The pain from the brutal, self-inflicted surgery on his thigh was a blazing beacon in the ocean of suffering that his body had become. He lay on the cold, dusty floor of the silent cabin, gasping in dry sobs, his body slick with cold sweat, tears, and his own blood. The skeleton in the chair remained his silent witness, its eternal stillness feeling like a condemnation. He had survived the first torment, but he knew this was only the beginning. This gruesome victory meant nothing if the infection in the rest of his body was left to fester.
This was just one wound. There were others.
With a movement that felt like pulling himself out of a grave, Devon began to tear away the remnants of his tattered clothing. Each touch of fabric against his inflamed skin sent new waves of pain through him. He had to see them. He had to know his true enemy. On his forearm, the goblin bite was a hideous crater. The surrounding flesh was no longer just purple; it had turned an unhealthy greenish-gray, and the smell, the sickly-sweet odor of rotting meat, filled the air around him. On his chest, the circular scar from the giant leech had swollen into hard, hot-to-the-touch boils, their centers black as pitch. He was a walking map of his failures, each wound a monument to his weakness.
He couldn't just cut them out. He had learned from his thigh; the bleeding was too severe. He needed something else. He needed fire.
His fever-glazed eyes scanned the room, searching, before finally settling on the open wooden chest in the corner. Spellstones. He crawled laboriously, dragging his newly stitched leg and leaving a wet trail of blood in the dust. He reached for one of the dull red stones, which seemed to absorb the light around it. It felt warm to the touch, an unnatural warmth that pulsed with a faint energy. Fire. Warmth. Heat. A terrible, desperate idea began to form in his clouded mind.
He returned to the center of the room, retrieving the blood-smeared scalpel. He placed the red stone on the floor beside him. Then, with a hand that trembled violently, he pressed the blade of the scalpel against the surface of the red stone. At first, nothing happened. Then, with a soft hiss, the stone began to glow from within, its dim red light growing brighter. Heat coursed through the scalpel blade, turning it from silver to blue, then to a searing red. He had created a primitive cauterizing tool. A perfect instrument of torture.
This time, he knew what kind of pain was coming. He grabbed a small piece of wood from the floor and bit down hard on it between his teeth. He focused his gaze on the goblin bite on his arm. He couldn't hesitate. With every last scrap of courage he possessed, he attacked the wound. He cut deep, excising the rotting flesh, the sound of the blade slicing through his own skin and muscle the most horrifying sound he had ever heard. Thick, black blood gushed out. He screamed, but the sound was muffled by the wood in his mouth, turning into a strangled growl.
Then came the worst part.
He raised the glowing blade. Thin wisps of smoke curled from its tip. He took a deep breath, then pressed the hot metal to the gaping wound on his arm.
The pain was a supernova. It eclipsed anything he had ever felt before. It was a white-hot explosion that incinerated all thought, all memory, all awareness, leaving only pure, unimaginable suffering. His body arched in spasm, his back lifting off the floor. The shriek that finally tore from his throat no longer sounded human; it was the squeal of an animal being butchered alive. The smell of his own burning flesh filled his nostrils, a ghastly barbecue aroma that made him want to vomit. The blood and fluids inside the wound hissed and vaporized instantly. He could feel the heat searing down to the bone.
When he finally pulled the blade away, the wound on his arm was now covered with a hideous black layer of char. No blood flowed. There was only the throbbing pain, so intense it made the world tremble. He lay there, gasping, saliva and tears streaming down his face. He had done it. He felt like he wanted to die.
But he wasn't finished. There were other wounds. Driven by some kind of madness born of unbearable pain, he continued his work. He reheated the blade. He cut and burned away the leech scars on his chest, one by one. Each time, he screamed. Each time, a little piece of his soul crumbled to ash. He no longer thought. He was a machine of suffering, programmed for only one task: to destroy himself in order to save himself.
Until finally, there was only one wound left. The largest and most inflamed of the leech scars, located on his lower abdomen, just inches above his hip. His body had now reached its limit. He had lost too much blood. His nervous system was shattered by the repeated torment. His hands shook uncontrollably, and his vision blurred, the edges of his sight blackening. But he had to finish it. He couldn't stop now.
He heated the blade one last time. He bit down on the piece of wood again, his teeth chattering. He stared at the grotesque, blackened wound. He tried to steady his hand, but his muscles refused to obey. He gathered the last vestiges of his will and lowered the glowing blade.
And that was when his body betrayed him. Just as the tip of the blade touched his skin, a violent, uncontrollable spasm wracked his entire body. His hand slipped.
The hot, sharp blade didn't just sear the surface of the wound. It sliced sideways and down, cutting through layers of skin and fat with ease. There was no resistance. There was only the deep, wet sensation of tearing. Devon froze. A new, sharp, and different kind of pain exploded from his abdomen. He had sliced himself open.
He stared down in horror. From the gaping wound he had just created, something glistening, pink and gray, began to spill out. His intestines. His internal organs, which were supposed to be safely hidden inside his body, were now tumbling out into the open air, steaming in the cold.
The pain was unbearable. It wasn't the searing pain of the burns or the cuts; it was a deep, fundamental violation of his very being. He vomited blood, hot, dark red liquid spewing from his mouth, mixed with bitter bile. He was going to die. This time for sure. There was no coming back from this.
Panic, purer and more intense than any terror he had ever known, took over. He tried to push his protruding organs back inside with his trembling, blood-soaked hands, but it felt like trying to catch slippery eels. Frantically, he groped around him, trying to grab anything, a miracle, a solution. His panicked hand swept across the wooden chest, knocking the remaining spellstones onto the dusty floor.
His failing eyes fell on one of the stones. A smooth, jade-green stone, glowing softly amidst the pool of his blood. Without thinking, driven by the last instinct of a drowning creature, he reached for the green spellstone. It felt cool and soothing in his fevered palm.
Death was at hand. Darkness was beginning to creep in, swallowing his vision. He could feel his weak, erratic heartbeat beginning to slow. He clutched the green stone with the last of his strength, pressing it against the gaping wound in his abdomen. "Please," a voiceless whisper formed on his lips.
And that was when the spellstone ignited.
A soft, brilliant green light erupted from his grasp, enveloping his body in a soothing radiance. The excruciating pain didn't vanish; it was as if it were being muffled, pushed back by a wave of warmth that spread from the stone. He watched in disbelief as thin tendrils of green light began to stitch his wounds from the inside. He saw his spilled organs gently drawn back into his abdominal cavity. He saw the edges of the gash in his stomach knit together, his skin weaving itself back into one as if the wound had never been there.
The light then spread throughout his body. The black burns on his arm softened, the char flaking away to reveal healthy new skin underneath. The crude stitches on his thigh dissolved into nothingness as the wound closed perfectly. The leech scars, the cuts, and the bruises all vanished beneath the touch of the healing green light. In less than a minute, every wound, every scratch, every trace of the torment he had just endured, was gone.
He lay there, naked and whole, amidst the sea of blood and carnage he had created. The pain was gone. The fever was gone. All that remained was an exhaustion so profound it felt like death itself.
He stared at the green stone in his hand, its light now faded to a soft glow. He saw the blood-smeared scalpel lying nearby. He saw the skeleton in the chair, which seemed to be staring at him with the same mocking gaze.
Then the realization hit him.
Oh, great. A spellstone that can heal. A stone that can close the most gruesome wounds in an instant. He had it the whole time, lying there in the chest.
So what was all this for? What was the heated blade for? What were the screams and the blood and the burning flesh for? What was the torture he had just put himself through, which had almost cost him his life and his sanity?
He sucked.
A laugh began to churn in his chest. It burst out, not as a sound of joy, but as a broken, hoarse, and utterly insane sound. He laughed and laughed, a hysterical laughter that echoed through the silent cabin, mixed with uncontrollable sobs. He punched the dusty floor with his weak fist.
"Idiot!" he screamed at the ceiling, his voice cracking. "Devon, you're an idiot! A complete and utter idiot!"
He had sought strength in fire and steel, in pain and violence. He thought he had learned the lessons of this world. But he had missed the most important lesson of all. He had gone through a self-made hell of torture, only to find out in the end that the door to heaven had been open the whole time. He wasn't a tough survivor. He wasn't a hero being forged. He was an idiot who had tortured himself half to death for absolutely no reason.