And then -

Lac had a pretty gentle life. His mother was a healer and would ply her craft when he got sick. He never had to do hard labor or fight for his life, and most of his waking hours were spent reading.

So what happens when you give this sheltered bookworm a deep, wide wound in the center of his chest, cracking ribs and reaching dangerously close to his heart?

It actually takes a second for the pain to register, and then it hurts too much for screaming. Forget about situational awareness or anything - this is a couple notches past "wishing for death" and well into what his second favorite Irorian philosopher calls a "limit experience." 

Not that he's thinking about that right now. 

"Hey, somebody, got a wounded fighter!"

"Can we get a healer over here?" the first voice calls out again, louder this time.

There're sounds of a crowd - not an army, not people running scared, but a crowd, maybe happier than an average day in a city?

Then someone else in nicer clothes steps up closer (if he's looking).  "My, my, look at this!  But why would you drag a wounded fighter into the middle of the festival square? Couldn't he be carted off somewhere else, like... oh I don't know... an infirmary? Or an accommodating ditch?"

He's in an infirmary?

Maybe Ma can heal him

He isn't yet...

Another voice, a man sounding like he expects people to be listening to him, comes up.  "Make room, everyone step back! Now, what's the matter? What happened to him?" 

"Demons, Prelate!" says the first voice.  "We found him barely alive outside the walls of Kenabres!"

"The walls, you say?"  He pauses and continues in a suspicious tone.  "The enemy doesn't usually stray so close to the city. We must fortify the defenses, especially now for the festival..."

demons? evocation doesn't work on demons

Lac is really losing quite a lot of blood.

The Prelate turns back to Lac.  "Hold fast; don't die; we'll get you patched up now!  But first -- you there, guard, take his weapons.  Bearing arms is not permitted during the festival. Wounded or not, he can get his things back afterwards."

He can feel... well, if he can feel anything now over the pain and blood loss, he can feel... some people removing some weighty things from the stretcher.

The pain feels far away, or maybe there's less Lac present to hurt! He doesn't react to the loss of his weapons, paid for with utter tedium and laundry wizardry.

Maybe the sinking feeling is real.  They're laying his stretcher on the ground now.

The light hits just right, and a glowing vision of Hulrun's sun-and-sword sears into Lac's darkening visual field. The prayer is reflexive.

Iomedae-

But just as Hulrun takes out his holy symbol, before he starts praying, he jerks his gaze over to one of Lac's stretcher-bearers.  "Seize him!" he orders.  And then he barks, "Who are you?"

"Just a loyal subject, Sir -" (The stretcher is jerking under Lac.)

"Then why do you have a disguise spell up!?"

The same well-dressed man as earlier responds, with a slight whine in his voice.  "Prelate, if you're trying to both arrest this man and heal this dying adventurer, surely there's someone more suited for one or the other of those two urgent tasks..."

"Adventurer" is something of an overstatement, but he's not self-conscious. It's easy when you're not conscious at all!

The other stretcher-bearer shakes him.  "Hey, you can't be dying on us!  The prelate's right here --"

Hulrun looks at him with some concern, but then narrows his eyes.  "And who are you, ignoring someone so suspicious?"

"Prelate, surely Iomedae would not require you to choose such a pleasant task as interrogating these men right now.  After all, She only commands you to abandon your work" (he waves his hand at the dying man) "for amusement once a month."

Hulrun doesn't spare Daeran a glance.

He shakes his head.  "Surely if such a distinguished Good man as our Prelate won't heal this adventurer, he has surely detected some grave Evil on him -"

By now several other men are holding the stretcher-bearer, and Hulrun steps back over, frowning.

(He has detected some trace of evil, but that shouldn't be stopping him now...)

He frowns again at Lac's wound, but raises his holy symbol.  "Oh Inheritor, leader of our troops, grant your mercy, heal his wounds..."

The cure washes over Lac. He opens his eyes, feeling the fading warmth of positive energy (he's felt it only once before, but it's unmistakable), and a pain in his chest. It only hurts a moderate amount, but it makes him flinch from the memory of far worse pain, and jolts him to alertness. He's lying down, on a stretcher(?) and there are people standing around him - he moves his head cautiously, and there's no pain, so he takes in the people standing around him, one of whom has a sun-and-sword and was probably the source of the cure. An Iomedaean cleric, then. Some tension leaves his body.

"Ah, welcome back to the land of the living."  He throws wide an arm in a sweeping gesture.  "My apologies if you were expecting a happier afterlife."

Hulrun looks at Lac skeptically.  "Welcome to Kenabres.  Do you remember what brought you here in such a state?  And in such suspicious company?"

He glances at the other stretcher-bearer, who's stepping away, but freezes at the Prelate's gaze.