1.15 First Failure
"Your generous manhood was preserved m'Lord" Nora said, patting his back. "You'll fight and fuck another day!"
"Yeah I guess..."
Vicktor was still shaken, he had all his blood volume back and most of its functionality. He wasn't particularly squeamish, but apparently it was standard procedure for peacetime healers to explain the details about the specific healing methods they employed. It might have been his advancing mana sense but he could feel everything happen inside him as the healer said it.
"Alright, piercing wounds" the young woman said to both his mentor and Vicktor. "No necrosis, no poison, no mana or magic residue. Femoral artery ruptured"
Reaching out the woman reached out to his hip above the gushing wound and placed a firm hand on it and flared her mage-sight.
"Clamping the femoral vein and artery" thankfully it was mostly painless. Tiny invisible fingers put pressure internally. His damaged leg felt strange as the blood flow slowed to a trickle.
"External blood purge and disinfection"
The blood gathered and globbed together. Pealing away from his wound and extracting itself from his torn robe. He felt his leg deflate a little as the blood inside him pulled to get out of the wound.
"Estimate 1.5 pints of blood loss, bleeding stabilized. No complete tendon or muscle fiber separation. Beginning healing from the inside out."
His muscles knitted themselves together, he saw and felt his quadricep muscle harden and solidify through the tooth marks in his skin. The pink corded flesh visible against the white fat and thin layers of his skin and hair. Eventually the pink flesh disappeared behind a curtain of fat and then the fat disappeared behind the clean pale flesh of his thigh.
"Higher than average mana consumption during healing. Physiology restored, freeing femoral artery and vein, releasing young red blood cells from bone marrow."
Vicktor's leg reinflated and his bones began to ache a little. It wasn't painful, nothing of the events had been, whether because of the sharpness of the teeth or his adrenaline.
"No tumors or scar tissue detected. Patients should be advised that the replaced red blood cells are young and not as effective. Volume is not restored, please drink a liter of water when you leave. It will be harder to do various tasks for a few days, try not to get truly injured for another month or so. It's harder to make new blood cells from scratch than it is to finish the ones your body has already mostly made. Good day. I am Mage Petra, Mistress Elana will confirm my work"
The cordial older woman helped him to his feet, leaving a hand holding his arm.
"You are all set, Petra did well. I will be checking in about your 'medical history' please stay in Allium for the next week"
"I have no plans to leave, Master Tosk hasn't returned and I definitely need more training." Pointing to the holes in his robes.
"Master Tosk, of course he'd have picked you, that explains more than I'd like. Goodbye"
She turned around and walked back to the entrance of the arena, with her and Petra having a hushed conversation.
"What was that about?" Nora asked, concern plain on her face.
"Nothing too important" he lied, badly.
They stopped for onion soup, bread and a light lager. Despite the weeks of consistent meals, he never got too bored of the town's namesake's vegetables. The variety of fried, baked, reduced and fermented Alliums astounded him. When combined with dairy and meats, the combinations surprised him. Before the Academy, his family was more pastoral than agricultural. They had soft cheeses, abundant game meat and simple grains. There were a small number of herbs and spices that grew wildly or could be cultivated in common grazing areas, but it didn't come close to what a knowledgeable plant Mage could grow in a stationary greenhouse.
When Vicktor was at the Academy, warm honeyed cinnamon apple cider had gotten him through several rough nights of studying. The ingredients could not be easily acquired in his herd. The apples had to be grafted and too easily attracted beasts.
Before he'd left for the Academy, his favorite drink was a tea made from the wildflowers of riverbanks. He had enjoyed sipping the tea and sitting safely beside his parents and siblings in the night air, surrounded by a herd of Mages and Chosen. There was a safe danger to that time that he missed greatly.
He missed his family more than he realized. He might send them a letter, they might even respond after not hearing anything from his disgraced hide for six years.
"You've been out of it all day. We need to debrief and you need to get your head out of your admirable ass" Nora said, then drained her lager.
"What happened? What's going through your head" Alar said in-between bites of onion soup. "You got injured, sure, but we're worried about you. That conversation with the healer and your secret discussion with Princep Talia has us worried"
"I'm sorry, I can't, not yet. It's– complicated. My tribe–"
He paused, looking down not wanting to continue.
"I-I can't tell you, not yet, I need to be more powerful. I'm not strong enough to protect myself. I need to train, to grow. My performance in that fight I was unsatisfactory, I felt useless"
"You don't need to tell us, not right now" Nora said then paused, "But... if it continues to affect you so strongly we will need to chat again. We can't have your mind failing during a real fight, the constructs have safeguards and are controlled. "
"She's right, its okay, take your time." Alar spoke up. "Lets debrief now, you aren't the only one who felt useless"
"Fine" spat out Vicktor. "Now's fine" and finished his lager. The bitterness felt somehow stronger than it had minutes before
"Alright then" Alar began. "You aren't the only one who felt useless. I know you were the only one hurt, but that doesn't mean either of us could have been hurt if we had changed scenarios."
"I'm not so sure, you can fly away from danger and you have the ability to hit enemies from range, and you" gesturing at Nora, "You have the range, strength, and power. Ughh, this reminds me of why my–"
"Shut it, tell us when you need to, not from some emotional outburst. You're not useless Vicktor. There were several kills on the constructs that I wouldn't have been able to make if not for your foundation's. Star's above, you and I would probably have lost against the troll if you didn't slow it down and trap it. Alar's turret is good against smaller weaker creatures, but it's not nearly enough against larger or more magical targets. We all need to get better. None of us can stand toe to toe with a beast of our tier. Unless we plan on adding members to our group, which we should at least ask Master Tosk about when he returns, we need to focus on ourselves"
"I agree" Alar spoke, "I think we've all been focused on magic too much. I think both of you need some sort of melee weapon and training with. In that spirit, I need something to protect myself when I'm in the air. I wonder if I can do a magical barrier, but I doubt it's that simple when flying."
"Neither of us have the time to learn proper sword forms, Vicktor. I think you should practice with your staff more, you might have been able to crack that wolf's skull with a better hit, you did kind of flail around more than you should've."
"yeah..."
"I'm not going to add a spearhead to this warbow, I saw it mentioned in a play once, but apparently that was from a time before dimensional storage was as safe as they are today. Something about how putting a dimensional storage inside of a dimensional storage would cause some sort of explosion that disappeared anything within a small distance"
"Brutal"
"Absolutely" Alar stated "Those also needed to be charged by a dimensional Mage, these just need to be charged by any Mage with spare mana once a day. The results are far less catastrophic as well. Its actually really interesting, they were able to find the glyph to stabilize those better by offsetting the extra dimensional space instead of trying to shrink the volume extra dimensional space. Near infinite recursion, although apparently there's a dimensional relativity that slows down the time inside of them. Master Tosk once mentioned that it was similar to how the archive works, but wouldn't tell me any more – Ah right back to us being useless Mages"
Vicktor was feeling better, his friends were still his friends and fellow apprentices. They didn't hate him for being useless.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I really am quite strong when I need to be, so I think I'm going to carry a set of maces and a set of machetes. I'm not sure it'll stay that way though. It really depends on magical beast defenses. Should we try to cut through them? Stab them? Bludgeon their skulls and ribs? The dimensional storage means I don't have to worry about the additional weight, so for now, I'll take the capacity reduction for future utility"
"Sounds like a place to keep experimenting with in future training. Make sure you can draw them fast enough" Alar spoke. "I've heard swathes of stories of guardsmen killed before they could draw their weapons. My–"
They spoke for hours, discussing the minutiae of their futures as well as the occasional people watching or ogling. After ordering even more soup and beer, their moods had lightened substantially.
Suddenly, three familiar lizards approached with scrolls propped on their spiky backs. Turquoise anolites.
The tone of the conversation still raw, they rose and grabbed the scrolls of the backs of the toned beasts and read:
Sorry about my continued delay.
I'm about to finish my business and will be back in Allium in a month. We have a goblin problem, a bridge to repair and keep training.
I hope my studious apprentices didn't slack off in my absence.
I hope your tattoos and gadgets have served you well.
"I know this sounds unrelated, but let's go visit Selia and her team tomorrow. I wanna know what gear they brought on that fight they were talking about."
Of course, he had an ulterior motive, but it wasn't really a lie. He did want to know how he should prepare but also...