Whether minutes or hours or days passed, Agrippa couldn’t have said, for there was nothing but pain. Nothing but his own voice screaming inward, willing his lungs to keep drawing in air, for his heart to keep beating, for his body to live. Nothing but the accusation in her eyes, telling him that he deserved this.
Then a hand touched his shoulder, and he jerked, catching a sob with his teeth as he looked up into the naked man’s eyes. “I know it’s warm,” he said between ragged breaths. “But you should really get some clothes. Some of us are quite prudish.”
Then he focused beyond, seeing that the man wasn’t alone. A dozen men and women wearing armor made of leather and plate metal watched, all of them with weapons in hand.
“I’m flattered,” he whispered, “that you think so many were required to do me in. Sadly, I think another hour of bleeding should do it.”
The group exchanged frowning glances, speaking in low voices. Then a girl no older than Agrippa was himself nodded. The only two unarmed among them—man and woman—approached, one of them saying something to the naked man, which Agrippa was fairly certain meant hold him down because that was what he did.
The woman took hold of Agrippa’s left leg and jerked it straight, pulling a scream from his lips even as she did the same to the other.
Then the pain in his legs was gone.
“How…?” he gasped, but the rest of the words fell away as the pair moved from injury to injury, seeming to vanquish them with their touch.
And they aged as they did it.
Wrinkles creased their faces, strands of grey worked through their hair, and age spots rose on their skin. It was not possible. He was either dead or dreaming, because this was not possible.
Pulling a knife from her belt, the now middle-aged woman cut away his clothes, gave him a look that promised pain, and sliced him open.
He passed out.
And when he came to again, all the pain was gone. Not just the injuries from the river but those from the battle. Those from his fight with Carmo. All just…gone.
The pair who’d done it sat on the riverbank, ancient and grey and stooped, surrounded by all the warriors but one.
The girl sat next to him, watching him with considering eyes. She wasn’t particularly attractive but there was a presence about her unlike anything he’d felt before. As though she were not entirely of this world.
“Where am I?” he asked, trying first in Cel and then moving through every language in the Empire, but the girl only frowned until, at last, he tried the Maarin tongue—one spoken by traders all across the Empire. “Where am I?”
“Oh, good,” she replied. “I was concerned you only spoke in gibberish. As to where you are, that depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you,” he said. “I’m an officer in the Thirty-Seventh Legion. You’ll be paid handsomely by the Senate for assisting me.” And he’d be paid handsomely by the Senate when he told them what these people could do. To have one of them in the medical tent… Racker might be forced to finally pick up a gladius and fight.
“And we are back to gibberish.” She tilted her head. “You are in the Uncharted Lands, near the border of what the usurpers now call Arinoquia.” His face must have been blank, because she patted his cheek. “On the eastern coast of the Southern Continent.”
Dread filled him, his eyes moving from her face to the sun, which was high in the sky. When he’d fallen in the river, it had been the middle of the night. Which meant…
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“The Celendor Empire,” he whispered, and then, because it had to be the truth, he added, “On the other side of Reath.”
Winds blew across the group, voices carrying on them that seemed as vast as the sky. As deep as the seas. All of them saying the same thing.
Welcome to the Dark Shores.
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