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Brewing Bad Ch. 59
🕑 Added 2024-06-03 14:00:08 +0000 UTCCh. 59 - Through the Fire
Lucas remembered very little of the next few days. He woke up briefly, at random. It was just enough to know he was still alive, but most of the time, it wasn’t enough to figure out much else.
He was still hurt bad, Adin was still trying to take care of him, and eventually, he saw the dwarf looking at him with concern too. They’d moved camp, maybe? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think that they’d camped in the tower last time. He thought they’d been somewhere else. He saw Arisse, sometimes, but other than that her wrists were still tied, he didn’t really care.
Lucas tried to talk to them during those lucid moments, but even if they could understand him, they wouldn’t listen. They all told him to save his strength, but he had no strength to save.
Things didn’t start to fall into place until suddenly he saw Casarra tending to him, and she was talking to Kar’gandin. It was then he found out that he had a terrible fever while they were arguing about treatment.
“He needs a proper doctor or a healer,” she said, practically yelling. “If you don’t take him to Lordanin, he’s going to die out here.”
“If I would, I could,” the dwarf said. “But it ain’t safe to move him yet anyway. Hura’gh is out looking for a healer that's willin’ to come this far out, but until then, do the best you can.”
It wasn’t hard to see why he was in bad shape. The bandages she gestured to were green and black more than they were red, and if that’s the color his wounds were, he was probably dead without antibiotics that hadn’t been invented yet.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he rasped finally, joining the conversation.
“Well, the good news is ya killed the owl bear,” Kar’gandin said with a fragile smile. “The better news is it sounds like Adin figured out what we’re going to do with your prisoner… and after that, we’re pretty much out of good news. I won’t lie to ya, Lucas. You’re hurt pretty bad, and—”
“Not me,” he interrupted, already feeling weaker just from the effort of talking. He coughed hard, letting the pain overwhelm him for a moment before he continued. “The operation. The Manor. The city. What’s happening there.”
“Oh, well, on that front, things are better,” the dwarf nodded, obviously relieved not to have to talk to Lucas about how grim things looked for him. “Plenty of fightin’ and feudin’, but we ain’t involved, so it’s all to the—”
“Enough,” Cassara said, shaking her curly red mane in annoyance. “You dragged me out here to the middle of nowhere to save this man, so I’ll tell you both this, he needs his rest, more than anything else.l He needs to sleep until he can’t, so there will be no more talk of business or strategies or anything else, is that understood?”
For a moment, her indignation was enough to cow even the dwarf, but that approving thought was Lucas’s last coherent thought before he lapsed into darkness, though. Because she was right. Even trying to make himself heard was too big a strain on a body that had lost this much blood and was fighting off a serious infection. Later that evening he was woken up long enough to choke down another healing potion and some water.
He didn’t have to ask her how he was doing. He could see it in her eyes.
“Maybe he needs something for the pain,” Adin volunteered, but Lucas just shook his head at that.
“No,” Cassara said, catching his meaning, “the pain is anchoring him to this world right now. It might be the only thing that is. He must bear it, at least until his health is improved.”
Lucas had no idea if she was making that shit up or not, but he completely agreed with it. Pain was the only thing that let him know what was going on, especially after the fever dreams started.
He dreamed about lots of screwed-up things. He dreamed that he and Danaria were married, but in Idaho, where they were cooking meth, not blue. He saw the terrible damage that those drugs took on her health and beauty, but he just kept doing it anyway. He dreamed he was back in purgatory. The angel there tried to convince him that he’d died again and was going to be reborn as a knight to serve others for all of his misdeeds.
Fortunately, Lucas could feel the owlbears claws still suck into his sides, so he was able to laugh the whole thing off until the endless gray of that place faded back into the darkness of unconsciousness.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there, at the edge of the abyss, but when someone finally pulled him off it, it hurt worse than all the other pain up to that moment combined. One moment, he was floating in the darkness between life and death, and the next, someone was forcing the light inside of him. There was a lot of light, too. It burned into him, cauterizing his terrible wounds and burning away the disease even as it healed the wound.
Lucas was sure that he screamed the whole time, but he didn’t remember it. Instead, after what felt like days, he woke up again, weaker than before.
This time he was on a cot, in a tent. That wasn’t where he’d been when he’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t even where he’d been when he’d passed out the first time, and he thought that perhaps they’d gone back to Meadowin.
“No, we’re still in the middle of nowhere,” she said, quickly disabusing him of that notion. “It’s still not safe for you there, according to your friends, but apparently, Lord Parin is working on that.”
“What's he doing?” Lucas asked, his voice cracking even after a long drink of water.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” she said dismissively. “It’s not the business of a peasant and certainly not the business of a healer. I’m only here to make sure that the man who’s been so good to my village pulls through so he can continue to help make things better.”
“Isn’t that Adin’s job?” he chuckled, instantly regretting it as a dull ache spread through him.
“It tis,” she agreed, “Not that you’d ever know it from looking at what he’s done for his subjects.”
“I’m not who you think I am,” Lucas confessed, feeling a little weird about her strange, prickly gratitude. “I’m just looking to build goodwill and trade favors.”
“True,” she nodded. “There’s a great many rumors around town about you, Mister Parin. Some say you aren’t even related to the young master or his sister, and most agree you’re up to no good, but I care more about the good ya done than the wickedness people seem to believe you’re going ta do.”
Lucas was humbled by that response and entirely unsure of what to say. Finally, he asked, “What was it that healed me anyway?”
“Your orcish friend found an itinerant battle priest and convinced him to come to your side,” she answered, giving him another sip of water. “Fortunately for you, your wounds were given to you in the heat of battle. They can’t heal anything else. I’ve never been subject to their tender mercies, but after talking to a few people who have, I can’t say I’d ever want to try.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” Lucas asked as the fog slowly drifted away from his brain, and things started to make sense.
“Because the act of healin’ not only inflicts the pain from the wound on you but all the weeks and months of pain that you would have suffered from were you allowed to heal naturally. I’m told that it’s quite painful.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure I paid a fortune for the privilege, too,” he said bitterly. This time, he took the cup and drank for himself. “Still, I suppose I should thank the man regardless.”
“That would be difficult in your current condition,” she answered with a shake of her head. “He left days ago, already. As to payment, I believe he healed you for the price of a meal by the fire and the story of how it was you took down something as terrible as an owlbear all by yourself. The way that Lord Parin told it sounded very impressive.”
“It was definitely the most impressive accident I’ve ever personally been involved in,” he agreed, silently adding on this world. Though his meth lab on Earth exploding had technically been more impressive than the wand unleashing all of its power in a single burst, that was another lifetime ago, and in his current state of mind trying to explain it to the woman would have been impossible.
Still, the revelation that the healing had been days ago shook him. He could imagine the holy fire burning within him to heal him well enough, but the fact that the healing magic had left him so exhausted that he would need to sleep for days just to recover from it spoke to just how traumatic it had been more than the half-remembered agonies he’d suffered through in his sleep.
“So, if I’ve got a clean bill of health now, maybe I can—” Lucas started to say.
“Then maybe in a few hours, if I decide you’re well enough, you can have some soup,” she finished his sentence for him in the least fun way possible. “But you are not getting out of this bed until we get some color in those cheeks. Is that understood, mister? You might be a lord, but until you can stand on your own two feet again, I’m in charge, not you. You got that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said, not sure what else to say.
What he really wanted to do was talk to Adin and figure out what had happened, but Cassara wasn’t going to let that happen until he was better.
“Maybe after dinner tonight, he can come visit you for a few minutes,” she agreed eventually, “but that’s it. You understand? Even though your wounds are healed, you could still drop dead from exhaustion. Your body is completely depleted.”
“Maybe we should try another healing potion?” he suggested.
“The only potion you’re having is chicken broth, Mister Parin,” she said with a cruel smile. “It and time are the only things that will make you feel better now.”
He slept fitfully after that, and true to her word after he’d choked down a bowl of tasteless chicken broth, Adin entered the tent.
“So, what’s the deal?” Lucas asked, staying as calm as possible, so Cassara had no excuse to kick the Viscount out any earlier than she had to. “My nurse tells me that you’ve figured out how to deal with the Whisperers. What’s the plan? How are we going to take them out?”
“Take them out?” Adin asked, confused. “No, that’s not what’s happening at all. We’re going to ally with them. Miss Torvin and I are to be wed.”
Comments
Robolo42
I love those little aspects, where the reader literally follows the pov. It’s so good, makes you feel on the same pace.
D. Winchester
Or did she seduce him? Sadly our MC was out of the loop, so we shall have to play catch up in future chapters.
Robolo42
What the hells going on?!? Did he seduce her or something?
