D’Arden clawed at his belt, hoping that he had saved some sort of potion, some sort of alchemical substance that could save his life. His fingers closed only on the hilt of the heartblade.
The Arbiter weakly unlocked it from its specialized scabbard, and brought it up to his eyes. The thrumming of the light in the heartblade was weak. It would not be enough to inoculate Elisa against the poison running through her and also to give him the strength he needed to force the manna to repair the wound he had sustained.
There was no other choice.
He would have to let Elisa die.
With a desperate cry, he thrust the blade deep into his own chest, little caring if he sustained more damage. He was dead anyway if this didn’t work, and he had neither the time nor the strength to make a careful application.
The thin, round blade pierced his heart.
Time stood still for a long moment.
The manna in the heartblade flashed into his body. Immediately the manna took hold of his body, wrapping around him in a warming embrace and beginning to knit the flesh that had been horribly wounded by the spider’s attack. He only hoped that it would work quickly enough before his mind died of air starvation.
Black sparks began to flash in front of his eyes and he felt himself slipping away, the pull of the manna on his soul getting stronger with every second that ticked by. His heart beat weaker, and weaker. He struggled to draw a breath even as he felt the uncomfortable itch and burn of the flesh repairing itself thanks to the burst of manna. Fear gripped him; fear that it wouldn’t be enough, that it was already too late for him, that his failure would cost the world dearly.
His lungs inflated.
Desperately, he gasped for air, reveling in the taste of the sweet dawn. The pull of death faded from him, and he found the sudden strength to pull the heartblade free of his chest.
As he held it up in the light of the rising sun, it suddenly illuminated with a brilliant flash of azure manna energy. He stared at it as it pulsed in his hand to the rhythm of a heartbeat not his own, uncomprehending. He had just expended what little energy it had held contained within it, and yet here it was, glowing as though it had just been recharged.
A low, weak moan snapped him out of his daze. He scrambled to his feet, doing his best to ignore the sharp flashes of pain that he felt as new flesh that had not completely healed tore and blood flowed again. He rushed to the side of the fallen girl and knelt beside her.
Elisa’s skin already had a dusky grey tint to it, and her face was ashen. Her green eyes were a strange, almost surreal splash of color against her otherwise colorless form. They stared at him, not quite vacantly, but with so little recognition that he feared it was already too late. The blood had stopped flowing from the deep wound in her shoulder, but it mattered little. The venom had obviously spread like wildfire, and even though he had no idea how long he’d been semi-conscious, Elisa was nearing death.
He held up the glowing heartblade in front of her eyes. Her glassy gaze focused on it with a vaguely puzzled look. “This is the only thing that stands a chance of saving your life,” he told her, though he knew that she likely could not understand him. “The chance is very slim. I have never heard of such a thing working before. It is probable that you will die.”
She nodded, weakly, once.
“Do you want that chance?” he asked her.
Again, weakly, she nodded.
Needing little more of an answer than that, he unbuckled her breastplate and pulled down her shirt, just enough so that he could get access to the area above her heart and not enough to expose her to the chilled morning air. He took the pulsing heartblade and slid it carefully between her ribs.
She gasped, and the blade thrummed in his hand as it released its charge of power into her. He removed the heartblade quickly from her, leaving a trail of blood and tiny blue flames behind.
Her entire body buckled as she screamed, the sound echoing throughout the broken-down buildings that surrounded them. He gave a soft thanks to the land for the daylight that would keep the demons from pursuing them, even though it would now be clear to their entire population exactly where they were. The pure manna was coursing through her bloodstream, obliterating the corruption that had been forced into her by the spider’s bite.
Now was the moment of truth. If she survived the initial purification, she might still stand a chance. He waited, more nervously than he would have expected for a life he’d come in contact with so recently.
As her scream finally died away, her body went completely limp. Her eyes stared blankly out across the dry riverbed.
He bowed his head.
After a few long moments, he reached out and grasped her wrist. There was no pulse, no indication of life. He’d lost her to the purification.
D’Arden breathed a heavy sigh. He’d known the risks when he offered it to her, and even if she hadn’t understood them fully, she had some idea of what it might have done. It could have been much worse, he thought – she suffered none of the transformational effects that normally accompanied a direct exposure to manna energy. The regret that she hadn’t survived, though, weighed heavily on him. He’d hoped that no matter how slim the chances were, that this young girl might have survived where the young boy Mikel had fallen, that he might have had the chance to make amends for the boy’s senseless death.
The sun continued to rise over the horizon.
**
He carried her body through the labyrinthine rubble that made up Old Calessa. She was light in his arms, less weight than he would have imagined, even without her soldier’s armor. He would not leave her corpse there to be ravaged by the demons, though he left most of her possessions behind. She was dressed now only in a thin white shift, as he’d left behind most of the padded under-armor as well, deeming it unnecessary for a simple burial.
At last he passed under the gate that led him back into the low quarter, having kept careful tabs on his direction this time so that it would be possible for him to find his way back again. He had little desire to carry her all the way out to the recently purified graveyard outside of town, as it was nearly a mile back to the trade gate and then another hour’s walk from there. He decided that he would simply offer her to the purified manna font in the low quarter, and allow her body to be dissolved and returned to the land, just as had happened to Mikel.
He walked the streets of the low quarter in the early morning’s light with a grim face and a solemn demeanor. D’Arden had little love for death, though he encountered it on a frighteningly regular basis. His least favorite death of all was that of the innocent, of the talented, and of those with the greatest potential, for it felt as though it was those who were truly wasted. It was one thing for the farmer who’d toiled all of his long life to finally return to the stream of life, but it was quite another for a violent and unexpected end to come to a young life.
At last, he approached the door of the font chapel.
Something was wrong.
He felt it spreading outward from behind the door, a sickening, twisted feeling that struck him to the core. Someone, or something, had undone all of his work. The corruption radiating from behind the door was even stronger than before. He’d lost his foothold, he’d lost the boy, and now he’d lost a swordswoman with incredible potential that he’d expected would grow into something great.
Everything was lost.
What was he to do? He could not comprehend who or what could have corrupted this purified font so quickly, in just one night. Something horrible must have come past here and attempted to induce corruption into the font purposefully, otherwise it would have resisted simply something passing by.
He had an enemy here, and one that was smarter and more dangerous than he’d imagined. The guard captain, Mor, had mentioned that there had been an Arbiter here who’d succumbed to the corruption several years previous. D’Arden doubted that even the demon himself couldn’t have poisoned a font so quickly. The corruption that was carried by true demons was insidious and deadly, but it was slow to work and only the most powerful of
