No cost too great

His body was on fire as he pulled in and out of unconsciousness. The fire of pain spreading all throughout the right side of his body like it had gasoline poured onto it.

His dreams were no better. The great black shadow was back and with it the Pale king of endless light. There battle blinding him white at the same time giving him sight he had never had before. He saw glimpses of knowledge no mortal was ever meant to see.

Of the nature of soul and shadow. The eternal war between the light and dark as the wyrm fought the child of god and void in a battle that seemed to transcend time itself. Yet even still for a reason he could not understand the light refused to mount an all out attack against the shadow.

Even when the Lord shade threw absolutely everything It had the Pale God refused to do more than defend and quarantine that being of purest black. Sometimes he would get glimpses of the Gods hand reaching out almost to touch the Lord shades body only for the being of void and black to scream a soundless wail throwing the Pale Gods hand back whence it came.

Through all of these things though he could feel the pain of the creatures weapon upon his body like a beacon in the night burning away all other thoughts. He tried time and again to remember where exactly he was cut, but no matter the effort put into it he would always be thrown back by pain.

That was until he suddenly felt as if a cold comforting splash of water had been draped over the fire that was the wound upon his body. With that comfort came consciousness and with it sight, or at least what should have been sight.

The entire right side of his vision was missing. It was simply Gone like it had never been there in the first place. His left hand vision was intact though which is were he saw his wife sitting with obvious bags under her eyes and red eyes from tears.

"I was expecting a lot of things, but the great Aerium Gracklein crying? Not in a thousand years." His voice came out like a whisper and with obvious crackling pain as he tried to smile.

His wife though looked at him like she wanted to both strangle and hug him. "Well when the father of my children almost dies you can forgive my breaking from tradition." The stress and worry was palpable in her voice and it drove away any thoughts of humor from his mind.

"How are the kids?" He asked somberly. She took a second to think over her answer before responding, "Their fine, but their worried over you. They like the rest of weren't sure you would recover after what happened." He nodded at that before the words fully registered with him.

"What do you mean you weren't sure I would recover?" She looked him over once before looking back at him with eyes that screamed a wish to not speak. Taking that as a signal he turned his head to look at the rest of his body and when he did he saw just what she had meant.

Scars many scars. Some small as if barely nicks upon the skin, others though they were truly horrendous. One large one at least half a foot thick and long in his left side.

Another ran the length of his body up to his neck and what he assumed was beyond. And a final one on his arm were he had blocked a swing with his gauntlet. "Those are just the wounds you can see, according to the medics and healers you had at least five cases of internal bleeding and bruising. To call your survivalist a miracle is a understatement you should be dead."

As the words entered his ears the full story finally returned to him. That of the ambush by the creature, of its unending constant attacks that he just barely was able to hold off against. The way it would shred his armor and cut deep with every unblocked attack.

How he had almost wept in joy upon hearing the sounds of reinforcements only to turn back to the creature a quarter of a second later to see its weapon hurtling towards his face like a speeding bullet. Then pain, hot searing unending pain for who Knows how long. Then blackness and sleep, but the pain never stopped even in the dreams as if the cut touched his soul itself.

"Frederick did you hear me?" Breaking out of his eternal revelation he turned back to his wife and asked her to repeat herself.

"I said the damage is permanent Frederick. It will never heal with mortal methods of healing. Every time the doctors would make progress on healing the scars and more crippling damage it would simply revert on itself." As his world came to a crashing halt she continued speaking as if un-aware of what this meant to him.

"You will never see out of your right eye again Frederick, and you have lost the ability to yell or raise your voice above a whisper." She did something he hadn't expecting then. She got out of her chair and hugged him as tightly as she could without hurting him. They sat there like that, her hugging him with tears spilling out of her eyes like a river and him digesting everything that he had been told.

Finally he took it upon himself to speak. "Did we secure the creature?" She looked upon him with obvious sadness before drying her tears and responding. "Yes we did but in the process of bringing it back we lost another four adventurers to the other ones attacks."

A horrible trade by any metric considering they had no idea if it would even be of any use, but they had to, no needed to figure out what these things were. And what better way to do that than studying one?

"When will they allow me to leave the hospital?" She looked at him with a raised brow before getting up and grabbing a piece of paper. "It says here that you can expect to leave no sooner than a week from now so they can make sure you don't degenerate in any way." Nodding at that he laid closed his eyes and laid his head down to think.

A week was a long time when it came to the situation they were in. Any day that thing could attack the city itself and cause chaos, but there was very little he could do what with only one eye, heavy injury's, and a barely hearable voice. Even still he felt the unstoppable need to do something. Even if it was just to give his accounting of the events that had taken place in the forests around Axel.

"Tell me Aerium why me? Why was I the one it decided it would put so much effort into killing. Up until that point it wouldn't attack someone who could fight back if they escaped its opening attack. Yet not only did it attack me multiple times after I evaded said attack it seemed determined to kill or maim me."

The question was met with silence as he turned to look upon his wife who looked at him with obvious thoughtfulness as if rolling the question around in her head to dissect it. "I don't know frederick. All I know is out of every one it attacked you seemed to have drawn its furry in a way that we only saw during that first battle with it."

"There must be some reason though! Throughout the entire time we were there other than said first encounter it was cautious and slow in its approach almost like a predator stalking its prey." She took not even a second to respond to him. "That's the thing Frederick it's not a normal creature whatever it was it was smart and intelligent. It would set up traps and ambushes for us throughout, but it kept to a set of rules we could figure out easy enough. Mainly just don't be caught off guard by it's first strike. It's not just a beast though which is something we forgot."

He cut in at that point to steer her to were he knew this was going. "And intelligence can be random and unpredictable with its nature. Making those not prepared for it vulnerable to its use." That got a single nod from her as silence descended upon the two of them.

With that silence he once more looked upon his broken body and knew that this was not the end. Even if it took him years he would avenge all those lost in that forest of death. The young and innocent lost would be avenged as there was no cost too great In his mission.