God of the Abyss (37 page)

There were medical records on people and where they
were supposed to live, so when someone didn’t check in, search parties were
sent out after them. The downfall was that those search parties were supposed
to be able to heal using magic. There was an entire underground civilization of
magic-users who just suffered a major disaster and now had no magic. People,
goblins, and trolls everywhere were in a panic.

I saw a side to Nila I never saw before. His sweet,
goofy, juvenile personality evaporated at the sight of his people in danger.
Everywhere we went, he directed people and delegated duties. He would walk into
a room of panicking people and walk out a minute later with everyone calm and
safe.

I helped the people I could with bandages and
cleaning wounds, but it was those who couldn’t make it to the medical stations
that I worried about. Without magic, the doctors had trouble figuring out who
was mortally wounded and who could wait, because they didn’t have medical
equipment designed for detecting internal damage. Therefore, it took longer
than it should have to send out search parties. When I told the doctors that I
wanted to go on the search, they asked if I had any medical training. Edward
put his hand over my mouth and told them I was a doctor on Duran. Nila gave him
a look, but kept quiet.

The doctors were thrilled and sent us on the first
group to leave. Nila refused to stay behind and said he was more useful on the
trip, so Edward, Nila, and I headed out with six other people, none of which
knew any English.

“What was that about me being a doctor?” I asked
Edward in English.

“They cannot know you’re the only one left in the
world with magic. At least if they think you’re a doctor, they won’t suspect
anything when your ‘patients’ suddenly get better. You need to disguise your
healing and not heal them too much. If they find out you are the only one left
with magic, they would likely suspect that you’re the cause of its absence.”

“I got it. Play human.”

“Not human. You are officially listed as my brother
and they will believe anything I tell them to believe,” Nila said. “Now bring
my nephews to visit or I will tell my guards that your pet is a mercenary.”

“You really must stop calling Mordon my pet. And
besides, I don’t think Mordon would care.” We came to a partially collapsed
tunnel. There was a way around, but it would have taken most of a day, so we
went through it. Still, it took more than an hour. Most places were a tight
squeeze for everyone but Nila and the loose clay was wet and sticky.

We made it out to another village, which had suffered
a lot more damage than Nila’s city. Houses here were made of stone and an odd
synthetic wood which disintegrated when wet. Very little held up to the
knee-high flood and what was built at a higher elevation had shaken apart from
the quake. People were trapped in their homes and businesses everywhere.
Several people hadn’t reported to the stations because they were trying to get
their loved ones free.

Nila was an incredible help, as he could lift and
toss aside debris three times his size. He was the strongest of the dile, which
were the strongest of people. Even the other dile stood aside to let him work.
When we got to people who were mortally wounded, I would disguise my healing
magic by wrapping bandages, as I learned to do on myself as a kid. We rescued
several goblins, which were very difficult for me to heal because they had to
be unconscious for me to get away with it, as they were very sensitive to magic
of any kind.

We worked throughout the day and night, going from
village to village. I lost count of how many people I healed, but I knew
exactly how many I failed. There were too many people and some of them had been
killed instantly. Some died from bleeding out or suffocating because it took
too long to find them.

The first time I saw one of the rare trolls, I was
timid to approach him. Halfway out of a tunnel that had collapsed on him, he
was obviously in need of help, but he was about twice my height and four times
wider. His skin was greyer than a person’s and his huge face was a little
flatter. When Nila tried to move the fallen rock off of him, he woke thrashing
and yelling nonsense over and over. Edward explained to me that trolls were not
bright and were extremely dangerous when they felt trapped. Oddly, when Nila
got enough of the debris off him, the troll still did not get up. Instead, he
moved around before resettling himself with his arms under him.

“He’s holding something,” I said.

I reached out and touched his arm, sending magic
through him. He lifted his head to look me right in the eyes. It reminded me of
the last time I came eye to eye with a draxuni in the Aradlin forest. It was
protecting its pups, but the pack had somehow mistaken Mordon for an abandoned
pup and was not going to let him go on his own.

My magic showed me no damage except for some bruised
bones and a sprained wrist. “Come out of there. No one will hurt you,” I said
as softly as I could. I knew my magic would translate my words into something
he could at least halfway understand.

The troll glanced past me at Nila and Edward before
he retreated a few inches further into the collapsed cave. It was as much as he
could move, but it left a message. The troll never moved his arm that was
blocking whatever was under him. He was holding himself up on his elbows and
cradling something with one hand while hiding it with his other.

“Nila, Edward, back up just a little ways,” I said.
“He’s scared.”

“Trolls are dangerous when they’re afraid, Dylan. He
might attack you,” Edward said, not moving.

The troll snarled his rotting teeth at the Guardian.

“Hush,” I said, moving to block the troll’s sight of
my uncle. “Nobody is going to hurt anyone. Come out. I can’t help you in here.”
I kept my hand gently on his arm as I took two slow steps back. With my free
hand, I waved everyone behind me away. I paused before taking another step
away, breaking contact with the giant.

He crept forward, just enough for my hand to touch
his arm again. I wondered why his skin was so cold, but I figured that must
have been a troll thing because my magic didn’t warn me about it. I smiled, but
kept my lips closed so I wouldn’t show my teeth.

I took another step back and he followed, braver now
that I was retreating instead of advancing. Soon, he was cleared of the cave.
“I am a healer. I can help you if you need it,” I said. He looked unsure, but
slowly uncurled his arms, laying his burden on the ground. It was two little
dile children, both about Ron’s age.

“Heal,” the troll grunted, nudging them towards me.

The two children had short brown hair and dark purple
eyes. They were almost identical in appearance, including the raged, torn
clothes and dirt covered faces. I assumed they were twins, but one was a boy
and one was a girl. The boy was fine, just shaken up and a little dehydrated.
The unconscious girl, on the other hand, needed serious medical attention.

There was a small mound of dirt, just high enough and
wide enough to lay the girl on to keep her out of the water. Somebody laid a
damp sheet down on it so it wouldn’t be so muddy. My magic found multiple
broken bones. Her legs were crushed and with only a mortal’s power, she would
never walk again.

“Please help her. I tried to get her out but she kept
screaming,” the boy cried. Of course, he was speaking Dego, but my magic didn’t
miss a word in the translation. “The troll heard her screams and came to help,
but then he was trapped, too.”

“Nila, take him,” I said. I couldn’t concentrate. I
had stitched flesh, mended bones, and even healed burns with magic… but I never
had to rebuild bones that had been crushed before. “Get me scissors, a cloth,
and water.”

I don’t know who handed me the cloth and water, but
Edward got to work on cutting away her pants, revealing horrible wounds. My
magic had been too overwhelmed by all the internal damage that I hadn’t even
seen the deep exterior injuries. I pulled out my pen light to help me see in
the dim light and washed the wounds as gently as I could before Edward started
applying medical herbs. All around us there was crying and pleading from the
injured and their loved ones. Debris randomly fell loose from the ceiling and I
could hear tunnels and homes collapsing in the distance.

This was what being a doctor in the middle of war
must have felt like.

When Edward was done with the external wounds, I
stopped him from wrapping her legs. The medical paste would prevent her from
bleeding out, but I needed to work on her bones without the gauze hindering her
healing. After putting my penlight away, I released my magic and concentrated
on healing her.

I could see in my mind how her bones would expand
back into their original shape and begin mending. They would never be perfect,
but I had to do my best. When I didn’t feel pain in my own legs, I knew it
wasn’t working. So I sent more magic. I stopped trying to picture the healing
and trusted my magic to do what it was created for.

It was distracting when someone put a curtain around
us, but it cut off some of the sounds of people in despair. As prepared as I
was for pain in my legs, it was a sudden pain in my chest that left me gasping
for breath. “Her heart stopped,” I said, moving to press my ear against her
chest. I was right, but I wasn’t about of give up.

I was CPR certified for infant through adult since
middle school on Earth and I had never been more thankful that I had learned. I
did the hands-only method because I didn’t have enough air to give her. My
magic was still cycling through her and giving me her pain.

She woke and coughed before screaming in agony. I
stopped pressing on her heart and continued working on her legs. As distracting
as her screaming was, I didn’t want her to stop, for it meant she was alive.
Then the pain came on more strongly than I had ever felt from healing someone.
I was glad to be sitting because I knew I would not otherwise have been able to
continue. I could barely keep from screaming myself.

Finally, her cries ended, but my pain did not. Edward
quickly wrapped her mostly healed flesh wounds. Her brother helped her up and
when she stood, wobbly, but without pain, she cried and hugged me. Although it
was agonizing, I couldn’t tell her to stop. Her brother took her away and
Edward knelt in front of me. Edward tried to hand me a cup of water, but I
couldn’t take it. When another spasm of pain went through my legs, I fell back.
Instead of landing in knee-high water, huge hands caught me and pulled me up,
way off the ground. The troll held me to his massive chest in an extremely
gentle hug.

“Good healer,” the troll praised, petting my hair.
“Good healer.”

The pain was fading, but not enough that I could
stand when the troll tried to set me down. “I can’t,” I said. My legs wouldn’t
hold me up and the pain was crippling. The troll couldn’t figure out why I
didn’t stand, but he wouldn’t let me fall into the water, so he sat me gently
on the same mound where I had healed the girl.

I didn’t know how to heal myself from phantom pains…
or even real injuries. If Mordon were here, I could have cycled my magic
through him to help myself, but without him, I would just have to suffer
through it. Edward helped me drink water.

“Bring me someone else who needs to be healed,” I
said. I couldn’t even move my legs, but at least the rest of my body just hurt.

“Not a chance. If you can’t go to them, you are in no
shape to heal them,” Edward said.

He would always put my needs first, and somewhere
along the way, he learned that I felt the pain of the injuries I healed. I
looked at the troll and saw more intelligence in his eyes than I expected. I
held out my arm and he gently picked me up, cradling me like a child myself.

“There’s someone screaming louder than anyone else,”
I said to the troll. “Take me to her.” The troll had no trouble following her
cries… but it wasn’t an injured woman we found. The woman couldn’t have been
more than twenty and despite the blood covering her body, she appeared
uninjured. In her lap was a dead man in his late twenties with a horrible gash
to his head.

I tried to reach out to him to see if he was beyond
help, but the woman yanked him away.

“This man is healer,” The troll advised, his voice
guttural.

She looked from me to the man in her arms before
moving away just a couple of inches. The troll sat me down next to him. I let
out my magic, but it came back to me with hopelessness. I looked at the woman
as she watched his face. I knew she wanted nothing more in life than for him to
open his eyes. “I am sorry,” I said. She cried and laid her head on his chest.

The troll nudged me in the back. “Heal,” he demanded.

“I cannot heal the dead.” The man had been dead for
hours. Nila came to my side. “You need to help her before she does something to
herself.”

“He was her husband. It is not shameful to die of a
broken heart,” the boy-king said.

“If she kills herself, that is not dying of a broken
heart,” I argued.

He considered the woman. “It is to us. She has a
right to end her pain. She is not a child and we cannot ask her to move on. You
can heal anyone who asks for it, but let her deal with her grief.”

“People get over the loss of their spouses! They even
get over losing children. You can’t let her kill herself because she’s upset!”
The troll picked me up and walked away. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Healer is wrong,” he said simply.

By now, the flood water was only about five inches
deep. The pain in my heart was overtaking the pain in my legs, but the troll
would not set me down until it was to heal a teenager who was bleeding out
badly with a major head wound. I healed her with no incident and the troll
moved me to another victim. He only offered one-word answers when someone spoke
to him.