The carriers Helle promised never came. Walking back to the fortress was torture. Every step caused my shoulder to flare anew with waves of stabbing pain. I tried to hide it at first, put on a mask of indifference. The charade ended when my foot caught on a small outcrop of stone and I cried out in pain as I steadied myself. The scream broke Nora from her post battle haze and she rushed over to help keep my arm steady as we walked.

  Mika was busy helping Ellen, whose leg injury kept her from putting any weight on it. Even with the help, the walk back was misery. And now seated on a stone in the basement room of the fort, I was over the moon to be getting medical aid. Even if the aranae healing ended up being as painful as what we had back home; I’d weep with joy not to have a spear of bone exposed to the stale air of the Under Tunnels any longer.

  The woman who tended to me was one of the scholar sub-species and was currently spreading a paste onto the area around the injury. Brown-green like muddy leaves, the paste smelled like pickled mint. Sensation ceased where ever the woman applied the paste and in a couple of minutes the entire left side of my chest and arm was numb. Not only could I not feel anything as she poked around the wound to watch my reaction, I couldn’t even move my arm.

  For what felt like an eternity, the only sensation I got from the left side of my torso was a slight chill and the occasional jostle as the woman moved my limb. The woman’s silence only served to unnerve me. She hadn’t said a word since she arrived. I’d greeted her as she came down, but she simply removed my armor – ignoring my cries of pain, and cleaning up the fresh blood – before she left to grab that pickled mint concoction.

  I felt a shove and heard a loud pop but didn’t dare look over my shoulder until the aranae woman tending me passed by to the counter by the door. She pondered the jars on the countertop for a while before she reached for a jar that contained three finger shaped bones carefully preserved in some kind of yellow jelly.

  Where jagged bone once pierced through the skin was now a wadded-up ball of fabric, the dull beige color rapidly darkened red as I bleed. When I looked back to the medic, she was standing over the counter, both of her heads focused on her work. She used the still bloody knife she’d cut me open with to carve into the finger bones.

  When she returned from the counter, it was with the bones, a needle and thread, some kind of mushroom, and a ball of copper the size of my pinky nail. By now, the fabric stuffed into my shoulder was sodden with blood and the room was spinning.

  “Here. Eat, help blood.” The woman’s left head said in broken Trade Tongue, handing me both the mushroom and ball of copper.

  I was a little unsure, but the woman insisted. Repeatedly pushing the mushroom and copper into my hand. Slightly acidic, the mushroom was otherwise tasteless and went down easy enough. The copper, on the other hand, I was unsure how to even approach. I eventually caved under the stern glare all [Healers] seem to have and popped the copper ball into my mouth. Treating it like an ultra-hard version of the gum Mr. Anders’ plum trees sometimes leaked back home.

  I had to look away once the [Healer] took the wad of gauze from my shoulder and started to stitch with the needle and thread. Thankfully, the process was over quick. Even though I couldn’t feel any of the pain that usually accompanied stitches, the slight tug and pull as she worked the needle through flesh was still unsettling.

  By the time the [Healer] finished, her stitching ran the entire length of my shoulder. Just by looking at the inflamed skin, I knew I’d have an interesting new scar once this healed; the smooth cuts from the healer contrasted against the primal tear where bone met flesh. She’d also closed the entrance wound from the spear, but that was so small in comparison that it would fade amidst the forest of other scars.

  She wasn’t finished, however, and next placed one of the newly rune-carved finger bones on top of my shoulder. Carefully balancing it before she stepped away.

  The woman said a short incantation, both heads speaking different words in perfect harmony. The runes on the bone flashed a bronze light in cadence with the chant. With each pulse of light, I felt a mist of foreign mana invade my body. The mana dug two inches into my shoulder before it pooled around my broken collarbone. The woman repeated the process twice more, once on my chest just under the bone, and another on my back in the same spot before she stepped away from my still numb shoulder.

  I thought the bones would fall off of me as soon as she stopped actively chanting her spell, but something about the way the mana pooled around my collar bone kept the runic devices firmly latched to my body.

  “Be easy. Bones will dust when finished.” The [Healer] said. Both heads looked appreciatively at her work.

  “Thank you.” I said around the slightly chewed copper sphere.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The woman just waved me off and went to leave, but before she could ascend the stairs, her left head swiveled to me and shouted.

  “Swallow!”

  I felt like a little boy scolded for not eating my vegetables and, as gently as I could, swallowed the softly mangled piece of metal. I was pretty sure it cut my throat on the way down, but I chose to attribute the metallic taste in my mouth to the copper itself and not blood.

  ~~~***~~~

  I met with Ellen around the same time as we exited our treatment room. A large red-dyed bandage wrapped her leg, and she walked with a large femur shaped into a cane. Unlike me, they couldn’t save her clothes and she currently rocked a fashionable half-pant, half-short look.

  “Thank you for pulling me out.” I said.

  Truthfully, I was unsure who actually pulled me from under the goblin woman but the fact Ellen filled the gap I left made me assume it was her.

  She smiled at me, her teeth bright in the dim lighting.

  “I’m glad I could.”

  She made to tap me on the shoulder but stopped herself at the last second.

  “Thanks for stepping in at the end there. Saved my life.”

  “Happy to.” I said in return.

  I was glad Ellen hadn’t tried to underplay what she’d done for me. In saving me like she had, she’d ensured not only that my people wouldn’t lose their chosen, but she’d also ensured my daughter wouldn’t lose her father. It would have offended me if she downplayed the significance in that.

  Together, the two of us walked up the stairs into the courtyard at the center of the fort. By the final steps, I had my good arm around Ellen’s shoulder to help her climb. Mika and Nora waited for us in the courtyard, both looking intensely relieved. Slightly behind them, Maggie stood with a proud grin on her face and her notebook in hand.

  All three of them went to hug us. Nora and Maggie enclosed both of us in a hug tight to make me glad I was so tall and my shoulder escaped them. Mika, however, only had eyes for Ellen. He gripped her in an embrace like he was scared she’d disappear if he let go.

  They stayed together, locked in an embrace for long moments, even after Nora, Maggie, and I untangled ourselves. It wasn’t until the taller Ellen bent down and whispered something in his ear that Mika let go.

  “Great! Now that we’ve been reunited. I wanted to say how proud I am of y’all. All of you did incredibly well out there, I cannot wait to see what the [Bards], [Minstrels], and [Poets] in the academies will do with this.” Maggie said and waved her notepad around. “Leadership says the real siege will begin in about half a day, so go get some rest. Oh, and catch up on your System notifications, got it?”

  The four of us gave our thanks and turned to leave.

  “Mika! I almost forgot, before I can let you go, you still have stone carving duty.”

  Mika gave a small curse, and with a regretful look towards Ellen, made to leave. I tried to follow, thinking I still had the task as well, but Maggie put a hand on my uninjured shoulder.

  “Not you Bran, spiress gave direct orders that all injured combatants are spared from extra duty until healed.”

  “Oh! That’s right! What’s with the bones on your shoulder?” Nora asked.

  “Not sure. The woman who fixed me up just told me to rest until the bones were dust.”

  “Okay… but what does that mean?”

  “No idea. Her Trade Tongue wasn’t great, so we didn’t do much talking.”

  “Would you mind if I looked at them? Same with your bandage too, Ellen.”

  Ellen and I agreed easily enough, and Maggie reinforced for us to get some rest before she pulled a sullen Mika away to his stone carving duty. As Maggie led him away, he called out to Nora.

  “When I get back, you’re sharing your notes with me!”

  Nora led the two of us to the assigned room as System notifications reminded me of their presence from the corner of my vison, no longer content to be held at bay now that I was out of combat and healed.

  Our room was a cramped space with four beds almost touching each other and a small alcove with a couple of chests to store our stuff in. The nice sheets made the room slightly cozier, same with the orange and red patterned rug in the center of the room.

  Nora began her inspection with the bandage around Ellen’s thigh. She spent a couple of minutes just hovering over it, not saying anything or touching the wrapping. Eventually she leaned away from Ellen and pinched her nose, slowly and shallowly breathing through her mouth.

  “I’m not very good at runes, but I recognize what a couple of them do.” She sighed. “What’s interesting, though, is the mana. The wrapping has two threads of mana that dart back and forth between itself and your leg. They’re carrying something, but I have no idea what.”

  Ellen asked a followup question but engrossed in her musings, Nora didn’t hear. Without a word, she stood from Ellen’s leg and marched over to me, where she did the same and hovered over my arm. To distract myself from the Nora’s slow breaths on my neck, I tried to follow and distinguish between the bones’ and Nora’s mana as they interacted.

  It was faint and I would have missed it if I hadn’t explicitly been looking, but I felt a strand of mana enter my shoulder and ‘feel around’ for a lack of a better term. Nora’s mana first went through the mist that connected the bones to my own, feeling blindly. She spent a couple of moments doing that before, like a bloodhound on a scent. Her focus narrowed onto something just above my collarbone. She found something because she broke from her concentration and stood to retrieve her notebook and charcoal from her chest.

  “Bran’s bones confirm it. Something is being transferred from what the [Healers] put onto both of your wounds, but I have no idea how they’re doing it.” Nora muttered and wrote feverishly in her notebook. “Do you guys mind hanging out for a bit so I can study them further?”

  Both of us agreed we were meant to be resting, anyway. And like that, we’d signed our day away. Briefly, I checked my notifications while Ellen and I chatted about everything and anything. Turns out Ellen would rather fight a horse sized ten-year-old than a ten-year-old sized horse. It was objectively the wrong answer, but I didn’t harp on that.

  Congratulations! Through your efforts you have leveled up your class [Grove Guard] to level 8!

  Congratulations! Through your efforts you have leveled up your class [Grove Guard] to level 9!

  Congratulations! Through your efforts in the field, you have leveled up the skill Focus to level 2!

  Status:

  Name: Bran

  Class: [Grove Guard], LVL 9

  Attributes:

  Strength – 26 (+2)

  Dexterity – 14 (+1)

  Constitution – 32 (+4)

  Endurance – 27

  Wisdom – 10

  Intelligence – 11 (+1)

  Aura – 14 (+2)

  Luck – 5

  Class Skills: (1/5)

  Woodland Pulse (1/10)

  General Skills: (2/3)

  Basic Stone Carving (9/10)

  Focus (2/5)

  Mastered Skills

  Beginner’s Hammer Art

  Beginner’s Shield Art

  The Willow’s Wrath}