21 A New Dawn

Farsian was lying on the floor outside the city walls. He was breathing very hard and was holding his own stomach. Where his Stomach should be was only a big hole.

Only moments before he had been inside the city and trying to escape this hell. He was fighting a guard at close quarters when suddenly a blinding light emerged and hit him in the stomach. Behind him was a priest of a higher rank.

That priest was also very desperate, he had wounds all over and even when he was casting a spell at Farsian another ghoul mercilessly attacked him and ripped his arm out. The shock of his lost arm paralised that poor priest and only moments after he died of blood loss.

But Farsian was one of the undead it would take far more than just a gaping hole in his stomach. He could propably survive another hour in these conditions. But the guard noticed that Farsian was weakened and attacked without mercy. He swung his sword down on Farsian and managed to break the collarbone and cut deep inside his flesh.

"ARGH!" Farsian screamed. He now had a hole in his stomach and a sword in his shoulder. Things weren't looking good for him.

Farsian grabed that sword in his shoulder and held on tight. The guard was frantically trying to get his sword free but couldn't. Instead of retreating the guard froze on the spot, terror struck. Farsian was locking at the guard with a smile that was everything but a smile. His sharp teeth flashed and he leapt at the guard.

The guard screamed for help, he could feel his life force leaving him slowly and entering Farsians body. The wound on Farsians shoulder started to heal slowly, his bone was slowly mending but it was not fast enugh. At this pace the guard would die before his injury was healed.

Farsian looked back behind him towards that priest that had died but what he saw gave him a shock. Behind him were 20 more priests that were hell bent on reaching the corpse of their companion. If they really got that close to him they would also discover him.

He had to make a choice now. Either he stayed and tryed to heal his wounds by sucking his enemys of their life force or he could retreat and leave this troublesome city. Farsian was not sure if he could drink the blood of beasts and heal that way but he knew that a forest was behind the gates.

He had to give it a try!

Farsian forced himself to discard that corpse and sprinted towards the gates that were less guarded than usually. When he reached the gates he was alone.

Behind Farsian were thousands of ghouls, 20 priests and what was left of the garrison of this gate.

They were having an epic battle to the death inside these walls but Farsian didn't plan on being part of that, he turned around and left the city behind him.

When Farsian finally left he fell on his knees just outside the walls. He was utterly exhausted, he had gambled and lost. With his current strengh he could only dream of being able to hunt down a beast in the forest. He would even be unable to even reach that forest, that was how exhausted he now felt.

But all hope was not yet lost. He could hear the sounds of horses drawing a carriage, when he looked up he saw a merchant insignia. He could even hear the chatter of the people inside the carriage.

Farsian decided to bet everything on this random encounter. He got up and tryed to hide the hole in his abdomen with some cloth but the blood still leaked through. His shoulder hurt a lot and he had to try really hard to not make a grimace. When he was finished with his preparations the cart was about 10 meter away from him.

"H-Help! Help me!" Farsian shouted at the coach. It slowed down and when it was standing next to him a window opened and a familiar face greeted him. It was Akavier Orcho that green merchant but Farsian didn't spot his loyal guard Brutus. Instead there was a rare beauty inside the coach.

"Ah, that assassin that I hired to take care of my business! So you also made it out alive?" Akavier said to Farsian with a big grin. He could see the blood at his shoulder and his abdomen and was pretty sure that Farsian was in urgent need of treatment. He would let him pay dearly for his help.

Farsian was also no fool and knew what the merchant wanted for his help. He tossed a few gold coins toward that merchant.

"Here take that and bring me to the closest city." Farsian said through gritted teeth. Even if he was immortal it still hurt like hell.

After the merchant bite down on a coin and confirmed that it was real gold he let Farsian come inside.

Inside the coach Farsian could smell their pulsing blood and he had to suppress himself not to attack them on the spot. Either way those 2 would propably be insufficient to heal his wounds, especially that gaping hole inside his abdomen.

"How did you manage to escape my dear friend?" Akavier Orcho said. He was feeling rather grim, considering that he had to share his coach with a hired blade and worst of all his guard was not there!

"I was just about to ask you the same question. Why is your guard not here?" Farsian shot back at Akavier. He was unwilling to tell him that he had a giant hole in his stomach and was hunted by a bunch of priests and city guards. He could propably speak about the thousands of ghouls but even that could give him trouble.

"Brutus died." Akavier showed a hint of depression that guard must have been really precious to him.

"He was protecting me when it all started. I even saw him being torn apart by a bunch of greedy ghouls." Anger surfaced on his face for a split second before he managed to reign on his emotions.

"Same with me a whole bunch of my comrades died in that massacre." Farsian said with an emotionless face. In truth he could propably say that one or two of his kin actually died there, but he didn't really care about them he only had few friends one of them being Kaiser and Joelle the other one being Narsus who had left the city before it all started.

He was wondering how Kaiser was doing now and if he had escaped.

But then Farsian came to a realization.

'What if I become Akavier Orcho?' he thought. He could just kill that guy and take his identity. But he soon dismissed that thought, there would be enugh people out there that knew the true Akavier Orcho and he couldn't fool everyone of them.

"I wonder why it sounds so plain when it comes out of your mouth? Could it be that you really didn't care about your fallen comrades?" Akavier asked quizzically.

Farsian recognized that he had made a mistake, he was supposed to be sad about the loss. He then tried to make an excuse and tried to divert their attention to another theme. In the end they traveled for about 30 minutes before they made a stop at a camp. It was propably the camp of the survivors from the massacre. There he learned that there were 7 more of these camps surounding the city. He tried looking for his friends but discovered that he was alone here.

But there were a few elfes there that were tending to the wounded. They came out of the forest when they saw the city in flames and provided help for the needy.

There was also a young elf girl that was coming towards him, she used some weird medicine on his shoulder but when she was about to tend to his abdomen he stopped her. He could not let her see his fatal wound. Any normal human would have died allready. Instead he pulled her closer and whispered sweet things in her ear.

The girl soon blushed and agreed to come with him deeper into the woods. She thought that they would be having some fun there but when they got there Farsian mercilessly sucked her dry. The wound on his shoulder was as good as healed and most of his abdomen was back where it belonged. Only that he still had a big wound there that would be life thretening to a normal human, but to Farsian such a wound would heal with enugh time.

Time... that was all that he lacked now. If the king cleared the city from the undead and discovered who was behind this asault he surely would be very furious. He really needed to get as far away as possible from that place.