Latimer

During a time not so long ago, there was a dragon. A physician by trade, after completing his studies in another land he decided against staying there despite several lucrative opportunities. No, he declared after turning down every one, he had loftier ambitions--he would go back to his homeland, healing the sick wherever he met them.

Latimer, for that was his name, was not doing it out of the kindness of his heart. It seemed, for sure, a selfless thing to do, for his home was that cauldron of disease known as the Scarred Wasteland, where old and young alike sickened and died in droves. Yet it was selfishness that drove the action. The Imperial had been a talented student, particularly in the making of medicines, and made no attempt to hide either his brilliance or his boredom by the end of his schooling; he had, as far as he was concerned, learned everything he could from his teachers. If he was to further improve--if, indeed, he could--he needed actual field experience. Saving lives, compared to gathering more knowledge and renown, was merely the bonus.

It was with this mindset that he began wandering the region. At first it had gone almost exactly as he had planned: where he successfully treated a case of scale rot or king’s evil he found himself being showered with praise and gifts, and where he failed (the only surprise being that he did so more often than he’d expected) he, at the very least, learned from it.

Eventually, however, he tired of the constant stream: success lost its lustre; flattery became as the buzzing of flies around carrion; every cheap trinket of bone or tattered rags seemed almost offensively paltry. As for when he did not succeed, it was its own sort of drudgery, with the stench of death at times so constant he thought could smell it in his dreams.

One day, cleaning up the latest in a string of recent failures, perhaps Latimer, aware of it or not, had had enough--in an uncharacteristic act of carelessness while disposing of the cadaver he let it slip from his grasp. Now, this patient had died of gangrene, and when it hit the floor from the considerable height of an Imperial’s claws its entrails burst out of the thinned skin like so many wetly glistening rubies. His initial response was disgust, but even so he could not look away from their odd beauty.

Soon after, he would request from the clans he helped permission to dissect the bodies of those who did not survive; for the advancement of his medical knowledge, he claimed. Enough agreed, and soon he was filling page after page with detailed notes on anatomy and bodily mechanisms. With this interest in the internal came a shift, too, in the methods of his healing--he abandoned his poultices, left empty his bottles, in favor of bloodletting and removal.

Sadly, a mostly self-taught surgeon is just that, no matter how brilliant one is; more and more dragons didn’t make it, and fewer and fewer went to him at all. Yet the hunger for more bodies remained.

The last clan who ever asked for his help were desperate, though, enough to beg for the assistance of any physician--even one mostly fallen from grace. “Don’t worry,” Latimer had assured them as he herded all of the infirm into a designated room. “I shall take care of them.”

By the time the lucky ones had noticed the smell, the Imperial was long gone.

For a short while there were attempts to find him, but efforts died down quickly; the Scarred Wasteland is a brutal place, with little time or patience for someone else’s justice. Still, none who live there are quick to forget, lest the listeners of today become the victims of tomorrow. And if, despite their efforts, they find a stranger knocking at their door, ragged cloak as red as his hide and a smile on his face when he introduces himself as a doctor--that is when this story comes back, all at once.

Bio by @Passerinde

Art by kaniari