Flash Fiction: A Question of Immortality

Sometimes the answers are not what you want to hear.

“Stop burning the body,” demanded Shia, leading her guards into the smoke-filled dungeon.

“Your highness? Your father bade me destroy this thing,” the large, bare-chested priest responded in surprise, dumping red glowing coals from his shovel back into the fire.

“And you’ve been trying for four moons,” Shia snapped back at him. “Does she still start growing flesh the moment you take her bones from the fire?”

In a whisper he answered, “Yes, Highness, or even if I let the fire get too low.” He set his shovel against the wall, then faced her.

She told him, “My father no longer wants her dead; he wants the knowledge on how she heals. He charged me to get it.”

His fear filled eyes shifted to the blackened bones. “The risk is extreme. We know not what else she can do. 817 warriors died bringing her down.”

“Carpenters,” she snapped, pointing to the four men behind her guards. “They’ll nail and wire her skeleton to a table, making it impossible to move.”

His fear filled voices came in a hushed whisper. “Have lots of hot coals ready, just in case. Her reported strength.”

Shia interrupted him cuttings off the rest of what he was going to say. “Her strength has grown with every telling. Three of these guardsmen actually fought her. She’s strong and may be the finest warrior to have ever lived, but she was not tossing boulders around like pebbles as the common gossip now has her doing.”

**

-- Forge grips on a leg bone pulled it out of the coals, but magic held it to the others and the complete skeleton emerged from the glowing coals. The Fire blackened bone started turning white as Shia watched.

Everyone jumped when a clatter echoed from the walls from someone shoving tools off the nearby table. “Quickly now!” shouted the man who cleared that table. “Get those bones spread out so we can nail them down.”

Turning from white to red, Shia watched as blood began seeping from the bones as they laid them out.

Carpenters started nailing beside the arms and legs bones, tying wire across them.

“By the gods, flesh is starting to grow on them,” said one man in a panicked voice.

“Work faster,” The Princess snapped, her voice rising. “She cannot be allowed any chance to get loose.”

The nail pounding increased in fervor.

Shia jumped as a guardsman drove his short sword between the rib bones deep into the table and she looked a question at him.

“Having my sword in her lungs will take more of the wind out of her and be easier to do now than if she gets lose. It took the lances of many of us to hold her down before so she could be chained and burned.”

Shia looked back down at the body as lungs and guts began to form, and muscles now covered the wire and bones.

“Enough,” commanded her senior guard, pulling the carpenters back.

Moments later, the creature took a breath, lungs half-formed and it screamed, sending Shia’s heart racing. As she watched, flesh knit together, covering that chest cavity. Father was right. The secret to mending like that was priceless. The precise moment the woman’s eyes formed enough to work, the screams stopped. Those hate-filled eyes locked on her.

Shia’s could not keep the trembled from her voice as she asked, “Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” croaked the voice from that bloody, flesh covered skull.

“I want your secret,” she said, raising her voice with more authority.

“Water.”

“Water is your secret?”

“Throat dry. Hard to talk.”

“I have watered wine,” said the priest.

“I thought you gone,” Shia snapped. “Get it and give her some.”

Fair skin grew over her muscle, and Shia had a flash of jealousy. She had the figure and skin of a real beauty. As the priest was pouring wine in her mouth, fine blond hair started growing out of her head.

Shia put as much royal demand into her voice as she could. “Now your secret. How are you healing this much damage over and over?”

The woman turned anger filled eyes to her and spat each word, “I am not doing this. It is being done to me.”

The surprised priest asked, “Then who’s doing this? And how do we get them to heal others?”

Mocking, cruel laughter came out of that now beautiful face. “A demon’s doing this. This secret you seek; if a powerful demon lord likes seeing you suffer enough, it will keep you alive and make you fight things you can’t win against over and over, when it isn’t torturing you itself.”

Shia looked to the priest. “Is she lying? Can a demon really do that?”

The priest grabbed the carpenter’s hammer still on the table and smashed the woman’s throat. “Quickly, don’t let her speak the name. If she does, we’re all doomed.” He shoved a rag in her mouth.

Shia breathing in short pants, making her voice squeak, asked, “Will that summon it?”

“It may or may not,” the priest said tying that rag in place. “But it means someone certainly will. There are hundreds of priests and mages in this kingdom that can find out that name from us if we know it. Anyone summoning a demon lord in the kingdom will doom us all. It’s more important than ever that we find a way to destroy this creature before that name gets out.”

The senior guard said, “If a powerful demon wants her alive and to suffer, I don’t think we can kill her. And even if we succeeded, would that not bring it here?”

Picking his shovel back up, the priest asked “With your permission, I’ll start putting the coals back on her.”

The woman put everything she had into fighting the nails holding her down.

Seeing that, Shia barked, “Do it.”

“What will you tell your father?” A guard asked.

“I’ll tell him she was a demon. We sent her back to hell when we learned the truth. I’ll need burnt bones to take to him.”

Her guard-captain nodded and said, “Once she is just bones again, we fold the bones together and wire them that way. Then we place them in a jar and fill it with sand and water. Even if she heals, she will not be able to summon anything.”

The priest dumped a shovel of hot coals onto the woman’s nearly perfect body and the thrashing increase and blood flowed from under her.

He added another shovel full.

And another.

And another.

Finally the thrashing stopped. “Poor woman,” Shia said. But some secrets have to be kept from getting out. Now to find a place no one could get to her.