It was painful!
So incredibly painful that he felt like he could black out at any second!
The Lands swam with red and black. His body screamed at him to let go, to escape, to do anything but hold onto the source of his agony.
But he held.
He held because Uncle Adam was already moving.
The old soldier roared in shock and fury, a sound that held grief and rage and desperate hope all tangled together. His spear thrust forward with every ounce of strength remaining in his aged body.
The Butcher tried to turn and pull his blade free, but Damian held him in place.
And Uncle Adam's spear pierced the back of The Butcher's skull.
The stone tip entered at the base of the head and continued forward, emerging through the eye socket in a spray of blood and worse. The Butcher's body went rigid, every muscle seizing at once.
At the same moment, Chieftain Ayala and the other Warriors reached them.
Ayala's stone sword sank into The Butcher's side, carving through the muscles that had seemed so invincible moments before. One Warrior drove a spear through his back, piercing a lung. The other brought an axe down on his arm, nearly severing it at the elbow.
The Butcher did not fall.
His body remained upright, held in place by the weapons piercing it from every direction.
But his eyes... well, his one remaining eye found Damian.
And even dying, even with a spear through his brain, he managed to speak.
"You're fucking mad, Tokoloshe."
Him?
Mad?
No.
He just made a necessary move to lock down a beast so that it could be taken down.
Or maybe not so necessary.
Maybe there had been another way.
But this had been the fastest. The surest. The one that guaranteed The Butcher would not escape, would not recover, would not kill anyone else.
And all Damian had to do was...
"Persevere."
BOOM!
He spoke the word as if it was a string of glorious hope and wonder.
The letter that was more than a letter. The sound that predated all sounds. A fragment of the Primordial Tongue given voice in a place of blood and death.
Instantly, blue flames erupted over his body.
They burst from his wounds like water from a broken dam, pouring out in waves of cerulean fire that held the weight of ages. The blood that had been flowing stopped. The flesh that had been torn began to knit. The bone that had been shattered started to mend.
The flames wrapped around the serrated blade still lodged in his body, and Damian slowly, agonizingly, pulled it free.
Inch by inch.
The serrated edge caught on healing flesh and tore it anew, but the flames followed, burning away damage as quickly as it was caused.
He pulled.
And pulled.
And finally, the blade came free with a wet, horrible sound.
"Ah..."
Damian staggered back, the flames still dancing across his body.
He watched the figure of The Butcher remain utterly still. The monster's eyes were filled with blood now, the spear through his brain having destroyed whatever had made him dangerous.
The Butcher of the Golden Tribe was dead.
Damian breathed heavily as he looked down at his own body.
He could see bone and muscles being restored. Could feel the flesh knitting together beneath the flames. The process was utterly horrendous and painful, a sensation of being unmade and remade simultaneously.
He did not want to do that again.
But he had to test it.
The power of that ancient letter, the power of that word, was unfathomably grand.
He felt it more clearly the second time as he was wide awake. The flames were not just healing him. They were doing something fundamental.
And the one thing he was able to say with surety as he painfully watched his body heal within seconds was that the concentration of Mana in his flesh also greatly increased after he said this word.
So... instant healing and a huge jump in Mana concentration?
His pain-filled eyes tried to put his thoughts together.
Without a doubt, he could feel that his flesh now held more than twice as much Mana compared to before he said this word. The sensation of power was intoxicating, even through the agony of reconstruction.
And what was unique was that his head hurt a little.
He felt slightly tired.
Almost as if he had used an invisible muscle to lift a heavy weight it was not used to.
Blue flames burned around him as he stood in the center of the devastation.
The tribe had gone silent.
Warriors and Tribesmen alike watched with wide eyes. The Butcher stood frozen in death, surrounded by the weapons that had ended him. And before him, the figure of Damian burned with flickering flames, his body healing from a wound that should have killed any man.
The image was ingrained in their heads.
A thin young man wreathed in ancient fire, standing over the corpse of a monster.
When he was fully healed, the flames flickered out.
Damian nodded to himself, taking stock of his restored body. Everything worked. Everything moved. The pain was fading, leaving behind only the memory of agony.
He was raising his head when...
PAH!
A large hand smacked the back of his skull.
An angry Uncle Adam appeared beside him, the old soldier's face a storm of conflicting emotions. He looked Damian over up and down, his eyes checking for injuries that were no longer there.
"Don't do that again!"
His voice cracked with something that might have been relief or fury.
...!
Damian smiled and nodded.
"I'll try."
The feeling of weakness was overtaking him now. The invisible muscle he had used to speak that word was sore in a way he could not describe. He sat down heavily on the blood-soaked earth, sensing the Mana coursing through him.
It was still there.
Still flowing.
He had not dreamed it.
Around them, the Tribesmen began to emerge one after another.
They came from behind huts, from inside dwellings, from wherever they had hidden during the battle. They whispered in low hushed tones, their eyes moving between the corpses, the wounded Warriors, and the thin young man who sat in the center of it all.
Many looked toward Damian and Uncle Adam with expressions that mixed fear with awe with uncertainty.
The muddy Elena also came forward.
She stood beside her father, her face still smeared with the earth Damian had rubbed on it to hide her features. Her eyes found Damian, and they held something he could not quite read. A bit of shock, gratitude, confusion, and fear maybe?
All of it tangled together.
Damian looked over at the eyes of the Tribesmen, and then at the bodies of The Butcher and the others.
His gaze was difficult.
Even though they had managed to survive, he knew that this was far from over.
The Golden Tribe would not take the death of their Butcher lightly. The blood spilled today was merely the beginning of what might come.
But for now...
He sighed as Uncle Adam came to sit behind him.
The old soldier put his wide back against Damian's, as if he wanted to support his Young Lugal even while sitting. Uncle Adam finally breathed out his own exhaustion, and Damian realized that this old warrior was actually the one injured and bleeding all over while he was fully healed.
Damian looked at the thick blood that now coated the sand and stone all around them.
"Hey."
His voice was quiet.
"As crazy as things were and as many of your Doctrines we violated today... we actually did not violate the biggest one."
...!
Uncle Adam could not help but heave and smile.
Yes.
The only Doctrine they did not violate.
The First Doctrine of Stone.
The good never win, but there is so much wickedness in men and beasts that when given the chance... do something good.
There were countless evils in the Lands of Stone. The good were few. Men and Beasts were out for themselves. Even the moving mountains were out for themselves, wandering across the landscape without care for the tribes they sometimes crushed beneath their passing, or those they left behind seeking their protection.
In such a place, when you could... do something good.
This Doctrine, this one, they followed today completely.
It was never violated.