Leper's Grace

Story In The Law Of The Leper Series

By the grace of Gǒd, a weary, sore ridden man came upon a mountain valley. Small, protective, isolated, it was far and away from any other realm inhabited by man or other mortal races.

Finding a pond fed by a small waterfall flowing from a opening in the side of the cliff, the weary man undressed. Pus and blood stuck his attire to his scabbed ridden, crinkled skin. Placing his sword on the ground at his feet, he undid his chain-plate armor, and with a clean, slick silver knife began to cut away his decayed and infected flesh. Allowing fresh blood to wash away the impurities that afflicted his body.

Leprosy was his curse, it was a sin to be in such a unsightly state, whether by circumstance or purposefully risk, once one is blighted they are shunned by both the world and the heavens. Even the Allmighty would denounce such a vile state of being, where even death provides no respite.

Despite these sorrowful conditions, the man known as Wøëbeth took what respite he could salvage from his existence. Cutting into his sores, he bled out the disease, and carved away the rotting parts by the slightest of layers. What was once green and purple had become bloody and oozing with healing fluids. Washing it away in the pond water, he shivered at the sharp pains and the chilling cold.

Holding his sword Exscababøürn, the fractured, rusting sword had restored feeling to his otherwise unfeeling body. Allowing only the superficial parts of his body to succumb to the ultimate erosion of leprosy, it also gave him the blessing of feeling, whether it pain or pleasure, it was better than feeling nothing.

Almost being a corpse, it was the burning feeling of a sharp blade cutting into his festering wounds that made him that reminded him of his humanity. Despite being cursed, under layers of tainted flesh he was a bleeding, vulnerable man. If Göd was kind, the Allmighty would grant him some pity, perhaps the pond was a blessing to ease his weary soul.

Once he finished cutting the rot from his ankle, he realized that what he fooled himself to be a blessing, was in actuality a trap, a horrible lure meant for any traveler on those highlands. Leagues of no streams or bodies water around the seeming oasis, had been bait for a rather sickening trap.

Through the mud at the ponds bottom gurgled with movement, bubbling, frothing, emerging, it rose as if it a swiftly growing tree. Erecting itself from its earthen tomb, the gray boned skeletal undead was awakened, having sensed the presence of living flesh inside the cold water above its grave. Hair a soft dangle over its exposed skull, its eyes black, except for miniaturized balls of life that were once human eyes before being shriveled.

Upon its nearly naked, inactivated body clung, tatters of garments that stuck to the body as if they were clumps of mud. The water wasn’t disturbed by the living corpse’s resurrection, but a ghostly mist appeared on the water’s surface.

Wøëbeth shiver, then turned about suddenly as he saw some disholy apparition’s reflection in the pond water. To his eyes he saw it, the grotesque horrors of animated rot, a filthy, malignant corpse given unlife by some dread blasphemy. Wizardry, sorcery? It was all the same, the cancerous heresy that would see the dead deprived of their final rest, forever earthbound to a painfully shell of decay.

‘Don’t be afraid…join us…join us…within the mud…’ as the corpse spoke through its chattering teeth and creaking jaw, uttering out a disembodied voice, other corpses rose from the water.

Wøëbeth struck by a quivering fear, lifted himself from the pond water, just as they began to reach out for him. Taking Exscababøürn in his hand, he unleashed a violent cry, and swatted back the clutching, skeletal fingers of the dead. One he cleaved nearly in two, but there were many hands from above and below the pond water, reaching towards him as he stood on the ponds shore.

Walking back he was naked, cold, and frightened, as his leprosy didn’t faze the dead.

‘What do the dead care? We ourselves are lepers!’ one of the dead cackled, finding humor in their damnation. Unable to ward them off with the curse they both shared, he had little choice but to retreat, watching the living dead dragging his garb and belongings he left carelessly on the shore into the water.

‘Wretched fiends!’ he bellowed, Wøëbeth hacked at the nearest of the emerging legion with Exscababøürn, but the sword’s enchantment were of no use. For leprosy was a protection against its mystically imbued metal, and despite rending apart some bones and leathery, gray flesh, it could not end the undead lepers curse of unlife.

Despite the fear he felt, the slow moving pursuers were just that, slow, and if he was trapped in terror they would’ve overwhelmed him, seized him, and dragged him to his watery doom. Without a effective repellant for the undead adversaries he retreated, going to the steep, rise he climbed to get to the pond, he felt the rocks dig into the soles of his feet.

Bristly and barbed brush cut deep into his exposed, freshly treated wounds, and as he descended, he saw the mists deepen at the rise abovehead. Fearing some ghostly hand would reach out and pull him back, he quickened his pace, and in his frightened haste stripped over himself.

Feeling down, he tumbled across skin cutting foliage, wound intruding rocks, and dirt got into his still bleeding wounds, till he reached the bottom of the rise, filthier than when he was before.

Crestfallen, wounded, he had Exscababøürn in his hand still but nothing else. Turning to the rise above, he looked to see the mist had vanished, along with the living dead that once threatened his life. Escaping the peril, he was naked, exposed, and shivering against the cold.

Whatever he experienced was a poor reflection on his naivety about Gød’s mercy. If he had given any grace, it was his escape of that dire snare. Mercy and care was not granted by sheer pity or right alone, one must take what little miracles life provided when they can, for there is always a time and place, where we are left to the cruelties of fate.

Wøëbeth continued on his journey, wiser, more cynical, naked, and in great pain.