The Fall of the Society

Chapter 35: Learning of Loss

Sitting tentatively, Rose stared at him. "Did they pursue you?" she asked him earnestly.

He smiled at her, "They pursued as long as they were able, but my mother continued to move away from the place, taking small jobs for money as we went, some people just gave her some food and told her to move on when they saw me. It was an extremely challenging time for my mother and I, we were homeless and had no money or food most of the time. On the plus side, I had learned to walk, granted it was very awkward and painstaking, but I was managing on my own at times. If I were walking, we had to go slower and eventually she would carry me when I would get tired, but I would not ask."

Rose worked to break into the conversation once more, a question on her mind. "How did you guys survive the injuries you sustained at the monastery?"

A grin crossed Sid's face, "Noticed I skipped that did you? I was hoping not to go into it yet, but it is the secret behind all my success and survival. You are a phoenix, which is one of the rarest things in existence. What I am is even more rare," he told her. "Essentially, I am an immortal and it is all due to my regeneration ability. While there have been others that have the ability to heal themselves and survive fatal encounters, they eventually age and die, or are destroyed completely to the point their body can no longer heal. I do not age, I had to force my body to change and grow to the point I looked like an adult. Very few people alive are aware of this information, so keep my words to yourself please. Finally, to answer your question, my blood flowed into her open wound and healed her."

"Have you ever tried to make medicine from your own blood? You could help so many people!" Rose cut in.

"Of course, that would be your first reaction, I expected nothing less. Unfortunately, the sharing of my blood can come with horrible side effects, but on that occasion my abilities where still in an early stage and did not cause any mutations within her. Years later I would find this out when trying to help in a triage tent near a battlefield, but that will come up later. Back to where I was, my limbs were growing stronger, but it was a slow process, and they were still twisted and knobby, with growths still spread across my body. I was very awkward, and most people avoided me as though I had the plague. The experience at the monastery taught us we had to continue to move, otherwise peoples fear may cause us harm. It also taught me that there was something special inside of me. At the age of six I had perfected walking, which may seem an odd accomplishment at that age, but none the less it was important for me."

"Now that I was more able to take care of myself during the day, we settled in a heavily forested area near a town that was large for the time. It had a keep and garrison and plenty of work that needed to be done. My mother would walk into town and do jobs for whoever needed it and come home in the evening. No one in town knew of my existence and she thought it better that way as I was even more awkward as I was growing steadily more deformed. On occasion my mother would make comments about the fact we never got sick, which I know why I did not, and I attribute her strong immune system to the sharing of my blood. We lived like this for another two years, before mother began to fall for a soldier in the local garrison. It was tearing her apart, she wanted companionship, but she also did not want to put me in any danger and superstitions ran deep at the time. I decided to tell her to pursue the gentleman if she wished, I was growing stronger and did not need full time care anymore. All she would need to do was to bring me food every few days and visit occasionally and I would be fine on my own. She did not like the idea of leaving me alone and refused to do so but began allowing the soldier to court her."

"It is good that you guys found somewhere," Rose added when Sid had paused for a moment.

"The respite we found did not last as long as we would have liked. Her courtship was going well, and she was extremely happy at that time. Then one night he followed her home against her knowledge and began peering through the window. Apparently, he found it odd that she never invited him to her home and that she lived in the middle of the forest by herself. I had learned to move quietly in the time we lived there and had done a lot of exploring of the surrounding areas, so I knew my way around well. Picking up his trail, I followed him to the house. After a few moments of looking through the window, he let himself in, surprising my mother in the process when she looked up and it was not me. She immediately began telling him to leave, that it was inappropriate that he was there. He ignored her demands and started to become aggressive. He put his hands on her and shoved her toward the bed, which was not something I was going to allow, so I rushed in with a large stick that I carried around at the time and began hitting him with it. Surprised he spun and drew his sword but hesitated for a moment when he saw my strange and mutated form, then his expression changed to disgust, and he slashed my chest with his blade. The pain did nothing to stop my forward movement and I continued to bludgeon him with my weapon. I was not strong enough to do any severe damage with it, but it still hurt, and his anger grew, then my mother pushed him and knocked him off balance. Turning he tried to thrust his blade at my mother, but I jumped in the way and was ran through by his blade. Mother quickly retrieved a knife from the table and stabbed him in the side of the neck. He spluttered and ran from the house, leaving his sword stuck in my ribs. Between my injury and what she had just done, my mother was in a state of panic, and near a complete emotional collapse."

Sid picked up a bottle and took a drink before tossing it to Rose, who took a hearty drink and continued to stare at him, desperate to find out what would happen. "She pulled herself together just enough to withdraw the sword from me and I healed almost instantly. This event surprised her as much as anything else as the last time she had been unconscious when it happened. I sat her down with a cup of hot tea and went to see if the man was still in the woods, and soon found him dead on the side of the path. He had bled to death from the wound in his neck. His death forced us out of our home, causing us to begin wandering once more. She was shaken from the events, and it took a price from her. Her demeanor was in no way violent and the man's death weighed heavily on her conscious. We shortly settled in a new forested area and made a new home for ourselves in a cave we found there. I took to scavenging the forest for things that were edible as she was losing strength and unwilling to continue living. Her depression was increasing at an alarming rate. The event in our home with the man did however help me to further understand my abilities, and I began to focus on them increasingly. Though it was not a safe way to work on them, I began cutting myself to watch it heal. Soon I advanced to trying to cut the growths from my body, but I would heal too quickly, making it impossible for me to perform the task on my own. I even tried breaking my own bones in a hope that they would heal straight but was unable to accomplish this as well. After months of practice I discovered that I had a great deal of control over my body, and soon began to adjust the way my body looked. Mother tried to be excited about the happenings, but she was increasingly weak. I thought that if I could force myself to look normal, we could go live in an actual town and she would be happy. The process of changing the way I looked was incredibly painful as I had not learned to block it yet, and my body needed a large amount of adjustments before I would appear normal. Many nights, after a long day of looking for food and firewood and caring for my mother, I would meditate on adjusting my disfigurements until I would pass out from exhaustion and pain. While the process was worth it overall, it caused me to spend less time with my mother for a period. This still saddens me to this day because she would never leave that cave."

"I had managed to transform the way I looked, but I was still just a kid of nine years physically. My intelligence was far more advanced, and I continued to learn, but I was unable to learn what I needed to save her. The last thing she ever said to me was that she was proud of the handsome young man I had become, and that she loved me and was glad the time she spent on this plane of existence was in my company. I buried her near a river just outside of the entrance to the cave, the area was and still is exceptionally beautiful, which I occasionally visit to this day. My departure from that place was incredibly hard at the time. I was alone for the first time in my life since my birth and I had no idea where I should go, or what I should do." Sid paused before continuing. "The world is a dark place and I had discovered this in a very difficult way."