I suddenly snapped back to reality. The haze of delight and debauchery lifted as my body continued to feel more and more power once again flowing through it. I dropped the armor plate to the ground, it splashed on the wet dirt that was pooling around me. My reality was torn back into focus, my mind having slipped from control over my own body and insidious instinct taken over. A woman lay before me, bleeding, dying. Someone I should be indebted to was injured, and yet I had been participating in some debauched sanguine pleasure.

I refocused myself, looking down at the barely conscious woman. She seemed to be holding onto some thread of willpower that kept her alive and focused despite the immense blood she was losing. She had saved me, and I had repaid her with refusals to help and worse still a ugly sampling of her vitality. I needed to save her, she had done just as much for me regardless of her reasoning.

Bending down to sit next to the woman, her blood and injuries didn’t seem to hold sway over me any longer. The hunger and intense desires I had felt were washed away as my bones thrummed with strong mystical bindings. I could feel the power flowing throughout me, expanding my senses in ways that are hard to describe. First and foremost, I could feel the power I had briefly harnessed hovering around me like a thick shroud; it was even clinging to the woman like a pleasant perfume, an aura of her own subtle power.

I shook my head again, trying to ignore my new senses. My mind was still distractible despite my sated hunger. The woman lay almost completely still, faint and pained breathing barely able to heft her chest. In my sanguine ritual I had relieved some of the stress on her body, in a crude way, by removing the heavy breastplates from her leathers. Yet I still didn’t know the first thing of what to do for an injury, and I couldn't fathom what to do about the excessively bleeding wounds.

I examined the wound on the woman’s shoulder. Her pale and fair skin drenched in drying blood while more still freely ran from the gaping tears in her flesh. The teeth of the scaled creature had torn and scarred her deeply, I didn’t know what to do. I looked at my savior’s face, she was turning paler than her snow-like skin had already been. Her purple eyes were fading fast and losing focus, her mouth barely moved while taking in struggling breaths. I steeled myself, I refused to let her die after I abused her vulnerability in such a way.

I didn’t know if it would help, but I placed my hands against the wounds. I held tightly, squeezing the leathers together to try and put the shreds of armor tight against her skin like a poor bandage. I knew I had some kind of power and it was replenished by her blood, so it was only right I tried to channel it back into her in some way. Yet I wasn’t sure how. I focused on the woman, I begged the energies flowing inside of me to strengthen and imbue her with the power to live. Without any idea how these abilities even worked, with strange words and thoughts still rushing through my mind as the potent vitality ran through my non-existent veins, I channeled whatever I could into the woman’s injury. I wish I could say something miraculous happened, but what occurred could hardly be called a boon.

I felt my power complying to my will. Whatever vitality I had stolen from this woman’s blood flowed back out of me and into her. I felt a string of words flooding into my mind. Each one strange and new, begging to be used. What they were is lost on me, as they came and went I refused each one thinking them wrong. I hoped for some unknown knowledge I didn’t know I had, some other effect that would happenstance its way into my mind conveniently to fix this catastrophe. Yet each word that came became less appealing than the last, but then other words came. Groups of words, two, three, even four at a time. Strings of phrases and key terms that promised a less effective, but more diverse pallet of powers.

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I felt the woman’s life fading. My newly tuned senses could feel her aura, a similar power that now flowed freely within me, was running dry of her. I somehow knew when it ran empty the woman would perish and go into an eternal sleep. I had to choose a beckoning scripture. I had to choose a poison and hope it wouldn’t just kill her, but instead somehow waylay her death with as little pain as possible. Her strength was ebbing fast, and words were fleeing quickly. Some that I barely recalled would’ve fit better, but had already left and I couldn’t enforce them, and the three words I finally found were the best I could do in my panic. Without enough time to think, with no experience on what script meant what. I spoke aloud, “Recall Thy Flesh.”

The words spoken, my choice made, I felt a surge of power forming at the tips of my fingers. Like when I attacked Nefelair with a word, these three words were commanded by my conscious thought into a manifestation of will. As I watched, the woman’s wound began to glow a sickly green. Red gore, bubbles of blood, and pieces of dirt and grime coming along for the ride, all slowly returned to the woman’s wound.

At first I watched in amazement as my chosen words seemed to be repairing and knitting together the open wound. I had made the correct decision, I thought. Yet as I marveled at my own ability, the flesh that returned and ‘repaired’ itself gained no color or fair elegance. Sickly patches of scarred tissue reformed and crudely put itself back together. Grime seeping into the seams becoming gross with puss and gnarled scabs. A rapid, cruel, winding back of time took place in a matter of moments. The woman had barely had her eyes open as she was fading out of life a few moments before, but as her flesh forced itself back together she suddenly regained consciousness with a wail of pain.

Clutching at the wound on her shoulder, confused and newly awakened by her malady, she and I watched in horror as parts of her leathers got caught in the rewinding of skin. She yelled out in pain, and all I could do was keep my hands pressed against her shoulder to maintain the effect, hoping the end result would be less horrific than the process. Halfway through the woman refound her grit, clenching her teeth and rolling over on her side to scream into the earth. An excruciating moment passed as the final pieces of flesh realigned itself, leaving a dark stain on her otherwise perfect complexion.

The process was over. It had, in reality, only been a few seconds, but it had felt like many minutes of length as I agonized over my crude attempt to save the woman. When it was over, she lay mostly still, quietly shaking as she coped with the obvious pain, her good arm’s hand hovered over the spot of the wound like she was afraid to touch it. She slowly rose to a sitting position, wincing with jolts of pain with even slight movements of her ‘healed’ injury. “Imn… Te’mel… Cin.” the woman said suddenly.

“I… I didn’t know, I am sorry…” I stammered.

The woman looked towards the revealed entrance to the scaled monster’s dwelling, then she turned her gaze towards the monster that had wounded her. Somehow she mustered enough strength to pull herself up to her feet, her left arm limp from the injury of my words. Dragging herself over to her sword, then approaching the unconscious and wounded creature, she raised her weapon and plunged the point into its throat. I said nothing. Her strength of will was enough to stun me into silent compliance, I felt I still owed her despite having barely saved her life. Her limp arm swung as she yanked the weapon free of the gurgling creature, and she winced in pain again. The puddle of blood still stained the ground, and wet red was beginning to crust on the bronze breastplates. My deeds taunted me.

The woman turned to me, barely enough strength to heft the sword to her side. Using the end to point towards the hole in the hill, she sternly said in my language, “Help.”

Her conviction weakened me, “I will try my best. Yes, I will help.” I said, bowing my head in shame.

As I looked down, avoiding the brave woman’s gaze, I saw my bare bones coated in stains of red and crusting blood. I cringed as the image of the heinous ritual returned to my mind, and I could only hope the woman was too injured to have understood what I was actually doing when I removed her armor plating. I rose from my place on the ground, and knew I must repay the despicable acts I had done. I hated what I had done, and even after I had used the grotesque power I gained to help I felt I only made things worse. I wondered what could be done to repay the violation and scars I had caused simply by being. Yet none of that mattered. A task was before me, if my savior commanded I help her against these beasts I will follow with a dreadful determination. I owed her at least that much now.