Flash Fiction: A Question of Immortality

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

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

“And you’ve been trying for four moons,” she snapped. “She still starts growing flesh the moment you take her bones out of 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.

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

His 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 voice filled with fear. “Have lots of hot coals ready, just in case. Her reported strength…”

Shia cut him off. “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 together and the complete skeleton emerged. Fire blackened bone started turning white.

Everyone jumped when 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, 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.”

Nail pounding increased in fervor.

Shia jumped as A guardsman drove his short sword between the rib bones, deep into the table. She looked a question.

“Having my sword in her lungs will take more of the wind out of her and be easier 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. 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.

It screamed. sending

Shia’s heart raced. 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 voice trembled 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.

“Now your secret. How are you healing this?”

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

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

Mocking, cruel laughter came out. “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, when it isn’t torturing you itself.”

Shia looked to the priest. “Is she lying? Can a demon 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 doom.” He shoved a rag in her mouth.

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

“It may or may not. But it means someone certainly will. There are hundreds of priests and mages that can find out that name from us if we know it. Anyone summoning a demon lord here will doom us all. It is more important than ever that we find a way to destroy this creature.”

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

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

The woman started fighting the nails holding her down.

“Do it.”

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

“I’ll tell him she was a demon. We set 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.

Thrashing increase.

He added another shovel full,

and another,

and another.

Thrashing stopped.

Poor woman. But some secrets have to be kept from getting out.

Now to find a place no one could get to her.