User blog:Lordkenyon/Aftermath 1: Nahlgaaf I

When he awoke, it was into a small moment of bliss. All his rage, hatred, and pain were absent, and Nahlgaaf felt at peace. The moment ended, and things began trickling back. He tried to lift himself up to his elbows. His right forearm didn’t seem to work, and pain tore at him from the elbow. He slipped down to his back once more. Another attempt. It yielded the same result. He could see a bit more clearly now. He was in a room, some sort of hut. White bedsheets. His mouth was dry. He realized he could feel nothing below his throbbing right elbow, but he couldn’t think anything of it. The smell of blood, along with that of charred and wilted flesh pervaded the air around him. A slight breeze delicately ran itself over his face, having slipped through gaps in the hut’s walls. He understood that he could feel his body again, slowly. The black bandages and leather he wore under his robes were absent. If they weren’t he would have felt them clinging to his corrupted flesh. His robe was obviously gone. The wind, it had brushed his lips. His mask covered those. Frantically he tried to rise again, his mask was missing, it needed to be found, he needed it, where was it? As he rose, nausea roiled within him, and his head throbbed and the world spun. And once again it seemed his right forearm refused to do its job. He crashed down into the mattress once more.



The world repositioned itself along its conventional axis, and his head was content to settle upon a dull ache. Nahlgaaf’s faculties were slowly regaining their proper composure and strength, but still not quite getting there. It puzzled him, the situation with his arm. It was as if the forearm simply wasn’t there. Even the dull pain that usually emanated from every inch of his body was missing from it. He carefully tried to rise once more, planning on propping himself up using his right elbow, as it seemed pushing himself up with the arm wasn’t working. When his weight rested upon it, agony arced its way through him, and he let out a choking gasp of pain. Wet bandages clung around his elbow, sticking to burnt and oozing flesh. He pushed himself into a sitting position. His tortured lungs and throat made a sickly rattling noise as Nahlgaaf gasped, dragging air into himself with wheezing breaths. The crushing, terrible, realization was terrifying to Nahlgaaf. He couldn’t feel his right forearm for a reason, it wasn’t there. How could he fight like this? He was ruined, useless.



The time it took for him to get to his feet felt like a lifetime. As soon as success was made, the world began spinning again, and he almost tumbled to the ground. The world re-aligned itself, and his weak and shaking legs remembered part of their strength. He realized he was naked. He had known it before, but it hadn’t quite registered. He turned, slowly and sickeningly and reached for the bedsheet. His upper arm extended uselessly, baring his bandage wrapped stump at the bed. A crimson droplet fell onto the coarse white cloth. Nahlgaaf seized the sheet with his left hand, and wrapped it around his mutilated body. It slipped and fell to the floor. Nahlgaaf slowly knelt, almost losing himself to nausea as he did so. His head would not clear, his thoughts felt ponderous and weighty, and the pulsing pain would not cease. He tried again with the bedsheet. A staggering limp brought him to a washbasin. It was iron, showing some signs of rust. In the water’s reflection was a hideous visage.



Nahlgaaf stared into his own face for a time. The skin, like the rest of his body, was a network of burn scars. In times past, fire had taken him. It had twisted and melted and ruined. It had mangled his flesh and left his body as a grotesque ripple of charred scars. His pale green eyes gazed outwards. They seemed almost glassy and dead, but there was a roaring rage behind them, an unquenchable and inhuman thirst for vengeance and the spilling of guilty blood. The skin was ripped and torn away in a gruesome red triangle cornered by his left eye, cheekbone, and temple. That was a new disfigurement. A fit of violent coughing sent droplets of blood plunging into the basin. He recalled that his mouth was dry and painful. In contrast, it seemed his throat was never dry, but always painful. It was wetted and slick with seeping blood, a constant reminder of the ruin wrought by flame upon him. Why couldn’t he think properly? His head felt unbearably heavy. He cupped water from the basin with his sole remaining hand, and dribbled it over his face. He gave in to his thirst, draining the entire basin.



When he was done, he recalled his missing mask, and his reason for fighting himself free of the bed. He began a frenzied search for it, sifting through the hut. His zealous search yielded no results, and a nervous fear gripped his mind. It was then that his other great obsession whispered its way back into his consciousness. A surge of adrenaline and willpower sent him reeling towards the door. He had to know, if his efforts were undone, then this had all been for nothing. Nahlgaaf’s tattered hands gripped the door’s wooden handle, and he all but fell through it as it opened. And so he plunged out into stares and daylight.