Chapter 52 - [Husk]

I frantically approached Sir Walter and knelt down. He had been cut in the abdomen, but he was covered in countless other injuries. He had been pressing his hand to his stomach wound before he had lost consciousness. As I looked closer, I saw that some of Sir Walter’s intestines had spilled out of his stomach wound.

Injury: Deep cuts to the abdomen, chest, and left leg. Large and small intestines completely bisected in several places. Femoral, mesenteric, and pulmonary arteries severed. Lungs and heart shut down 174 seconds ago. Soul left the body 114 seconds ago.

Soul? [Triage] could measure a person’s soul?

Whatever. I shook the doubt out of my head. Walter had been dead for less than three minutes. People had been resuscitated after much longer. I could still save him, I was sure of it.

I grabbed Walter’s body and pulled him down onto his back. If his heart had really stopped, I would have to perform CPR to get his heart beating again. As I pulled Walter down, I thought about what Prayer I should use. Before that point, I had been using the [Second Prayer], but I decided I should use the [Eighth Prayer] to heal Walter. The [Eighth Prayer] was about half as efficient as the [Second Prayer], but its incantation was much shorter, and it could be used from ten meters away.

“May Nyx repay you for what you have done!” I chanted as fast as I could.

I felt my mana make a connection with Walter’s body, and I began to pour my mana into the void left by Walter’s wounds. I could tell when I started that the void I had to fill was much larger than ever before. Sir Walter had been completely torn apart by whoever had done this.

Within a few seconds, all of Walter’s wounds had been healed, and a minor headache furrowed my brow. That was the first time in my life that I had felt the deleterious effects of too much mana use. I had never used that much mana all at once before.

As I moved to start doing CPR on Walter’s body, I realized that there was no trail of blood leading to him. He must have suffered those wounds where he had fallen. If he had been injured in such a way somewhere else, he would have left a thick blood stain on the stone floor.

I started chest compressions. My hands quickly became tired, but I continued the process for about a minute. I did as I was trained to do: chest compressions and rescue breaths about every twenty seconds. Adjusting my body so frequently quickly started to exhaust me, so I started doing only chest compressions after a minute or so.

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Two minutes after I started CPR, Beltane came sprinting into the hallway. He was running at full speed when he turned the corner and saw the scene in front of him.

“Oh, thank the gods, you’re alive,” Beltane sighed loudly. “I ran into a dozen orcs on the way over.”

“Help me!” I shouted at Beltane with the authority of a trauma surgeon in an emergency. “Walter’s been seriously injured!”

Beltane ran to Walter’s side. As he ran, I noticed that he was followed by five orcish zombies. “What are you doing?”

“It’s medicine,” I said shortly. “His heart stopped. I’m compressing it rhythmically to restart it.”

“Okay,” Beltane said without questioning me further. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to breathe for him,” I said. “I don’t have the stamina to compress his heart and…”

“Wait,” Beltane said, looking closely at Walter’s face. He placed the back of his hand in front of Walter’s mouth. “You can stop.” Beltane spoke with a grim tone.

“Why?” I said, terrified of what Beltane’s answer would be.

“He’s breathing,” Beltane said, though his voice certainly wasn’t happy.

Great, I thought at first. In all circumstances, CPR had a less than 50% success rate. Even when CPR was successful, it usually took ten minutes to work. CPR working after just two minutes was a very good sign for Walter’s long term survivability.

The fact that CPR worked so quickly was probably the result of the healing he had undergone. His heart was perfectly healthy, and I just had to return it to sinus rhythm.

Something was off, though. I had used CPR successfully before. In those circumstances, I knew to stop because the patient started moving. Walter had been resuscitated, but he didn’t move. This paired with Beltane’s grim tone caused me to be filled with dread.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Beltane snapped his fingers in front of Walter’s face, and his eyes opened. I looked in Walter’s eyes, and there was nothing there.

“I’ve seen this before,” Beltane said, darkly. “You’re a really good priest. Too good, actually.”

“What?” I said, the truth slowly dawning on me.

“You fixed him. Well, you fixed his body,” Beltane said, scoffing slightly. “His soul is gone. When the heart stops, the soul leaves exactly sixty seconds later. There’s no way to get it back. He’s a Husk now.”

A pervasive feeling of cold filled my entire body. Walter was dead. Nothing more could be done for him. Even with all my medical training and all of the magic at my fingertips, I couldn’t save one man.

“Hey, hey,” Beltane shook his hand in front of my face. “We’re not done yet. We still need to secure the rest of your family. Come on, we’ve wasted enough time here.”

Numbly, I got to my feet. There were still four people unaccounted for in the manor, and the only people close enough to save them were Beltane and me. I shook my head, trying not to look at Walter’s inert form.

“Come on,” Beltane said, patting me on the back. Together, the two of us ventured deeper into the manor, unprepared for the horrors lurking inside.