[Afflicted: Terminal lucidity]

By being at death's door, all negative status effects are negated for a brief time.

[You are suffocating]

[HP 5/232]

With a start, he was awake and started to thrash around wildly. Something heavy tugged at him and he felt the world swim around him, disorienting him even more than he already was. After he stopped moving so wildly, he took a moment to gather his bearings. He couldn’t open his eyes as they were swollen shut and throbbed fiercely. He tried to focus on his senses, which was hard, as it felt as if he was burning up from the outside, pain flaring seemingly on every inch of his body and inside.

Pushing beyond the pain and sensing anything else than the pain was hard, but after a few moments, he could sense other subtler things through the loud shout of pain by focussing on it intently. The moment he lost focus, the pain blended everything out. Putting his full consciousness behind the effort to focus on anything but the pain, he felt as if he was floating in water. His face felt cooler, so it must be in the air. He tried to breathe in, but he couldn’t get any air, and the burning sensation in his lungs grew harder, the scream for air in his body becoming overwhelming.

[You are suffocating]

[HP 4/232]

He threw his legs down through the water, with what little force he could muster, and felt a tugging weight at his side, dragging him down. He pushed that sensation away for later consideration, desperate to get air into his lungs, he tried to swim blindly to somewhere he could climb out of the water. Feeling large clumps brushing against his skin, pushing through it, pushing them aside, thrashing wildly in the water with his arms and legs as he tried to find a walkway. His left arm wouldn’t work properly, every time he tried to move it,t it would hurt fiercely in his chest. Pushing on with his legs and his functioning arm, splashing his way blindly through the water.

[You are suffocating]

[HP 3/232]

Panic was starting to eat away at the edges of his mind. He didn’t want to die so close after his success! He couldn’t accept that it would be all for naught! He had to return to his tribe, show them how strong he had gotten, how much food he had gathered, and the weapons!

With renewed vigor, he splashed blindly around, pushing floating bits aside, desperate to find purchase somewhere. His bad arm bumped into something that didn’t give way and sent a huge flare of pain through his chest, that made him see white stars through his closed eyes.

With desperation, he grabbed with his good arm at the solid object and felt stone, and then a searing pain flared through his hand. Fingers hurting so bad at touching the course stone, made him flinch back from the side. It took him a moment to gather enough resolve and then grabbed the stone side, steeling himself against the pain that flared through his hand.

[You are suffocating]

[HP 2/232]

He found the edge and dug his claws into a crevice on the side and heaved with all the power his right arm could muster. Kicking with his legs in the water, he managed to halfway get his chest to rest on the side. He was lucky the water level was so high in this part of the sewer. He wouldn’t have managed otherwise, it flashed through his mind.

With some effort and will of the mind, he let go of his hold, doing his best to keep balance, kicking his legs in the water, trying not to slide back in. He managed to find another spot of purchase and pulled himself further until his entire upper body was on the side.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

But as he was pulling himself up, he felt a heavy weight pulling at his back, and in his unbalanced state, it rolled him on his side. A sharp stabbing pain shot through him.

[You have sustained piercing damage]

[HP 1/232]

He tried to scream out from the pain, but he couldn’t. His body coughed fiercely instead and he felt warm liquid escaping his mouth in a huge gush. With great pain he tried to breathe in again and felt sweet delicious air entering his lungs with a loud gasp, before he went into a new coughing fit, coughing up more water.

Lying there for a few moments on his side, his bad arm under him, breathing, coughing, he was enjoying the sensation of air entering his lungs, even though every breath came with a sharp stabbing pain. As he focussed on the breathing sensation, he felt as if his left side didn’t get as much air, as if the water wouldn’t get out there properly. He tried coughing again, but all he got was a giant stabbing pain in his left side, and quickly abandoned his attempts.

Pushing it to the side for now, as he needed to do something about his health quickly. A single rat-bite could kill him right now, or the wrong move that had caused the stab. He took a moment to think it over, whilst he took in sweet glorious breath after breath, wincing with pain at every air intake.

Considering where he was, he couldn’t have gone far from where he had battled the rats. His memory was fuzzy about the happenings there, but somehow he had survived the battle, so he must have won from the vermin, and landed in the water somehow.

That meant it would be likely that a rat corpse would be nearby, within reach. A rat corpse would mean food, food would mean minor restoration. Food would also attract other rats, so he would have to be quick in recovering, or risk succumbing to them.

Taking a sweet breath and holding it, to prevent him from screaming and attracting undue attention, he felt around with his right hand, which was hurting fiercely, with every gingerly touch after touch. Each time he touched the stone walkway, fire flared up in his fingers. He reached as far as he comfortably could, but found nothing with his hand, there was nothing nearby.

He let out his breath shakily and fought back the despair that tried to overwhelm him, threatening to drag him down into a deep dark hole in his subconsciousness.

He firmed his resolve and started to reach around with his foot in the water, feeling like he was dragging it through needles instead of water.

After a few moments, he felt something being shoved by his leg. With effort and care not to move his torso, to prevent whatever caused that stabbing damage to repeat the experience, he moved his foot up. Eventually, it was resting on top of something that had a little bit of give to it.

Gingerly he got a hold on a piece of it with his toes and started to drag it, ever so carefully towards him, within reach of his good arm. After what seemed like a painful century, he finally had a hold on the thing. He grabbed it, barely reaching it with his claws, and dragged it closer. Getting a proper hold on the thing, he dragged it between his legs, over his groin towards his chest, leaving a cool damp trail on him, that sent new sensations of pain.

Letting out a breath of relief, he gave himself a few moments to let the pain in his hand and legs subside. When the burning and piercing sensations had subsided to a more manageable level, he took up the thing he had grabbed with such effort and brought it to his mouth. He didn’t know what he had there in his hand, the pain made sensing what it was hard, it took everything he had in him to just keep hold of it. But he was willing to wager that it was a rat corpse, just what he needed.

Opening his mouth and biting down on it, his sharp pointy teeth tearing into it easily. Feeling cold liquid explode in his mouth, together with the stringy taste of rat he was overjoyed. He swallowed the chunk of meat whole, without chewing, before biting down, taking another chunk from the rat in his hand, this was however too large to swallow whole, so he had to chew.

Feeling rat bones pop and crack between his teeth as he chewed, he felt hope blossom ever so slightly in his chest. Every movement of his jaws sent pain through his swollen eyes. Focussing on eating, chewing, and swallowing, he just let the pain do its thing, numbing his mind until suddenly all he had left was a stringy, leathery piece of rat tail. Slurping it into his mouth and then chewing on it, he tried his best to get it down. After three painful and unsuccessful swallow attempts, he managed to get the mass down into his throat.

His stomach felt good now, full of food. He finally let his grip on his mind go, and the pain of it all overwhelmed him, robbing him of consciousness.

Through an extreme act of will, you have exercised discipline over your mind.

[Wisdom +1]