Chapter 111: Repair

The light was too small to belong to a complete Beacon, yet Mara recognized the pressure it placed upon the surrounding darkness. The damaged lanterns along the walls drew their flames from it. Cracks near the pillar had closed, and the stone beneath it remained cleaner than the rest of the floor.

"Is that this Bastion's Beacon?"

"Something like it." The old man stopped beside the pillar and examined the white flame. "The original foundation was too damaged to restore. I recovered one surviving fragment and gave it enough memory to sustain this hall. It cannot protect the entire Bastion or rebuild what lies beyond these chambers, but it discourages weaker Abominations and keeps the structure from forgetting itself."

"You repaired the Seventy-Second but couldn't repair this one?"

"The Seventy-Second still possessed most of its foundation. It had forgotten how its pieces connected, which is difficult but reversible. This place lost entire sections of itself. Restoring it would require more than instructions and a Seventh Rank core."

His gaze drifted toward the feline.

"More than I am currently willing to spend."

He led them into one of the larger rooms branching from the hall.

A long stone table occupied its center. Metal restraints had been fixed near both ends, though rust covered the clasps. Cabinets lined the rear wall beside shelves holding curved instruments, sealed fragments and containers of dark liquid. Unlike the laboratory Mara had seen within the Fourth Rank's memories, nothing here had been built to appear clean. Every surface showed age, repeated use and repairs performed with whatever materials remained available.

The old man removed his coat and folded it over the back of a chair.

"Put him on the table," he told the feline.

The creature crouched beside the stone slab and opened its mouth.

A pale membrane emerged from behind its lower teeth. It unfolded slowly, lowering Rook onto the floor inside a transparent sac of remembered flesh. The membrane withdrew once he was free, returning beneath the feline's tongue without leaving a mark upon him.

Mara hurried forward.

Rook's body had stopped deteriorating, but the damage remained. His chest was flattened, one leg twisted beneath him and much of his skin carried the translucent sheen left by the Pale Abomination's digestive fluid. His face had partially reformed during the journey, although one side remained too smooth, as if the flesh had forgotten the smaller bones beneath it.

The old man lifted him beneath the shoulders.

Mara moved to help without being asked. Together, they placed Rook upon the table.

"Will he wake up?" she asked.

"Not during the first stage. His mind has withdrawn from the damaged parts of his body. Forcing him awake now would only make him experience injuries he cannot control."

The old man positioned Rook's limbs, straightening them as far as the damage allowed. He then placed one palm against Rook's chest and the other over his forehead.

White light appeared beneath his hands.

It was not the sharp glow of a Death Imprint. The light spread slowly, passing through Rook's skin and revealing the broken structure beneath. Fractured ribs overlapped inside his chest. His left shoulder had separated completely from the joint, while cracks ran through his skull and jaw.

Something darker moved among those injuries.

The Pale Abomination's digestive fluid clung to his bones and memories in thin, shifting layers. It had no stable colour. Grey became black, then transparent, changing whenever the light touched it.

The old man closed his eyes.

The fluid began peeling away.

It rose from Rook's skin in narrow strands, resisting wherever it had worked itself deeper into his remembered flesh. The old man drew each strand toward his palms. They entered his hands and disappeared beneath the skin.

His fingers started trembling.

Dark stains formed beneath his nails. The skin around the first knuckle lost its texture, becoming smooth and indistinct. Then the damage spread into his palms. Wrinkles vanished. Veins disappeared. One finger briefly turned translucent enough for Mara to see pale fragments drifting inside it.

She caught his wrist. "It's digesting you."

"Yes."

"Then stop absorbing it."

"If I stop before removing the deeper residue, it will begin spreading again. His body has already mistaken part of it for its own memory. Pulling it free requires giving it somewhere else to go."

"Will it destroy your hands?"

"It will try. I know what belongs to me well enough to resist it."

His voice remained calm, but the muscles in his forearms tightened as the final strands left Rook's body.

The old man drew both hands away and pressed them together. Dark fluid shifted beneath his skin before being forced into one palm. He held it there until his fingers stopped trembling, then closed his fist.

When he opened it again, a small grey clot rested at the center.

He placed it inside a metal container and sealed the lid.

Only then did he examine his damaged hands. The fingers had begun recovering, though some remained featureless at their tips.

Mara looked toward Rook.

Without the fluid holding his body apart, his remembered flesh had started repairing itself. Broken ribs shifted beneath his chest. His shoulder dragged itself toward the joint with a series of wet movements. The twisted leg straightened slowly, though several fractures remained misaligned.

The old man reached beneath his folded coat and removed a white sphere.

It resembled an Abomination core, but none Mara had seen possessed light so clear. There were no faces struggling beneath its surface, no dark tissue surrounding it and no confused voices escaping from within. The memory inside had been refined until nothing recognizable remained.

He pressed it against Rook's chest.

The white sphere softened.

Part of it passed through his clothing and entered his body. Light spread from the point of contact, filling the spaces between broken sections of remembered flesh.

Rook's body reacted immediately.

His ribs pulled themselves apart and returned to their proper positions. Bone formed where pieces had been crushed beyond repair. Muscle followed, weaving across his chest before the skin closed over it. The fractures throughout his arms and legs vanished one after another as new remembered flesh replaced what the Pale Abomination had consumed.

The left side of his face regained its shape.

Mara watched until she could no longer find any injury upon him.

The sphere in the old man's hand remained more than half full. He removed it at once. Seemingly unwilling to part with such a precious looking object.

"Why did you stop?" Mara asked. "There's still damage inside him. You said some of his memories were eaten."

"I said the Pale Abomination damaged them. This cannot restore what belonged to him."

He placed the sphere inside a padded pouch and returned it beneath his coat.

Mara looked from it to Rook. "You used an Abomination's core to heal his body."

"I used memories refined from one. Remembered flesh does not require every memory forming it to belong to the same soul. It requires material and a strong enough sense of what shape that material should take. Rook's body consumed the foreign memories, stripped them of what little identity remained and used them to rebuild itself."

"Then why not give him the rest? Wouldn't more memory make him stronger?"

"It would make him less certain of who he is if given too much of what he isn't."

The old man wiped his hands upon a dark cloth before continuing.

"A small amount of neutral memory becomes flesh because his own identity controls it. Too much begins exerting pressure in return. Foreign habits appear. Emotions without causes. Dreams belonging to lives he never lived. If the imbalance grows severe enough, the body may begin remembering another shape alongside his own. That is one of the ways Abominations form."

Mara looked down at Rook's restored face. "So his body is healed."

"Yes. He is stable, and the digestive decay has stopped. What remains damaged now is not flesh."

"The memories."

"The pathways leading to them. Some were broken by the Pale Abomination. Others were damaged long before today. Several have been sealed deliberately."

"By whom?"

The old man studied Rook for a moment. "That is what I intend to discover."

He crossed toward the shelves at the back of the room. Rather than choosing one of the larger instruments, he opened a narrow wooden case hidden beneath several folded cloths.

Inside lay a curved knife.

Its blade was short and thin, bending slightly near the point. Symbols had been carved along the dull metal, each so small that Mara could not read them even when the old man brought it beneath the lantern.

She looked at Rook and then at the knife. "You healed him just so you could cut him open again?"

"The body was the simple part. Flesh announces where it is broken, and once given enough memory, it repairs itself according to a shape it already understands."

The old man tested the edge against his thumb. No blood appeared, though the skin briefly shimmered where the blade touched it.

"Lost memories are less cooperative. They hide beneath replacements, attach themselves to pain and sometimes resist the person they belong to. Those Rook chose to bury will resist more than the ones taken from him."

Mara moved to the opposite side of the table. "What do you need me to do?"

"For now, keep him still. Once I begin, his body may remember wounds that no longer exist. It will react to them as if they are happening again."

He placed the curved blade against the center of Rook's chest.

"This is where the difficult part starts."