Mortarion froze. He could not begin to understand the old man's actions. Suicide? Or the final step of some more sinister Sacrificial Ritual?
The old doctor rushed to the nearest patient, a young woman already at death's door, whose throat had rotted so badly that her windpipe was visible. Ignoring the stench and pus pouring from her body, he dropped to his knees in the mud and thrust his rough, callused, scarred hand straight into the scalding pot, scooping out a large lump of black ointment.
Hiss-
Without hesitation, he smeared the scalding ointment over the wound in the woman's neck, which was still emitting yellow-green toxic fumes.
At that moment, a miracle occurred.
When the black ointment touched the festering flesh, the scene Mortarion had imagined did not unfold. Instead, the toxins ravenously eating away at her flesh rapidly dissipated and neutralized, as though they had met their nemesis. The flow of pus visibly stopped, and the curled, blackened flesh gradually ceased to rot.
Then the old doctor pulled a small waterskin from inside his clothes, diluted some of the remaining ointment with its water, and forced the woman's mouth open, pouring the black, pungent medicine down her throat.
A few seconds later, the woman, who had been barely drawing breath and whose pupils had begun to lose focus, gave a labored, whistling gasp. Then, though her breathing remained faint, it miraculously began to grow steady and regular.
She had survived.
The old doctor did not pause for even a moment. He immediately rushed to the next dying villager. Using the same rough, direct, yet astonishingly effective methods, he dragged one life after another back from death's grasp with hands scalded red by the ointment.
Mortarion stood utterly rooted to the spot.
His mind was blank.
His worldview, as