Duncan Ward spent his 533rd birthday doing two things. First, he blew out an unlit candle before tossing it into the mud. And then he saved the lives of two hundred soldiers.
“Medic! Medic— Someone, anyone! Help!”
Duncan hurriedly stuffed a golden pill into his mouth and grabbed his medical kit, scrambling towards the cries for help. He squeezed through the narrow, muddy trench that had been his home for the past few months, squinting his eyes in the heavy downpour.
A mortar shell struck somewhere close as thunder cracked at the same time, sending tremors through the whole ditch.
Duncan cursed as the sandbags supporting the trench walls collapsed under the weight of falling mud, blocking the way forward. Teeth gritted, the man crawled out of the trench as the rattle of machine gun bullets cackled heartlessly over his head.
He coughed violently, falling on his face as an artillery shell exploded above him. Fire scorched every inch of his face as the pungent odour of burning garlic permeated his nostrils immediately.
His khaki uniform was barely visible through the haze of rain and yellow gas. The British army insignia on his left shoulder was caked in soil, while the Medical Corps insignia on his right had long been torn off. His matted blonde hair was more of a dirty brown from all the smeared mud, and his once electric-blue eyes looked a lot darker now.
With a growl, the British medic forced his body to a standing position again. Several bullets pelted the side of his body as though warning him to stay down, but the pain barely registered through the mustard gas searing his skin.
Duncan turned to give a pointless glare in the direction of the gunfire before he continued running towards the tortured wailing. A mass of writhing bodies greeted him soon enough, and he dived back into the trench.
“Calm yourselves, relief will come soon,” the medic muttered, opening his medical kit to rummage for menthol solution-soaked gauze. “Gah! By Jove…”
There was none left.
“Help, it hurts…” A blistering hand grabbed him weakly.
Duncan’s heart ached at the sight of his fellow malnourished soldiers squirming and clawing at their blisters. Most of them were no older than twenty. All of them looked no younger than forty. None of them deserved this.
These men, once boys who played in the yard with sticks and laughed at each other’s silly jokes, were about to be meat for the birds. These trenches, meant to be their stronghold against the horrors of the Great War, were about to become graveyards for the unburied.
War doesn’t usually change. But when it does, it always changes for the worse.
The medic looked around desperately. There were about two hundred soldiers crammed in this hellhole. To make things worse, they were right on the front lines without reinforcements arriving anytime soon. Their enemy wouldn’t stop the onslaught until they were either pushed back or dead. Turning back was obviously not an option as well, since the bullets flying overhead would catch them on their first step out of the trench.
There was only one option left if the soldiers were to live. He didn’t have a choice now.
Duncan Ward closed his eyes for a few seconds, feeling his fingertips crackle with energy. It didn’t matter if he revealed what he was; his comrades would probably be too disoriented to remember who he was anyway.
Bolts of yellow energy illuminated his veins as Duncan focused his attention inward. Magic shifted from the depths of his soul, surging out into his body like water bursting from a dam. Flashes went off in his head like a crew of overzealous cameramen, and he brought his hands in front of him.
Light bloomed around him, healing magic oozing out every pore and rapidly spreading through the entire trench as though it were leaking liquid. To any other observer, it would be more glaring than the blinding afternoon sun.
But to the wounded men around him, it was their elixir of life.
The soldiers looked at themselves, murmuring in awe as their wounds disappeared from their bodies. Meanwhile, the witch medic wasted no time channelling more magic into his fingertips. His blanket of blessed air would only protect these soldiers for a minute longer before it expired and dispersed into the air. He had to get them out of there before the next gas attack hit them again.
With a resounding snap of his fingers, a rectangular gateway materialised in front of him, pulsating a dull green.
“Go! Get out of here!” Duncan yelled at the dumbfounded soldiers, jabbing frantically at the dense forest on the other side of the portal. “Turn right and head to the military hospital!”
Boots squelched against mud as the soldiers obeyed without hesitation, making a mad dash into the portal. A few of them cast nervous but grateful looks at him. Most just focused on getting the hell out of this nightmarish quagmire.
Duncan stepped through the portal as well after the last man got out safely. He closed it as the rattle of the enemy forces still wasting their bullets firing over an empty ditch cut off abruptly. Most of his comrades had limped off to the medical hospital, except for one, who, for some reason, had opted to stay behind and wait for him.
“Thank you, angel! Thank you!” The dark-skinned soldier shook his hand vigorously. “It’s such an honour to serve with you!”
Duncan only gave him a small smile in response before sprinting towards a devastated town. There was still more he could save.
Black smoke hung over the decapitated town like a repulsive blanket. Duncan stumbled through the dense smoke, covering his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, leaving his eyes to water. He didn’t actually need to see where he was going; his magic senses already told him where the only sign of life was.
It was the stench he had to block out before nausea spun his head out of control.
Piles of corpses, unfortunate enough to be in the range of the enemy’s gunfire and bombs, lay idly around the cracked streets. The ones at the bottom were covered in ash, while the ones on top had blackened faces and missing body parts that were oozing with blood and pus.
Duncan’s stomach lurched at the sight of what mankind had accomplished. It was like staring straight into the face of Hell itself, if Hell had the face of a snarling demon.
He tripped over what he initially thought to be some kind of tree root before finding himself staring back at two empty eye sockets.
The man got to his feet quickly and gave the corpse a cursory glance. Its face was still bloodied and missing a huge chunk on its left half. A layer of ash covered its khaki uniform, and the part of the body that was supposed to be in its right sleeve had been reduced to a stump.
Still, there was no way he couldn’t recognise the Medical Corps insignia on its right shoulder. Or rather, what remained of it.
Duncan turned a corner and quickened his steps. Not much further now.
A man trapped under some rubble caught his eye. Duncan would have mistaken that man for another corpse, if not for his senses telling him otherwise. The young soldier had gone almost motionless. Perhaps he had lost too much blood. Or perhaps he had plainly accepted his death. Likely both.
“Hey, soldier!” The witch doctor carelessly shoved aside the five-ton concrete slab after reducing its weight with an inconspicuous spark of magic. “Don’t give up on me now, son. You’re still alive. Come, let us get you out of here.”
The soldier wheezed as though he had just woken up. “No… Are you… a medic? Save yourself… Enemy infantry incoming…”
“What’s your name?” Duncan’s eyes shot to the dog tags around the man’s neck. “Bertram Harvey? This is no place to die, Corporal Harvey. There’s a military hospital just three klicks from here. We can still make it—”
His voice trailed away as he finally noticed the stumps where the soldier’s knees ended. The wound had turned black under all the coagulated blood, and flies were already beginning to circle what was left of his legs.
“Artillery… got me.” Harvey shook his head in defeat. “I won’t make it.”
Duncan clenched his fists in determination. “Like hell you won’t.”
With a swish and a wrist flick, a complex purple glyph materialised in the air. The medic furrowed his eyebrows, his hands trembling under the turbulent magic focusing itself through the glyph.
In all his past wars, Duncan never needed to use magic to heal soldiers directly; it was always too much of a risk to reveal his powers as a Sorcerer. But today, he had just used it twice in front of hundreds of people. In normal circumstances, he would’ve disappeared into the shadows if there was even a single witness.
But he was Duncan Ward, the last living witch doctor who had spent centuries as a volunteer wartime medic. And he’d be damned if he let any more lives slip through his fingers today.
Harvey groaned in slight discomfort as the blackened flesh below his knee shuddered under the glow of the shimmering glyph. Duncan’s eyes glowed in tandem with the magic thundering through his fingertips. Flesh sprouted rapidly from the blown-off stumps below Harvey’s knees.
It took another minute before the soldier’s legs were fully regenerated under the power of the witch doctor’s magic.
“Jesus Christ…” Harvey breathed, standing up testily. “Jesus Christ! Are you Him? How did you—”
A rattle of gunfire cut him off.
Duncan dragged the man behind a broken wall as the familiar sound of marching drifted to their ears. The two men kept their backs pinned against the wall, hearing someone with a nasal voice bark instructions in German.
“Bugger, enemy infantry’s here,” Harvey whispered urgently. “We’re screwed.”
Duncan focused his mind on the military hospital again, but quickly let go of his power. His magic was nearly depleted from all the heavy healing today, and he hadn’t had enough time to recover enough energy to create a portal so far away.
“Not yet, we’re not.” He scanned the area for a firearm that Harvey could use to protect himself, but there were none in their immediate vicinity. “Not if we don’t alert them.”
Duncan looked over the short wall.
“Safe zone’s that way.” He pointed at a random smoke cloud. “Germans have not reached our spot yet, but they are already spread thin. We can still make it out if we keep quiet.”
Harvey’s eyes quivered with nervousness, and Duncan took in how young the soldier looked once again. He nodded at the young man reassuringly. “You’re going to survive, lad. Have faith.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.” Harvey nodded back firmly, determination growing in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by getting out of here alive.” Duncan stood up, looking around a corner. “And by not breathing a word to anyone about what I did for you.”
The two soldiers scurried out of their hiding place, using the rubble around them for cover. Thankfully, the German infantry was too preoccupied searching for survivors amongst the corpses to notice them darting around.
“We’re almost there,” Duncan whispered, still pointing at nothing in particular. “We just need to go through these guys.”
“How?” Harvey whispered back, gesturing at the overgrown mass of soldiers guarding the town entrance. “There’s only one way out of here. They’ll spot us the moment we move out of cover.”
Duncan focused his breathing, feeling a trickle of magic crackle around his fingertips. He still hadn’t managed to recover too much magic, but it was just enough to open a portal right behind the enemy’s checkpoint.
So be it.
A rectangular portal materialised silently right behind the guarding German soldiers as the witch doctor put down his pulsating hands. Duncan motioned for Harvey to enter before Harvey could waste time asking questions.
The two men exhaled slowly and leaned against a tree as the portal closed behind them.
“That was bloody mental.” Harvey broke into a short laugh. “Man, you must either be an angel or Christ Himself. I just wasn’t expecting Him to be Scottish.”
“I’m on your side; that’s all that matters.” Duncan wiped the mud off his insignia. “But if you insist on names, you may call me Charlie Ward. Military hospital’s that way. Best hurry.”
Harvey glanced at the empty area that Duncan was pointing at again and creased his eyebrows in confusion. “You keep talking about a military hospital, but I don’t see a building.”
Duncan ignored him and trudged ahead. He was sure the hospital was in that direction; it was probably just a bad angle of view to see it—
“F— Feind entdeckt!”
The two men swivelled around in surprise as a small group of strolling German soldiers reached for their weapons frantically, also caught by surprise by their enemies’ presence.
Alack!
“Go, go, go!” Duncan shielded Harvey with his body as the enemy began firing. “Stay in front of me!”
The soldiers made a mad dash into the depths of the forest, bullets whizzing all around them. Duncan gritted his teeth, adjusting his body to cover Harvey’s gait as much as possible.
If he had recalled correctly, the military hospital was in a demilitarised zone just a few hundred metres ahead. Technically, their enemy wouldn’t be allowed to discharge their weapons there, but he wasn’t about to count on goodwill now.
Duncan fished out a satchel from his thigh pocket and flung it behind him.
Inky darkness billowed out of the satchel like a spreading gas, blocking their pursuers’ view instantly. Coughs and foreign curses ensued, and Duncan took the chance to sprint as fast as he could.
The edge of the forest came into view, and the two soldiers gradually slowed their footsteps. A deathly silence greeted them, although Duncan couldn’t be more grateful for its solemn welcome. Thank God they had managed to shake those soldiers off.
He doubled over in discomfort, feeling his flesh slowly push out the hundreds of bullets lodged in his back. The immortal witch doctor had healed from worse injuries in the past, but healing from these bullets was a new experience. It felt like hundreds of worms were crawling out of his skin.
“Charlie?”
Duncan didn’t reply; he was still busy getting the last few bullets out of his body.
“Charlie Ward? Is this… supposed to be the military hospital?”
“What?” Duncan finally looked up. “Of course it is—”
His heart dropped.
What stood in front of him was no longer a safe abode for the injured, but a pile of crushed rubble. The military hospital had been reduced to nothing more than a cracked husk of the building that it was less than an hour ago. Its foundations gasped its dying breaths in the choking concrete dust in the air.
The lingering heat of explosives simmered in the air. The bitter stench of blood clung to the rubble. And the world blurred.
A dull thud broke the silence as Duncan Ward fell to his knees. It was all for nought. All those lives he saved; everything he did… had been for nothing.
“Those bastards…” Harvey gritted his teeth, his whole body trembling with rage. “They must have blown up the hospital on their way to the town. Despicable, wretched, cowardly… War criminals! They’ll pay for this… They must pay for this!”
Duncan didn’t answer, nor did he agree. Because he knew. It wasn’t the soldiers. It wasn’t the Central Powers. It wasn’t the Allied Forces. It wasn’t even the enemy.
It was humanity. And he was done helping them.
The immortal healer ripped the insignia from his shoulder and tossed it onto the ground. He walked away without another word.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQodgsZJmUO
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