"I am burning down the rest of the forest."
Announced Rudra. Unfazed. Unashamed. And utterly confident.
Tish didn't doubt him. She had seen him conjuring fire bright enough to mimic the sun for several minutes. "Fire is not solution of every problem," she said, "If you try burning the forest you'll burn our men as well." He looked offended as if it was somehow her fault that Benevian soldiers didn't come fire-proof.
Mamon, for his part kept his head level. He stepped forward, his personal guards following him closely behind. "Come forward!" He barked, "I am the Mamon Kosco Rān, I am your Prince!"
The crowd of people watched them silently.
"We... don't want any trouble!" added Tish in a softer tone.
"....neithe'l do we," answered one of them. The voice was gruff, exhausted. Tish turned her head to see one of the pale shadows disattach itself from the rest of the group and move towards the center. Towards them.
It was an old man. In his fifties. Perhaps even more. He walked with his weight balanced on a stick.
Tish frowned. It wasn't the stick that bothered her. It was the way he used it. His feet were planted too wide apart, and every step overshot or fell short, as though the ground kept shifting a hand's breadth from where he expected it. A man weak from age walked slowly. This man walked like his legs had stopped taking orders from his head.
"We ...need 'elp," said the old man. "How can I help?" The words were out of Tish's mouth before she could even think. She caught herself and looked at Mamon who gave him a little nod. So she corrected, "How can we help?"
The old man smiled, a fragile thing that stretched his lips for one centimetre or two, The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes deepening, "We need ....healing," he slurred out, held out his hand, "...sick."
Tish took it. Ofcourse she did. The hand felt merely like a bag of paper with sticks in it. It was terrifyingly fragile. And it made something twist in her chest painfully.
Under her fingers, the hand trembled. It wasn't the fine shiver of cold or old age. It was a coarse, jerking tremor that came in waves, and the wasted muscle between his thumb and forefinger had sunk to almost nothing. Years in the Sanctum's infirmary, bent over Antonio's thick medical texts by candlelight, had taught her to read bodies the way other people read letters. And this body was saying something she didn't like.
Beside her, she could hear Rudra taking a sharp breath, the suppressed anger and frustration rolling off of him was noticeable enough to keep other men at the shadow.
"You don't even know who he is!" Rudra growled out, growled because Tish could hear the rumbling of a dragon, a second layer, beneath the human voice - as if both of his forms- draconic and human - was fighting for dominance.
A year ago, Tish would have been scared. Now she felt nothing.
"I am Bel'kin K'loskoslav," said the man. The last name struck a recognition in Tish's head, "You're a Kroskoslav? A relative of Verthon?" Asked Mamon, now interested. The old man nodded, "Was," he said, his voice thick with unspoken emotions, "He passed away."
A silence fell upon the forest. Even Rudra stopped fidgeting. Tish noticed the old man's chin tremble.
"The disease....took him," croaked out the man and then looked at Tish with yellow glassy eyes. His pupils were faded blue, like seeing river water through thick layer of ice. Tish wondered if he could even see her properly, "P-please save us." In Tish's grip, his hand shook, "We... ale ...scal'ed."
This was it.
This was why Rāva blessed Tish. Not to sit in the 'Sanctum of Miracles' healing the so-called most devoted followers of Rāva, to whom, Tish was no more than a curiosity, a mere entertainment.
Here. She felt needed.
She clasped the old man's hand with both of hers, "Sir Berkin, is it?" She asked, "I'll be here. I won't leave until I've healed all of you." Someone in the crowd of pale shadows in the woods snickered, almost breaking the spell. Almost
Berkin looked back, startled, "They don't mean it... not mocking," he slurred out, "Can't stop laughing."
Tish looked past him at the pale figures in the trees. Now that she was listening for it, she could hear what was wrong with the laughter. There was no joy in it. It came in sudden bursts with nothing before it, and it died as abruptly as it started, and the faces that followed it were wretched, as if each person had just been caught doing something shameful. A man laughed because something was funny. These people laughed because something in them had come loose.
Unknowingly, Tish started running through what she had seen. The slurred, stumbling speech that wasn't an accent at all, because the same sounds failed in the same mouths. The staggering gait and the tremor. The laughing that came without any cause. Four symptoms, all different, yet they all pointed to one place.
Not the lungs. Not the blood. The head.
It was something in the nerves, or in the brain itself, something that was slowly breaking the wires between what a person wanted to do and what their body did. She had seen a mild version once, in an old scribe who had lost the use of his hands. This was far worse. She had no name for it, and that scared her more than the rot ever could.
"Master Berkin," she said gently, still holding his hand, "how long have you been sick? Did it start with the shaking, or the speech?"
But before Berkin could utter a word, Tish was yanked back.
"You crazy bitch!"
It was Rudra. Of course it was Rudra. He pulled her by the arm so hard it almost hurt.
"Hey!" Mamon was already protesting, but Rudra didn't care. He whirled Tish around and slammed her against a tree, leaving her breathless for a second, and then he was on her.
"Didn't you hear what I said?" His voice was awfully quiet compared to the outburst just a second ago. Tish winced, then looked up at him and glared.
She had never looked at him this closely. His face looked like a sculpted statue of an ancient god. An angry ancient god. Despite the eyebags, the cracked lips and the tousled hair, he looked no less intimidating.
As he closed in, his frame swallowed the little light of the torches, plunging Tish into his shadow and suffocating heat.
He smelled like grass and metal. It made her breath hitch.
"Didn't you hear me ask whether you could heal evil?" he pressed. Tish did her best to keep as much distance between their faces as possible, but it was hard when she had nowhere to back off to. "They don't smell sick, Tish," Rudra's voice was flat. "They smell like evil and death. You're trying to cure dead people."
"No," Tish insisted. She tried to shove Rudra back by slamming her palm against his chest. He didn't budge. Behind him, she could hear Mamon swearing loudly as he tried to pull Rudra off her to no avail.
Rudra was like a mountain. An immovable cage of limbs and anger around Tish, separating her from the rest of the group.
"Evil people don't ask for help," she said. "They just take it." She pushed again. "Dead people don't shake, Rudra. Dead people don't cry. But they're dying. They will die if I don't do something."
Rudra leaned even further until Tish could do nothing but clutch at his chest. "Back off!" she snarled, trying to summon her anger, her holy magic. Her palms glowed for a second. Then she felt his breath moving the strands of hair curled around her ear, and the magic spluttered and died. She couldn't look at his face anymore. Instead, she looked down, trying to focus on the loose strings of his tunic around his neck.
Focus. Goddammit, Tish. FOCUS!
He is not hot. He is a narcissistic, psychopathic, genocidal maniac of an overgrown lizard...
"They're dying," Rudra agreed, completely ignoring her order to back off. "But of all people, I thought you'd at least understand..."
Tish looked up at his eyes. They didn't look angry. They just looked... disappointed.
"That some things aren't worth saving," he said quietly. "That some people are better off dead."