Tomaz: Enlightenment

Woo - Chapter :)

A jagged pain tore through his chest, his back started to spasm and arch as Graim tried to escape his confines. The last thing he had remembered was falling unconscious at the side of the worn path. Evidently he didn’t hide well enough. Trying to open his eyes, the Prince slumped back into a lying position, the weight on his forehead covered his eyes and prevented any chance of him being able to see where he was.
“You’re going to hurt yourself more if you continue to struggle like that! And I swear, if I have to stitch you up again, you’re going to regret it!”
Graim tensed at the sound of the voice, it was a woman’s for sure… but that explained nothing. Wetting his dried lips, the Prince attempted to reply in the strange language. “Where am I?”
The sound of humourless laughing came closer as the wet cloth was taken from his brow. Graim squinted against the light, but the hazy blur shot another bolt of pain towards his skull.
Eventually the lamp light stopped flickering, allowing the Prince to open his eyes hesitantly. He was in a log cabin, a lonely fireplace in the corner and walls with few adornments. After looking to his left, he gasped. The voice returned, however this time there was more emotion in it.
“That would be my only daughter, by the time we knocked you out, she had lost a lot of blood…”
Graim couldn’t tear his eyes from the young girl, she could only have been seventeen summers at least.
“I… did that to her?” the Prince asked with a breaking voice.
The girl’s mother walked into his field of vision, her tear streaked face belied the calm voice with which she spoke. “No, it wasn’t you… it was the monster inside of you.”
Graim closed his eyes and felt the tears form, how could he have been capable of such an action.
“Why did you help me if I did that? Why didn’t you just leave me to die?”
The woman sighed and got to her feet, Graim looked at her face and only saw a deep sadness. The cloth returned to cover his eyes and he began to relax.
“I really don’t need this cloth on my eyes, they’ve relaxed enough as it is…” Graim said as he turned his head to face the roof of the cabin.
“The cloth isn’t for your sake, I just don’t want to have to see those Golden eyes after all these years.”
The prince tensed at those words, “What are you talking about?”
The woman walked back to her seat and covered her daughter with a worn blanket. She sighed for a moment before she answered the wounded Prince.
“You’re not the first I’ve come across with that illness, another person would probably be less understanding of your situation but I had a husband once that tried to overcome the disease.”
Graim opened his mouth to speak, but his mind couldn’t form the words…he just lay there and listened to the woman.
“He was always such a happy man, he tried for years to overcome the weakness and he managed to hide it from me for years. Always refusing to seek medical help, he tried to carry on with his life… I saw a change in him.”
The woman put her hand on her child’s forehead, feeling for a temperature. The child inhaled sharply and started to shake until the woman cooed her back into a relaxed state. Tucking the worn cloth around the girl’s shoulders the woman turned her attention back to the man lying on wooden table.
“…I think it was four summers before his eyes changed, he later explained to me that he started to hear voices when he walked in the woods. I feared for his sanity, but he said that the voices welcomed him and sought only to help. Obviously when I heard this I laughed and tried to reason with him… but it was no use. He started to talk back to the voices and started to lose his mind…”
The woman got to her feet and brushed the non-existent dust from her lap before she went to the fireplace. Graim could hear the rustling sound of iron being grated against a rock like surface and began to slightly panic. “What does this have to do with me? My eyes aren’t even yellow…”
The woman paused briefly and Graim realised that he had burst out in Vancequan. Thinking quickly, the Prince tried to translate what he had said in the woman’s tongue.
Looking to the stoker that she held in her hand, the woman smiled. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t intending on hurting you, I just need to sweat the fever out of my daughter… her body is starting to reject the venom from your teeth. I just hope I was able to counter it in time.”
Graim wanted to ask what she was talking about, but a warm pain shot through his spine, sending him into a deep sleep.

A light touch woke him from his sleep, his eyes opened to look into a pair of innocent green eyes directly in front of him. Graim gasped in surprise and tried to move out of the way, but his reaction was nothing to the startled yelp of the frightened girl.
Graim turned his head away out of the shock and tried once again to move from the leather braces that bound him to the table. When he turned back to look at the girl, all he saw was the green eyes shadowed by a pair of knees clutched tightly to her body.
The Prince took a breath before speaking, he didn’t want to scare the girl any more than she already was.
“Where is your mother?” he asked slowly, hoping that she could understand his foreign accent.
The girls green eyes darted to the door quickly before disappearing under a mass of jet black hair.
“So she left for a while… what is your name?”
The girl shuffled uncomfortably before gasping in pain. Graim’s eye locked onto her right shoulder and saw a slow stain of blood begin to appear. Slamming his head back on the table, the Prince wondered what the hell had happened to him. Could he have been so hungry that he had tried to attack an innocent child?
Impossible! He was far too weak to stand, let alone try to bite anything.
Closing his eyes, he tried to remember what had happened back at the city. The lightning magi had freed him, however after that most of it was a blur.
“Tipp…mine is Tipp”
Graim opened his eyes and stared at the girl, “Who taught you how to speak Vancequan?”
“Father…”
Graim was about to ask another question before the girl welled up with tears and ran off to another room.
The prince lay on his back wondering how he possibly could have harmed such a girl, she was petrified.
“Finished scaring my daughter?” The womanly voice returned as the door closed behind her.
“I didn’t mean to do it, she was here and I asked her a question… she can speak Vancequan?”
The woman smiled as she took a seat beside the table, she started to check on the stitching on the shoulders. “I would hope that she could speak it after all the years she’s been practicing it.”
Graim was confused, “Why would she want to speak our language? We’re the least interesting people in all of Shiroz…”
The woman laughed at the comment but continued her inspection of his arms. “She’s one of the most gentle girls in the world, and she hates violence… her father taught her that Vancequan men don’t fight, so she learned the language so she could find herself a decent man.”
Graim looked at the woman, “You’ve got to be joking… She learned it so she could find a nice man?”
The woman smiled again, her face lighting up as she talked about her own daughter. “Once she puts her mind to something, good luck to anyone that tries to convince her otherwise. You should have seen her face when I told her where you were from…”
Graim smiled for a moment and the woman stopped her inspection briefly. “You have a nice smile when you stop worrying…”
The Prince lost his smile and stared at the woman, “Sorry, I’m just not accustomed to smiling after escaping captivity only to nearly kill a girl…”
The woman locked eyes with the Prince and said softly, “If I thought you were a killer, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, your highness.”
Graim froze… she knew who he was!
“How did you …why haven’t you called the guards?”
The woman smiled bitterly, “You really don’t understand do you? The only way you’ll get over your illness is constant willpower, being locked in a cell will kill you and everyone around you… this way you have a chance.”
Graim sighed, “I don’t understand why you’re being so nice to me… I nearly killed your daughter.”
“Nearly killed her… but I made a promise to my husband that I would not let his life be forgotten, hopefully I will be able to teach you the things he discovered about the illness so you can survive?”

Releasing the leather straps, the woman took a step back to allow the man to sit up properly. Graim tested his shoulder and found it to be healing nicely, a long scar reached across his two arms, extending down his back. Black scorch marks peeled much of the surrounding skin, but the pink spots indicated its healing. Stretching his arms and legs, a smile peeled across his face. “Thank you for helping me, there is a question I have to ask though…”
The woman walked to the lonely cupboard and took out a small black book. “Its written mostly in Tomassian so you’ll have a bit of trouble with the translations, but everything about his life with the illness is documented in here.”
Graim took the book and leafed through the pages before he asked, “Actually, my question was about the illness itself, what is it? Am I going mad?”
The woman’s smile turned into a worried frown, “You mean that you really don’t know what’s happening to your body? You don’t know why you were able to last so long on the poles without food, why your body hasn’t collapsed in on itself? You really don’t know?”
The Prince closed the book and looked the woman in the eye, “What’s happening to me?”
However it wasn’t the woman that answered. Tipp sat atop the table he was on moments before and stared at Graim before telling him, “You’re becoming the Wolf…”

Author's Note

Have fun...

Reviews

[Bethany Tipping]

Ah Graim chapter, How I've been anticipating this :D I prefer this arc for him rather than the original...(I wonder why?:P) Awesome job, can't wait to read more! :D

[FoolsGold23]

ohhhh Hey now!! this gets tricky, and to think I liked him before, now he's dealing with a potentially fatal/interesting malady...hehe, Graim just keeps getting better....doesn't thrill me like Anxious though, but he's a great fellow. ;) awesome work!