The Ever Lord: Sen Wakes Up
How long had it been?
Days? Years? What was time to the dead? There was no now, only then. The dead had no future, only a past full of pain and best forgotten.
Then, a point of light. He woke. The cold grip of life closed over his heart as the aches and pains of the burning air settled over him.
“Master Yebidesh, can you open your eyes?”
The voice was soft and gentle, a sharp needle in his ears through the rushing sound of blood and screams. He tried to open his eyes, stopping when the effort drained him. Nearby, the sounds of a medical monitor beeped at him, faint…too faint. He couldn’t fall asleep while he was holding a soldier’s heart in his hands. He needed to know what his patient was feeling. He reached out to adjust the monitor’s volume.
“Don’t try to move, just rest.”
What patient was he working on? What were their wounds? He didn’t remember, but it was always safe to urge the wounded to stay still. It hadn’t even sounded like his own voice. Perhaps he was working too hard. His limbs were numb, he couldn’t feel them move. He was so tired, but he couldn’t stop.
Burning flames crawled in his veins.
“Do you know where you are?”
Test the patient’s awareness. This was a good way to tell if the medicines were still in their body, befuddling their senses and sending them back through their memories, or to the Pearl Palace of Healing. Why had he just thought of that? The Pearl Palace was a children’s story, to comfort and soothe those afraid of the oblivion that came with rest.
His patient wasn’t answering. They didn’t know where they were.
“Master Yebidesh, can you hear me?”
Someone else was talking; that was why it hadn’t sounded like Sen. Perhaps he was still training? No, he had finished his studies. He had been dispatched to the front the day after he had graduated. Who was talking? The General? Madam Garimar? The Countess Hyan herself? The memories drifted to and fro in his mind like snowflakes, gently melting away in the raging flames.
“Just breathe easily. You’re safe.”
Safe. There was only one place that was safe anymore; His closet was gone, almost a mile away on the other side of the bunker.
But he was safe now, wasn’t he? The Ogres had finally found him, torn him apart and scattered his body across the snows that once covered House Hyan.
Everything was white.
White.
Ice is not white.
When Sen had been young, his school teachers tried to get Sen to paint the snow and ice white. Being young and foolish, he did so. After a single week during his tour, Sen now knew that ice was blue and gray and shimmering bits of green peeked through at certain times of the day. It was black and red and it glowed sometimes in the night when the pale light-panels were the only thing Sen had to see with.
Eyes shut. White vanished. Pain remained.
It was dull and throbbing, and it covered his entire body. It felt like someone had plugged each hair of his skin into a cable and was slowly raising the power. It burned, but something in his body craved it. Sen tried to turn his head, but he couldn’t. He opened his eyes again, slowly.
White.
Something gray, but the rest was white.
Sen closed his eyes again, and sank into the soothing pain.
Safe, the voice had said. The word was terrifyingly foreign and delightfully familiar, sending a sharp pang to his heart that mirrored the rest of his body.
Warmth. The pain was Warmth.
He should have cried. He should have said thank you. He should have smiled. He should have shouted for joy. He should have laughed. He should have grabbed the soft hand and squeezed it as hard as he could and never let go, lest the dream end and he fall back to his frozen metal tomb.
He slept instead.
How much time had passed? Sen didn’t know. All he knew was that the room felt familiar now, and so he was not afraid.
He sat upright in the bed he had laid in for years, or maybe only days. The sheets were rough on his skin, grating away his flesh like hungry insects.
The walls were whiter than bone, lit from glowing orbs in the walls and ceiling. Strange and horrific machines filled the room. He recognized few of them, and the ones he did were too familiar to be comforting. He had been a field-medic. He knew what tools surrounded the dead and dying.
Two men and a woman were standing and staring. Their eyes glistened. Their backs straight. They stood like soldiers.
It was an interrogation. Sen had to be judged for his life. His choices. His successes and failures. Then his afterlife would be decided; one of peace, or one of torment.
The short man raised his pen. A sword to cut away the lies from his soul. “Can you tell me where you are?”
Sen looked down at his hands.
Old stories floated through his memory. His grandmother believed in the old heresies, and so had told him many times about the Ghostly Trial, where the dead were judged for their actions in life. She told him that, as a surgeon, when he died the souls of those he healed in life would rise to his defense, an army of warriors against the forces that sought to claim his soul for damnation. The judges would hear their witness and he would be saved. Well and truly saved.
How many lives had he saved? Did they all lie now beneath the ice? Did they wander as the Unstill Dead, hungry for the warmth life provided? Where were they?
It was too late. Sen was alone.
“Master Yebidesh?”
She was a thick woman, wearing a sash of the Imperial Legion, and uniform of the Ever Church. Her jerkin was flared, the epaulets curved and pointed. The hat she carried under her arm was trimmed with blue silver. She leaned forward, her wrinkled hand gripping the edge of Sen’s bed. “Do you know where you are?”
Eleven…Twelve…Thirteen…
“You are on board the Imperial Velvet-ship Blessings of the Harvest, honor of House Torvis. I am Priest-Captain Manjero. Do you remember me?”
Sen shook his head. There was nothing in his memories but cold and ice and running and darkness.
The short Judge clicked his teeth. “This is impossible,” he muttered, lowering pen and paper. “What on earth do you expect to get from this peasant? His mind is gone.”
“Please continue, Captain.” The tall demon leaned against the door, his arms folded. His eyes were like fire, his skin like polished midnight.
After a moment’s pause, the Priest-Captain stood tall, and now Sen saw that she was Captain Bellon, blood pouring from where his stomach once was. “Surgeon Yebidesh?” The Captain’s voice was sharp and clear. Sen looked up into his eyes. “Report.”
Sen opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“I said report!”
Sen needed to explain, to provide witness to his life. He needed judgement. Where were the people he had saved? Had he…had he not saved anyone? He felt his throat tighten.
“It hurts.”
Captain Bellon looked back at the tall demon, tall, like a tree, a pillar of ice dressed in black. Darkness. Void where things fell and sank away into oblivion. There was no escape from the glittering metal on his shoulders and sash.
“Doctor,” the short man called to the air. A thin body — where did it come from? — reached out and grabbed something thin and smooth from outside Sen’s vision.
“Not too much,” the demon muttered. “I want him as clear-headed as he can possibly be.”
A distant pain, somewhere below. A half-whispered scream told Sen it was halfway down his body. But he didn’t have a body anymore, did he? Fingers clenched. The pain subsided.
“Now, soldier! Name and Rank!”
The burning white fell away, leaving a soft and gentle breeze. Sen could see clearly now, the demon was still there, but the others were angels of the Ever Lord. He needn’t have feared. Even Captain Bellon’s wounds were gone.
“Sen Yebidesh, of House Hyan,” Sen answered the Captain as he felt pain fade further and further away. “Field-Medic stationed at the Southern Bunker.”
“You call yourself a field-medic?” Madam Garimar crossed her arms. “How long did you serve in the Bunker?”
Sen bowed his head. He should have felt shame, but he couldn’t stop smiling that her soul had come to witness for him. “Forgive me madam. I have served at the Southern Bunker alongside my brother and sister soldiers for three weeks so far.”
“What did he say?” the Judge asked. “Three weeks?”
“Speak up!” the General walked past him down the line of soldiers. “What was your mission in the Bunker?”
“To serve,” Sen shouted along with his fellow conscripts. “To defend. To heal. To bring honor.”
“What were you protecting?” Madam Garimar leaned closer, her face shifting and molding itself like a bubbling stew. Her face settled on that of the Priest-Captain. He was one of the few allowed to operate the holy instruments of the Ever Lord, the flashing screens and blinking lights that sages and scholars poured over in distant lands. They had few such ancient relics of a time long past in the bunker.
Sen wasn’t a sage, he was a field-medic. He had only one charge.
“House Hyan. Protect the palace, the Countess, the eastern front.” He looked down into the dying eyes of the young soldier as she begged. “The soldiers.”
The Demon stepped forward, his black uniform growing darker as he approached. “According to the logs we found, you survived in that bunker, alone, surrounded by Ogres, for almost half a year. You couldn’t have managed that without help.”
Sen knew the Demon, he understood its purpose. It was here to damn him, to scorn his achievements and throw him into the pit of despair. It was a Demon of lies and manipulation. Half a year? No, three years at least. Maybe more.
Sen smiled. He did not fear the Demon. He did not despair.
“You must have found something,” the Demon hissed. “A secret supply, perhaps, hidden from use by the other surgeons? Did you ever operate on yourself? Give yourself blood from a holy reliquary?”
Sen had never needed blood. By the blessing of the Ever Lord, he had never lost enough. All the blood had been drunk away by the dying and the dead.
The Demon leaned forward. “Did you hear anything? Your commanding officer shouting commands to destroy anything before it was lost to the enemy? An offhand reference to secret records? Anything at all?” It sighed and stood straight again. “Medic! Report on the emergency breach protocols. If the walls are overrun, if enemies breach the bunker, what is your primary mission?”
Sen looked up. “To die.”
The soldiers of House Hyan were skilled. They knew their duty, and they had achieved their goal with startling efficiency. They had known, from the day the front was broken, that they would die. There was no other house who would help them, no other place they could turn to. Sen had wondered if the Ever Lord would have even bothered to send help if he had known what was happening.
He had known. The Ever Lord knew everything. His grandmother patted him on the hand. Just have faith in the Ever Lord, and everything would happen the way it was supposed to.