Barick flitted into and out of consciousness as the serpent’s venom navigated its way painfully throughout his body. He was dimly aware of Chief Donegal pressing a cold compress to his forehead while his assistant cut at the puncture marks on his ankle with a sharpened bone blade in an effort to stimulate bleeding and hopefully permit some of the venom to seep out of the wound. Barick knew it wouldn’t work, this venom had moved through him at blistering speed and he doubted that he had much time left. He tried to tell the Chief that he was done for and to end his suffering, but the words came out a garbled, blubbery mess; nonsensical noises carried upon frothy, bloody drool. At least soon, the pain would end he knew, and when the darkness finally did come for him, he embraced it willingly.
But it was not the permanent darkness of dreamless death. He would awaken from time to time, sometimes alone, other times with the concerned or laughing faces of his comrades peering down at him, but each time he was welcomed to consciousness by an explosion of pain and confusion that lasted until the blessed darkness returned to claim him.
During one of his forays into the waking world, he overhead the conversation that would spell out the rest of his life:
“….good medic?” He recognized this voice as First Talon Bariel.
“Nah, he ain’t got the learnin’ to be a chirurgeon or the smarts to be much more than a physicker, an’ even then, he ain’t know nothin’ about herbs an’ salves an’ such,” answered Chief Donegal. “No big loss.”
“Ok, then we leave him,” Bariel responded coldly. “We can’t afford to waste more time here, not for one man.”
Donegal grunted in affirmation and shuffled out of the tent.
“Leave his gear and a couple of skins of water. If he pulls through, that should get him to Raam,” Bariel ordered an unseen figure in the tent, and he turned to leave.
Barick tried to respond and plead his case, but he just blubbered nonsensically instead.
“Hang in there, soldier,” Bariel responded with a surprising note of concern in his voice. “You’ve got a hell of a fight ahead of you, but Badna is the Lady of Venom. She will watch over you if She finds you worthy of saving. And if not, pray She takes you quickly.” And with that he left the tent, and along with him went all hope…
The next several days found the pain replaced by bouts of intolerable heat or freezing cold, at once both sweating and trembling, as the fever wracked his body. He could not tell if he was awake or asleep, as the fevered visions morphed seamlessly into crazed nightmares. During these visions, Barick witnessed the end of the world at the hands of the five-headed monstrosity Tiamat, and watched firsthand Her ascension into Godhood. He felt the agony and despair of the people as they were ground to nothingness beneath her mighty talons; he witnessed firsthand great oceans of water turning into barren stretches of golden sand; and he watched the other Gods bow before her in abject subjugation.
Throughout his fevered state, Barick was privy to the very birth of this world out of the ashes of the last one, and he felt great shame for his worship of this foul creature. He cursed every tithe that he offered in Her name; every prayer he uttered to earn Her pleasure; even every idle curse that bore Her dark name. He regretted donning the dark cloak of the Black Talon Regiment and was now horrified by the innocent blood that stained it in service to Her. He bore Her mark upon his shoulder in the form of a black claw that seemed to tear into his flesh, a symbol of his devotion to Her he had thought at the time. Now, he tried to rip that tattoo from his shoulder, digging into his flesh with his fingernails until his skin was soaked through with blood, but Her mark still remained, whole and undaunted. Just like Her.
The next night…or was it day? Morning?...brought more fevered dreams, but this time they took on a new form. In them, there was always a silver serpent, suggestive of the one that had bitten him, but in the center of each scale was affixed a moving, blinking, seeing eye. These eyes all had different shapes and styles, sizes and colors, and many seemed to belong to people, or animals, or diabolical creatures; and they were all looking directly at him. Behind this strange serpent, different scenes played out, seeming to tell the story of a band of heroes trying to wage war against the Dark Goddess – how he knew this he was not sure. Barick could also tell that these events had not happened yet, but would happen in the years to come. He knew too, that he would never meet these heroes, though somehow his destiny was linked with theirs. No, his path led to the north, to a small town centered around a giant granite boulder. Once there he would eventually find them. There were four of them, currently shrouded in mist, their forms insubstantial and inscrutable in the visions. He could hardly make out their features, yet he somehow knew that he would know them once he saw them in person.
His fever finally broke sometime on the fourth day, and instead of feeling sickly and weak, he felt completely emboldened and renewed. He quietly grabbed his weapons and gear and, after staring at it for a long moment, he at last donned his black army cloak with a sense of reluctance. He then slung the water skins over his shoulder and began the long march to the north, but not before muttering a short prayer to Savras to guide his feet and his heart towards his destiny…