Shaula vomits in panic and disgust. She hasn’t vomited once since she’s come to Omicron. While she cleans away the vomit from her lips, she frantically rushes over to Ajax’s head.
“Fuck! Fuck, Ajax, I’m so sorry!”
Shaula rushes to pick up his head; it looks just as unresponsive as earlier. She picks it up gently and holds it in her arms as if it were a newborn babe. Her movements slow as she looks at it for a few moments. She stares into his unfocused eyes, each eye looking in a slightly different direction. Her eyes tremble at the unsightliness of his mutilated head. Her tears do not stop.
"I’m sorry, Ajax. I’m sorry. I’m not mad. I’m not… If you wake up now, I promise I won’t be mad at you for this. I promise. I promise… I’m begging you… I’m begging you… I swear on my parents’ grave, I fucking swear I won’t be mad at you!! Ajax… wake up… please…"
He really is unconscious. He really is unable to heal from this. It shouldn’t be possible for him to die from a mere decapitation. It shouldn’t be… She needs to get Ajax help, help that she simply has no ability to provide. In a normal situation back on Earth where anyone she knew was injured or in danger of dying, she would call 911 and tell them to bring an ambulance over.
Of course, what would paramedics and doctors be able to do about a decapitation? Furthermore, as far as she knows, there were no means of emergency healing services in this city. For emergencies, healers would have to be called from nearby but only if they were actually around and made themselves known publicly.
There is, more often than not, at least one person in each apartment building, residential district or neighborhood with the ability to perform some minor healing, most likely of the muscle reconstruction tier on average. That was the best most people could get unless they were at least upper middle class and could pay the church to use their healers directly.
Nevertheless, the average unaffiliated healer is still miraculous (by Earth standards) for dealing with injuries like broken bones, deep cuts, stabbings, etc. Even aneurysms, blood clots or internal bleeding can be curtailed and cured by such healers.
All healers are also quite capable of curing diseases caused by viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms without much difficulty. If a person has an illness that is in its early stages, they can ideally visit a healer and get it taken care of without much difficulty.
Healers who can treat severe ailments like limb loss, organ failure, and certain cancers with severe progressions are solely under the domain of the church. Emergency healing services offered by the church only run in affluent human areas and are quite expensive.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Of course, all of this is moot because healers who can deal with decapitation are non-existent, as far as Shaula knows. Her mind is running at quite the frantic, somewhat jumbled pace right now, focusing on things that are only somewhat relevant to her current situation.
Ajax shouldn't need any healing magic anyways. Who knew if it even worked on his or her special flesh? They had never had it used on them, something Shaula regrets deeply right now. But, regardless, Shaula thought she had an understanding of his and her healing factor. She has a hypothesis about its limits, but was never deranged enough to test it out for herself.
She had thought that as long as the brain was intact, either she or Ajax could regenerate even an entire body such as in the case that either of them were beheaded. Which is why she hasn't lost hope just yet. His head seems to be intact. His skull isn’t caved in or bleeding or anything. She touches it carefully to feel for any fractures, anything that could have blended his brain into something unrecognizable.
Nothing. He should still be capable of coming back from this.
Though it doesn't stop her from fearing that she's wrong.
"You're not dead, Ajax. You're not. How… How do I speed up your healing for you? Why… Why aren't you healing yourself?”
However, Ajax cannot hear her any longer, a fact she has finally accepted. Unknown to Shaula, Ajax is hearing Rita telling him to wake up and get ready for another day of high school. He is making breakfast for her.
He is in school with Shaula and already in the middle of a trigonometry quiz. He had already come back from school and was in the middle of watching a nature documentary about gibbons with Rita and Shaula, or at least the version of them in his transmuted astral plane.
He was currently reliving his memories of the first semester of his twelfth grade. He was not lucid either, experiencing his life back on Earth without a care or worry of anything concerning the world of Omicron or his life there. Ajax is in a time-dilated dreamscape, having already lost his lucidity, and she is left with only his head and her own horror.
"What do I do… What the fuck do I do to help you?" She whispers worriedly
Shaula doesn't know what she can do for him. Her eyes start to tremble as they stay fixated on his severed head. She's filled with adrenaline right now with only thoughts of saving him. However, her terror is starting to reassert itself. Her terror. It is what makes her slowly acknowledge the reality in her hands.
She's holding her best friend's head.
Shaula is holding her best friend's head. She turns towards the floor of the hallway and sees both Ajax's mutilated body close by as well as the corpse of the man who most likely did this to him. The enemy has also died and Ajax was able to kill him in the end.
But, she doesn't care about his dead adversary at all, not even enough to be angry towards its maimed corpse. All of her anger is drained away, replaced only by the panic of losing her dearest friend without being able to do anything to help him remain in this world.