One Moon Until the Day of Akkavan
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Appo’s forearms were drenched in thick, lumpy blood. He stood over Mena’s torso, staring inside her exposed abdominal cavity with an inquisitive and perplexed look. Jere stood at Appo’s side, holding a pair of scalpels that Appo had just used to debride some excess flesh. Jere had spent the better part of the last few hours avoiding the corpse as much as possible. He was feeling the full weight of his nausea.
“Do you see anything unusual, Jere? Anything catch your eye?”
Jere shook his head without looking. He had caught glimpses of Appo’s work but had no idea what to make of it. Not that he was trying particularly hard to look. He had been in enough fights to know what blood and guts look like. “I just see flesh, healer.”
“You’re right. There’s only flesh.”
“I could have told you that before we went and cut her open.”
“No, I mean… there’s nothing to see. Literally. The human body should have organs. But as far as I can tell, I can’t make out anything discernable.”
Jere raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying she’s missing all her organs?”
“Um, not exactly… She clearly has a heart and lungs, though they're a little hypertrophied. But her digestive tract has been completely liquified. Stomach, intestines, liver, spleen… It’s all dissolved.”
Appo took off his gloves and wrote a few notes in his journal. As he did so, Jere willed himself to look. He held back his repulsion but could understand what Appo was saying. Mena’s abdominal cavity was nothing more than mass of chunky flesh and blood. He could make out the deep maroon lungs and heart covered in a tangled mesh of veins, but not much else.
“It explains why the screamers lose their appetite,” Appo said to himself, “they have no stomach to deposit food into. The esophagus appears atrophied past the pharynx, almost like a vestigial structure. Instead, the epiglottis appears to be fused to the trachea, opening to the bronchi alone.”
Jere did his best to keep up with Appo’s musings, but he could only make out every other word.
“The lungs are certainly hypertrophied, looking about one and a half times larger than they should be, and appear to have increased blood flow in its direction,” Appo continued, “I wish I had more time to pry, for I feel as though this unique respiratory system could explain the source of the afflicted’s screams. Perhaps this is how they survive without food and water?”
Jere groaned, albeit quietly. “Healer, what have we learned here? Was this worth risking our lives?”
Appo pondered for a moment. “It confirms a couple of theories. A lack of appetite and hydrophobia are undeniable symptoms of the disease. I theorize that the liquefication of the gut begins immediately after infection. It’s the only explanation for why it has deteriorated to this extent in such a short amount of time.”
“So it confirms something we already knew. Great. What else?”
Appo looked frantically around the room, as though he had so many thoughts running through his head that he was struggling to arrange them into something coherent. “Well, there are no fat reserves. The muscles are hypertrophied as well, though it's nothing like I've ever seen. They're denser than the muscles of warriors... Most troubling, as far as I can tell, decomposition has occurred at a rate much slower than what is normally expected. I dare say I’ve yet to find any sign of it.”
“What about sleeplessness? Anything that explains that?”
Appo shook his head. “I would have to look at the brain. We don’t have enough time to dissect that, as much as it would help.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“So what’s next?”
“I present what I’ve found to the Heads. I’ll have to explain how I got access to a body, but at this rate, it’s more important to let them know that what we’re dealing with here necessitates much further study. Perhaps this can convince them to take precautions against celebrating the holiday.”
Jere stood silently. Appo put his gloves back on, returned to the corpse, and grabbed the flaps of skin around the open torso. He wordlessly motioned toward Jere for his suturing needle, which was ignored.
“Jere?”
Jere didn’t respond. His hands were shaking.
“Jere, I need your attention. We can’t be caught down here, remember?”
Jere finally spoke, his voice cracking slightly. “I haven’t slept since I pushed her. I don’t feel tired either.”
“It’s been a long night,” Appo reassured, “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if we’re both infected? I can’t tell whether I’m even hungry. I could be cursed! We could both be cursed!” Jere’s voice was dangerously close to becoming a shout.
Appo turned to him, raising his hand in his direction. “Listen to me. You are not infected. You are going to be fine. I need you to be fine.” He spoke softly, but with authority. “Here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to take care of Mena, and then you’re going to take us out of here. After that, you’re going to go back home, you’re going to take a long nap, and then you’re going to eat a large meal. But you can only do those things if you’re with me on this, okay?”
Jere was struck by Appo’s composure. It instilled him with confidence, even if it was fleeting. At that moment, he could have trusted Appo with anything. He nodded his head, and the two got to work.
It took another hour for Appo to return Mena to her original state. The work was demanding and tedious, but as Appo promised, Mena looked good as new. The sutures held Mena’s chest together remarkably well, and the linen wrappings were easy to tie back together. Once completed, Appo gathered his belongings, carefully packed everything coated in Mena’s blood into a separate knapsack, and loaded himself back into the tumbril. Jere covered Appo with the white sheet, pushed aside the stone slab with ease, and pulled the tumbril out of the sacrificial chamber.
Jere carefully navigated the tumbril through a different exit of the temple, hoping to avoid coming across the same guards that accosted him earlier. Fortunately, the new temple guards he encountered upon exiting allowed Jere to pass without incident. The sun was still below the horizon, though it was rising quickly. They had left with just minutes to spare.
After navigating a few streets away, Jere pulled the tumbril into the alley where he had found it. He lowered it gently and removed the white sheet on top, only to discover that Appo was fast asleep. Jere was furious. Not just at the fact that Appo had risked blowing their cover by snoring as a corpse, but that he had been able to fall asleep at all. Already anxious, Jere had to repress a growing fear that he would never be able to close his eyes again.
Jere shook his unconscious partner awake. Appo groggily raised his head. “Did we make it?”
“No thanks to you, ignoramus! Get out of here before we’re seen!”
Appo wanted to thank Jere for everything he had done, but at that moment words were struggling to come to him. Instead he nodded, grabbed his things, jumped out of the tumbril and walked away.
Jere rushed back to his home, making sure to take back alleys and lesser traveled streets to avoid the patrols. He was certain he made it back without anyone the wiser, but his thoughts were scrambling. He wondered if the temple guards would be able to keep a secret. He was terrified that Adok grew a backbone and reported him to Penzer. And of course, he wondered whether his anxious thoughts were a growing sign that he was destined to lose his humanity to the disease. He was always one to push darkened thoughts aside, but doubt was creeping in every second he was awake.
He opened his door to see Adok passed out on his bed. Jere was angered by the affront, before realizing it meant that Adok did as he asked. Upon closing the door, Adok leaped out of bed with the discipline of a trained soldier, collecting himself as though he were preparing for a scolding.
“Jere! You made it back! Did you accomplish everything you set out to do?”
“Guard,” Jere said with impatience, “Get the fuck out of my bed and return to your post.”
Adok didn’t have to be told twice. He made sure to stay away from Jere as he passed him.
Jere removed his priest robe and sat on his bed. He tried his best to keep his mind from racing, but he couldn’t help but contemplate death, or worse. He tried coming to terms with dying in Ash after all his travels; trapped as a mercenary with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. He was lost in his own selfish thoughts, becoming increasingly certain that he would be experiencing his last moons with control of his body. He wondered if he could just follow Duncic’s lead, and simply slice his throat with the scimitar, just so he wouldn’t have to wait.
Suddenly the bed felt soft. His eyelids became heavy. He leaned over on his pillow as his thoughts drifted away. Jere fell into the deepest sleep he had in years.