Rothgar was dying, really dying this time. Tata could feel it in their shared bond. When he did, Tata would die too, her body would probably continue on for another few years. But it wouldn’t be Tata anymore, the magic granting her expanded awareness and sense of self would leave, and she would go back to being a common crow. She’d seen it before with Rothgar’s teachers familiar after her death.
Tata knew what to do, she’d studied magic on Rothgar’s shoulder for the last 20 years. Since Rothgar found her as a fledgling with a broken wing, and nursed her back to health. She opens her beak, and a stream of arcane syllables come from her chest, magical patterns forming in the air, clearly visible to those who knew how to see. The link between the two of them widening and a circle forming at each end. At the cumulation of the spell, both circles switch sides, and Tata groans in pain. As he lies there, his lifeblood leaking out from the wound in his leg, Tata smiles. So this is what it’s like to be human. He wonders if his great-grandchildren will even realise that it’s not her when Rothgar returns home.
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Ososi startles as he hears an unfamiliar voice casting spells behind them. Innee and Jayne could handle the dragon for a few seconds while he ensures they’re not being ambushed from behind. As he turns around he sees Rothgar lying on the floor, blood pouring out of a small wound on his leg. One of the dragon’s orcish guards must have got a lucky shot before they killed them all.
“Man down! Keep aware!” he shouts before hurrying over to the fallen Archmage.
“Selene, goddess of the moon, I call upon your power to bring light into the darkness. Heal this man that has aided your cause, and restore him to health.”
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A soft blue glow spreads out of his hand to cover Rothgar, and slowly the colour comes back to the body and Rothgar’s breathing becomes less laboured. After several seconds, the power from his goddess tapers off, and he staggers, woozily, back. Rothgar must have been far worse than it seemed, as Ososi feels totally wrung out.
“We need to retreat, this mission’s a bust.”
“What about the artifact?”
“The dragon’s had it for 3 years since it was stolen, another few months isn’t going to be a problem.”
Slowly the three of them retreat with Rothgar and his familiar. Once they get to the switchback and the small side tunnel they came in from, they relax as the dragon can’t follow them down here.
While Jayne keeps guard, Innee looks Rothgar over, “What happened?”
Ososi shakes his head, “I was about to have a look, but there was a lot of blood.”
Carefully pulling away the robes and trousers, the two of them see a tiny cut on the inside of his leg. The faint blue scar still healing with the remnants of a goddesses power. “Here, I think it hit something important, and I doubt Rothgar even knew it was dangerous until he passed out. Thank the goddess I heard spell casting, otherwise the first we’d have known is when we found him dead. Assuming we survived the fight without spell support.”
“How long until he wakes up.”
“I don’t know. He was so close to death it took almost all the magic I could channel to heal him.”
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Without Rothgar’s knowledge of the arcane to transport them over wild lands leading to the Dragons cave, it took them a month to return to the nearest town. Innee scavenged for berries and game to keep them fed, by channelling her limited connection to nature into the berries, to provide everything they need to survive, and the game so they feel full. His familiar was the first one to awaken, and it seems to have forgotten how to talk, or even move, as it faceplanted on the dresser of the inn room they were renting. Rothgar was the same when he came round a few hours later. Innee didn’t care, her lover was awake, and that’s all that mattered.