V2Ch59-First Aid
“Well done with your catch, my friend… but I sense that our master is in distress,” Heimar said in a low tone.
Despite the quiet, gentle quality of his voice, the gravity of the old nachzehrer’s speech immediately captured the attention of his companion.
Raybeck turned to face Heimar, the ghoul’s jaws slick and red with blood from his most recent kill, a screwhorn antelope that lay in Raybeck’s arms, still warm. The heat of its opened neck steamed the air.
“The master, yes,” Raybeck said. “Distress…”
Heimar couldn’t help but smile a little. He had praised Beck for catching the antelope even though it was slow and weak. But what had really excited him, over these days in the mountains, had been the way his old friend had begun recovering some of his vocabulary.
Semi-Enlightened, indeed…
Then he frowned as he refocused on what he’d just said.
“I think we need to go to him and…” Heimar’s voice trailed off.
Raybeck’s body had begun to glow, and the nachzehrer had an inkling of what that might mean.
He’s about to evolve. All the beasts we’ve slain, all the hunting, all the tireless effort… finally, it bears fruit.
“Can you delay this?” Heimar asked. “Without doing any harm to your progression?”
Raybeck nodded, though Heimar had to wonder a little if his friend actually knew the answer or was just trying to be accommodating. Along with his vocabulary, bits of Raybeck’s personality had been returning: his neuroticism, in small bursts, and the people pleaser side of him, dampened but still present, at least toward Heimar and their master.
“Very well,” the nachzehrer said. “I trust your judgment. Wait on it a little while. I don’t know how long monster evolution takes. But even though the master didn’t ask for our help directly, if he’s in a bind, he should know we will stand beside him.”
Beck nodded once more, and the glow around him faded in an instant.
Heimar led the way back down the mountain, using the bond with Tybalt like a compass to guide him.
Soon, you’ll be back to your old self, my equal once again, Beck. I look forward to your personality resurfacing in full.
***
Baldwin let out a low grunt as his dagger punched through the layer of dense muscle that protected the death’s-head leopard’s jugular.
“Yes! Yes!” Hieron cheered from six feet back.
The revenant couldn’t help a little smile at Hieron’s childish joy.
“That’s right, now you’ll have a mount, kid,” Baldwin said.
He turned, and he saw the fext’s smile suddenly morph into a frown.
Then the sensation hit Baldwin too.
“Did - did you feel that?” Hieron asked, looking at the revenant. “It feels like the master’s in trouble.”
Baldwin took a moment to collect his thoughts and compare and contrast with the last time he had sensed Tybalt in danger.
“I’ve felt worse from him before,” he finally said. “I think he was just alarmed by something. And I don’t sense a loss of consciousness. We should go about our assigned tasks as usual.”
He gestured to the freshly killed goat behind him. Two or three animals was the maximum Baldwin could usually drag around before it became unwieldy. It was Baldwin and Hieron’s job to cook for the captives from the mines who Tybalt had not killed yet.
“Are you sure?” Hieron asked.
“If he needed me, he’d ask for me,” Baldwin said in a tone of certainty that he did not quite feel. “He has stronger undead than us close by anyway.”
“All right, if you say so…”
“I do. Now let’s go. It’ll be your job to start the fire this time while I clean our kill. I hope you remember what I showed you the day before yesterday.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Hieron replied, doing a mock salute.
That kind of sloppy salute would get you in trouble if my old drill sergeant saw you…
But the revenant said nothing, just smiled. Those were things he and Hieron would never have to worry about.
He looked at the fext carefully again.
Yeah, he’s definitely growing. Hieron’s hair was getting a little longer, and he had gained an inch or two in height, despite being undead. I’ll have to ask Tybalt about that next time we see him.
The revenant and the fext made their way uphill toward where the former miners remained bound to trees, kept barely alive by Baldwin and Hieron’s efforts over the last several days.
***
Dero knew she wasn’t going to make it at the moment she teleported.
It just wasn’t possible to move faster than whatever was happening behind that massive boulder, since the old man had screamed at the same moment she moved. In the split-second she moved, she feared the worst - and forced herself to move past it at almost the same.
The rocks had already fallen all around, crushing all but one of the people Dero had moved to save this time.
She made herself grab the surviving child and teleport backward. The dark elf dimly remembered this was a little foxgirl named Ren, one of the youngest orphans present.
“They d-died,” the child exclaimed as soon as they landed back in the sand. Her eyes were wide with fear and horror.
“It’s - it’ll be- ” Dero swallowed down the instinctive urge to pretend things would be all right. Comforting lies never did anyone any good. “I’m glad that at least you’ll survive,” she said instead. “I’m going to go back in and see if anyone else can be saved.”
Ren nodded eagerly, a twinkle of hope kindling in her eyes. The dark elf felt a bit gross at having created what was probably a false hope. It wasn’t as if her void powers would let her go back in time. But she wasn’t lying when she said she’d do what she could. Perhaps she hadn’t gotten that good of a look. Maybe there was someone who was just injured among the other four.
Dero let go of Ren before either she or the child could say anything more. She teleported to the exact place she had moved from.
Then the dark elf winced. Definitely false hope. She had known it already.
Still, she couldn’t help swearing at the sight that unfurled itself before her.
“What the fuck? Fucking… Damn it!”
***
“Orders! Orders, master, I need orders, please! Order me to come and help!” Stanislaw called out to Tybalt, almost screaming.
The necromancer would remember that later - how the mummy seemed genuinely afraid for the beastfolk children. Even if they often seemed like bits of bone and flesh and dust, held together by magic, the undead could also be a kind of people as well.
In the moment, Tybalt’s head rang with the echoing of the former High Priest’s inner voice. The necromancer’s brain was almost frozen at the sight of his bodyguard fallen on the ground before him, though his hands were already in motion, tearing her shirt open so he could access the dent in her side.
The telepathic yelling was just what he needed to return to thinking more clearly, albeit still a little sluggishly. There was too much information to process.
Right, I had told him to stay out of sight unless he had to do otherwise to protect me, he thought dully. The danger passed so quickly he didn’t have the chance to pop out, but he must be close by.
“Do whatever you can,” he sent back after a moment. He then sent the same message to the other mummies nearby. “Save anyone you can.” He paused, then added, “If you see anyone suspicious on the mountain nearby, memorize their appearance.”
That was one of the bits of information pressing itself forward in his brain: this rockslide was no accident. It was an attack. He had recognized the sound of an alchemic explosion that had set it off. Exactly the same sort of environmental attack that Andric had unleashed on the squad weeks earlier, separating Tybalt and Mariella from the group.
A follow-up attack might occur at any moment - logically should happen very shortly - now that Tybalt’s bodyguard was down, his group presumably weakened, and the necromancer himself occupied with trying to help Kistana.
Was it the Army? A squad that he hadn’t realized was in the area? A disgruntled beastfolk?
He didn’t know. But he wanted to, very badly, even as most of his brain was focused on the catgirl and secondarily on the others who might be injured or dead.
He wouldn’t order the mummies to capture people when seconds counted, and they already had protecting him as their primary command. But trying to fix a face in memory shouldn’t delay them by more than a moment or two.
I think… Stanislaw has a skill for this situation, right? Last Gasp.
A skill to bring someone back from the dead. Because Tybalt couldn’t imagine that they had gotten through this situation without anyone dying.
Sure enough, somewhere among the rubble, he could hear Dero cursing.
“What the fuck? Fucking… Damn it!”
It was the most genuine emotion he’d ever heard in her voice, and that probably meant something terrible had happened.
He tried to ignore that and kept working, focusing on keeping his hands steady. The children at his sides were totally unharmed thanks to Tybalt grabbing them and Kistana protecting the three of them.
They stood riveted as Tybalt used Fleshcraft to open Kistana’s side.
A strand of bloody saliva trickled from the side of her mouth as he worked, and her teeth gritted with pain. She hadn’t fully lost consciousness.
“Help the others,” she rasped without opening her eyes. “Don’t worry about me…”
“Shut up,” Tybalt whispered. “I’m done listening to you about your body’s condition.”
Her lips twisted into a bittersweet wry smile.
“Maybe I wasn’t worthy after all- ”
“I definitely just told you to shut up,” Tybalt said. “Follow orders properly. You’re distracting me.”
Kistana nodded and went silent.
Crazy cat. How are you even still conscious? Your stats are in the wrong places or something. There needs to be a sanity stat, and you need about ten points added there…
His fingers worked inside her, probing as gently as they could, moving fragments of rib bone out of wounds the impact had created and setting the bones aside with one hand as his mana-coated fingers coaxed the tissue back together, willing the organs to knit completely, not merely on the surface that his hands could touch.
The catgirl let out quiet whimpers when the pain got so bad that she couldn’t suppress it anymore. Tybalt tried as best he could to ignore the tears that gathered at the corners of her tightly closed eyes.
I’ve got you, he thought. Don’t worry, I’ve got you…
He kept searching for more injuries inside her - guided only by his memories of anatomy, mainly from Unholy Forces - and he kept finding them. A shallow cut to one of her lungs, another organ with a bone fragment in it, a piece of her spine that seemed to be misaligned.
At some point, Kistana passed out from the pain. Tybalt noticed the moment when her breathing changed, and he himself let out a little sigh of relief at knowing that she at least couldn’t feel everything to quite the same degree now.
Need to carry something to make patients lose consciousness in the future.
After he had repaired the more acute injuries, he fixed her ribs. The fragments he had set to one side needed to be placed back in their points of origin. Fortunately, his power could perfectly join bones back together.
Operating almost entirely by touch - the light did not fully reach inside Kistana’s body - he mended everything he could, until finally, anxiously, he thought he had to stop.
I think that’s all Fleshcraft and Scrimshaw can do.
All the internal bleeding had stopped at least. He turned Kistana so that the blood that had pooled inside her could drain out.
Then Tybalt ran his fingers along the hole he had made in her side and used Fleshcraft to slowly pinch it shut.
“Did you save her, Mister Necromancer?” asked a little girl’s voice. Tybalt barely recognized it was Kalina.
He forced himself to smile and nod.
“I think so,” the necromancer said.
I hope so. I’ve at least done everything I can.
“Master, I am here,” sent Stanislaw.