by Eric Vall
“Oh dear,” she said with a giggle. “Gryff, I’m sorry to ask, but … ”
“Already on it,” I said with a wink before I stripped off my battle-dirtied shirt and handed it over.
It was too long for a woman, but the fitted cotton looked nice on Cyra. She wore it confidently, and her gorgeous body more than made up for any possible blemish.
“You look fantastic,” I said honestly.
“You’re as charming as you are smart,” Cyra flirted back. “I’m guessing you’re about to come up with some plan to fix all of this, huh?”
“Sure am,” I confirmed with a grin.
I tore my eyes away from her with some effort to consider the scene around me. The apothecary burned slowly, and our fight had left a trail of destruction behind us. We would have to do damage control before we went after Gawain, but for the meantime, I considered what we’d missed.
Despite our strong team, we hadn’t been able to capture the fire mage. My mind raced with new strategies as I filed through potential ideas to slow, disable, disarm, or defend against Gawain.
The fire mage was usually a crackshot, but he’d done an awful job of finishing people off this time. In his wild state, Gawain’s aim had been erratic at best, much to our good luck. He’d only focused and gone all-out when my team had arrived to confront him.
Perhaps there was something inside of Gawain that rebelled at the thought of murder. I filed that information away as evidence for myself that Gawain was still worth saving. Whatever had happened to him, he wasn’t completely gone yet.
His reaction to my words told me there was something deep inside him that was still my friend. I would do almost anything to have the chance to save him.
I just needed to figure out how.
We hadn’t done too badly in our fight, technically. Our strategies always worked fantastically against monsters we could kill, but it was clear we needed to rethink things before we could successfully capture a human. Oddly enough, many of our monsters were simply too powerful to use to their full capacity.
If I summoned my baroquer or my roosa, I couldn’t imagine they would be of any real use. They did a great job of looking intimidating, but how would I use them safely? I pictured the baroquer’s enormous sword sweeping Gawain flat or the roosa poisoning him, and I shook my head to clear the ridiculous idea away.
What other monsters did I have? The vindehund, the sun giant, some axe goblins, a cementroll, speed slugs, and a variety of others too strong or too weak to use against the fire mage.
Then something new occurred to me.
Cyra hadn’t gotten the chance to use the petripede’s power before Gawain had destroyed it, but the failure of yet another monster gave me an idea about how we could stop the fire mage next time.
It was time for me to quit just considering summoning and start considering other kinds of magic. Gawain was used to fighting monsters since he was an Academy mage like us, but we were awfully inexperienced at using monsters to fight humans.
I’d been thinking about this all wrong, but I knew exactly what to do now.
“Maker,” Cyra commented as she brushed ash away from my shoulders, “you always get the same look on your face when you have a new idea.”
“Don’t worry,” I said with a confident wink. “I have a plan to get everything back.”
Chapter 9
“Find a way to put out the fires,” I told Cyra as I took out an essence crystal. “I’m going inside to check for survivors.”
I used my bullet bass coating to run upstairs and look for people to save. Though I luckily found nobody inside, I did recover several chests of important herbs and components. I felt bad for whoever the owner was, since his building was ruined and his stock stolen, and this was the least I could do to make up for that pain. I wished there was more.
Cyra did most of the real work of putting out the blaze since I owned only a single water imp without much power of its own. She summoned a swarm of creatures that looked like spiders, but their bodies were crystalline and partially translucent. Each had a torso close to the size of a loaf of bread and eight spindly legs of about the same length. Three green eyes glittered like chips of emerald from the head of each monster.
“What are they?” I asked in awe. “Also, how do you have so many of them?”
Cyra shrugged. “They’re called wetweavers. While I was closing rifts for money, I ran into a portal that wouldn’t stop putting these little guys out. We must’ve killed two hundred by the time we finished with that rift.”
I laughed in amazement. “They’re incredible.”
They really were. As we spoke, dozens of wetweavers scurried up the sides of the apothecary building. With quick movements of their delicate legs, each wetweaver cast out a lacy net of water just like a spider spinning a web, only much more quickly. Every net settled and stuck without spilling a drop, and it was like the water itself had been suspended in time.
“It’s not actually water,” Cyra explained, “but a glue-like compound with fire-resistant properties.”
Sure enough, the fire smothered and died where the nets touched. We watched as the roaring inferno shrank into small fires, and then into embers.
It was then that Varleth found us. He ran down the street and stopped short at the sight of the wetweavers, the ruined shop, and the two of us simply standing amongst the disaster.
He blinked and raised his eyebrows. “Where’s Gawain?”
I shook my head. “Gone, we don’t know where. He stole a ton of potions, though.”
“Do you think he came into town to get them?” Varleth mused.
“I think so,” I agreed. “He looked rough when we saw him. I guess he gave up trying to hide in the forest and came here out of desperation.”
“This is all so strange,” Cyra considered. “He’s behaving more like a monster than a man. He can’t seem to think more than one step ahead, and all he wants to do is destroy things.”
I frowned as I recalled the fight. “He called us foolish humans.”
“Hasn’t Gawain always called us that?” Varleth drawled.
I shot him a look, and he quirked an eyebrow. It really was a good joke, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
Cyra giggled, and we all shared a quiet chuckle.
My smile faded as I considered the situation. “If we’re going to take him alive, I think we need a new kind of magic.”
“New?” Cyra repeated.
I nodded. “One that’s really good for defence and a more controlled, careful offence. We need magic that can maneuver well and restrain our opponent. We’ve used it before on a mission.”
Varleth met my eyes as he realized what I meant. “With the pyrewyrm,” he recalled. “Almasy used earth magic on the first one we defeated.”
I nodded back with new resolve. “I think it can do the job we need. Summoners are great for a lot of things, but we aren’t amazing at holding down an opponent without lethal force.”
Cyra hummed in agreement as she realized my plan. “You want to send Erin to collect Almasy’s power.”
“It’s the best idea I have,” I admitted. “And with any luck, I think it’ll actually work.”
Our arrival back at the Ricochet Inn did a good job of tempering my hopes. The inn’s exterior and the street around it were in an awful state, and I imagined so were the people who had been caught in the fight.
Erin ran up to us with worried eyes as we approached.
“You’re alright?” the orange-haired mimic asked as she took in the sight of us.
“Gryff seems to have donated his shirt,” Varleth hummed, “just in case you were wondering.”
“We’re fine,” I said with a wave of my hand as I ignored the gypsy, “but Gawain escaped again. He took a bunch of potions with him. How are the people here?”
“No casualties, eight in severe condition, another two dozen with minor injuries,” Erin reported as she took the news in stride. “I got a healer in as soon as
you guys took off after Gawain, and she’s been doing amazing work.”
I unclenched my teeth and released a deep breath. I was hoping Gawain hadn’t managed to kill anyone, but the fact that he hadn’t was nothing short of miraculous. He’d really appeared bent on murdering people, but he’d only managed to make non-lethal shots.
“Erin,” I said, “thank you for your work here, but I need you on the next airship to Balvaan. This town is big enough to have one leaving for a major city sometime this week.”
“There’s one leaving for Varle tomorrow at five-thirty in the morning,” Varleth supplied, “I heard it being advertised in town. You can hitch a ride to Balvaan from there.”
Erin tilted her head slightly. “Why am I going to Balvaan?”
I grinned. “You’re going to get Almasy’s magic, come back, and help us pin Gawain to the dirt like a bug. He won’t be able to so much as twitch a finger with earth magic at our disposal.”
Erin shrugged and smiled. “If you say so. It sounds like a good plan to me.”
“Excellent,” I replied, “now let’s take a look at the injured.”
We slipped into the inn and were greeted by the sight of a full emergency clinic set up right on the floor inside. As I examined the state of the inn, Varleth slipped upstairs.
An elderly healer with graying hair pinned into a bun crouched on the floor with her hands placed over a man’s stomach. Blood trickled from his mouth to indicate something inside had been punctured.
Maybe I’d been wrong about Gawain’s intent to avoid killing.
Varleth slipped down the stairs again and tossed me a new shirt. I put it on gratefully against the chill of the night.
After I adjusted my collar, I walked down the line of the critically wounded. Some suffered burns from fire or electricity, though their injuries weren’t the worst. Heat had cauterized quite a few wounds even as the bullets ripped through the victims’ flesh.
One man wheezed loudly from his position on the floor, and I learned an earth bullet had fractured several ribs where it grazed his side.
A blonde woman had taken an air bullet to the arm, and though the wound itself was nothing more than a discolored bruise, it had dislocated her shoulder with the force of the impact.
Layla bustled around and helped to set up the clinic as she brought down pillows and rolled out new bedding to try to keep the area sterile. She tucked blankets over patients while she avoided their wounds to keep them warm and prevent shock from setting in.
I was glad to see Layla on her feet after she’d lost control of the hyppocrans earlier. It was difficult to bounce back from mana depletion like that, but it looked like she’d been given a potion or tonic at some point to help her with it.
“Mimic,” grated out the old healer woman, “I’m ready for you now.”
Erin rushed over and briefly touched her fingers to the old woman’s lips. In a blink, the transaction of mana was over.
“Now, child,” the healer croaked, “just work on the surface burns and scrapes. I don’t want you messing up anybody’s good organs.”
Erin nodded obediently and set to work on fixing up surface wounds. I knew from Arwyn that healing was a difficult magic, and she’d said it could do more harm than good if used incorrectly. Perfect concentration and knowledge of the human body was integral to the healing arts.
Erin seemed pretty competent with the minor injuries she was tasked to take care of, but she couldn’t replace a full-fledged healer. Perhaps with years of training, she would be able to master healing magic on all kinds of injuries. If we got into a fight outside of a major town, we might be left with no healer to fix our wounds.
“Oh, Gryff,” Erin exclaimed as she laid eyes on me, “your arm!”
I looked down at the shallow slash Gawain had given my left forearm. It didn’t bleed much, but I could see a dark patch underneath the fabric of my new shirt.
“It’s nothing,” I assured the mimic, but she just ignored me.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Erin asked worriedly as she pushed up my sleeve to get a good look at the cut.
It had cauterized instantly because of the heat of Gawain’s blades, so there wasn’t much to look at. A thin strip of blackened flesh rimmed the straight line of the wound, but it looked worse than it felt.
Erin closed her eyes and wrinkled her brow cutely as she concentrated her healing magic.
I sat motionless and content as the distant sting of the cut faded, and then the skin sealed up into a thin scar.
“Much better,” the mimic said with satisfaction. She opened her eyes and rubbed at the scar with a wet cloth to clean the char and ash from it.
“You did a great job,” I thanked her with a happy smile. “You make a fantastic nurse, in my opinion. Though, I might be biased.”
Erin blushed and rolled her eyes. “I only work on handsome patients, so you just got lucky,” she quipped back.
Suddenly, the old woman flicked her eyes to me and jabbed a gnarled finger to a patient across the room.
“Boy,” commanded the elderly healer, “you’re healed now. Quit flirting and go hold down that bandage.”
I followed the gravel-voiced commands of the old healer for the next hour as she tasked Erin, Varleth, Layla, and me with various assistant tasks. I wasn’t sure how or where Erin had found her, but I suspected the old woman had followed the sounds of the fight all on her own. If she had an assistant or a team, they hadn’t come with her, but she seemed satisfied to make us their replacement.
I was impressed by her spitfire attitude, and despite the huge number of patients, the room soon turned from an emergency into a stable situation.
“Well,” the healer croaked, “that’s it. Good work, kids. They should all live, as long as they aren’t moronic enough to rub river mud in their wounds.”
“We’re done?” I asked dumbly with a roll of fresh bandages ready in one hand and a pair of fabric scissors in the other.
“We are,” the old woman confirmed. “Now put that down before you poke an eye out, sonny.”
I glanced around like a lost dog before I slumped into a seat at one of the barroom tables. Then I set my supplies down and sighed at the ceiling as I rolled the crick out of my neck.
“Quit that, boy,” the old healer said.
I stared in alarm as she eased to her feet and came over to my table. She slapped one gnarled hand against the back of my neck like she was swatting a fly. There was a lightning-quick pulse of magic, and the pain in my neck eased away as if it had never existed.
My mouth dropped open in shock. “That was fast.”
She emitted a hoarse cackle like a raven. “Ya learn a thing or two if you’ve been healing as long as I have. Actually, I almost killed a man once with that powerful trick, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Her offhand attitude didn’t seem anywhere close to serious enough, and it set off alarm bells in my head.
I eyed her nervously and tried to smile. “Thanks.”
From across the room, Varleth made eye contact with me and mouthed a silent, horrified expletive.
I couldn’t help but agree.
“What time is it?” Erin asked blearily from across the room.
I squinted at the small clock on the bar room wall. “A quarter past three in the morning.”
The mimic startled and jumped upright. “I have to hurry up and sleep before the airship!” she exclaimed before she rushed up the stairs to her rented room.
“Y’know,” Cyra said with a yawn, “it’s really convenient to have the battlefield and the recovery tent right under our bedrooms. We should do this more often.”
“Very funny,” Varleth mumbled.
Footsteps interrupted us, and voices grew outside the door. Hopefully, it was help and not more trouble.
“Oh, are the other medics here?” Cyra asked.
The door opened to a harried team of healers and assistants in white outfits. There were five in total, though I wa
sn’t sure which were doctors and which were technicians. Two burly men in white hats also followed them closely with a wooden stretcher, but I got the impression the strongmen were just volunteers.
In a dizzying scene of organized chaos, each patient was loaded onto the stretcher and carried off by the strong men or the healers. I assumed they were going to be in the real clinic somewhere in town for many more days.
I was more than happy to say goodbye to them so I could get some rest. I creaked to my feet with a groan and swayed over to help Layla get upright. I accidentally lifted her petite body completely off the ground as she hopped up, and Cyra laughed as she watched us.
“Goodnight,” Varleth yawned out as he walked past us. His heavy boots clomped up the stairs and faded from hearing as he hurried up to bed.
“Sleep sounds like a gift from the Maker himself right now,” Layla sighed out.
“Don’t I know it,” Cyra agreed.
“C’mon,” I said as I beckoned them up the inn stairs.
Cyra and Layla followed me without a moment’s hesitation as I opened the door to my room and gestured both women inside. After a hard day of walking and a rough night of fighting, the best cure was a good night of sleep with somebody else to share the bed with.
Or two somebodies.
I dropped into bed with a huff of air, and Cyra pulled my boots off as I lay there. I stripped my shirt off and kicked my pants into a pile, then shimmied under the warm covers.
My two beautiful girls joined me on either side, and I tucked each one under my arms.
“I could get used to this,” Cyra purred as she stretched against my chest.
Layla hummed wordlessly in blissful agreement. She was too exhausted to do much more than nuzzle my neck as we lay together.
The bed was warm and comfortable, and soon enough, the three of us drifted into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.
This time, we slept through the night.
Dawn came and went without us noticing, and by the time I cracked open my eyes, the sun’s position indicated that it was half past seven.
I was sorely tempted to close my eyes again and let the world pass by for another few hours, but we had a job to do, and Gawain wasn’t getting any closer with us simply lying here.