The next day, the noble divisions' contract ended. Mirk didn't know whether to be worried or relieved.

All the remaining healers from the Tenth were in high spirits, despite the number of casualties. Once that final wave of injured men was bandaged up and sent off, they were all free to go until after the Festival of Shades. If any officers or high-born fighters needed healing before then, most of them had private family or guild healers to meet their needs.

It was the Twentieth's lot to tend to the needs of the less fortunate during the gap between the end of the winter contracts and the start of the spring ones. Though they still had to do a little work, most of his fellow healers thought of that liminal gap as a fine enough holiday. Most of them had no family or home to go to beyond the City anyway. Himself included.

Eva was the only healer from the Tenth who was going to stay on through it. She claimed it was because her high-born relatives were insufferable. But the rest of them could tell that was only partly true. Mirk doubted she would have left before Slava came back, even if her relatives had tried to force her into it.

Though there were a lot of them, the men sent through the field transporter at the conclusion of the noble divisions’ contract weren't horribly mangled. The combat healers must have had either the time or the potential to properly see to their wounds. The Tenth’s last spell of work would be light. Or so Mirk had thought.

He was entrenched once more at the table in the common room, still working at his interminable pile of mending. After discussing it with Emir and the rest, they all agreed that it would be wrong to waste any of the potential the djinn had given him before the Easterners returned. Which meant there was little for Mirk to do aside from mending and scrubbing. He preferred the mending. Cleaning reminded him too much of things that he'd rather not think of.

Both Yule and Danu were beside him that night, Yule flipping through a grimoire with a cross expression while Danu picked at the lunch she'd forgotten to eat with a melancholy air. At the sound of the field transporter crackling to life at the end of the emergency hall, all three of them tensed.

"Gerlach! Gerlach, get over here!" The voice was loud and brash and amplified by a spell to make it carry as if the man yelling Gerlach's name was in the middle of every room in the building.

Danu slumped, spitefully ripping at the bun she'd been trying to work up the will to eat, and Yule went back to reading, muttering under his breath about the Tenth's uselessness. There were running footsteps out in the hall; a figure whisked past the common room doorway. Then there was more yelling, a lot of stamping and banging, and the feel of an enormous magical potential that resonated so strongly with Mirk's own that he was drawn involuntarily up onto his feet.

He ran a hand down the front of his chest, listening and feeling around inside of himself, ignoring the curious looks Yule and Danu shot at him. It wasn't his own potential the magic down the hall was resonating with. It was the djinn's. His own potential didn't have that eerie, shifting quality to it.

"Something's happened," Mirk said, heading for the door.

"It's the nobles. Not our problem," Yule called after him.

"I'm not going to do anything. I just...I need to go see."

He arrived at the juncture of the field transporter hallway and the one that connected the two first floor wards too late to catch the beginning of the commotion. A cluster of combat healers and fighters clustered tightly around someone or something, spiriting it off to the front entrance, Gerlach at their head. Mirk could just make out the officer’s sputtered apologies over the sound of wet boots squeaking on the floor. But he arrived just in time to see the rest of it.

Am-Gulat had said that two or three djinn had been kept behind to serve Ravensdale. And they'd served him to the end. Two pairs of soot-streaked and weary fighters were carrying the limp bodies of two djinn down the hall. Mirk didn't have to wait around to see them make the turn to know they were hauling them to the basement rather than up to the second or third floor for treatment. Crossing himself and mumbling a prayer under his breath, Mirk pressed his back against the wall of the hallway, just out of sight of the basement steps, waiting for the sound of the fighters' footsteps to fade before starting off back toward the common room. He knew it was a mark of his cowardice, but he couldn’t bear to catch even a glimpse of the dead djinn’s faces.

He was halfway back to the common room when he caught sight of Eva hurrying in the opposite direction. Mirk paused and waited to meet her, fingers still lingering on the shape of the crucifix of his mother's rosary underneath his robes. "You aren't needed this time," she called out to him, stopping at the doorway to the common room. She made a pointed gesture at Danu and Yule inside, then carried on.

"What's happening?" Mirk asked her.

"That mage didn't project his whole report," Eva explained. "Ravensdale's group was ambushed on the way back to the transporter after meeting with the king who contracted him. There's more wounded coming through."

"Who?"

"The mage didn't think it was important enough to name names. Not with Ravensdale wounded." Eva frowned as she walked past him. Mirk could hear the transporter engaging again off in the distance. "Just a scratch from the sound of things. Ravensdale, not the rest."

Danu and Yule emerged from the common room, both of them rolling up their sleeves. "At least we have something to do now," Yule said, in a tired attempt at lightening the mood.

"And it won't be Morty or the rest," Danu replied, nodding in agreement.

Mirk fell in behind them, offering his explanation before either of them could protest his involvement. "I'm just coming to see what happened. And methinks there has to be something I can do to help. Bandage, or suture, or..."

His explanation sounded hollow even to himself. But neither of the other members of his team ordered him back to the common room. By the time they'd reached the field transporter hallway, a second group of men were on their way to the front of the building — mages, mostly, none of them so badly injured that they couldn't walk. And not so badly injured that they had to subject themselves to the care of a woman or the Twentieth rather than their own healers. Save for one unlucky man, carried on a stretcher by two fighters who waited for Eva beside the transporter rather than meeting her halfway. The horrible, sick weight on Mirk's chest grew when he realized who it was. Elijah.

"Did all the other healers go with Ravensdale?" one of the fighters asked Eva, side-eying Mirk's team trailing along behind her.

Eva nodded. "If he wants to be healed, then he'll have to make do with us."

"Don't mind in the slightest," Elijah said, weakly raising a hand to the fighters. "A healer's a healer. God, this stings..."

Elijah's injuries were bad enough to make it difficult for him to walk, but not so severe that Mirk thought they had to fear losing him. A magical blast injury, which had caught him in a glancing blow to his side and hip. His skin was blistered and bleeding but not cooked straight off his bones like it could have been. One of the combat healers must have given Elijah pain blockers. The feel of his magic and mind were faint, cloudy. And he wasn't screaming and moaning like a man of Elijah's delicate sensibilities would have been without blockers to take the edge off.

They all held their tongues until Elijah was hauled into the room nearest the transporter and the fighters had left. Yule was the first to set in on him, both with questions and shears to cut off the parts of his shirt and trousers that had fused with the burn. "What happened? Someone tried to take Ravensdale out?"

Elijah nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling. And he pinched his nose, no longer able to bear the smell of his own scorched flesh now that he was indoors. "Came at us from all sides, they did. Too fast for me to follow, anyway. Before I knew what was happening..."

"I was told this morning that the contract was done," Eva said. She'd unrolled her tools and was using one that was a cross between a pair of scissors and a tweezer to remove the bits of fused fabric and flesh Yule left behind.

"It was. But the winners weren't happy about the price they paid, I suppose." Elijah had begun to shiver; Danu put her hands on his temples and steadied his soul, though she didn't lift it away. Elijah was too close to consciousness for that to be better than the pain. "Oh...the half-Death again...sorry, I've forgotten everyone's names...these magic burns hurt like hell...worse when someone else does it to you instead of you doing it to yourself, somehow..."

"Would you like us to put you to sleep?" Mirk asked him. Privately, he wished Elijah would stay with them, keep talking. But fetching potions was all he was good for at the moment.

"Oh, hello Mirk...didn't see you...no, I'll be fine. Honestly, I don't really like the blockers. They give me a sort of spooky feeling. Like I'm half-dead. No offense, Miss...er..."

"Danu," she said, gingerly patting the mage's temples to reassure him.

"Right! That's it. Danu, Eva, Mirk...and..."

Rather than giving Elijah his name, Yule asked him another question. "Must have overcharged them by a lot for them to go through the trouble of coming after you while you were leaving."

"And kill two djinn," Mirk added, softly. All his fellow healers shot him a pointed look.

"Oh, hell, don't remind me," Elijah groaned, twisting away from Eva's tools and Yule's magic. Danu's hands shifted down to his shoulders, keeping him pressed down flat on the table. "Sorry, sorry...it's just...it was the worst thing I'd ever seen. Ravensdale must not have thought they were moving fast enough. He just...he...he sucked everything out of them. They wailed, and then they crumpled, and then..."

Danu winced — Elijah's soul lashed out at the strength of the memory, at the pain of it. Mirk put a hand on the mage’s arm to comfort him and draw his attention back to the present. "I'm sorry, Comrade Elijah. We'll do everything we can to make up for it."

Touch alone wasn't enough to draw Elijah out of his bitter memories. Though the tenor of them shifted from distress to anger. "I didn't feel bad at all about letting those foreign mages have it. I...I tried to pay attention this time, just like Comrade Genesis told me to. I watched the hand-off. King was this big ugly brute covered in silver and pearls. Thanked Ravensdale for dealing with the savages, and hoped he enjoyed his pick of the...the...ladies..." Elijah gasped, either in disgust at the memory or in pain from Eva digging deep to clear all the injured flesh from his wounds. "Ravensdale was so...so smug. So happy. And so was that awful king. Got him with a fireball myself. First time I'd ever seen someone take my magic..."

Elijah was trying to put on a brave face, Mirk knew. And he could sense how much he hated what he'd seen and heard. Still, having seen the impact of his combat magic for the first time, person to person, made Elijah’s gaze go distant for a time, haunted. He really was too soft for the K'maneda, Mirk thought. Not suited for fighting at all. Danu elbowed Mirk in the side again, shooting him a meaningful look. If he was going to be taking up space around the table, the least he could do was keep Elijah distracted and talking so that the other healers could do their work.

Mirk took hold of Elijah's hand, squeezing it until the mage's eyes focused on him again. "It'll be all right. The contract's over, non? You're not going back?"

"Oh, Lord no. I bet they'll blast anyone in black on sight from now until they forget about us. And we do have a break now for the Shade's Festival. Though I don't much feel like celebrating this year." Elijah paused, his nose wrinkling. "You feel funny, Mirk. Am I dreaming? You almost feel like the dj—"

He hushed Elijah before he could finish, nodding. Even though the remnants of the Tenth, Eva aside, had all left with Ravensdale and his men, it never hurt to be careful. Or perhaps being around Genesis was making him paranoid. "You're right. I...well. They gave me a gift once they were sent back. Since Genesis and the others are still gone."

"They're on contract?" Elijah's brow furrowed in concern. "I thought they were all sick still? Tal-Hatha's nasty business, there's no handling those ghost-mages without a djinn or two, especially if you're not well. Or is that why Richard left?"

"Ravensdale sent the djinn back. But Genesis and the others are still gone. Genesis, he...euh..."

"He's gone off," Yule said, flatly.

"He's gone...oh. Off."

"What's our potions stock look like?" Yule asked Mirk, while Elijah was thinking over the news. "I made at least two dozen flesh regens yesterday."

"Gerlach took ten for Ravensdale and his," Eva said, without looking up from her work.

Yule scoffed. "Ten? Lazy bastard..."

Silence fell over the room. Elijah was the one who broke it, in a small, uncertain voice. "I could go by Tal-Hatha and see how they're doing.”

"Your right side's mincemeat," Yule replied, immediately. "Once those blockers wear off, you're not going anywhere."

But Yule wasn't quick enough to dash Danu's hopes. His warning to Elijah didn't seem to reach her — she leaned over Elijah's twitching body, staring down into his wide, puzzled eyes. Hers had gone black. "You could? Wouldn't Ravensdale be suspicious?"

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Elijah tried to shrug, but Danu's grip on his shoulders was so strong he couldn't budge an inch. "I'm friends with Heine in the Fifteenth Cavalry. His hobby's exploring for relics and rarities to sell to the guilds. He won't say a word. And Ravensdale hardly ever speaks to him anyway, since Heine won't talk about anything other than pottery."

"Not a good idea," Yule said.

Eva nodded. "Agreed."

"I wouldn't do anything. Just keep an eye on things," Elijah said. "And I have nothing to do here. Ravensdale doesn't have the Third out on contract until March. I was going to go back down to Brighton to see some old friends, but...well. This seems more important."

Danu knew who she had to argue with. Her attention shifted from Elijah to Yule and Eva, who'd both paused their work on the mage's injuries to stare her down. "We need to know what's going on if we're going to be ready to help."

Yule shook his head. "When do we ever know what's going on?"

"That's exactly why we lose so many," Danu insisted. "There won't be any more casualties coming in from the field, since everyone's back besides the Seventh. Just assassins and babies, the same as every Shade's Holiday. We have the potential to fix him," she added, pressing down on Elijah’s shoulders.

Eva's body seemed to outpace her mind. She nodded even as she voiced her protests. "If Elijah gets caught, things will go poorly."

"Who's going to report back to Ravensdale on it? Morty and the others won't. And all of Ravensdale's goons will be gathered around his bedside for the next week, even if all he got was a scratch."

Yule shook his head. "Not a chance."

"The Festival balls begin this week," Eva said. "If the nobles are not with Ravensdale, they'll be occupied by those."

Mirk looked across the table at Yule, allowing some of his own desperate concern to seep out past his mental shielding. "If we're prepared, then there's less chance that we'll lose anyone. And you won't even go talk to them, will you, Comrade Elijah? Just look?"

"On my honor," Elijah said, nodding. "Consider me a ghost. Comrade Genesis will notice for sure, but...well...I imagine that if he's gone, er, off, he'll be distracted."

Yule drew his hands and magic back from Elijah's wound, cursing under his breath. "You're all hopeless. If I ever turn into a drippy idiot over a gnome, an ogre, and a skeleton, one of you needs to put me out of my misery." Nevertheless, Yule was already cracking his knuckles, something he always did before a bout of intense healing.

"I can spare five flesh regeneration potions from upstairs," Eva said.

"I'm not lifting a finger until they're back if I do this," Yule said. "And if you get yourself in trouble, you're on your own," he added to Elijah.

Elijah nodded. Whereas everyone else was still mired in their private worries, torn between duty and need, Elijah seemed to have drifted off a bit, through some combination of the blockers and the force of Danu's stabilizing hold on his soul. "I've always wanted to see what he can do when he's off. Ravensdale never lets us get anywhere near him when he's like that. I wonder if he keeps to his spellcraft, or if he starts really using his own potential..."

Yule took up his work on Elijah's side again, this time making liberal use of his magic. It stung enough to draw Elijah's attention over to him. "You go to this Tal-Hatha place, you check up on them, and you report back. No standing around taking notes. You fuck it up, it's your own problem. Understood?"

Elijah mustered a weak smile for Yule as he nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm yours to command, sir."

Huffing and rolling his eyes, Yule made an offhand gesture at Mirk. "Go make yourself useful. Get those potions and come back. The rest of you, focus back on your work. I can't believe I'm doing this..."

Yule ignored the bevy of thanks given to him from all sides. But he stepped up his healing nevertheless.

- - -

"You two need to go home."

Danu and Mirk looked up at the sound of Yule's voice. He'd gone and collected his cloak from the closet attached to the common room, but hadn't yet put it on, leaving it draped over his forearm as he leaned against the common room door frame.

"We need to stay ready. We told Elijah we would," Danu said, sipping from the bottle of specious gin they were splitting. A gift from Fatima, who'd stopped in that morning to badger Emir about his progress on recruiting more healers for her ladies.

“Elijah said he was going to look and come right back,” Yule countered.

"Something must have happened," Mirk said, taking the bottle from Danu. The gin really was terrible, but he kept drinking it all the same. It made him less aware of the djinn potential still circling inside of him, though his own magic had begun to work on it, making it harder for Mirk to feel the difference between it and his own.

"Elijah's a flake," Yule said. "You're all worried over nothing. He probably got distracted by a shiny rock, or some rubbish. He'll show up when he shows up."

Danu glared across the common room at Yule, but didn't have the energy to put much venom in it. She was worn thin with worry, pale and huddled under her cloak despite being indoors. Her eyes had gone black yesterday afternoon, and not a hint of their usual warmth had returned to them since. "I want to be here when he does."

Yule shoved off against the doorframe and crossed the room to them, holding his hand out for the bottle. "What are you going to do in this condition if he does come back with bad news? You need rest. Both of you."

"My magic's fine," Danu replied. Though she did pass him the bottle.

She wasn't lying, not exactly. They'd all been conserving their strength ever since they'd sent Elijah off two days ago, doing the best they could with potions and spell papers and handiwork rather than leaning on their magic, like they ordinarily would have during such a slow spell. It was just as Eva had said — nothing but assassins and Supply Corps women coming in with babies, with the results of a few lost fights at the taverns sprinkled in between. In the long gaps between patients, they made preparations for the Easterners' return. Which meant mixing a lot of potions, at least for Mirk.

He'd found that, even without leaning too much on his magic, he had a knack for flesh regeneration potions. Mirk didn't follow the recipe in the potions grimoire, but he was still able to hear the components without needing to listen too hard. Something about how the potion required more plants than minerals, about the way they harmonized with each other easily, making a melody that it always made Mirk feel a little better to hear. Their chorus reminded him of the sound of the chimes his mother had strung up above the kitchen doorway when they stirred in the afternoon breeze rolling in off the distant sea.

Yule sat down with the bottle, taking a long sip. "God, this is terrible. I hate gin."

Mirk shrugged. "I'll bring in something nice for both of you once things are settled."

"I don't need you buying me presents to motivate me to keep doing my job." Yule paused, then flashed Mirk a humorless smile. "But I'm not too good to refuse a gift from the seigneur, if his purse is already open."

Their conversation died then, all of them taking listless drinks from their communal bottle, lost in their own thoughts. Mirk glanced at the clock nestled in amongst the bottles in the liquor cabinet. One in the morning.

"Tiens," he said, lightly touching Danu's arm before she could take another drink. "Let's take a few hours. I finished cleaning the plague ward this afternoon, we can rest there so we're close if something happens. The beds up there are much nicer than the ones on third."

Not as nice as the bed in his quarters, of course, but at least the plague ward beds weren't so lumpy that Mirk felt like he'd fallen asleep on a pile of rocks. And there wasn't the same unpleasant emptiness up on the plague ward that there was in his quarters. He'd tried going back and sleeping there once, but the absence on the far side of the bed had weighed too heavily on Mirk's mind for him to be able to get any sleep.

Danu ignored his suggestion. "I hate this," she said, shaking off Mirk's hand and taking another drink. "But it's always going to be like this, isn't it? Left sitting here with nothing to do but wait while the rest of them are off..."

Mirk sighed. "Yes. It was the same for maman with my father. But it's worth it, non?"

"I suppose. I just..." Danu struggled to find words, but came up empty. And so was the bottle.

It was enough to crack Yule. He took hold of Danu’s other arm and tugged on it. "Come on. The cooks sent us too many meat pies today. They're up on third. One of those and your stomach will hurt so bad you'll have to lie down."

Danu was about to protest when the distant sound of a cry for help from the waiting room made her mouth snap shut, her eyes going wide. Shaking both of them off, she shot out of her chair and bolted for the front of the infirmary. Yule cursed, Mirk crossed himself, and they both scrambled to catch up.

Elijah had returned. He was uninjured, but the two men he'd dragged through the front doors along with himself could barely stay on their feet. Two of the Easterners, whose names Mirk completely forgot in his panic. Elijah spotted the three healers coming, jerking his head at the man to his right in a silent plea for help. He was so winded all his words came out in gasps. "More...coming...bad..."

Before any of them could make it across the waiting room to help Elijah and the wounded Easterners, Mordecai appeared in the doorway behind him, the bang of displaced air his teleportation magic left in his wake making all the benches and chairs rattle. He'd brought in two men as well, oversized fighters who were using him as an ambulatory crutch. Mordecai was wounded himself, from a vicious bite to his neck, but judging by the amount of blood oozing from it, he'd been too quick for whatever it was to latch on and cause severe damage. Though Mordecai was pale and shaking from the strain of supporting two men double his size, he seemed to find a fresh well of strength within himself when his eyes locked on Danu across the room.

"It's okay, Danny," he said, forcing out a smile for her. There was blood on his teeth. "I'm fine. Help them first." He shoved one of the two men at her — the fighter's eyes had rolled back in his head, and it took all of Danu's inhuman strength to keep him from fainting dead away onto the floor.

"What happened?" Mirk asked Elijah, as he rushed to take one of the casualties from him. Yule had taken one look at all the chaos and had rushed back into the depths of the infirmary to round up reinforcements.

"It...I'll explain later," Elijah said. "Just get them inside. I think they'll be fine? Otherwise they wouldn't be walking, right? The rest, though..."

"The rest?"

The worst off of the two men nodded and replied for Elijah, though his response wasn't in English. Mirk shoved himself under the man's searching hands to help support him as he slapped on his translation charm.

"...did it...we'll be...he said...bring us home, at least...better dead...at home..."

The other healers on duty that night — all newer people from the Twentieth, who didn't have enough seniority or gold to avoid the overnight watch — began to trickle into the waiting room to help. Mirk didn't recognize any of them; he rarely worked overnights. A man and a woman swooped in to take the other man from Elijah. Mirk began to help his own patient toward the hall that led to the critical rooms, but Elijah stopped him, taking the man back from Mirk before he could go more than a few steps. "No. You need to stay here."

"What?"

"Comrade Genesis. He..."

Another pair of healers arrived, taking the second wounded man from Elijah before he could make it very far either. The mage straightened up and tried to compose himself, running his hands down the front of his shirt before swiping them back through his hair. It didn't help much. Every stitch of his clothing was saturated with blood — trousers, cloak, shirt — and now it was streaked through his hair too. Mirk lowered his shields just enough to check Elijah for injuries. Despite the blood, he was unharmed, physically. But the emotions radiating off him were a bitter mixture of fear and panic. Elijah gestured for Mirk to follow him outside.

It was dark out on the street. All the lamps that lined the road in front of the infirmary were out, from the library to the south all the way to the Third Mage's headquarters to the north. And it was snowing, hard, a thick and undisturbed blanket of it coating everything in sight. It made the City unnaturally quiet. Though there was something beyond the snow adding to the silence, Mirk thought, the same something that was keeping the magelights in the lamps from illuminating. A familiar cold, staticky something.

"He said he'd bring the rest of them back," Elijah said, his voice lowered to a whisper, as if he was afraid to break the silence that reigned beyond the infirmary doors. "I don't know what he meant, but..."

Then the darkness below the infirmary steps unfurled. Long tendrils of shadow crept up from the street, slowly, the hissing of their chaotic potential filling Mirk's senses. He pulled up his shields against them so that he could keep his bearings. A large mass of shadows collected in front of Elijah and Mirk. Something in them shifted, a yawning emptiness expanded in their depths, and a body emerged out onto the steps below them. In the span of only a few seconds, the curls of shadow offered them five more men who were barely more than corpses.

Mirk dropped to his knees beside the nearest one — Grisha, it was Grisha, a mage whose chaotic light magic would have been struggling against the shadows, if he'd only had enough potential left to fight. Though the shadows had brought him back, they didn't release him, even as Mirk prodded at the band coiled around Grisha's neck. There was one tendril lingering there, and a second, thicker one around his midsection. Elijah was gibbering something at him, but all Mirk could make out was his fear. He was too focused on Grisha to keep track of Elijah's stammering.

He sought out Grisha's pulse on his wrist instead of fighting the shadows. Faint, uneven, but there. Mirk cast his magic out into his body, just far enough to feel for his injuries. One on his neck, and one across his stomach. Both of them severe, mortal wounds. Mirk realized what the shadows were doing. Grisha would have bled out by then, had the shadows not been forming some sort of hissing barrier atop his wounds. They were applying just enough pressure in just the right places to keep Grisha from hemorrhaging.

Pulling his magic back, Mirk refocused on his surroundings, searching for someone to tell about the shadows. Another three men had appeared on the steps while he'd been working on Grisha, all of them wrapped up tight in a few spare tendrils of shadow. Behind him, Mirk heard someone curse. He looked over his shoulder, only to find a cluster of healers frozen in the infirmary doorway, not knowing what to do with all the broken and dying men the shadows had brought to them.

"It's all right," Mirk said, trying to project a sense of calm, despite the way his own fear was boiling inside of him. Not fear of the shadows themselves, but fear of what they meant. "They won't hurt you. They’re...euh...helping them. Once you've closed the wounds under them, methinks they'll go away."

"How can you be sure?" one of the healers asked, a spindly woman whose eyes were fixed on the shadows rather than Mirk.

"I know what's causing them. It's the injuries. Once they're helped, they'll go away," He waved her closer, but she refused to budge. Only once Mirk slid his hand underneath the band of shadows on Grisha's neck, and it yielded for him, was the woman convinced enough of her safety to get down on her knees beside Mirk. "Try feeling for the wound on his neck," he told her. "It's on his left side, right by my hand."

Hesitantly, she slid her hand underneath the shadows beside Mirk's. Though she grimaced at the feel of the dark magic against her skin, the shadows didn't attack her. She began to heal the wound beneath them, drawing together the tears in the delicate arteries. As soon as the wound was half-closed, the shadows fell apart and retreated back into the night.

The healer looked back up at Mirk, uncertain. She'd had to draw hard on her potential to stop the bleeding, so much that her shielding had crumbled, leaving her apprehension and fear plain to be felt, even through Mirk's own. "It's all right," he said again, this time brushing a hand across her shoulders and projecting a spark of reassurance along with the words. "Please, help them. I'll take care of the rest."

Once the other healers had seen proof that the shadows weren't going to attack them, a steady stream began to emerge from the infirmary, venturing out into the cold and dark just long enough to collect one of the fallen men and carry them back inside in teams of two and three. Though the shadows didn't release the injured men completely, the tendrils connecting them back to the waiting darkness across the street out on the parade grounds grew thin, little more than cobwebs. Mirk looked back at Elijah, who was still leaning, shellshocked and limp, beside the infirmary's front doors. "Where's Genesis?"

Elijah jerked his chin in the direction of the parade grounds, confirming Mirk's suspicions. "Out there. Somewhere. I...I don't really know...I didn't want to get...too close..."

Mirk went to him, taking him by the shoulders and looking up into his eyes."Du calme. It's fine. I'll take care of things. Thank you so much for your help."

Without waiting for Elijah to reply, Mirk headed off down the steps and into the night.