The first thing Daevo saw when he opened his eyes was blood. The blood was everywhere. He was sinking in a pool entirely made of blood! He looked around fearfully, watching pale dead bodies float like driftwood. His first thought was that he had descended into the underworld, his own floating amidst the bodies of the damned. He began to choke.
Suddenly, a fist grabbed hold of his collar and dragged him out. He blinked the blood out of his eyes and coughed up what he had swallowed. When he looked again at the pool of blood, he saw that it was really just the moat... the water mixed with blood.
He looked at the one who dragged him out. It was the soldier, whom he had been quarrling with in the battlement before the explosion. The soldier had discarded his armor, which now lay at the bottom of the moat.
Daevo sputtered, "Why..."
But before he could finish, the soldier grabbed him again and dragged him around the castle, to the secluded area where Daevo had been loitering before the attack. The soldier set him against the trunk of a tree, stripped a piece of cloth off his arm, and wrapped it so tightly around Daevo's left arm that he lost all feeling in it. Not that he had any feeling in his arm besides pain, anyway.
The soldier crouched down, and looked Daevo in the face. "Now, you listen to me," he said. "That little stunt you pulled back there may have saved your life. If you were any farther from the window, you would have been instantly crushed. However, do anything like that again and you'll get yourself killed. You've lost a lot of blood. You're too weak to fight, and probably too weak to run. In fact, your arm's so bad now that you'll definitely need it amputated."
Daevo didn't argue; he hadn't the strength. The soldier got up, and began looking for a back door to the castle.
"What if they find me here?" Daevo mumbled.
"They won't," the soldier said. "At least, not until everyone else is dead. Now look, I'm going to go get as many people as I can out here without bringing attention from the moblins. Then we'll head that way." He pointed towards Death Mountain, in the distance.
The soldier found a back door and slipped inside the castle. Daevo whispered, "Good luck," and passed out.
[ July 01, 2004, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: Yoshimaster Sees All, Knows All ] |