He was a creature of pain, buried in filth. Arthur lay in the rotting straw, his world reduced to the ragged, shallow breaths that tore at his shattered ribs. He was burning with fever, and the cold of the night air was a welcome, numbing counterpoint. He was groaning, a low, constant, animal sound he couldn't control.
He was so deep in his own agony, he almost missed the sound.
A soft scrape. A pebble shifting.
His eyes, swollen to slits, snapped open. Fear, cold and instant, cut through the fever-haze. They're back. The teens. The guard. They'd found his hiding spot. He was trapped. He was dead.
He tried to hold his breath, which sent a fresh, blinding spike of pain through his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire broken body tensing, waiting for the boot.
The sound was closer. Not the heavy, confident thud of a guard's boot, but a lighter, hesitant step.
The straw and refuse above him shifted.
He flinched, a pathetic, full-body spasm, and let out a choked, terrified sound.
"Shh! Shh—by the Suns, be quiet!"
It wasn't a teen's jeer. It was a woman's voice. A whisper, laced with pure, undiluted panic.
He opened his eyes. A figure was crouched in the mouth of the alley, cloaked and hooded, a dark silhouette against the moonlight. She was leaning over him, pulling the filth-caked straw off his body.
He tried to recoil, to snarl—is this a trap?—but he was too weak.
"Please," she begged in that same, terrified whisper. "Don't make a sound. Please."
He saw her face then, barely visible in the dark. She wasn't one of the women who had spat at him. She was a stranger. Her face was lined with fear and... pity? She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, with kind, terrified eyes.
"Gods... what did they do to you..." she breathed, her hand flying to her mouth. The stench of the alley and his own unwashed, bloody body was overwhelming, but she didn't pull back.
"Who..." he rasped, the word a bloody bubble.
"Hush." She pulled a small satchel from under her cloak and, with trembling hands, uncorked a waterskin. She ripped a piece of clean cloth and dampened it. "This will be cold."
She began to wipe the caked, dry blood from his face, from his shattered nose and split lips. The touch was gentle. It was the first kind, human touch he'd felt since he'd been thrown into this world. It was so foreign, it hurt almost as much as the beating.
He hissed as the cold water hit his broken nose.
"I know, I know, I'm sorry," she whispered, her eyes darting to the mouth of the alley. "I have to. Please, you must not tell anyone I was here. Do you understand? No one."
He was too confused to do anything but give a weak, jerky nod.
She finished cleaning his face as best she could and then moved to his chest. She gently pushed aside his torn, filthy rags. When she saw the black, purple, and green map of bruises—and the unnatural, jagged angle of his ribs—she let out a small, choked sound.
"This is... this is bad," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "By the Suns, this is..."
She placed her hands flat on his chest, right over the worst of the breaks. Arthur tensed, bracing for the agony.
"I... I'm not good at this," she whispered, her voice shaking with effort. "My... my daughter, she's the healer. I've just... I've just watched her. I only know a little bit."
A faint, pale green light, the color of new leaves, flickered under her palms. It was weak, and it wavered as her hands trembled, but it was magic. It was warm. It wasn't the searing heat of a fireball, but the lukewarm, gentle heat of a poultice.
It sank into his chest.
It didn't fix him. He felt no snap as his bones reset. But the sharp, glass-like, gurgling pain... it dulled. The agony that had been a 10/10 receded to a 7. He took a breath, and for the first time, it didn't feel like he was inhaling broken glass. It was still agony, but it was survivable agony.
She held it for a full minute, sweat beading on her brow, before the light faded and she slumped, exhausted.
"It's... it's all I can do for your ribs," she panted. "It's not... it's not healed. But it should... it should mend now. If you stay still."
She then looked at his mangled hand. She shook her head. "This... this is beyond me. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
She rebound his hand with a clean strip of cloth, making a crude but effective splint.
Arthur stared at her through his one good, swollen eye. His brain, fogged with pain and hate, couldn't process this. Why? Why would anyone help him? The merchant had walked away. The woman had ignored his screams. Why her?
"...Why...?" he forced out.
She flinched, looking back at the alley entrance again. "No one... no one deserves to be left in a gutter to die like an animal. Not even..." She trailed off, unable to say the word curse.
"...Name...?" he whispered.
She hesitated, her entire body tensing. Giving her name was dangerous. She was already risking everything.
"Please..." he rasped. He needed to know. He needed one thing in this ocean of hate that wasn't an enemy.
She looked at him, at the desperation in his ruined face.
"...Anya," she whispered, so quietly he almost didn't hear it.
"Anya..."
"I have to go," she said, scrambling to her feet and pulling her hood tight. "I can't... I can't come back. If they saw me... the guards, or those... those boys... they'd come for me and my daughter."
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small, hard hunk of bread and a piece of dried, salted meat. She pressed it into his good hand.
"Stay hidden. Stay quiet. And live."
She was gone. She didn't walk. She fled, disappearing into the shadows like a ghost.
Arthur was alone again, in the cold and the filth.
But the world was different.
The pain in his chest was a dull, manageable roar instead of a sharp, killing scream. His hand was bound. And in his good palm, he held food.
He was still filled with a black, bottomless hatred for the world that had done this to him. But now, it wasn't a world of total blackness.
In the middle of that infinite darkness, there was one, single, baffling point of light.
Her name was Anya.
He ate the bread. He would live.
*****
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