It only took us a few minutes to find where the Dreamers were, or had been. Only a single person was there now, groaning as she lay in the alley way. A metal trash can was dented and it looked like the stone ground had been pulled up in several places. The most noticeable thing however was the blood.

There looked to be more than there really was, it was just more spread out. Like an exaggerated crime scene from a play.

“Should we help her?” Elina muttered from beside me.

“Yes.”

The bloody scene was interesting. Enough so that I decided it was worth no longer following our planned schedule for the day.

The dented trash can was the least interesting part, however the dent in it spoke of a greater force than normally possible by humans. Strength enhancement with Intent.

The blood spatters were intriguing. They showed violent, but shallow wounds. If the assailant was using something like a knife, one or two might be understandable, but more than a dozen? It was intentional not to go for vital spots and instead prolong the pain without putting the girls life in danger.

There was no large pool of blood around the girl, but rivulets from gashed on her exposed skin made smaller pools around her. That meant there was less likely to be a lethal injury unless they were either stabbed with a blade and the blade was left in or there was more blunt damage that would damage internal organs. Her body was still moving so she didn’t have a broken neck.

No obvious deformities either that would come from broken bones or crushed limbs, not that there were not broken bones, but none were obvious at the moment.

The wounds that I could see were flowing steadily, though they already seemed to be slowing down due to clotting. Not arterial bleeding, another good thing.

By far the most interesting part was the ground. In six places the concrete had erupted upwards similar to how a worm burrowing up through dirt. As we got closer I could actually see holes in the ground where the concrete had been pushed up, however there were no more signs of what had caused it.

I saw three possibilities.

One. There had once been poles in these locations but they had recently been yanked out. Most unlikely option as there are no signs of the poles and I cannot think of a reason to remove poles during a fight unless the poles held some significance or were used as a weapon, but the wounds were sharp not blunt.

Two. Nightmare. Perhaps one of the individuals Intent I had sensed was actually that of a Nightmare, and it had surfaced from under the ground to attack the girl. The girl was likely to be the other Dreamer I had sensed, though it was possible she was just a random person. What made this unlikely is that we were in the middle of the Sun States largest city.

Three. A Dreamers Wit. One of the two sources of Intent had used their Wit and whatever the ability was it caused the ruptures in the ground. I found this to be the most likely option. When I initially sensed the Intent once had felt like flying freely through the sky while the other one reminded me of fresh vegetables. Vegetable, plant, ground. That was no way concrete evidence that it was the vegetable person, my senses were still fresh and I could be wrong, and even then it could be the other one as I knew nothing of their Wit. But it did make sense.

“Monty? Monty? MONTY!”

“Hmm?”

“It’s Melanie, from Professor Alyci’s class.”

I had no idea who that was. Now that I was closer I could see that she was Empyrean like me, with jet black hair and her slightly opened eyes showed light grey iris’s. She looked to be tall, taller than myself or Elina.

“Does she like vegetables?”

“What?! Why would that matter?”

“Does she?”

“I don’t know, now can you help?”

I realized I must’ve been standing still for an unknown amount of time as I looked at the scene.

“Yes.”

I knelt down next to the girl, Melanie, and thought of what I could do to help.

Bleeding, superficial but covering a lot of her exposed skin. Blood loss was a real issue with so many wounds.

“Her clothing is already ripped so cut it up more and use that to make tight bandages over her wounds. We want to apply pressure onto them and encourage clotting.”

“Uh sure.”

Melanie had a coat that had also been torn in a few places so Elina ripped it further taking thick strips to wrap around Melanie’s leg.

The moment we started to touch her Melanie seemed to become more lucid.

“Ow you fucking bitch,” she grumbled, slapping a blood soaked hand on Elina’s thigh.

Elina scowled, shoving the hand away with her elbow and continuing to apply the bandage..

“Airway is patent.”

“What does that mean?”

“She can breathe.”

“Why didn’t you just- never mind.”

As I worked on the arm with more of the torn jacket I inspected the wounds. They were not as clean as I had been expecting. Instead of clean cuts from a blade they were more like ripped tears. Once I finished wrapping I checked her pulse on the same arm to see if she still had circulation to the limb. She did.

“Where did you learn this?” Elina asked as she started on the second leg.

We were running out of jacket.

“My neighbor was a former member of the Forged Order, he had a book on first aid treatment on the battlefield. I read it.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Oh, cool.”

“Go and see if you can find an officer or something. As students of the R.D.A. they should go out of their way to assist us. If they seem reluctant so them your pin and let off a bit of Intent.”

“You want me to threaten them?”

“Yes.”

Elina left in short order and I finished wrapping her wounds the best I could. I ended up having to tear through the outer shirt she wore, but decency was not as important as living.

Most of the scratches were on her limbs, but there were still a few on her torso and even one on her face. The only one I left uncovered was the one on her face, so I could inspect it more.

Like I had seen earlier the wounds looked to be more like ripped skin rather than just cuts, and on closer inspection I could see a starting point to it. There was a deep burrow on one side where the ripping was the worst then the cut quickly got shallower as it moved.

“Oi, Creepy Kid, can you not look at me like that?”

The girl, Melanie, was more awake now. She was giving me a cross look.

“How were you injured?”

She grimaced.

“Thorns.”

I felt a smile widen on my face.

“So you do not like vegetables?”

“Uh. I eat them, but I guess not, except broccoli, I love broccoli.”

“The small tree vegetable.”

“…Yes.”

I nodded.

“Are you lucid enough to explain the other peoples abilities in detail? I assume they were other Dreamers, however there is still a small chance of it being a Nightmare.”

“It was a person, multiple actually.”

Multiple? How? I only felt a single different Intent. Were the other assailants not Dreamers or were they just not using abilities?

“Explain please.”

“Creeps, I’m currently bleeding from dozens of cuts and may or may not have a concussion, I am not in the mood.”

“I saved you.”

“Ok? Did I ask.”

“No, would you like me to remove the bandages then wait for you to ask?”

“No.”

I nodded, my eyes boring into hers, waiting for the explanation. She grimaced.

“It was the Cheshire family,” she finally relented.

Ah, now it made sense, at least partially.

The Cheshire family was a family of Dreamers that had been deeply ingrained into the Sun State for as far back as the revolution. A lot of the early battles were won thanks to them continuously growing food for the armies. Not to mention the sieges.

I didn’t know exactly what made some Dreamers more likely to start a bloodline. Not all Dreamers children had abilities, and even Dreamer families offspring were not all Dreamers, but Dreamer families usually had an affinity for something. Such as the Glass Kingdom royalty having abilities related to glass, while the Cheshire had abilities related to plants, or maybe food.

“How did their Wit work? I assume that plants sprouted from the ground.”

“You’re not going to ask why they attacked me,” Melanie said squinting her eyes at me.

“… Maybe later. So about their Wit.”

“Yeah yeah. Thorny vines sprouted from the ground and wrapped around me. Then they used that to knock me around a little and then the vines were ripped out.”

“Did the vines have Intent flowing off them? Were they real or conjured? What happened to them? What color was their Intent? Did you try and taste it?”

Melanie groaned again.

“Just slam my head back into the ground until I pass out.”

“No… Well?”

“Ugh. Yes. Real. I don’t remember. Green to no ones surprise, and of course I didn’t try and taste the vines.”

“Shame.”

Melanie squinted at me.

“You’re really weird ya know that?”

—

Melanie went to the hospital and Elina and I went to the academy to tell the teachers. Both Professor Alyci and Professor Pure left to go see to her. I asked if I could join in order to see Professor Pure’s pink fire once again, but he refused.

They also didn’t take a car and instead Professor Pure flew himself and Professor Alyci there. So not only was I unable to see the Cheshire family members use their Wit I also was not allowed to watch Professor Pure heal Melanie up.

All in all I decided I broke even. We stopped the shopping day that we had been on and ruined a set of perfectly good plans, but I got to see some interesting wounds, wrap said wounds and learned a bit more about a Dreamer family and their abilities.

It also felt good to possibly save someones life, which wasn’t something I had been expecting. Ever since Burst’s death I always had a fear that I would grow cold to the life and death of others. Like my compassion had a leak ever since I was a child and one day it would run out, if it did, I hadn’t run out yet.

The next morning when Elina and I were sitting in the cafeteria for breakfast Melanie joined us.

“Heyo Elina! Creepy Kid!” she said joyfully, sitting down next to Elina.

“I do not like that nickname.”

Melanie made a face.

“Melanie it wouldn’t be nice to call someone who helped you names, and if you do so I would ask that you don’t sit with us,” Elina said kindly, but with a bit of steel in her voice.

“Hmm, my bad… Mooonty?”

“Yes that is my name, and I forgive you.”

I didn’t like people calling me names, so I was thankful for Elina there.

“I just wanted to say thanks for helping me out yesterday. Apparently I actually lost a lot of blood believe it or not.”

I believed it, it might have looked worse than it was, but that didn’t mean it was good.

“So why did the Cheshire family come after you?” Elina asked.

“Uh, well I guess I sorta attacked them first technically.”

Both Elina and I looked at Melanie like she was stupid.

“I didn’t know they were Dreamers at first, and they started saying some racist shit.”

The Cheshire family was Solarian, and Melanie was Empyrean.

“Damn that sucks,” Elina said.

“Meh, at first it was just the usual. Duster, ash-spitter. I’m sure most Empyreans in the Sun State have been called that at least once,” she looked to me for confirmation.

I nodded, Eichlin was a rather nice city, but there were still the occasional extremist for both sides. Ash-spitter had been a slur for us for centuries, because the Coal Empire used coal of course, but after the capital city of the empire was obliterated it was more mocking than before, as the capital literately turned to a wasteland of ash.

“Then they started throwing shit and saying stuff like how they should hunt down Empyreans and hang them from buildings like the Empire did with their Shrimp Cruisers.”

That was definitely less than typical insults. The Shrimp were a type of flying ship the empire had used for war. If coal was the primary source of power for the empire than slaves were the second. Using Stygoscript the Shrimp would siphon off life-power from slaves to help them stay afloat. Once a slave was drained completely the empire would hang them from the bottom of the ship by a noose.

Along with the shape of the airship the hanging bodies made it look like a shrimp with hundreds of legs. The Shrimp would then fly over burn sites or even drop them on enemy towns and water sources to induce sickness.

“Yeah, they kept that up for a while. Honestly the throwing of trash was the most annoying part. Eventually I pushed the kid that got close then all of a sudden instead of random shit-heads they were all Dreamers. The Professors told me this happens a lot. Dreamer families don’t like the idea of other Dreamers getting power and their children will often push kids from the R.D.A. around because they have more training than us.”

“At least your wounds healed well,” I said.

Most of her body was covered in the uniform, but the scratch that had been on her face and hand were only slightly angry red marks, it didn’t even look like they would leave a scar.

“Yeah,” she scowled. “I’ll get them back one day.”

“Melanie,” Elina said.

“Yeh?”

“That sounds like a stupid thing to do.”

“Unless it works.”

“Nope, it just sounds stupid.”