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Only An Empath
by Respite NewWynter
The noise of battle first reached Respite’s ears as he was travelling through a lightly wooded area just west of the Yegharran Plains, a half-day’s journey from Ta’Illistim. A clash of metal, a scream, then silence.
Respite pulled up the hood from his black leather cloak, covering his features as he slipped quietly into an open gap in the thinning trees. Just beyond lay the seemingly endless plains, home to deer of all manner and their predators, the brindlecats.
Walking out into the sunlight, two crumpled figures grabbed Respite’s attention. The nearest was clearly dead: a warrior, paired falchions twisted and resting at his feet, his body bent and broken in a disturbing echo of his destroyed weapons. One hand was nearly completely severed, the entire arm hanging at an unpleasant angle.
Respite quietly knelt beside the fallen swordsman, slid a small flask free from the shadows of his cloak and silently poured a mouthful of its milky white fluid into the warrior’s mouth.
Replacing the flask, Respite turn his attention quickly to the warrior’s companion. Blood covered the ground behind the Sylvan ranger, but loud, labored breaths proved there was still life in his body. How long it would last would be up to Respite.
The lad was indeed a ranger, Respite presumed from the snapped bow that lay beside him and the arrow still clenched in a bloodied hand.
"Too young to take on scouts, my friend," Respite said, kneeling beside the fallen elf and pulling back his cloak’s hood. "Especially an archer."
The words caught the ranger’s attention, stirring him to sudden, pained motion. The Sylvan twisted painfully to face Respite. His throat was nearly crushed, and terror filled his suddenly wide eyes.
"It’s ok now," Respite said, his words soft and comforting. He wiggled his pointed ears almost playfully. "You’re among friends, brother."
The young ranger gasped for breath, trying to force words loose from his throat. Spitting blood, he managed to cough out a single word.
"Trap!"
Respite smiled calmly down at the stricken elf.
"It’s okay, friend, just rest now."
A quick assessment of the ranger’s condition revealed that beyond his throat wound, a deep laceration across his back was the lad’s main injury. Even now, blood bubbled and gushed from the ripped skin.
Respite shifted to turn the youngster on a side, getting a clearer look at the wound staining the elf’s deep green leathers a sick purple color.
The ranger started in sudden pain, still motioning in fear.
"Go…." he said, pausing painfully to suck in a wet, cracking breath before slumping again to the soft grass. "Back!"
Respite smiled once more, calmly, as if the ranger had told some private joke.
Respite softly traced his fingertips across the ranger’s back and paused.
Amazingly, the blood flowing from the young elf slowed, then trickled to a stop. The skin quickly stitched itself back together, leaving only healthy pink flesh where the wound had once been visible through the gash in his green leathers.
The young elf couldn’t see the wound close. Neither could he see the dark spot that started to grow wider on the back of Respite’s own charcoal grey leathers.
But other eyes could.
As Respite took the youngter’s wound, a low, throaty laugh echoed across the sunlit glen.
An orc scout, hidden in the bushes behind Respite, stepped noisily into the sunlight. A variety of colorful stones and feathers decorated the gnarled creature’s armor haphazardly, a stone for every fallen victim, a feather for every rank.
The scout motioned, waving with a bent claw, and two other scouts, less decorated but each at least 30 pounds heavier than the healer, revealed themselves in front of where Respite was kneeling over the softly moaning elf.
Quickly, they took up positions surrounding the dead warrior and injured Sylvans.
If
Respite had noticed the orcs, and surely he must have, he didn’t show it,
quietly tending to the elf, covering him protectively while the last traces
of injury disappeared from the ranger’s back.
The orc scout pulled himself up to his full height, laughing deeply from his belly.
"Killing dem both," he growled in broken Commonspeak, clearly for Respite’s benefit.
Respite quietly laid the elf on his back in the soft grass and softly started to wipe the young Sylvan’s brow free of sweat and blood.
As one, the two scouts slid their weapons free from their sheaths – bone-hilted iron longswords, each as long as Respite’s arm. The pair took slow steps forward.
"Trap fail dis time," the leader of the orcs growled again, mocking. "Iz only empaff. Better fight nexx time."
Respite froze in place.
The two younger scouts hesitated in response, looking to their leader for direction.
Slowly, as if in slow motion, Respite stood, turning to stare calmly at the single orc, his hands empty, his back turned to the others. The dark cloak fell quickly over him, draping across his features.
"Only an empath?"
The orc did not answer, its hairy face either intrigued or amused by the boldness of the lone healer who stood just a few paces away.
He did, however, slide his own weapon free of its sheath.
"ONLY AN EMPATH?"
Respite muttered something quietly under his breath.
The orc hesitated, buying time for his fellows to draw closer to the healer who continued to present only his still-bleeding back to them.
Respite spoke again, his voice calm, somehow cold to the ear in the warmth of the summer day. His soft brown eyes stayed locked on the orc.
"I have something for you to tell your people."
The words were still registering in the orc leader’s brain when Respite’s hand flicked free of his cloak. The motion was small, quick and unexpected like the strike of an adder.
The decorated orc froze suddenly in place. He leaned hard and struggled, but it was all at once as if unseen forces were holding him still.
Respite smiled softly at the orc, whose face was now frozen, looking forward at him. Quietly, the healer took a step forward.
In a voice that was suddenly half-commanding and half-panicked, the orc grunted quickly, "Kill de empaff!"
The first orc held back, uncertain. The second, however, had no such indecisiveness.
He flung himself immediately at Respite’s back with a howl of rage.
The empath was quicker, though.
The black cloak flared wildly as he turned to reach for the enraged monster. An invisible blow of pure force crashed into the orc, unbalancing it in midair, tossing its giant form back against a tree like a rag doll.
Respite’s motion gave the other scout time to attack. The beast leaped forward on powerful legs, bringing the longsword down at the empath’s exposed neck.
Respite twisted, turning to try and avoid the blow. The blade swept down, suddenly hindered and redirected by an unseen wall of force that seemed to blanket the healer. It was just enough to save his life.
The huge blade swept down to the ground, but not before slicing into the flesh of Respite’s upper arm. Respite dodged backwards, staring down the orc quietly.
Without a word, Respite waved his hand again.
Aghast, the orc could only stare as the bloody wound he had just caused quickly healed itself, until it was as if it had never happened, replaced instead by a smooth scar that looked days old.
Before the orc could react to the healing, Respite was in motion again.
The bound orc could only watch in frustration as Respite’s dark form knelt and leapt like a streak toward his compatriot, reaching into his cloak again as he came. The decorated orc saw the mace in Respite’s hand first as it exploded through the other’s back, then again as the Sylvan pulled it free, letting the corpse slump without ceremony to the ground.
Calmly, Respite showed his back to the bound orc, turning his attention again to the second of the two inferiors. That other orc was leaning back against the tree, trying to claw his way up to a standing position on a leg that was very clearly broken.
Grunting in pain, the orc somehow found the strength, adrenaline or stupidity to launch himself, screaming wildly, at Respite one more time.
Calmly, the healer reached for the orc again. This time, the unbalancing hit him head on, snapping his neck back sharply with a loud CRACK. The orc fell backwards, slumping over his fallen comrade, and lay still.
Respite turned back to the bound orc.
"Only an empath?"
Quietly, Respite slid the mace back under his dark cloak. He stooped beside the ranger, who had grown just as quietly amazed as the bound orc had during the combat. Respite silently brushed the ranger’s skin, growing visably weaker as the ranger grew stronger.
Respite turned again to the orc, stepping closer, muttering a few quiet words, their arcane power quickly replacing the blood Respite had given his new friend. Another wave of his hand and his back stopped bleeding as well.
"That bind should be dropping soon," he said, smiling at the orc. "I want you to tell your people that this area is under my protection now. Every soul that I see drop here will cost your kind tenfold."
The orc toppled backward as the bind suddenly dissipated. Climbing quickly to his feet, the scout tightened his grip on the weapon still in his hand and snarled menacingly. Respite smiled softly, crossing his arms to display his open hands, waiting.
"Come, if you must," he said slowly. "No more spells, I promise. Ever hear of Voln?"
The orc was beyond rationality, his honor stripped in front of inferiors. Inferiors that were now dead, granted, but the damage to his pride had been done.
A deep growl and the orc brought the blade around in a hissing arc.
Respite’s dark cloak billowed in a wide arc of its own, echoing the path of the empath’s elven tracking boot as he caught the orc’s weapon hand with a solid blow, separating the monster from his weapon. Respite’s trailing foot nearly separated the orc’s arm from its shoulder as well, landing another hard blow that rewarded the healer with a nice crunching sound of snapping collarbone.
Respite hit the ground rolling and leaped forward again, this time catching the orc with a blow to the solar plexus, doubling the creature over seconds before a strike to the back of the neck brought it to the ground.
The scout was a warrior, trained from birth. He stood quickly, protecting his broken shoulderblade with sharp claws.
Like a flash, those claws raked toward Respite’s face, but the nimble Sylvan was already moving. A hard kick to the inside of the orc’s knee was followed quickly by another unpleasant cracking sound.
Respite stood and quietly appraised the orc, who was struggling for balance, leaning heavily on one leg.
"I didn’t suppose you had heard of Voln," he sighed, voice blank, reflecting no emotion.
"If you go now, you can probably deliver the message before the brindlecats get to you."
The orc growled softly, as if weighing his options. Quietly, he bowed to pick up his fallen sword.
Respite didn’t move.
After a long moment, without a word, the orc turned and limped gingerly back into the deeper forest.
Respite smiled at the ranger again.
"I told you it was okay."
Moments later, the unlikely trio appeared in town in a sudden cloud of fog.
On his way back to the hanging gardens in town to rest, after both of the injured men were healed and resurrected, Respite felt the touch of the orc’s soul slipping away.
Quietly, he made a note to himself.
He still had a message to deliver, but it was a message that could wait until after an ale or two. After all, he was only an empath.