When I woke up, I felt extremely lethargic. I tried to turn my head but the effort was too much. I’m in a room and can feel a rough straw mattress under me but that’s really all I can see as I tiredly move my eyes.

A blur of movement from the corner of my eye catches my attention as a form moves. I now realize my eyes are unfocused as the shape gets closer. It's roughly human in appearance but I can’t make out a face.

“Easy there, sonny,” the calm elderly voice says as he places a finger on my neck to check my pulse. “When the watch found ye, you were in a bad way.”

I tried to croak out a reply but my mouth was dry and my throat hoarse so it only came out as a rattling cough.

“Here, let me sit you up, and get you some water,” I grunted in pain as the unknown man tried his best not to jostle my injured hip as he sat me up. “Sorry about that.”

The room temperature water felt like heaven as I swallowed it. I tried to gulp it down but the man pulled it away. “Easy, you gotta drink it slowly or your body will reject it.”

“Wha- Where am I,” I managed to rasp out.

“You’re in Fraughton, lad. I’m healer Cass and this room is part of my clinic. Sorry, it isn’t much but it's all we have.”

“Tha- Thank you,” I replied, my mind having a hard time focusing. “Wha’s wrong with my head?”

“Had to give you milk of the poppy for the pain so you could rest. You’ll feel a bit out of sorts for a day or two until it leaves your system but I suggest you rest for a few weeks to heal up. That was a nasty gash.”

I nodded slowly, “how long?”

“How long have you been here?” I nodded weakly, “Two days, today will make a third.”

My mind had a sudden moment of clarity, “My stuff,” I tried throwing off the blanket and getting out of bed.

“Easy, easy,” the healer pushed me back down with little effort. “All of your things are here in the room and your horse is stabled. Nobody would be daft enough to steal from a Chosen.”

“What, how do you know?” I asked in fear.

The man let out a happy chuckle. You weren’t exactly subtle about it as you approached the town, making rocks and dirt hover around you as you passed, while being unconscious. I think you may have shaved a few years off the poor frightened guard's life. But it’s for the best. If you hadn’t come in like that, the guard might have mistaken you for a bandit with a wound like yours and your scars.

I swallowed hard at the implications. If the guard had mistaken me for a bandit, I would be dead. They wouldn’t have bothered bringing me to a healer, they would have just killed me, and my horse, then buried my body in the desert and sold the horsemeat off to erase any evidence of my arrival. It was done that way to prevent reprisal because you never knew if bandits had friends nearby. And while this area hadn’t suffered a bandit attack in years, it didn’t mean people forgot the ones that did occur.

The man offered me another sip of water and I drank it greedily.

***

The next few days passed by much the same. I would wake up in agonizing pain, drink some water and some broth and eventually pass out again. It was a full week before my mind was clear enough and my body strong enough to remain awake. I got a good look at the ugly scar on my leg that my attacker left me with. The healer said I was recovering fast and that was a good sign. It meant the wound wasn’t infected. It still felt like my former mentor was poking me with a red hot stick every time I moved that leg though.

A guard had come to ask me some questions the previous day, but I didn’t have much to offer the man. I told him about my hometown being deserted and the attack as I was heading this way. It seemed he was more concerned about possible bandits than what happened to a town full of nearly a thousand people simply vanishing. I think he was afraid of the possibilities if even a Chosen had come from the town injured.

On the eighth day, I managed to hobble out of bed to check on my supplies. One item in particular. Shoved into the top of my bag was the metal tube. I sighed in relief. The item was worth more than my father’s house and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it missing. But it was as Cass had said, nobody had dared taking it. I quickly checked everything else. The only issue I came to was my sword. It was there, but the blood had dried and it was stuck in the scabbard.

Grabbing the stubborn item, I moved back over to the bed to take the weight off my bad leg. With a sigh of relief, I settled back to the mattress. There was a bowl of water and a towel to clean myself so I dribbled water over where the sword met the scabbard. My hope was that I could wet the blood enough to slide the blade out. The only other option was to break the wooden scabbard since the clip that held the halves together was under the tang of the sword.

It took me an hour to loosen the dried blood enough to slide the blade out. I winced at the condition of the weapon. I hadn’t been completely successful at avoiding the bone of my attacker during the fight, and it showed. The tip of the blade – about a fingernail’s length – had chipped off. There were also numerous chips along the length of the blade, lending it a saw-toothed appearance that would only lead to further chipping.

At this point, I wasn’t sure if the blade could be salvaged. I could sharpen away the chips in the edge but the tip couldn’t be fixed or ground down without affecting the entire blade. I could still use it without the tip but ceramic swords were best utilized for quick stabbing motions.

Seeing as I had plenty of free time on my hands, I got my whetstone out and began trying to fix the damage.

Turns out that using a room – designed to let people heal – for the purposes of sharpening a weapon, was frowned upon.

Cass threw a fit when he saw me making a mess in the bed. He went so far as to take all of my items out of the room and said I would get them back once I recovered enough common sense to use them wisely. I didn’t argue with the man as he had saved my life but sitting around doing nothing was driving me up the wall. The motion of sharpening the blade let my mind focus on something other than my missing father and Gan as well as the entire town I had grown up in.

After another week of healing, I could move around without too much issue, the hitch in my step lessening with each day.

“The Chosen are truly blessed by the Mother,” Cass stated as he inspected my wound which was already fading from an angry red scar to a dull brown that matched my skin tone. “I don’t see any reason to keep you here any longer. But I suggest you take it easy, keep your horse to a slow trot if you can help it but it would be best to get a small wagon to ride on instead.”

“Thanks, Healer, I can’t repay you enough.”

“Bah,” he waved off my concern, “call me Cass, and I’m only doing what the Mother would have wanted.”

I simply nodded at his generosity as I started to get dressed. Wearing a belt caused too much hip pain so for now, I had suspenders to keep my pants from falling around my ankles as I walked. It made me look like an old man as I caught a reflection of myself in the mirror.

No, it wasn’t only the suspenders that made me look that way. My eyes had changed. They were sunken with dark bags under them. The scar on my cheek added to the overall look of someone who had aged too quickly for their own good. I could only sigh and hope some of my more boyish features would return once my body recovered fully from my repeated injuries and blood loss.

Cass gave me a crutch to help me walk around. I wanted to turn it down but after a few steps, my hip would flare with pain if I didn’t use it. Cass assured me that would go away with time. Time I didn’t have but I didn’t mention that to Cass.

With the aid of the crutch, I managed to make it to the stable where my horse was being cared for. That was when I got my first dose of reality after being injured.

“I told ye’ I ain’t giving you your horse until you pay the sixty-four plates you own me for housing and feeding the beast for two weeks!” the overweight man yelled at me, spittle flying.

“But, I didn’t ask you to care for it!” I yelled back. I even tried the, ‘I’m a Chosen’ card to no avail.

“I don’t rightly care if you’re the Mother herself. I got a family to feed, and I don’t run a charity like that sentimental fool of a healer. Pay up, or I’m keeping the horse.” My frustration at dealing with this man must have been noticed as it drew a few guards.

“What’s going on here,” one of the men said as he walked over.

Before I could answer, the portly man that owned the stable cut in. “This deadbeat is trying to get away without paying.”

The guard looked at me, looked at my crutch, then looked at the stable owner and sighed. “How much does he owe you, Varnith?”

The guard winced when he heard the amount owed. “Seems a little high?”

“Hey, don’t blame me for the cost. I was told to treat this horse like it belonged to a noble, so I fed it the best grains and gave it the cleanest stall. If you don’t like that, you guards shouldn’t have told me to do that.”

The guard grunted. “Jace, go speak with the Captain and see if we can cover this fee for the Chosen.”

The other guard saluted with a fist over his chest before hurrying off.

The three of us were left waiting in a tense standoff. Varnith with his arms crossed over his ample chest and a petulant glare on his face. The guard with a hand on his spear and an exasperated look about him. And me, leaning against a crutch with the most annoyed look I could conjure up, aimed at the fat bastard in front of me.

After about twenty minutes, Jace returned with another older man who seemed none too pleased to have to come out here and deal with this nonsense. He threw a bag at the stable owner which hit the man in his chest and clanked to the ground because the man was too surprised to catch it.

“Get this man his gods damned horse, and don’t think I will forget this the next time one of us guards is called out to deal with your drunkenness,” the man who I assumed was the Captain, glared daggers at an annoyed and huffing Varnith as he bent over and retrieved his coin.

The Captain only gave me a curt nod as he strode off. A few minutes later, I had my horse fully outfitted and ready to ride. As I mounted up, I left some parting words of advice for Varnith. “Let’s hope you never need a Chosen either, because I’m going to tell everyone I meet how you acted today.” The man turned beet red in anger at my hollow threat but it sure made me feel good.

I turned my horse and rode back east. I needed to go back to my hometown and check some things out. I had been a bit emotional the last time and realized I didn’t do a proper job of looking for clues. Then I could decide on a course of action after I ruled any other possibility out.