Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 11: Computer Geeks Need Love Too, Part 4

Damnit! Corbin grabbed Dimitri and helped me lower him to the ground. It seemed all the fighting died down while I was talking with Ishmael, or because Dimitri was shot; everything went silent. We laid him out across the boards, and I sat down at his side to examine his wound. It was bad, really bad. I don't know if it had the touch of decay or if the ray was just pure, undiluted force, but this was a death blow.

"How's it look?" Dimitri groaned. He sat his hand across the wound, his dark eyes rolling around in his head. He was suffering.

"Looks like you've seen better days," Corbin said, pulling Dimitri's hand away to look at it once more. He sat it back down and held tight to the wound after he got a good view of it. He was quick to address me. "This isn't good—"

"I know," I told him. "Dimitri—"

"Listen," the older assassin said, digging his fingers in around the wound and trying to hold it shut. "I didn't give in once, not even to save my own hide."

"What?"

"I didn't break down once to their demands. They got nothing out of me." The assassin sighed out and dropped his head back, his heels riding across the boards in his anguish. "You—you get back to the Mainland when this is done. You get back and you tell my daughter I was no coward."

"Hey now," I said to him, "we're all going to go back together."

"Don't think so," Dimitri said, settling down on his back to try and get 'comfortable' and come to terms with it. "You tell my daughter, Mathias. You tell her lies. You tell her whatever you need to so—so—you know I don't want her thinking I was a bad guy over here. You tell her I didn't give in, not once. Don't tell her I was some opportunist survivor. Tell my wife I loved her, and—"

"Stop talking like that," I said to him, raising my head up. Lilly and Geraldine and Jo and Jason joined us, but none of them had anything to say, to offer. We were all watching Dimitri die in front of our eyes. "No." I rejected such a premise. "No, I'm going to see this through."

I pulled my tome out and sat it on Dimitri's stomach, opening it up to the page on Blood Healing, Mending, and Repairing. I knew how to do it in small doses, but I didn't think I could mend a wound like this, not yet, at this level of talent. I'd try, though.

Just like the other night practicing, I drew on my own blood, calling it out from my palm. I pulled their hands away from the wound and covered it with my own, attempting to seal the wound right then and there. It worked so well the other night, yet now, it did not hold. The wound could have been too deep, could have been cursed; whatever it was, when I raised my hand back up, nothing changed, nary an inch of flesh stitched back together.

"Just let me rest," Dimitri said, his voice weak and his skin becoming cold, clammy. I was losing him. "It isn't so bad. I just hope He—"

"Shut up," I said under my breath, stopping him from his doom and gloom. "You got me in this mess, you're going to be here with me until the end." I turned my head and stuck my hand out. "Give me a knife."

"For what?" Geraldine asked.

"Just give it to me."

She pulled her side knife from her belt and offered it to me. I took the handle and I looked down at it. I gave a nod and I began to whisper a little bit of a prayer; I was a poor follower, terrible at worship and service, but I just hoped someone out there—He, She, any of the divine—were listening. I prayed that they were seeing me and Dimitri through this.

First things first; I'd need to open a vein if I wanted the power to mend this wound. I couldn't conjure enough blood to my palm to really tap into it, I needed to afflict myself to get what I needed. I took the knife in my left hand, stuck my right arm out, threw back my sleeve, and I dug the blade right into the soft part of my forearm, underneath it and near the wrist. I severed vein and muscle until the blood gushed forth.