Chapter 10 Secrets Unveiled #3
Feeling his neck, he found the thin chain and pulled out the tiny vial filled with his first attempts at glowing paste.
It was not very strong, just as bright as a dim candle flame, but the little light was enough to make out the contours of his immediate surroundings.
Apparently, he was in some kind of workshop room, which seemed to be out of use for a while now, as blankets covered most of the furniture.
Careful not to run into anything, he made his way to the door and pushed it open, entering a hallway.
Under one door, he could make out a sliver of light.
Was the guild master still awake? His instincts dictated him to move silently, and so he sneaked up to the door that was ever so slightly ajar.
Carefully, he opened the door and found himself in a study, illuminated by a single candle on the desk.
The room was a mess. Papers and books were spread all over the place, and a shiver ran down Kraghtol’s spine. Something was definitely not right.
When he heard a pained groan from the floor, he jumped and almost hit his head on the doorframe.
His heart was beating in his throat, but he entered the room and closed the door behind him, revealing a figure on the ground in the blind spot of the door.
The man — Kraghtol recognized the heavily tattooed face of the guild master immediately — was bleeding from multiple wounds, painting the floor red with the life that was quickly flowing out of his body.
The cuts were more than dangerous, Kraghtol realized immediately, and his eyes darted around the room, searching for anything to use as a bandage.
“Hold on! Don’t move!”
As quickly as he could, he removed his cloak and used his foot and his good hand to rip strips of clothing from it.
Fey’s breath! It was damp, and dirty, and covered with soot from his climbing!
If he used that, the wound would almost certainly get infected, but what choice did he have?
If he didn’t stop the bleeding, the man would be dead in a matter of minutes!
“Who… who are you?”
The guild master’s voice was thin and weak, and Kraghtol cursed under his breath. He had lost too much blood already.
“Krasen. Don’t speak.”
It was crazy how impeccably his mind worked right now, even getting the name right while he concentrated on the bandages.
There were two main cuts, one on the inside of his right thigh, just where the muscle met the softer tissue, and one at his lower right side, dangerously close to where he knew the liver to be.
Aside from that, there were a few smaller cuts that seemed to come from a fight, but these two would cost the guild master his life if he didn’t act immediately.
The one on the belly was probably the more dangerous one, but the other was more urgent.
Whoever had injured the man had hit a major blood vessel, and blood was gushing out of the wound.
Gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain that shot up his own injured shoulder, he used all the strength he could muster to bind the cloth tightly in a desperate effort to stop the bleeding.
He should have come earlier! If he hadn’t wasted so much time in front of the door — no! Concentrate! He knew how to do this. He just had to stop the bleeding. Wet and warm, and unstoppable. More blood poured out between his fingers, working as fast as he could.
“Krasen… There is…”
He half-wanted to shout at the man to stay silent, to save his strength, but perhaps keeping him conscious was not the worst idea as well.
“What is there?” he encouraged him.
“Attacker. Downstairs.”
Kraghtol froze for just a second until the red between his fingers urged him to continue.
“Whoever did this is still here?”
He couldn’t stop the panic creeping into his voice. If these wounds were caused by an assassin, they clearly knew what they were doing. Parts of him wanted to run away right now, but he couldn’t just leave Virex here to die!
“Careful… Krasen… Will I die?”
“You’re losing a lot of blood.”
Truth be told, it didn’t look good. If the blood loss didn’t kill him in the next few minutes, the damage to his inner organs would within the next hour. And if by a miracle he was to survive that, the infection would in the next days.
“Probably, yes,” he heard himself say without his active doing. Should he have lied?
Suddenly, he felt a light touch on his arm. It must have cost him a lot of strength, but Virex had raised his hand to grab his arm.
“Listen. Krasen. You must… listen.”
The urgency irritated him so much he stopped momentarily but immediately got to it again. The blood flow from Virex’s leg had slowed down to a trickle now. Perhaps there was still hope. If he managed to do the same with the wound on his torso, and if the blade had missed vital organs…
“Yes, I’m listening. Sorry, this is going to hurt.”
The guild master groaned as Kraghtol removed the blood-soaked clothing as carefully as possible.
“There is… a lockbox. False bottom in the cabinet in the… in the metallurgy workshop… down the hallway. And a key here in the…”
Another pained groan as the half-orc applied the first improvised bandage.
“Key — here in desk drawer. You must… take both. They cannot find it. Take it and run as fast as you can. And then — hide it. Tell… Merress, but only later — after time has passed. They will… watch him. Do you… understand? It’s important.”
Kraghtol nodded, and his mind eagerly absorbed the words while he was busy working on the stab wound. It must have been intensely painful, and he did not know how much internal bleeding there was. But he couldn’t give up now.
“You can tell him yourself. I’ll bring you out of here. Just a little more, stay with me, okay?”
The guild master’s breath became ragged as he feebly tried to shove the half-orc away.
“No, don’t waste time. The lockbox — it’s more important.”
“I’m not leaving you here to die! Just a little longer, we can do this!”
Virex stayed silent for a second and then began to talk again, in a quieter voice full of strained control.
“More than 25 years ago, Holen and I were tasked with working on the border ward, to improve it.”
What was he talking about now? Was he getting delirious?
“We developed… alchemical metallurgy together. It was a breakthrough. The ward became stronger and…mo —”
Virex gasped, and his body threshed in pain, making Kraghtol’s hands tremble.
Had he touched something wrong? Then his ears registered the faint sizzling sound, and he saw a dim blue glow under the remains of Virex’s shirt, near his heart.
He removed the fabric and stared at the source: one of the many small contract marks had lit up in blue, alchemical fire, and this time, the flame was not cold and controlled but singing and painful.
Kraghtol’s eyes grew wide as he understood what was happening.
“We made them… movable,” Virex pressed out between gritted teeth, and against the pain. “But it was not for… improving defense. They used the… the… mobile ward not as a shield but as a weapon of conque —”
A small jet of blue fire erupted from his chest and shook his whole body, making him cry out loudly in pain.
“Stop! Don’t talk! You’re killing yourself!” Kraghtol shouted helplessly and understood in that moment with terrifying clarity that this was precisely what the guild master was trying to do. Virex’s voice was little more than a whimper when he continued, regardless.
“We are not protecting ourselves. We are waging war. And Holen and I… we found it all out. But he put us under contract not to tell anyone, and we…”
Kraghtol looked at Virex desperately. Most people would have passed out from the intense pain that had to be shaking the guild master’s body now, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.
But somehow, Virex still powered through.
The contract mark was spewing and stuttering like fat dripping into coals.
It was too late, the healer’s apprentice realized, and almost all on its own, he heard himself ask.
“Who? Who is he?”
“He —”
The guild master coughed up blood that didn’t stem from his stab wounds before trying again.
“He’s… the… K —”
This time, it wasn’t just a jet, but a blue lance made of fire that pierced through the ravaged body of the guild master, which arched up one last time, his eyes making one last pained contact with Kraghtol’s, before collapsing to the ground lifeless, the word unspoken.
Kraghtol felt his bloodied hands open and close helplessly as he stared at the body in front of him. He had seen death before, but not like this. Not so… violently. Part of him wanted to throw up, and another part of him was frozen in place, unable to move ever again.
A noise came from downstairs, and Kraghtol’s survival instincts kicked in. The attacker was still in the house! And someone — Kraghtol couldn’t possibly say if it had been the guild master, or himself — had cried out! He needed to get out now!
He had half turned to leave when he remembered Virex’s words. Right. Key. Lockbox. The desk drawers were hanging in their frames, ravaged, empty. If there had been a key, it had been taken already or was somewhere in the mess on the ground. He just didn’t have time to search.
His gaze was drawn to the corpse on the floor again, and he noticed the contract marks on the man’s body fading one by one, leaving behind only unblemished skin bloodied red by his wounds.