Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 92: Day of the Dead

Darrin Ordin

I coughed as I slowly came back to consciousness. Water streamed from my lungs as I hacked, each jarring movement sending pain through my body.

"Stay still, damnit!" a familiar voice said, though I was having trouble focusing. "You've put on weight, Darry! Just don't move and I'll get you back! You won't bleed out here!"

I was being pulled through the water in movements. Someone was hauling my body by my collar, and they weren't being gentle. Blood trailed through the water in my wake, what was left of my leg seeping crimson.

I coughed up more water, making my rescuer curse.

My mind slowly caught up with what had happened. Being thrown into the lake. I'd begun to swim up immediately, but something had latched onto me and pulled me down. Something huge.

The snake was still underwater somewhere. How had I even escaped?! It was easily the largest thing I had ever seen. I'd expected something to lurk beneath the water, but that was absurd. The mangled, rotting flesh had made it seem like something out of a nightmare.

But I'd seen something before I'd lost consciousness, hadn't I? A streak in the water as I struggled in vain to free myself?

Toren is down there, I thought. I shifted slightly, feeling my nerves rise in worry. Fighting that demon.

"Stop struggling!" that familiar voice said from behind me.

"Dima?" I said numbly.

"Can you move, Darry?" my old lover asked. "Never mind about that. We just got to get you to the raft."

I finally took the time to look past my leg.

And I immediately paled.

Arrayed in the distance, thousands of undead waited near the waterline. Their eyes glowed a deep purple, shifting and flaring like countless fireflies. And at their forefront were horrid, mutated conglomerations of rotting bone and bodies. Five commanders held out their hands, directing the myriad corpses around them. I recognized them from Toren's description: they were mishmashes of limbs, as if a child had jammed a dozen parts of their dismembered dolls into a massive lump of clay in a vague, humanoid shape. Atop their grotesque torsos were single, blemishless skulls.

"What are they doing?" I asked, horrified.

Dima didn't answer. Instead, she hauled me up as she reached the raft, dragging my limp form onto the safe haven. I cried out in pain as my leg–a mess of pulped flesh and shards of bone–jostled against the rim.

Dima knelt over me, holding a thick wad of bandages. All around us, mages scrambled about, preparing spells and flaring their mana. Shouts of alarm and combat rang in my ears, but I was having trouble focusing. The blood loss was making my thoughts hazy. "I... I need to get up. They need me. To lead."

"Will you stay still for once in your life?" Dima cried, fumbling with bandages as she leaned over me. Her body blocked my view of the undead, yet I could feel their ire from a quarter of a mile away. "Always standing up to help and lead and fight! Can you do nothing but give all of yourself away?!"

Wet liquid hit my chest as she haphazardly stretched out a tourniquet. My ex-lover was weeping quietly as she tended to my body, the crash of spellfire and screams of men fighting echoing overhead. I groaned as Dima snapped the tight bondage around my leg, trying to staunch the bleeding. "You're going to stay down here, Darrin, and we'll make it out of this. Okay?"

"No," I said weakly, pushing against the metal ground beneath me. "I need to–"

"You need to fucking stop!" Dima yelled. "Move too much more and you'll bleed out. Can't you see that?"