt like he had been shot there by a harpoon and someone was trying to pull it out.

And unfortunately, despite the rotten state of his body, his mind was crystal clear. Allowing him to feel everything.

Earlier, the doctor had walked over and shaken his head in disbelief. "I knew a full vial was too much. Next, we'll try half," He muttered and left.

Robert knew this was bad, but it wasn't any worse than earlier, so he couldn't muster much anger or frustration. He was simply doomed to die in a slightly different way.

As he lay there, being boiled alive by his own body. He felt a cool breeze wash over him.

'That's funny, there shouldn't be a breeze in here,' he wondered.

Unable to muster the energy to move his head and look at the source of the cool air, he strained his ears.

In the distance, at the other side of the tent that was big enough to house an Olympic swimming pool, he caught the vague sounds of groaning and whispered speech.

"Four more patients… Ether blight…" quiet voices drifted through the still air.

Then, heavy boots tramped towards Robert and laid down a body on a blanket beside him, moving off to place another person further to his right.

"What's wrong with him?" A gruff voice asked from nearby.

"He's reacting violently to a new medicine we are trialling," the doctor responded impatiently.

The owner of the gruff voice simply grunted and left the tent briskly, his heavy boots thumping the ground as he did so.

"Same as usual?" The assistant asked from further away.

"Yeah…" The doctor sighed, picking his way through the blankets and bodies, back to his laboratory.

When they left, and Robert was alone, he let out a breath. 'They didn't notice!' he exclaimed.

Earlier, when the gruff man threw down the person on the blanket next to him, his arm had sprawled out, flopping on top of Robert's boiling hand.

The hand lying on his brought a cooling sensation that washed over him in waves. Or to be more exact, a trickle.

But to a parched man, any water, no matter how little, is a blessing. And right now, Robert was truly parched.

The cool sensation was like a spring, bubbling up through his arm and trickling around inside his body.

'I feel as though my temperature has cooled,' Robert observed. 'Just a little longer and…'

As quickly as the cool sensation came, it vanished. Leaving him weak and yet improved.

He could just barely muster the energy to inch his arm away from the man beside him, although it took almost all the effort he could spare.

A short while later, the man beside him sat upright and looked around, blurry eyes betraying his confusion.

"Where am I?" He rasped, his voice hoarse.

"Who's there?" A sharp voice asked as the doctor poked his head out of the laboratory and stared intently into the infirmary. "Huh?" He said with a start.

"Who are you?" The befuddled man asked.

The doctor jumped up, practically running through the sick bodies to reach the man who had just woken up.

"What are you?..." Before the man could protest, the doctor had grabbed his wrist and bent over, peering intently into his glazed eyes.

After a long moment, that lasted even longer for Robert, who didn't want the doctor to notice something about him had changed, the doctor spoke.

"He's fine," He muttered, bringing out his scattered notes and checking them.

After a moment he placed down the notebook glumly and spat two words at the confused man on the blanket, "Get out!" He hissed, stalking off into the laboratory again without a glance backwards.

Robert just barely managed to catch him muttering something. "No dosage! That idiot was never sick to begin with. How else could he recover from Ether blight out of the blue?"