Howard ~ Past ~ Make yourself indispensable, under threat of death

I felt like I was in the top of the world, relief washed over me during that entire week.

When I appeared I had to feign confidence, I could not show a moment of weakness. The last thing I remembered was falling asleep while reading an isekai manga, only to wake up in a world where the sun did not exist.

To be honest, at the start I thought it was just a dream, but the moment they threw me into the cell I realized. No, it was real. Painfully so.

Mainly because I faceplanted the ground when they threw me in.

Getting out of jail? A masterful stroke of luck I must say. I had so little faith on my little plan that I even had taken out my glasses for when they got tired of my shit and gave me a good beating. They did punch me, so it was a good call in the end. If those got broken, I would probably be useless and then sacrificed immediately.

After I convinced them to let me live they got me a “doctor’s office” of sorts and got into work immediately. I was not tied up or anything like that, but I did get two guards stayed to watch me as I worked. Maybe to steal my medicine secrets, maybe just to make sure I didn’t escape. Who knows.

I was guarded 24/7, they didn’t dare leave me out of their sight at any moment. When the first patients arrived they looked absolutely shocked of seeing me. I’ll guess it’s the first time one of their sacrifices is allowed to contact other people this freely.

Fighting the cultural barrier… was a different matter.

The fact that I could not understand a single word anyone said did not prevent me of understanding their feelings. Their distrust of me was clear as day for anyone, and the guard that got assigned as my translator was already fed up after the first hour of the day. Eventually he screamed something to the other guard and simply left, fuming.

I looked at the other guard. It was a woman, even younger than I was, looking at me with blank eyes. We had a patient in front of us and she simply looked at me blank faced while tha patient asked what the hell was going on in their strange language.

It was then that I realized that the remaining guard did not speak english.

The first few hours were extremely rough. I no longer had any way to communicate with the patients, I didn’t have any reliable medicine by hand and the distrust they all showed only aggravated the issue.

By the end of the day I was sure I was gonna get sacrificed, it had been a complete mess.

The guard stayed at my side, just as tired and ashamed of what had happened as I was. Maybe more, she did actually understand their complaints.

This shit cannot stand. I won’t let them sacrifice me.

“You!” I said, pointing to the guard.

She looked back at me tired, uninterested.

I took a piece of parchment and started writing some symbols. Then I showed it to her while I spoke.

“Head. H E A D.” I said, repeating the word slowly, while touching and pointing to my head.

The guard was still looked at me very tired, but that did seem to pick her interest. She pointed to her own head.

“Hed?” She said, with the most horrible accent I heard in my life, but at that point I felt like her voice was a healing balm

She then looked at me like I was mad as I started crying out of happiness, writing words non stop, ready to teach her as many words as I could.

By the third day, she knew enough words to primitively communicate me what the patients wanted to say. I still was in a rough position, but unlike the first day, I could actually find workarounds and help the people who came.

By the seventh day, Meofor returned. He gave me a very stern look as a patient left the office, sighing in relief.

Apparently, he had heard of my work and although people started leaving happy and satisfied, he was not impressed. Even so, he took me away from the office, making me leave my new friend behind.

I didn’t know them at the time, but she, Swerans, would eventually become one of my closest friends. Someone deeply important in my heart.

Meofor guided back into an enormous building, the biggest one, in the heart of the city. After several minutes going around in it, we finally stopped. He turned around to look at me with an extremely stern look on his face.

“This is your most important task. If you touch her in any improper way, or if you hurt her, if her health gets worse, even if she simply complains about you, I’ll throw you back into your cell after beating you to a pulp with my own hands. Understood?” he asked, stopping me right in front of a very dark wood door.

I simply nodded, not wanting to risk infuriating him. He opened the door, entering, while saying some apparently very sweet words in his strange language. I got whiplash from how sudden the shift was.

Inside the room, dimly lit by small stones in the wall, was an enormous bed with a woman resting in it. She looked sickly. When Meofor entered, she turned to look at him, but soon turned to look at the ceiling again.

She would be such a beautiful woman if she was not in this situation, I imagined.

Meofor didn’t like how I looked at her.

“She’s my future daughter in law, Euryce.” He said, studying my reaction very closely. When he was convinced that any strange idea had been pushed out from my head, he continued. “She’s been sick from some time now, after she was dragged into the stream a couple of months ago during a sacrifice. Your task is to make sure she gets better.”

I turned around to look at him. He could not be serious. She looks more on the side of the dead than the living right now. With which exams, medicine or tools was I supposed to treat her?

And what the hell does he mean with the stream?

“Of course, count with it.” I said, determined to keep my head from rolling off my shoulders despite all my doubts.

I’m not going to be the one to say that I can’t do anything here.

Meofor looked at me, clearly still distrusting me. I had to calm him down.

“May I?” I said, pointing towards the room, waiting for permission to enter.

“Go ahead. Careful with yourself.” He said, standing there with his arms crossed.

I slowly walked towards the woman who stayed there, simply looking at me without saying a word.

She looked at me in the eyes, before turning her head to look at Meofor again, asking something I could not understand in their strange language. After he responded, she looked glum and angry. She looked at me before turning around in her bed.

“If anything happens to her, you’ll pay.” Said Meofor, before assigning a new couple of guards to watch me and left.

I sat on the side of the woman.

“Hi, by any chance, do you speak english too?” I said, without too much hope.

She turned her head around and just looked at me for a moment, before returning to watch the wall, completely silent.

I’ll take that as a no. I sighed, knowing that I had a long way ahead of me.

I looked at the guards and asked them: “Can any of you two help me translate?”

They also looked at me, confused. After a moment of silence, it dawned on me.

I could not believe this shit. They don’t know english either! Why the hell did Meofor leave me here without any way to communicate with her?

I had no idea what he was thinking, but as I turned around to look at Euryce once more, I knew I had to find a workaround if I wanted to keep myself breathing for another day.