The Arkanist

Black Flame

Eller found himself in his foul cabin when he woke. The blaring white sunlight peeked through the stained porthole pane and leaked into the dim and rank room like water. His head felt heavy as lead and swayed, drumming with a reverberating beat that echoed in his ears and thumped down into his throat. Painful rings rapped against the backs of his eyes as he tried to pinch them ajar, only to see white and black. His nose shriveled at the foul stench that hung in the balmy air.

         A great groan of wood screeched in Eller’s ears, splitting the intense beating. He felt his weary, ragged body slide to one side of the bed as the ship rocked, his thin brown sheets enrapturing his legs like a web. A sudden splash of excruciating pain erupted at his elbow, sharper than anything he ever felt before. It felt almost as if his skin was made of piercing glass, and when it was hit with the slightest movement, the glass dug deeper and deeper into his flesh.

         He jolted away from whatever he hit, his arm pulsating with thrumming heartbeats, lancing down the bone jarringly. Eller bit back a scream at the pain, his lip running red with blood and his sharp white teeth spattered with the red. He squirmed back up the headboard of his bed, the wood scratching his protruding spine. When the sunlight had lessened its intensity and his eyes flickered to a squint he nearly dropped dead in that bed of his at the sight.

         From under the heavy wet covers crawled out his arm, or at least half of it. The limb extended no further than his elbow, where it was heavily wrapped in gauze so that it looked a club more than an arm. The stump hung oddly at his side, heavy as iron, and dangling like a dead body from the gallows.  Words seemed to be forgotten, and pain seemed to halt as Eller stared with wide eyes, not caring for the Alleh’s eye, at his arm, cut in half.

         The gauze looked to be wrapped on a few days past, for there were heavy splotches of discoloration in the once white fabric. Grimy brown liquid hung to the bottom, smelling almost of rotten piss. The edges of the bandaging curled off in moist black where rotting skin might have been stuck once and Eller saw his shirt cut up to his shoulder, where grotesque tendrils of cloth stuck like glue to the pale white skin on his upper arm and on until it met the stump.

         Eller’s stomach curled like wrappings when his eyes met the blood. At the base of the stump, melded with the brown liquids, was the dark red, almost black blood. It stained the ratty gauze a dark red, until only splotches of red dotted the rest. He lifted the stump before his face to see crawling white worms of pus wriggling through the porous wrappings and seep out in pale, thick blobs, like oozing cheese. Mixed with the blood, some of the pus was tinted red, until the charred and rotten black flesh stuck out of the gauze like melted pieces of iron and folded to look dead and solemn.

         The smell forced Eller to lower his stump soon after he’d raised it. His nose, however shrunken or distorted could, not block out the stench. It rank of salt, dirt, vomit—for he might have puked on it—old milk, rotten cheese, eggs, burnt wood, sweat, decay, and death. The heat did not help either. Sticky and humid it was in his cabin, the air heavy and thick. It made the bandage even heavier with his sweat drenched into the gauze, the odor sifting through the cloth, lingering like a sore toe.

         It was then he screamed. The most pure and agonizing scream anyone had ever screeched from one’s mouth. Hopefully father can hear it in the grave. He screamed long and hard, his throat burning as the limp stump rung with loss and fire. Barely audible amidst the screams, Porrel moaned the small wooden door ajar and peeked in, watching the suffering. He wore his small tunic and bore in his hand a small goblet, filled to the rim with a pale white, almost milky substance.

         Eller’s screams burned out as his throat screamed for mercy. He glanced the servant boy walk up to his side, and set the goblet upon his wooden table next to his bed. He felt disgusted in himself as he sat there, his stump hanging there, lifeless, drenched in his own filth. He cowered slightly behind his sheets, trying to cover the stump, his disgrace. The damn servant boy looks better than I do!