“Well, this sure isn’t what I expected,” the wasted man rumbled. Even in his derelict state, Margen was huge. He was not quite as big as a jotun or fomori, but he was about as close as a human could get. His shoulders were as broad as Mortalius’, even though what once must have been mighty muscles had been greatly diminished by the undead corruption eating him alive.
“I thought I was done with this cycle, and it was back to Ol’ Dooms again. Imagine my surprise to not only be talkin’ to somebody but being brought back from the brink so we could have this chat. So how long have I been missin’?”
“Almost two hundred and fifty years,” Yuk supplied telepathically. They had taken the form of a large millipede, about the size of a weasel, and had perched themself on Joe's shoulder. Their story so far was that Yuk was Joe’s familiar, in hopes of forestalling any awkward conversations. Other than this last tidbit of info, the bug boy had spent the last half an hour vacillating between frantic concern and geeking out over finding what was clearly their hero.
“Almost two hundred and fifty years,” Joe reiterated, examining the wreck of a man for what he should work on next. “How are you still alive after all this time?”
“Well, to be honest, I wasn’t for much of it. Special perk of DoomHerald there,” the warrior stated, leaning his head toward the crack in the floor. Joe leaned over and glanced into the crevasse. Sure enough, wedged into the fissure was a heavy-looking, long-handled sword. “If I die by undead, as long I got Dooms, the blade sucks me up and spits me out sometime later whole and hardy. Turns out death by mummy rot counts. Each time the rot finished me off, I made sure I was touching that sword.”
“You have been rotting and dying over and over for two hundred years?” Joe gawped. “How are you still sane?”
“I did what I had to. Besides, I wasn’t around the whole time. Each time I die, it takes longer and longer for me to come back. At one point, I figured I must be over three months between resurrections, and that was quite a while ago. Must be even longer than that now. It’s pretty damn close to impossible to tell time down here.”
“And you could never find your way out?” Joe asked as he maneuvered Margen so the wasted giant was sitting up, one shoulder propped against the wall. Joe could keep working on the founder’s back that way while allowing the man to be up from his face-down sprawl.
“I tried for a long while. Tangled with the Erlking’s rotters a thousand times, lookin’ and lookin’ for his damn Eternal Loom. By the time I realized it was at the top of the ziggurat, the bastard had me figured out, too. He had his ghoulies pick up my sword when I was inside it and lock it in a cage. The twisted bastard thought he could break me.” Margen growled. “Came and enthralled me over and over again every time I was reborn. Messed with my mind and memories. He loved watching his rot eat me alive. Always letting me hold the sword as I died so he could torture me again when I reappeared.”
The big man hung his head and panted. Joe had made some headway on the man’s lungs, but they were still a mess.
“That was a bad patch, I tell ya,” the founder continued. “That is until some daft wight made a mistake and had the sword outta the cage when I hopped out. I ripped it apart and got my ass away from that bleedin’ cage. I knew I wanted to escape for real; the problem was the Erlking had torn my memories to shreds. I had no idea where I wanted to go or even that there was a world outside the pyramid. So I just ran. Down was the path of least resistance, so that is the way I went. Down and down. Into the caves under the Erlking’s lair.”
“I know that one. We did pretty much the same thing.”
“Yeah, easy to do. The one thing I knew for certain was that I would die, but as long as I had DoomHerald, I’d come back. We found a cave, not this one at first, and hid. We died a bunch, but each time I returned, I got more of my mind back. We found what we thought was a better cave, this one. Unfortunately, the next time we awoke, the cave was flooded all the way to the ceiling, and DoomHerald was somewhere under all that water.”
“Oh, man. What did you do?” Joe prompted, enthralled by the man’s insane story.
“I found Dooms wedged deep into that crack. The water had completely filled this cave, and try as I might, that blade wouldn’t budge an inch. Waited for the water to drain away, all the while getting weaker and sicker. It was a close one. I had to die from the rot, touching the sword. If I drowned, that was the end o’ me.”
The sheer stubborn grit this man must possess left Joe feeling small. Joe had never had that much conviction about anything before, let alone embracing an endless torturous cycle of decay, death, and rebirth. Choosing to suffer decades … centuries of isolation and illness. Never seeming to even consider giving up.
Joe’s death was a blessing he embraced. He knew, without a doubt, if someone back on Earth had offered him a revolving door through rebirth and cancer again, he would have told them to go take a long walk off a short pier.
He stopped his ministrations and stared blankly at the stone floor by his feet, just trying to imagine the level of resolve it would take to fight to die a painful death by putrefaction, over and over and over again.
“Just as the rot was getting real bad, I got a break,” Margen continued, seemingly unaware he had lost Joe’s attention for a second. The big man was clearly so thrilled to have anyone to talk to that he had barely stopped speaking ever since Joe repaired his voice enough for him to do so.
“The water started to drain. Not much, but enough. That’s where I lost all my clothes. I had to make ropes. One, I wedge up there.” Maren nodded his chin toward the cave ceiling, where some ancient scraps of cloth were wedged around a small rock into a crack in the cave roof. “The rest I used to tied rocks to my foot so my toes stayed touching Dooms. Hung there for three days, freezin’ my nuts off, but I did it. Didn’t drown. Hypothermia almost got me. But I won. In the end, it was the rot that got me. When I came back, the cave had drained, but Dooms was well and firmly stuck.”
Joe shook away his heavy thoughts and returned to treating Margen’s spine, trying to get the big man the use of his legs back.
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“I tried to chip her back out,” the big man continued. Joe saw the edges of the crack were heavily scraped up, with a few chips, but the damage was pretty minimal. “Whatever stone that bloody floor is made of is a damn sight harder than any other stone I could find in ‘rot range.’ That’s how far I can safely go before I need to be back here.”
“I figured,” Joe replied, drawing out more of the absolutely disgusting ooze from the man’s back. Joe had long since thrown up anything in his stomach, even bile. He still retched dryly whenever he breathed too deeply, but he didn’t stop restoring. Already, he could see the spinal cord had gone from black to red, reaching from the man’s skull to about halfway down his back. Margen probably could move his arms now, but Joe wanted him to stay still for a bit longer, so he had not mentioned it yet. “What did you do for the next flood?”
“Hey. I’m not that dumb, no matter what Tinz will tell ya. If I couldn’t get the sword out then I made sure this room didn’t flood again. Dug out the low end of the room until it opened to a bunch a tunnels. Now I just gotta lie down when the rot gets bad and wedge my fingers in there.”
Joe shook his head and breathed a shallow breath. “Ok. I get the rebirth part, but how have you not starved to death or died of old age?”
“Well, not starving is an easy one.” Margen looked at his hand, causing the limb to twitch for the first time. “Huh?” The big man grunted. Joe looked at the festering twisted digit, trying to figure out what the founder meant, when he realized that amidst the blackened flesh was a simple dark band hidden against the rotten flesh. The ring was made of a dull ebon metal that blended into the putrefied skin. “Ring of Sustenance,” the warrior informed. “A staple for any guardsman. My first sergeant told me, ‘A good soldier eats when he can; a smart one learns how not to have to.’ As for old age, well, I earned myself a damn good trait from Vallur called ‘Living Legend.’”
A window popped up in the air. This one was a rich golden color instead of the blue, green, or even black ones Joe had become used to.
Legendary Achievement: [Living Legend] The world of Illuminaria is better for having you in it. Henceforth, you will age at a significantly decelerated rate.
“Got that for blocking Necronias from comin’ over the Baerrok Peaks. That was one heck of a battle. You think the Lark’s got some bad deaders? They got nothing on the crap the Necromancer was throwing at us. But you were asking about me not croaking. Well, I figure between being in the sword probably as much as I’m out of it and the [Living Legend] trait; I really ain’t aged all that much, even after all this time.”
“You got a trait from a god? I thought that stuff only came from the One Above.”
“Well, technically, you’re right. The One Above is the one that actually presents the scroll, but the gods can petition the Keeper of Fates. Vallur’s name was front and center on my trait offering, so the god of bravery musta thought I did a damn good job.”
Joe didn’t really understand the religion of this world yet, but now was not the time to get into it. He had reached the cluster of desiccated nerves at the base of the warrior's spine, and he was trying to think of the best way to clear the rot without destroying the delicate bundle.
He sighed … and immediately regretted it. Gagging and gasping, Joe stuck his head into the [Heart Fire] burning next to him. The wait for the next pulse seemed to be an eternity. When it finally came, the blast of undead scourging energy flushed the vile particles from his nostrils and throat, allowing him to breathe again. He had a second fire crackling under where he was working. That spell managed to incinerate much of the wretched puss, but the area they were in was still tight and seriously lacked ventilation. Joe would have paid to have Hah’roo’s wind powers available to them. Yuk had tried to use hundreds of tiny wings at one point but that had been a bust. The little cave was just barely tolerable at best.
On the plus side, if Joe managed to heal this cluster, Margen had a very good chance of regaining motor control again. Joe would have to keep bolstering the man’s health as the Mythic Mummy Rot was still attacking the founder’s systems, but with nonstop efforts, Joe was gaining ground.
“OK, this next step is going to be difficult. I need you to stay as still as you can, Margen. I’m going to cut a small slice in your skin and cast, but I want to time it with a [Heart Fire] pulse. I can count it down out loud if you want. I’m getting good at predicting the pulses of my spell.”
“Nah. Just do it.”
“We’ve been counting them off too, Joe. The only time this place is bearable. Want us to count down with you?”
“Perfect. Thanks, bud.”
Joe reached into his healer’s satchel, and a small scalpel-like knife slid into his grip automatically. The bag’s magics were only capable of minor things, but it knew how to be helpful. Joe located the best spot to cut so the rot would escape outward and not tear through the nerves he was trying to save. When Yuk reached twenty, he made the slice and waited for ‘two.’ He cast on ‘one,’ expelling a gush of oily chunky fluid. The [Heart Fire] burned much of it away and as well as soothing the newly cleansed nerve cluster. Joe added [Excorcise] and a [Healing Touch] with [Healer’s Ward] just to give Margen’s moldering body a bit more resistance as he tackled this delicate area.
“Hey,” the big man yelled. “Hey, I can feel my feet again. Huh, I thought for sure you were gonna have to carry Dooms outta here with me in it. Never thought you could get me moving after I got this bad.”
“It won’t last too long, but I figure if we can get you back alive, it would be better than waiting months or longer for you to come back. Either way, we will get DoomHerald to Fort Coral, and Mercy Suku should be able to save you. I promise.”
With that declaration, a window opened for Joe. A small, excited mental yip told him Yuk had also received the notification.
BRING HIM HOME (Epic)
You have found the lost Founder of Fort Coral, Margen the Mighty. Bring him back to Fort Coral alive or contained within the legendary sword, DoomHerald.
Reward: +2,000 Reputation with Fort Coral and one Epic-level item of your choice from the city’s Adventurer’s Guild.
“DAMN! That is a good reward. An epic item. That’s better than any we’ve got! And with that much reputation! We might even be able to get a real place to live.”
The comment threw Joe off. It had not occurred to Joe how much Yuk had to deal with in order to keep his secret. He was a bit stunned to hear his strange new friend didn't have a real place to live. Once they got back to Fort Coral, Joe swore to himself he’d make sure Yuk had someplace to call home.
Refocusing on the job at hand, Joe flooded Margen's back with multiple heals and watched the black recede. There still was no aura of blue health anywhere, but sections of the man’s large frame were no longer dead black. He was becoming a patchwork of red and gray, wounded and wasted. Even better, there were hints of pink here and there, indicating just ‘damaged’ tissue.
Working nonstop, Joe finally got the warrior to his feet, which was not a moment too soon. The three of them desperately needed to get out of that foul, suffocating little cave.