Ailithorn (vol 2): Convalescence

Ailithorn woke slowly, groggily, to the sound of hushed voices. His mouth was dry and his eyes gummy. He lifted his head and squinted against the light of the room, even though it was dim because the slatted window shutters were drawn closed.

The voices stopped, and two people--a large man and a small girl--turned to look at him where he lay beneath tousled, sweaty sheets on a wooden bed. The man's expression was stern, but the girl hurried forward.

"Thou es vigilaes! Vocale thee nom. Thence thee?"

Ailithorn saw she was not a human girl, and tangled memories came back to him. His rescuer! She was only about three and half feet tall, yet, up close, obviously an adult. She was well-formed--petite but still curvy at hip and breast. She wore her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. A pair of lenses perched on her little nose, and their wire frames curved back around her small, round ears. Halfling, he thought. No, too tall and not angular enough. No, Ailithorn corrected himself, she's a gnome.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying," he croaked.

Her eyes widened. "You speak Western Common!"

Ailithorn blinked. "Yes... Doesn't everyone?" He smiled, but it came out wan. He let his head sag back onto the pillow. He felt dark and hollow inside.

The gnome shook her head. "Nay so in Dunsany." She studied Ailithorn's puzzled expression. "Perhaps," she said, drawing up a stool, "it would be best if you tell us who you are and how we came to find you surrounded by corpses before the yawning mouth of the Abyss itself."

Ailithorn introduced himself, and told his brief story--living and working in ElooByad; finding the strange copper box; the strange, terrifying presence released... and waking in the grotto to find the mayhem around him.

The gnome responded by hurrying to the corner of the room and rummaging in a large chest. As she did so, she introduced herself over her shoulder as Sonya Segvendal. "Though the people here call me Sophia," she added. "My companion is Lionel Khallar. He is the town's local cleric and religious guardian."

The huge man bowed his head at the sound of his name, but his face remained dour. He stood over six feet tall, feet apart, and his huge chest was like a barrel under his thick folded arms. He was dressed in chainmail and tough leather boots, all under a long white tabbard that reached nearly to his knees. His dark brown hair fell in smooth waves to his shoulders, and a thick, silky moustache flowed to his chin on either side of his lips. A large mace hung from his belt. Khallar stood unmoving, as an ancient oak or a great bolder stands upon a deserted plain.

Sophia returned to Ailithorn's side carrying a large roll of parchment. As she unrolled it on the bed, she translated the essence of his story to Khallar, who apparently did not speak Common. Upon the parchment was a large map of all the kingdoms of Tellure. Sophia pointed on to a small dot near the upper-left. "ElooByad, on the shores of the northern Jenisee," she said, looking at Ailithorn. Ailithorn nodded. Then she moved her finger to the lower-right corner, to a region surrounded by mountains. "The Kingdoms of Dunsany, where you are now," she explained. She looked at the map. "Over 2000 miles." She looked back up to him. "What's the last date you remember?"

Sophia gave a low whistle to his answer. "And 34 years crossed besides!"

"Like you, I'm from beyond the borders of Dunsany," Sophia began. "I came here from Corvis University in Cygnar, to study the geology and ley lines of the region. I'm particularly interested in the properties of Xibalba, the cave where I found you.

"I've only been here in Pungar Vees for a week. Yet, during my research, I discovered a lot of strange comings and goings. I began to wonder if Xibalba may have become the meeting site for a dark cult, and my fears were confirmed when I saw the mane demon follow you from the cave. I wasn't sure of your role in all this, so I brought you back here and contacted Khallar.

"You've been raving for a couple days now. We cured most of your ills. You had an advanced..." Sophia blushed. "A social disease. We noticed it because you would scream everytime you passed water. And there was... an odorous discharge.

"You also seem to have developed a luhix addiction. Care to explain how you came across the pollen of a Nelumbo abyssmal blossom?"

Ailithorn shook his head, bewildered.

"We found the pollen administed to a wound upon your arm, as well as sprinkled on your clothes," Sophia pressed. Khallar watched impassively from the far wall of the room.

"I rolled through some yellow powder in the grotto," Ailithorn mused. He found his thinking strangely languid and distant. "It hurt terribly... but the other pain I had been feeling up until then subsided afterwards." He looked up. "Sounds like luhix, yes?"

Sophia nodded, watching him closely. "Well, Khallar was able to break your addiction through prayer, but we've been giving you sannish since then to help ease your screaming fits." She nodded to a small ceramic cup on the bedside table, its pale insides stained indigo from the milky blue liquid within.

Ailithorn began to tremble, and he laid his head back upon his pillow in exhaustion.

"Rest," Sophia said. "We'll talk more later."

Early the next morning, as the sun rose outside the open shutters, Ailithorn sat in a small tub of hot water and took stock.

His body had been sorely used. His hair was now a dark grey, with lighter streaks here and there. His skin was sallow and oddly loose on his frame. Dusky shadows--like inky bruises--marked his joints, his sunken eyes, and the hollows of his cheeks. The pinky finger of his left hand was mostly gone--only a nub of skin and bone remained.

Everywhere his body was littered with scars. A faint pale line curved across his right cheekbone. A deep puncture wound marked his left breast like a knot in a plank of pine wood. A tight, shiny tangle of burns spread up his back, across his left shoulder, and up the back of his neck. Various dots and slashes littered his arms and legs. And of course his private parts were covered in the pockmark scars of ancient blisters.

He still felt weak, though the trembling exhaustion of the day before was beginning to leave him now. Food continued to taste like ash in his mouth. His joints throbbed and his stomach burned, but these minor aches paled in comparison to the seering fits of agony that he experienced every few hours. Twice he'd woken during the previous night, fumbling for the mug of sannish. The frequent doses had already stained his lips and tongue a pale blue--much as he had seen on drowned men pulled from the frigid waters of the Jenisee. The drug left him languid and uncaring, but it dulled the liquid fire in his veins. Sophia posited that these physical after-effects of long-term demonic possession would subside in time.

But his fugue had left him with more than just scars and physical pain. His sleep seemed little more than a constant string of nightmares. He could remember little of them when he awoke beyond vague images of fire, blood, torture, and murder. And, through it all, a seething rage.

The rage often surged within him even while he was awake. Once, when speaking with Sophie, he found himself envisioning crushing her skull open under his heel, watching her brains burst forth across the wooden floor. She had paused in mid-sentence, halted by the expression on his face. Ailithorn had suddenly come back to himself to find his fists clenched and a sneer on his face.

Now, even the smallest annoyance or irritation seemed to provoke him into an trembling fury. He strained to control any actual physical outbursts, but the ferocity of the emotion scared him. The sannish also seemed blunt the severity of these flare ups, and so whenever he lifted the stained cup to his lips, he drank deeply.