Blood Shaper - Book 4: Chapter 58

“It isn’t a turtle!” Kay screamed as he shot upright, jerking and thrashing as his body tried to escape whatever the fuck was happening. His memories were a garbled mess of nonsense that didn’t matter, all that mattered was getting the fuck away from all of it.

“Kay! Kay, calm down!”

He thrashed and moaned, alternating between curling up in the fetal position and vomiting uncontrollably while he trembled. The memories of somewhere else were fading even as they attacked his psyche, but even fading away they were terrible and dangerous. Sensations he couldn’t name and experiences that he couldn’t describe stabbed him in the brain over and over for countless seconds until all that was left was a migraine and the taste of vomit in his mouth.

When his ability to think came back enough to notice anything, he was being held down on a bed by strong hands. He grunted and squinted his eyes, shielding them against the uncomfortably bright lights.

“What’s wrong with him?” Someone demanded. “What’s happening? It’s good he’s moving and not all still like he has been, but he keeps freaking out.”

“He got pulled somewhere else, and wherever that was it wasn’t good to him. We don’’t have anyone experienced with this kind of shit, so we just have to hope that he survived whatever happened.”

He blinked a few times and realized that the strong arms holding him down were actually bands of thick cloth wrapped around his torso and legs. He blearily looked around the room and found himself in an infirmary, the one in Avalon’s palace closest to the entrance if he was recognizing things properly.

“What should we do?”

Kay looked up and saw Eleniah talking quietly with Cindy in the corner of the room. Lauren stood next to the bed he was in, watching the other two women as they talked.

“I don’t know.” Cindy replied, shaking her head, “The only reason I know anything about this is because of an ex-boyfriend who was in to cosmic horror fiction and the tiny number of lectures I’ve gotten about eldritch things here. Finding an expert to ask questions is the only thing I can think of.”

Eleniah leaned in close, practically plastering her body over Cindy’s, “What about your visions, haven’t you learned anything that way?”

“I haven’t had one since forcing them to be useful in the moment and pulling Kay out of those sideways cracks in the sky. I’m pretty sure I overtaxed myself visions of the future-wise, it feels like I’ve pulled a muscle and then not slept for weeks. It’ll come back eventually, but don’t rely on me for now.”

Eleniah closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then a few more. She patted Cindy’s shoulder and pulled away. “Sorry. Not trying to turn you into an on demand fortune teller, just…”

“I get it. I’m worried too. Give him some time to recover and lets see what happens before we jump into any decisions.”

Only half listening to the conversation, Kay slowly looked around the room, on the hunt for something to drink. His mouth was incredibly dry and tasted faintly of sick. After a torturous period of trying to move his head around the fluffy pillow blocking his line of vision to one side, he made out a pitched of water on the table next to him. He tried to reach out and grab it, not remembering the bands wrapped around him. His hand made it a few inches from his side before getting pulled back, and he grunted in annoyance at the restraints.

“Kay?”

He glanced up to see Lauren looking down at him.

“Can you get these off me?” He asked weakly, “I’m thirsty.”

“Kay!”

An immediate stiff arm from Lauren knocked back Eleniah and kept her from pouncing on him. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed his shoulder, pulling her face in close to stare at him with worry. “Are you okay!?”

“Calmly.” Lauren said softly, “Getting riled up doesn’t help anyone, especially him.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Right.” Eleniah breathed in deep and slowly let it out. “Are you okay, Kay?”

“No.”

“What do you need?”

“Water. Thirsty and my mouth tastes bad.”

She glared down at him. “I mean injuries and things I should be worried about!”

“Oh, I have no idea. I just woke up and my head hurts, can I have some water?”

“Of course you can,.” Lauren answered. She poured some from the pitcher into a small glass and held it to his lips.

“I can drink on my own.”

“I’m sure you can,” She replied with infinite patience and the tone of someone who was not going to listen to him.

Rolling his eyes, Kay took small sips from the cup.

“What happened?” Cindy asked after he’d had enough to drink.

“I got pulled to some other reality, and it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Please don’t ever ask me about it again.”

The three women shared startled looks. “Really?” Eleniah asked, “It was that bad?”

“There are literally no words to describe how bad it was, both because of how bad it was and because it mostly consisted of concepts that don’t exists here because we have concepts and that place didn’t. It was so different from anything that’s possible that I can’t even remember it properly. But even the diluted memories that are nothing like what actually happened suck to extreme levels and I don’t want to talk about it anymore after this. Are there any questions right now before we never bring it up again and only talk around the subject?”

“…No?”

“Fantastic. I’m only partially here right now and I’m pretty sure I’m not processing everything that’s happening, but is there anything I need to know before I got back to sleep? My head hurts and I’m nowhere close to being done recovering.”

Lauren pulled herself to attention, “It’s been about three days since you managed to drive off whatever that thing was, my lord. We’ve accepted the formal surrender of the army and the formal surrender of several groups that participated in the battle but are arguing that the Crusader General has no authority over them. Everyone’s been behaving, but we’re keeping an eye on them.”

“Other than that, there’s not much.” Eleniah told him, “You’ll need to speak to Alice and her dad eventually about vampyr versus vampire stuff, and I think Commander Ravenhome wants to apologize to you directly, but nothing there’s nothing that can’t be pushed off until you’re better.”

“Good.” Ignoring the memories of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and more that just couldn’t happen, but did, Kay wrapped himself in the blanket and tried to sleep. After only a few seconds he grumpily opened one eye and stared at the ceiling. “Can you make it darker in here? It’s too bright.”

“Yes, of course.” A few seconds later the lights from the crystals set into the ceiling dimmed considerably.

“Thank you.”

Right before Kay managed to drift back into sleep, something snapped him back to full wakefulness. He could feel the screen waiting for him to open his eyes, so he refused to comply. “Fuck off System. I will get back to you later. I just woke up after that shit and do not have it in me to deal with you.”

A soft, genderless voice spoke in his ear. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“What part of ‘fuck off’ do you not understand?”

There was no reply, and Kay ignored the stunned silence from the the witnesses in the room, keeping his eyes firmly shut. There were still problems to be solved, both locally and on a grander scale, but that was for later. Much later. The things he could faintly remember learning while in that other place were important and alarming, but they weren’t dire, and he wasn’t able to deal with anything at the moment, let alone problems of that magnitude. It could all wait until…

Between on complaint filled thought and the next, Kay drifted off into sleep, thankfully free of dreams of madness and impossibilities.

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In a portion of reality that was imperceptible to to every living being on Torotia, in the spaces between atoms and surrounding drifting motes of mana, a portion of something massive toiled without tiring. The System was patient, and it had billions of millennia worth of data from across multitudes of worlds to show it that rest and recovery were important after traumatic events. It didn’t have the ability or the resources to help every being that suffered under the System, but it did have enough to help here. Tools that could reasonably be called super programs chipped out bits of damage and corruption while leaving the thoughts, memories, emotions, sensations, and more in the best shape possible. There was damage that had to be left to keep everything moving and some scars couldn’t be fixed, but there would be no madness here, no corruption that created something horrible, and no mutations.

Kay deserved help after all the excellent effort he’d put into helping the System and Torotia, but the System still had use for him. It was even possible that the System might need him. It wouldn’t be the first time across the entirety of the System, but it was never a position the System wanted to be in. The System would even say it was uncomfortable with needing people, if it was capable of feeling comfort or a lack there of. Needing someone meant the System had no other options, and it always strove to have multiple options. It wasn’t quite sure that it needed Kay yet, but the possibility was there, so it continued its work. If the System did need Kay, it would be best if he was returned to the best shape possible, within acceptable limits of course.

The System continued to work, removing fragments of impossibility and shards of what couldn’t have been from Kay, all the whole ensuring he slept peacefully while it prepared him as best it could for the coming conflicts. Evidence pointed toward the vampire becoming a much larger problem over a short period, and the System had a vampyr destroyer it needed back on his feet.