Chapter XIV

Michael and Uriel were not back yet. Lucius could not understand the reason for their being so late. His gut told him that something was obviously wrong. Laili was restless, which made it very difficult to fall asleep. Time moved slowly, and he put all that on his groundless anxiety. At least he had already made his mixtures, which he planned to sell in different neighborhoods. If he had not enough sleep, it would be difficult to wake up early, but obviously, there was nothing he could do about it.

He tried to go out as often as possible, hoping to see familiar sights. The only things he could lay his eyes on were the mystical shadows of hundred-year-old trees, which, swallowing the moon behind the bushy branches, let both the imagination and fear run wild.

The fire was still crackling in the fireplace. He heard a strange noise behind the door. He had only made one step towards the entrance when the door burst open and blood froze in his veins. Uriel was standing at the door, covered in blood, with his blond hair stuck to his wet face. He could barely stand on his feet.

"What's wrong with you? Where is Michael?" Lucius rushed towards his friend to help him...

"No time for explanations," Uriel stopped him, "grab your medicines, take Laili and follow me..." He had such a miserable voice that Lucius could easily guess how much effort it took him to even utter a word.

He got down to work instantly, woke Laili up, grabbed his medicines, and threw them all in his bag.

"Now what?" Lucius followed Blondy, who was already standing at the door.

Holding Laili and his bag, he followed Blondy, whose hair now had turned red. The darkness covered everything around Blondy and the children, following him.

Uriel was bleeding. He could barely stand on his feet. Lucius could not wait to bombard him with questions.

The bleeding became stronger. If Lucius did not help, they could not reach the city. He stopped as soon as the thought went through his head. He put Laili down.

"I have to see the wound, or else you won't be able to continue," he told Uriel. He took off the shirt, tore it. Uriel did not object, he obviously knew Lucius was right, he just sat silently on the ground while Lucious was treating his wounds. As they continued their way to the Mondelay, they heard the bells ringing from the city.

"What is going on?" Lucius asked Uriel.

"I will explain later," he answered, frowning in pain.

"Don't worry, he is alive," said Blondy in a frail voice and Lucious finally sighed with relief.

The dark forest looked sinister and smelled damp. The roots of the trees tangled and intertwined like snakes, made it even more challenging to walk. Lucius was careful not to fall. He had no right to fall. He was holding Laili with one hand while helping Blondy with the other.

Mondelay was unfamiliarly alive at night. The streets were overcrowded, people were standing like sardines in a can. Huge bells of the church were booming. The entire crowd was moving towards the wall of the noble neighborhood. Fierce screams sometimes broke the sickening silence around. The boy wondered what was happening.

The closer they got to the wall, the more people appeared around them. People standing in the longest queue near the main gate doing everything to reach the place first. However, the gates were protected by armed soldiers.

Uriel headed towards the soldier on the horse. Lucius recognized the commander. As soon as the commander saw the boys, he whispered something to the guardsman standing next to him, who led them to the destination. The soldiers made a narrow passageway in the crowd. It was so tiny that they struggled to move forward, however, they soon forgot about it as soon as they ended up on the other side of the gate. Lucius expected Uriel to explain why the guardsmen behaved like that, but the wounded and exhausted boy could barely stand on his feet, let alone explain everything. They headed towards the streets, which had turned into ruin after the last attack. Uriel suddenly stopped and weakly pointed out the building that miraculously was still standing. It was a sign they had to enter there.

The building must have belonged to one of the wealthy families of the town. The boys almost crawled on all fours from exhaustion to get to the door, which, to their surprise, opened soon and they ended up in the hall with pillars and filled with wounded officers.

Lucius heard painful moans from everywhere; the people dressed in orange were attending to the officers, trying to save their lives, but it was obvious there were not enough doctors to help everybody. The ones left without the healers were pitifully asking for help.

"What the hell happened here?" gasped Lucius, but he soon realized that no one would answer his question, so he turned to Uriel, who was about to lose consciousness. He tried with all his might to drag him inside the building, while kept asking for help. No one came to help though, nobody had a minute to spare for them. Lucius was holding screeching Laili in one hand and trying to drag Uriel into the uncertain direction.

"It's them!" Lucius heard someone's voice and guessed they were talking about him. The person led them into the room with several beds, one of which was occupied by Michael lying with closed eyes.

"What happened to him?" asked Lucius and moved towards the bed. However, someone grabbed and stopped him, saying he was alive. Michael opened his eyes, too.

"Calm down, mate, I'm fine," he said in a frail voice.

He obviously was not, but Lucius chose not to reply to him. He gazed at Uriel, who was being helped to occupy the only vacant bed. One of the three people was a middle-aged man dressed in orange, two others were dressed in soldier uniforms. Lucius put down Laili and opened his bag full of his medicines. Then he went up to Michael, smiling weakly, and started examining him (Uriel was being treated by the middle-aged man, so Lucius helped Michael).

"How do you feel?" he asked quietly, but the answer he was feeling just fine did not satisfy Lucius, so he continued examining him. Michel had several wounds, however, they were not deep, so Michael's life was not in danger. He already had his wounds bandaged, but obviously, that was done quickly and superficially, so he re-dressed his wounds and used one of his medicines, "lotion made of the twisted roots" (that's what mother called it). Lucius had just finished attending to him and was about to ask him what had happened when Michael asked him to help the dark-haired girl, who was lying unconscious on the bed. Lucious looked around. There was no doctor here. The middle-aged man had finished looking after Uriel and tiptoed out of the room. Lucius looked at bandaged Uriel and thought he looked all right, so he moved towards the unconscious girl. Surprised, he was trying to guess who the girl was, or how it came that Michael knew her.

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"Her name is Angela," he heard Michael's frail voice when he got to the girl's bed and started examining her.

"Why would I care about her name?" Lucius thought and stared at the girl's face; he had never seen her, otherwise, he would have definitely remembered such a beauty. He carefully examined her and realized that her condition was much worse compared to the boys. Someone badly wounded her in the shoulder and the even worse, much deeper wound was near her stomach. Someone did not correctly administer the bandages, and she was still bleeding. Michael knew he had an arduous task ahead...

Lucius wiped the cold sweat off his forehead; he was panting and his hands were trembling. Could not really tell how much time had passed, but it felt as if the entire night had gone by. He often witnessed his mum stitch the wounds, but he had never tried doing that himself. But now, when he had, he could hardly believe he had managed well.

The girl woke up and had to endure unbearable pain.

"Scream, that will help with pain," told her Lucius several times, but the girl was silent even though she was bleeding from the lips she was biting on, suffering from the unbearable pain. Lucius had got the instruments needed for stitching and the medical spirit, though it took him a lot of self-convincing and persuasion, otherwise, he could not manage so much and so well.

After stitching the wounds, he could not think of anything else, so he just gave the girl remaining spirits and added that it would ease up at least some of her pain.

The girl mumbled something like a thank you and quickly took a shot (she grimaced, that was the only disdain she expressed).

Lucius moved on to Uriel. Laili was with him so that she would not see stitching the wounds - he left her in the farthest place of the room, with Blondy. Lucius sat near the bed and petted Laili on her head.

"Don't be afraid of anything," he caressed the tear-some baby and hugged her. Uriel had woken up too and was staring up at the ceiling.

"Won't you tell me what has happened?" Lucius asked finally, tired of waiting for so long, and looked questioningly at Michael (he looked better than others). Michael signed and told their story- what happened after they had met a girl called Angela in the tavern, he described the broken windows and red eyes, blood rivers and slaughtered people, cutthroats and faces suffering from pain, fighting against the one-armed soldier and the attempt to hide on the roof, the red-eyed enemies on the roof and the wizard in a mask who saved their lives, the fight under the moonlight and in the tavern. Michael continued their story and described how they miraculously survived the death several times, how selflessly the stranger fought against dozens of soldiers, how he revived the dead in the tavern so that they could also join him in the fight, how the tavern burned down during the battle and how Uriel and Michael fought against one guardsman, but in vain, as he injured Angela and Michael. However, Uriel beheaded him with his sword, later how selflessly Michael and Uriel helped the wounded masked wizard to get away from the red-eyed soldiers when the second round of the guardsmen circled the tavern and how the red-eyed monsters ran after Michael, Uriel, Angela, and the wizard and they once again mercilessly fought against six monsters on their way, but now together with the army. Michael described the unimaginable strength the red-eyed ones possessed, so if not the mysterious stranger, nobody would have been able to stop the monsters. They would have slain the second army and continued to slaughter innocent citizens.

According to Michael, after defeating six monsters, the badly wounded wizard told the commander of the Mondelay army to warn the citizens to seek shelter from other red-eyed monsters in the noble neighborhood.

The guardsmen were so shocked after the fight that they still could not think straight. The black-robed stranger was a miracle sent by God. Some of them declared a state of emergency, the others helped the wounded to get to the rich neighborhood. Michael and Angela followed the flow, whereas Uriel went to warn him and Laili.

"Where is this masked man?" asked Lucius after a long silence. Somebody answered he was being taken care of. "But how can this place accommodate the entire city?" he asked once again, though he knew no one would answer the answer was silence. Everybody (except Laili) was deep in their thoughts. Lucius could hardly breathe in this room.

"I will be back soon," he went out. The coolness of the hall greeted him as soon as he stepped out, but the moans of the wounded were so depressive. He was about to leave the building when one doctor stopped him.

"Do you know how to stitch a wound?" he asked, and when Lucius nodded silently, he continued: 'We don't have enough people to look after the injured. Please help us.

Having no other choice, Lucius had to agree. That's how he ended up with one soldier with one leg already amputated and a gaping wound in the other one. The soldier was tied to the newly assembled bed so that he would not interfere with the doctor, although the rope could not hold the soldier back and he was still restless-the ropes rubbed the skin on his hands but the patient would not stop moving. At first, Lucius thought the pain was making him wamble, but after hearing his screams, he soon realized something else, perhaps, the unimaginable horror he had experienced, had made him scream. The wounded was obviously trying to escape from someone or something and was screaming his lungs out, "Don't let it touch me, let somebody stop it..."- Lucius was horrified by this gruesome sight and tried to focus on the wound he was stitching with trembling hands, although sometimes his eyes crept to the amputated leg.

Lucius lost the track of time. He could no longer count how many soldiers he stitched and how many times he thrust a needle into the flesh split open. They tied some of the wounded to beds. Some of them were unconscious and could feel nothing, and some bore the pain heroically. Every poor, delirious and exhausted person had different wounds.

Lucius could no longer take it: moaning, hopeless screams simmered in and swelled his heart, the smell of sweat and blood suffocated him. He threw the needle into a bowl of some boiled water and left the building. Nobody stopped him, nobody asked him for help.

Surgeons were swarming in the yard. They had to operate in harsh conditions and now they were catching their breaths outside, trying to talk, to think. It did not surprise Lucius looking at them standing in the yard. He expected that everyone else would also want to get away from the horror happening inside.

Lucius wanted to talk to anybody, so he hurriedly crossed the garden and went out into the wide streets of the rich part of the city, which now were filled with people. The long line of people meandered outside the palace. People continuously entered the place through the enormous gate. The noble people were angrily talking to the soldiers. They must have been against the people entering their neighborhood, but the soldiers were not giving in, making them even angrier.

Lucius would never forget these streets, how he ran along them looking for Laili, how he ran for life.

Staring at the endless stream of people, Lucius wondered how many people were still beyond the gate. Probably many more than inside it. Would the neighborhood be able to give shelter to everybody who needed it? If yes, for how long? He was not sure of the answer; he was afraid of the future, of the creatures different from people with their red eyes and supernatural power. If he had seen them, he would think less about them, but now his imagination wrapped them in a haze of uncertainty that stirred tremendous turmoil in his mind.