Arc 1: Chapter 5: The Fallen
I stumbled through the woods, every step an agony. I knew, subconsciously, that I wasn’t going to last. My wound — wounds — were bad.
The bolt was lodged in bone, which I discovered when I tried pulling it out the first time and nearly passed out. Not long after I started coughing up blood, possibly from whatever the Glorysworn with the hammer had done to me with her unfamiliar magic. The wound in my shoulder burned and I might have had a fractured rib or three.
I wouldn’t last. Yet still, stubbornly, implacably, I put one foot in front of the other. Again and again, each step celebrated by the crunching of leaves.
Step. Crunch.
Step. Crunch.
Step…
I stumbled and caught myself on the rotten trunk of an ivy-covered tree, gasping for breath. Sweat poured down my face to trickle onto the undergrowth below. I vomited, wiped my mouth, and continued on my way.
Step. Crunch.
“Look how the mighty have fallen.”
The voice whispered from the shadows, so faint I thought at first it was my own thought. But then more voices answered it, drifting from the gloom of the wild like whispering insects.
“He killed him! The old man. Cut off his head and left him there to rot on holy ground.”