63: Bile

I helped Artan into the city, but he still was looking very confused and unfocused. I pulled him toward the Mage guild and directed him to a room where I could keep an eye on him. I sat down in a corner and laid the staff across my lap. The dark one was in there, but he wasn’t responding to me. I sat and concentrated on breaking the barrier between us. The staff was dark, and I couldn’t get through to him

After a while I cast the staff away in frustration. It clattered across the floor and lay utterly still; not the slightest glow or flicker. Nothing. I paced uneasily for a time in the eerily quiet guild. All the mages were out fighting the Daedra or helping the wounded, leaving the guild hall empty except for Artan and me. I set about trying to clear the fog from Artan’s mind. He was staring quizzically at a potted plant and would occasionally cast a spell on it. I approached him slowly and tried to catch his attention. The plant was evidently more interesting than I was.

I took a step forward to more forcibly take his attention, but a sharp pain stabbed through my foot and up my leg. I stumbled and grabbed my knee: the pain dulled but was persistent. I noticed Artan turn towards me and I looked up at him. His face was contorted into a strange grimace, and I almost laughed before he jumped into me, knocking me down.

He crouched on top of me, pinning me to the ground. The wind was knocked out of me, or I would have yelled. I began to push him off me, but the pain in my leg grew and expanded throughout the rest of my body. I couldn’t scream in pain or alarm, and Artan was just pinning me to the ground. His mouth opened and he spewed vile goo all over me.

Interestingly, a strange calm spread through my mind as the pain increased and the bile spread across my face and neck. It was familiar and welcome, and I was happy to feel the Dark One’s presence back in my mind. However, I noticed his mind was worried, so I became worried as well.

His thoughts to me were broken and incoherent, “No room… hurry… can’t hold… energy…STAFF!”

I got the last bit and feebly groped around on the ground nearby for the staff. I knew it lay somewhere nearby, but I was blinded by the vomit stinging my eyes. The pain was steadily increasing and there was a curious buzzing in the back of my head, like a swarm of angry bees.

Mercifully, my hand closed around the cool metal of the staff and I pulled it toward me. I felt the pressure of the Dark One’s mind spill into the excess room of the staff, and the pain in my leg began to subside. My heart thumped in my ears, and it slowly dawned on me just how much pain I had been enduring. Like a mudcrab in slowly-heated water, I hadn’t noticed just how painful it had become.

I lay gasping for breath, covered in stinky bile, and clutching the staff like a child holding a blanket. Slowly I rolled onto my side and wiped the stinging vomit from my eyes. I lay there for several moments before I turned to look for Artan. He was lying motionless nearby, though I was relieved to see he was breathing peacefully. I got to my feet painfully, and I stretched my leg before putting weight on it. The Staff was glowing in rhythmical, geometric patterns, almost like the Dark One was checking to see that everything still worked. I cautiously probed his mind to get his attention. He politely waited for my question. I asked him.

“What the hell just happened?”