He should have come earlier! If he hadn’t wasted so much time in front of the door — no!Concentrate!He knew how to do this. He just had to stop the bleeding. Wet and warm, and unstoppable. More blood poured out between his fingers, working as fast as he could.
“Krasen… There is…”
He half-wanted to shout at the man to stay silent, to save his strength, but perhaps keeping him conscious was not the worst idea as well.
“What is there?” he encouraged him.
“Attacker. Downstairs.”
Kraghtol froze for just a second until the red between his fingers urged him to continue.
“Whoever did this is still here?”
He couldn’t stop the panic creeping into his voice. If these wounds were caused by an assassin, they clearly knew what they were doing. Parts of him wanted to run away right now, but he couldn’t just leave Virex here to die!
“Careful… Krasen… Will I die?”
“You’re losing a lot of blood.”
Truth be told, it didn’t look good. If the blood loss didn’t kill him in the next few minutes, the damage to his inner organs would within the next hour. And if by a miracle he was to survivethat, the infection would in the next days.
“Probably, yes,” he heard himself say without his active doing. Should he have lied?
Suddenly, he felt a light touch on his arm. It must have cost him a lot of strength, but Virex had raised his hand to grab his arm.
“Listen. Krasen. You must… listen.”
The urgency irritated him so much he stopped momentarily but immediately got to it again. The blood flow from Virex’s leg had slowed down to a trickle now. Perhaps there was still hope. If he managed to do the same with the wound on his torso, and if the blade had missed vital organs…
“Yes, I’m listening. Sorry, this is going to hurt.”
The guild master groaned as Kraghtol removed the blood-soaked clothing as carefully as possible.
“There is… a lockbox. False bottom in the cabinet in the… in the metallurgy workshop… down the hallway. And a key here in the…”
Another pained groan as the half-orc applied the first improvised bandage.
“Key — here in desk drawer. You must… take both. They cannot find it. Take it and run as fast as you can. And then — hide it. Tell… Merress, but only later — after time has passed. They will… watch him. Do you… understand? It’s important.”
Kraghtol nodded, and his mind eagerly absorbed the words while he was busy working on the stab wound. It must have been intensely painful, and he did not know how much internal bleeding there was. But he couldn’t give up now.
“You can tell him yourself. I’ll bring you out of here. Just a little more, stay with me, okay?”
The guild master’s breath became ragged as he feebly tried to shove the half-orc away.
“No, don’t waste time. The lockbox — it’s more important.”
“I’m not leaving you here to die! Just a little longer, we can do this!”
Virex stayed silent for a second and then began to talk again, in a quieter voice full of strained control.
“More than 25 years ago, Holen and I were tasked with working on the border ward, to improve it.”
What was he talking about now? Was he getting delirious?
“We developed… alchemical metallurgy together. It was a breakthrough. The ward became stronger and…mo —”
Virex gasped, and his body threshed in pain, making Kraghtol’s hands tremble. Had he touched something wrong? Then his earsregistered the faint sizzling sound, and he saw a dim blue glow under the remains of Virex’s shirt, near his heart. He removed the fabric and stared at the source: one of the many small contract marks had lit up in blue, alchemical fire, and this time, the flame was not cold and controlled but singing and painful. Kraghtol’s eyes grew wide as he understood what was happening.
