Interlude: Following

 The One who Follows hobbled down the street, his breathing shaky. Having stowed his sacred garb, safely tucking his Divine Mother into his pack, he staggered away from the coastline, his hands limp and his ego shattered. By the grace of the Wills, his bones had begun to regenerate, painfully forming splintered calcium deposits in his limp, torn finger—it was a long process, but in a true battle, the Art was invaluable. But as with all the Arts, it took a toll.

Mortals stared at his odd clothing, so he found the first tourist trap that sold things called “T-shirts” and slipped some plainclothes on, paying the clerk in local currency—“gnollens,” they were called. Funny name, that. Sounded similar to his own name—just a few different syllables and vowels, and they’d be there.

Having used his greatest Art to halt the tsunami he’d inadvertently caused, he’d passed out for two days. Thank the Wills he had succumbed to fatigue underwater, or his lack of a heartbeat or need to breathe would have probably caused the mortals to try burying him in some primitive mourning ceremony. Every mortal culture had burying rituals, of course—it was no wonder why so many wished to stow their loved ones as close as possible to the Holy Ones who lay entombed beneath their planets’ surfaces. After all, wherever the slept in their ancient doom, humanity evolved time and again. They were the closest sapient beings to the Holy Ones that natural evolution could create. Yet so fleeting and petty. The Hierophant’s obsession with them had never made sense to The One, yet now…

He marched into the hospital, storming past the injured and sick, up to the counter where a bored-looking clerk sat staring at a highly primitive CRT computer monitor with eyes nearly as dead as his own.

“I would speak to your healers,” The One said.

“Pardon?” the clerk asked.

He gritted his teeth. “Your healers. I would speak to them, that I may share my healing Arts and treat the wounded’s misery, for which I am… responsible.”

The woman squinted at him, raising her eyebrows and giving him the most dismissive look he could imagine. “If you want a job, we have application forms on the HR side of the facility, but this isn’t the entrance. It’s around the back, and—”

“I haven’t the time for this prattle,” he said. Many had already died from his negligence and lack of skill. What a worthless guardian he had turned out to be—between that maggot and himself, only one had taken a life that night. And then, that angel had thrown that fact right in his face; he couldn’t say a word in response. He hadn’t felt so humiliated in cycles. And his superiors would never let him hear the end of it. They certainly hadn’t this morning.

Sneering, he strode past the front desk and into a door marked “Employees Only.” The door was locked with some kind of electronic system, but luckily, the doorframe was made of endelwood. He Whispered to the wood, and it listened, allowing the lock’s deadbolt to pass through it like water. “Comrade to man” indeed, he thought, quoting an ancient Forthallian verse. Not that he ever paid much mind to Forthallianism—the Divine himself had abandoned them all, long ago. Clinging to that old doctrine was a pathetic habit of the elder generations who couldn’t accept that the Divines wouldn't come and save them all again.

All but five were dead, anyway. And none could—or wanted to—help.

As he rushed past the yelping clerks on the other side of the door, he found halls full of holding rooms, where the healers did their work. Pain and suffering lurked behind each of the doors, but he stepped into the first one to the left, even while the healers and nurses begged him to leave.

“Sir, I’m going to have to call security,” one of the clerks said.

He paid her no mind as he regarded the injured man before him. Such a fleeting lifespan—barely a day’s worth of his own life; a blink of his eye, and everyone in this room would vanish to the dust of time. And yet, how could he claim to embody the spirit of an army whose creed was “Mercy Before Doctrine” if he simply let this man’s broken leg continue to torture him? No. While The One was no healer by his people’s standards, he had the Arts to manage.

Using Fleshmolding—an Art he had never fully learned, but which had saved his life several times—he slipped his fingers into the man’s skin, and as the man yelped in shock, The One grabbed his bones and kneaded them together like tubes of clay. He made sure to smooth the surfaces together with his thumbs, then let his fingers slide out of the skin, leaving not a mark.

“Wh—what did you do?” the man said, glancing down at his leg. It was still wrapped in a plaster cast, so The One lengthened his fingernail and split the thing, freeing him. “What the fuck?”

“Congratulations,” The One said. “Go home.”

“S-sir, this is a restricted area!” one of the clerks continued, even as she watched the man shakily get to his feet and announce that he was healed.

The One rolled his eyes as a security guard attempted to restrain him by grabbing his waist. Huffing, The One simply dragged the guard along as he dutifully entered the next room. If they didn’t take the hint soon, he’d holler at them as loud as the commandant had hollered at him after he’d given his report this morning.

Well, maybe not quite as loud as the commandant. She had lungs of steel, that one.