Halt's Test (Gone Wrong)

Chapter 14

There were six men, all dressed in black, standing there, one at the forefront; the one who had nearly killed Crowley was their leader. They all held crossbows, pointed at Adriel and Adriel realized that everything was so very much worse than he'd thought.

Adriel was in no state to argue, and he raised his hands, and when requested, he gave them his dagger too. It was when they tried to tie his hands together that he began to protest.

"Please, he's bleeding out! And he's going to die if I don't give him medicine!" He begged, throwing away any sense of pride to beg for the two Rangers lives which both hung in the balance. The men looked at their leader, and after a few seconds, he nodded, gesturing to the basket which had been kicked aside. One of the men moved to block the door as Adriel's bonds were cut and he rushed to the basket, snatching it up and heading straight to Halt. He seemed temporarily stable and had stopped the thrashing he had been doing minutes earlier, so Adriel turned to Crowley.

He pulled the dagger out of the wound, releasing more blood, but Adriel breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow, the dagger had not touched any important veins, how that was possible was beyond him, but he was just grateful that there wasn't blood spurting out of the wounds. Quickly, Adriel found some clean cloth in his basket and began applying pressure, before finding the small bottle of alcohol and pouring some onto another cloth and beginning to dab at the wound, having removed the now bloody cloths.

Adriel was glad Crowley wasn't awake for this, it would have stung worse than an entire hive of bees, and despite the fact that Crowley was a Ranger, he would have cried out in pain and tried to stop Adriel. Still, Adriel worked quickly, pulling off the rest of Crowley's shirt because he had no knife to cut it off with so he could bandage the wound properly. Once the bleeding seemed to have been staunched, Adriel turned back to Halt.

He drew a small vial of green vile looking that he had been told about by one of his old friends, Malcolm, out of his basket and raised Halt to a seated position. Then he plugged Halt's nose tightly shut and poured half the vial's contents into Halt's mouth. Halt had no choice but to swallow, though he was still unconscious, otherwise he couldn't breathe, and once Adriel was certain that he'd swallowed it, he let Halt fall back against the bed and straightened up.

The black clothed leader was standing nearby, watching him. "Finished?" He spoke, his voice cold, devoid of emotion entirely. That voice chilled Adriel to the bone, though he tried to hide it.

"Not yet." Adriel headed back to Crowley, kneeling beside him once more, and pulling another, black vial out of his basket. He'd also been told of this medicine by Malcolm but using it for the reason he was about to use it for was something that no one had ever tried, it only worked in theory.

And if the slightest thing was wrong, then...

He measured a small amount of it carefully, before forcing Crowley to swallow it, before gently lowering him back to the ground, corking the black potion, and placing it back in his basket. Then he slowly stood.

"I'm finished. There's nothing more I can do for them." He let them retie him and force him to sit in a corner, his eyes fixed on his two patients, hoping that the medicine he'd given both of them would work in its designated ways. There really was nothing else he could do.