The Lost Doctor's Soul - Chapter 26 - Battered and Broken

The moment a life comes to an end… I’ve seen it too many times.

The first time I saw it was when I was a child. My family had a doberman named Heike. He was an old rescue dog, who’d been with us since I could remember. I think he was about 8 years old when my older sister Anibelle and I were playing with him in the park.

He was hit by some teenagers on a joyride, it was a gruesome scene and I held Heike’s mangled body as he slowly died on the side of the road.

I didn’t understand what death was as a small child, but I still remember that moment so vividly, it was the first time I saw a life come to an end. It became more common after that, once I became a doctor.

When I was a medic in the Bundeswehr, I saw people die from injuries during training and combat, some were already corpses when I saw them, others died on the table while trying to save them.

When I was a doctor in Frankfurt, I saw people die much slower. From chronic illnesses that slowly brought them to an end, injuries that left them bedridden and barely clinging to life under all the medical treatment we could offer, only to die in the end. I saw people die waiting for surgery, not even having a chance to survive, others died on the table, their hearts giving up moments before we could have saved them.

And then the earthquake… so many lives lost, so meaninglessly. I had watched so many lives come to an end in my life.

But this was the first time that I watched a life come to an end because of me.

Because of my decision, a fight had broken out, and because of my actions, two men were killed right in front of me. And the person who directly killed those two was Arashi Kurohana, a warrior driven mad by a curse and so callously moving to murder the last standing guard, even after he surrendered!

“NO!” I let go of the guard I was tackling and scrambled to stop her, but she was too far and my body wasn’t listening to me properly! Luckily, the bronze-skinned Nisha acted before I could and grabbed Arashi, using his rippling strength to hold her in place so she couldn’t attack the man.

Her expression warped into disgust as she rammed her elbow into the elf, pushing him back with an immense strength that shocked me. It must have been from the curse as I didn’t remember her being so strong.

And following up the elbow strike, she raised her glaive again, swinging it at Nisha instead of the guard this time! I had barely managed to scramble to my feet and tried to rush forward, but she was much faster and struck first.

Instead of dodging to the side or stepping back, Nisha pushed forward, raising an arm to shield his body from the shaft of the glaive while lashing out with a punch. Arashi easily grabbed his punch and pushed against him, slamming him into the wooden wall, cracking it, before taking a step back to swing again.

I managed to close the distance between us and tried to tackle her by wrapping my arms around her waist and using my weight to push her down. But she didn’t budge, I thought her curse was magic and it would collapse as soon as it came into my range, but was I wrong? Was this all just pure physical strength? It couldn’t be, could it?

Ignoring me, she slashed out at Nisha, but he was a step faster and ducked low under the blade, quickly closing the gap while on all fours like some kind of feral beast, before slamming his body into her stomach, sending her and me tumbling back and crashing into the wall she had slashed into earlier. I heard some people screaming on the other side, but ignored that as I focused my attention on what was happening right in front of me. I was on the ground, my whole body hurt, but I was still holding onto Arashi, or I was, until she grabbed me with nearly enough strength to crack a bone and ripped me off of her, throwing me down the hall back into the surrendering guard.

Knocked onto the ground, I felt my body groan as I desperately tried to stand again. The guard I was slammed into was on the ground holding their head as they writhed in pain. The two guards Arashi slashed the throats of, were definitely dead. The guard I tackled to the ground was unconscious for some reason… it couldn’t have been because of me, I could only assume Starlight must have done something, since she was the only other person here. He was still breathing, so I thanked Jesus for that at least.

But the man I had stabbed was slumped against the wall. And he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even breathing. My Pike was buried in the left side of his chest, right where his heart was.

I… actually killed a man.

I felt the world start to spin as I took that information in, my heart felt like it was stuck in my throat and my stomach dropped. But I wasn’t even given the luxury of sinking in those emotions. [Get up! The priest is overwhelming the snake, and you need to stop that cursed girl from killing the elf!] Starlight’s voice resounded in my head like a migraine, reminding me how dire the situation was. But how could I help!? I wasn’t strong enough to help either fight, and my anti-magic wasn’t working.

[Your anti-magic suppresses the curse, it’ll just take some time for her to return to normal!] As if she could read my mind, she gave me the answer. So I just needed to hold out a bit longer! Struggling to get to my feet, I muttered a quick prayer begging for forgiveness, before grabbing the shield of the man I killed. I didn’t need to attack, I just needed to survive.

With unsteady feet, I charged at Arashi, tackling her as she slammed her glaive against Nisha’s arm again, possibly breaking it. Holding tightly onto the cursed warrior, I positioned my shield to make it as hard as possible for her to attack me. I couldn’t see the elf, but considering the impacts I felt coming from Arashi’s body, he was still in the fight.

While I desperately prayed that my anti-magic would calm her down, I felt my shield get yanked away, almost fracturing my arm in the few seconds of pointless struggle before I let go of it. She reached down to grab my shoulder and pull me off of her, and it hurt like hell as her fingers dug into my sword wound. I grit my teeth as I held her tighter, expecting to be pulled off as easily as last time, but she was a lot weaker than before. It was working!

My victory was short lived, however, as I heard someone come crashing out of the room behind me. From the sound of her heavy armour, it was Soliaras. Damn it! Did she win against Vildost? No, I still heard footsteps behind her, however faint, so he was alive and moving around.

I didn’t have any more time to think, as the distance from the door to us was covered in what felt like less than a second and I was hit with so much force I felt like my body was about to be ripped apart. The pain was excruciating and I barely avoided blacking out as the world tumbled around me. As I struggled to breath, my blurry vision cleared slightly and I realised that I had been thrown several meters down the hallway.

“You’re a dangerous man, Fischer.” Before I could even attempt to get up, an armoured hand grabbed me by my neck and forcefully pulled me to my feet, making my eyes meet the slightly battered but largely unscathed Soliaras. “I’m only going to ask this once, give me the sword.” She felt almost as strong as Arashi did with the curse affecting her.

As my foggy mind struggled through the pain and suffocation, I looked back the corridor to see Nisha injured, one arm probably broken, Vildost cut up but with no major injuries, Arashi collapsed on the ground coughing up black ichor as she probably couldn’t even breath, and Kanako… she was lurched over a bit, one of her arms was hurt, but what was she? My vision went blurry again so I just focused on the priest and thought about the sword.

I couldn’t give in, not now, not after three people already died, five counting Millar and Milvarr. Mustering more strength than I thought I had, I reached up and grabbed her hand, wrenching it open so she couldn’t strangle me.

“You chose poorly.” She immediately slammed me into the wall, the back of my head hitting it hard enough that I started seeing double.

I barely made out Kanako jumping at Soliaras with a dagger, but my vision was sent spinning after that. I was thrown again, but someone caught me and I was too disoriented to immediately make out who. All I could see was Kanako getting knocked to the ground with a worrying crunch.

Her attack wasn’t in vain, however, as her dagger was still buried deep in the priest’s right arm, making her drop her sword from the injury. I felt like we achieved a bit of a victory. If I could just stand up, then we could still win… but then I saw the familiar bundle in her other arm, the sword at the heart of this shitty conflict!

I absentmindedly reached an arm behind me to touch my backpack, then I noticed it was on the ground, ripped apart with all its contents split out. The sword was supposed to be tied to the backpack, but it was also the only thing I owned that was that big, so it made sense that she noticed it… damn in!

Soliaras neither gloated about her victory nor did she seem particularly mournful of her dead companions. Instead, she just nodded towards us and said “You’re a dangerous man, murderous snakes as company. Let's consider our business concluded with this.” it looked as if she was about to say more, but I was on the ground before I realised it and Vildost rushed her mid word, only to suddenly slow down as soon as he left my anti-magic zone.

With what seemed to be a defeated look, she shook her head and took a step back. She retreated with a speed impossible for a normal human, practically becoming a silver flash. Less than five seconds later Vildost returned to his normal speed and chased after her without so much as a glance back or a word. He seemed like a completely different man than the drunk idiot he normally acted.

On the floor, I took a moment to just stare at the ceiling, taking in everything that just happened. Then, remembering Kanako, Arashi and Nisha were injured, I struggled to get up. My body protested like it was about to fall apart, but I managed to stomach the pain, barely.

My knees wobbled like I just ran a marathon and my hands were shaking. My vision blurred as I exerted myself, but my thoughts were oddly clear. My eyes turned to Kanako first, she was the closest. She was now standing, her cloaked form hunched over as she grabbed her injured shoulder, the bloodstain on her cloak worryingly large at this point. “Are you okay?” I asked, quickly looking her over for any critical injury. She just nodded and I decided to move on and check on her more later.

Nisha was largely alright, other than his arm being injured It didn’t seem to be severely fractured, but there was definitely some damage to the bone. Unfortunately I didn’t have an x-ray machine to properly diagnose him, I’d have to examine him closer, but he was in better condition than I thought, he was built like a monster. Arashi, however, wasn’t in a great state. She had been unable to stand up since she was knocked down by Soliaras. With all her armour, I couldn’t tell her exact condition, but she seemed to be suffering from exhaustion. I didn’t know exactly how strong she normally was, but it seemed that going berserk because of the curse caused a great deal of strain on her body. She needed immediate rest and a proper examination.

||Starlight…|| I called out to the devil, and unlike usual there was a several second long gap before she replied. [What?] she sounded annoyed, and I wasn’t sure if it was at me or the priest, but I didn’t care at the moment. ||Would drinking a healing potion help Arashi?|| I asked, focusing on the task at hand and nothing else. [A basic healing potion only works on open wounds. You’d probably need magic or other medicine to help her heal faster.] came the reluctant reply. So it seemed I should use the potion on Kanako and treat Arashi with more standard first aid and nursing for now… but I also felt so cold. My body involuntarily shivered as my adrenaline seemed to drain away and everything hit me at once.

“Did your no magic get bigger?” Nisha spoke out, and turning to him, he was standing some distance away looking down at his hands confused. “My warm magic isn’t coming out.” I didn’t notice it, but he had always kept out of the range of my anti-magic. Had he been warming the room and the corridor all this time?

He was standing much further than my anti magic zone extended, and I knew my zone didn’t get bigger because of what happened with Vildost. Looking at him, he was a bit injured, but that was it. Looking down, I noticed blood spilt on the ground, but there was nothing else discernable. That’s when I realised that I was bleeding a lot. Jesus, when did this happen?

I didn’t know, it was confusing, it was tiring, I just had to get Arashi into the room and look at Kanako too. Nisha needed patching up, Vildost had open wounds and he was out in the storm, he needed to be looked at too, then there were the guards… god, the guards… it was all just too much. And before I knew it my knees gave up.

I expected to hit the hard and cold stone floor, but someone caught me before I fell. At first I thought it was Nisha, but it felt softer and shorter. Glancing to the side, I saw the annoyed face of the devil Starlight staring at me. “I’ll bring her in, you sit down and rest.” she hissed, but I didn’t care about her tone. I appreciated the help and let her lead me to our party’s room. On the way, I glanced over to where the guards were, and only saw an empty corridor. There wasn’t even a trace of blood. The marks in the wall were the only reminders that what I saw really happened.

“Why isn’t anyone coming out to investigate?” I asked, remembering all the other people in the shelter and the screams I heard. “You can repay me later.” was all she replied with, and I realised she must have been working in the background during the fight after all. But what could she have done? All I knew is that she could use spatial, creation and some projection magic… did she kill them or did she move them elsewhere?

No, she might be a devil, but she wasn’t that kind of person… what was weird, however, was that all the bodies and blood were gone, except some bloodstains on the floor which Nisha stepped on. From the position… I realised that must have been my blood. Did my very blood have anti-magic in it?  I couldn’t think about this much longer, there was already too much to process.

I decided to trust her for now and get a few minutes of rest so I could properly treat Arashi and Kanako. I just needed to close my eyes for a bit…

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