One moment, Blai is approaching the walls surrounding the next town on his journey towards the Constitutional Convention.

The next moment, subjectively, he's regaining consciousness. He's lying horizontal on a wooden stretcher, which bobs up and down slightly underneath him as it moves through the city streets. There's a searing pain in his chest, and blood is pouring from a wound dangerously close to his heart; his armor has been stripped off him entirely, though he still has his other possessions, as well as a pair of metal bracers around his wrists. The men carrying his stretchers are strangers, though from this angle their clothing and ethnicity resembles that of the Mendevian soldiers he's occasionally encountered at the Worldwound.

"Make way!" shouts a voice near his head. (He's speaking Hallit, but Blai can understand him perfectly.) "Coming through! Fetch a healer, quick!"