Ashe stumbled through the underbrush. She was leaning on her staff, a long dark piece of wood that was intentionally bulkier on one side making it more of a long club, she was holding it only with her right hand, as her left was preoccupied with keeping her blood inside her body. Ashe was familiar enough with the human body to know that blood was best kept inside.

She paused for a bit to examine her side. She very slowly withdrew her hand, and she suppressed a hiss of pain as she looked. The wound actually looked better than it felt, the slash had gone through the armour but it had obviously been slowed. She had been wearing riveted leather armour with her right shoulder, arm, and part of her chest being covered with plated metal, the armour was expensive proof of her success in this business and it was significantly heavier than what most people in her party would wear, especially when travelling through heavy forest but right then it seemed barely adequate.

The cut was bad, but she had the supplies and know-how to take care of it as well as her less serious injuries. There were a number of things that worried her more, the fact that she’d already lost a lot of blood as she stumbled through the woods in a post adrenaline haze for example. She had to find shelter before she passed out, her being able to treat the wound would be irrelevant if she fell face first in the dirt, as blood loss, gangrene ,and the rotters raced to see who would kill her first. So she kept walking, ignoring the wound was unwise but she did not know that were she to stop and take care of it right then, she would be able to stand again.

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

An unknown amount of time later Ashe found what she’d been looking for, a shallow but wide, almost bowl like, gorge.There were two wide paths on opposite sides that that led down, the trees were less omnipresent on the ground of the depression, but there were several small caves low on the cliff sides to provide cover should it be needed, and Ashe needed it, in the approximate centre of the bowl there stood a weathered red hued pillar of stone, a remnant an old settlement Shen had said. It was one of the locations the party had set as fallback points should they be separated.

Ashe almost fell several times on her way down, thankfully the path was not steep. She found one of the shallow caves, and she very carefully dropped her backpack and rested the club against the wall. She then dropped on her ass and immediately regretted it as she let out a muffled scream of pain.

She resisted her body as it told her to lie back just for a minute, and she hurriedly undid the straps that held the metal parts of her armour in place. They fell to the dusty rocky ground as she then dragged herself to the bag and got out the water, antiseptic, and bandages; she did not think that an attempt to sew the wound herself would end well.

There was no elixir in the bag, it was expensive and Shen was holding what little they had, unfortunate as elixir tasted like shit but worked much better and hurt a hell of a lot less than antiseptic.

A few terrible minutes later she was finally able to allow herself to drift off.