A few days later, Exill was eating breakfast when a messenger from Diallo arrived requesting his immediate presence. A slave had a broken a few fingers while their cage was being moved.
He quickly finished the meal and went back upstairs to grab his surgery tools. Envy looked up at him as she sat cross-legged on the floor, sharpening her sword in preparation for their morning delve.
“Change of plans, Diallo just called. I’ll meet you in front of the Labyrinth in an hour.”
Envy merely nodded and went back to honing her sword.
Exill rushed to the slave market so that he could be over with this as soon as possible. One of the terms of the Envy loan deal had been that Exill would be on call at discounted rates.
This would be offset against the 1300 Denars he was expected to repay each month for the next ten months. It was a minor blessing that he wasn’t charged monthly interest, and had been reticent (understandably) to ask Diallo if such a concept existed in this World.
He took a breath of fresh air before entering Diallo’s warehouse, steeling himself. It never got easier. In the distance, Perg, the portly healer could be seen walking down the cages, looking for interesting specimens.
“Ah! Delightful to see you here Exill, always a pleasure to work with Ark’s premier witchdoctor!”
“Likewise Perg, where is the patient?”
They walked a short distance to find a well-muscled man chained to a chair, cradling his bloodied hand.
The first thing he did was channel mana through the paralyzing runes of the scalpel and relieve the man’s pain. He inspected the hand. The index and middle finger was swollen.
“Shame really, man was supposed to be sold as a field hand today. I heard the buyer pulled back. I’m afraid those two fingers really need to go my friend.”
Exill nodded, he suspected it as well but wanted to try a new technique, nonetheless. His confidence as a surgeon and familiarity with the structure of the hand had grown remarkably these past few months.
“Let me try something.”
He used a razor to cut the thick hairs growing on the back of his fingers before scrubbing it thoroughly in dwarven spirit.
Exill split the back of the finger down the middle to inspect the bones by sight. Thankfully, the breaks were relatively clean, and he held the splintered shards together while Perg fused them with a highly focal [heal].
“Thanks Perg, I can take things from here.” He said, as the last fragments were knit together.
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble at all you know.” The middle-aged healer assured him while holding a handkerchief to his nose.
“It’s fine, this will only take a couple minutes.” The Witchdoctor replied. He didn’t want to hold anyone in this decrepit place any longer than necessary, and Perg nodded graciously then turned to leave.
True to his word and only a few minutes later, Exill sighed as he finished suturing up the fingers with practiced ease. He was running late, and Envy was guaranteed to throw him some attitude. He was hastily leaving towards the dimly lit entrance when a small hand shot from a nearby cage to grasp at his clothes.
“Please healer! Let me be your servant!” A young woman, the left side of her face hideously disfigured by burn scars desperately clawed at him as drool dripped down from the hole in her cheek.
Exill instinctively stepped back in revulsion, before guilt overcame him. As much as he wanted to help, he was in no position to adopt additional slaves. He shook his head in response to her pleading eyes.
“I cannot help you.” The claw was unhooked from his tunic, and he hurried away as she desperately cried out to him.
The girl had seen him treat the beastfolk with kindness and perform miracles on what many workers had whispered were lost causes. Her days had been spent daydreaming. The lucid dreams would become more elaborate over time as he not only purchased her, but fully healed her as well.
The refusal and look of disgust drove her mad and she screeched in torment at the quickly retreating figure. Exill was white faced as he ran away from the warehouse, haunted by her screams.
***
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
He met Envy in the hallowed grounds of the inner Tower and hurriedly checked the straps on her armour. The Vampire had been waiting for twenty minutes and was about to make a snide comment on his lateness, but held back when she saw his pale face.
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“Can you fight?” She didn’t voice the unspoken question. She was all too familiar with what went on in the slave warehouse. Envy was relieved to see Exill take a deep breathe before nodding, his pained eyes gaining focus.
“Let’s go.”
They had no problems clearing the first cavern filled with slimes, but in the second one, they encountered a group of three gnolls. Their gnashing tusk filled jaws spewed specks of spittle, waving their rudimentary spears and axes in pure aggression.
Envy glanced worriedly at her new contractor. Although he had performed fine against the slimes, gnolls were unpredictable in their viciousness and could seriously wound an unwary opponent.
However Exill was unperturbed, appeared eager even, and he motioned her to stand formation in the previous cavern. He then threw a rock at the wandering gnolls and shouted, before hastily withdrawing to her position.
The gnolls yipped and gibbered as they charged into their bristling formation, and was swiftly cut down by their combined armaments. In spite of the speed with which they were dispatched, a stray counterstrike from a spear lightly nicked Exill’s forearm.
Envy crouched to harvest the ichor from the fallen gnolls while her wounded master turned away to clean his injury. The extracts from the ichor could be used to enforce lesser berserk enchantments or to create stamina potions that had an invigorating effect. She quickly finished the task and eyed the vulnerable back of the Witchdoctor, applying the finishing touches to his bandaged arm.
‘It would take just a casual thrust.’ She thought idly.
The young man placed too much faith on the power of notarized contracts to bind actions, and she found his trust incredibly naïve. If being bound by your words with the Spirit as its witness was all encompassing and powerful, she would never have been betrayed in the first place, nor provided with the opportunity to kill her previous master.
There were always small loopholes that could be exploited, and just needed to figure out what it was. She was more experienced than most in pushing the envelope of what was permissible.
‘But why do I feel that this time… things might be different?’ the doubtful thought stayed her murderous hand.
The two wrapped up hunting in the Labyrinth after only an hour, then dragged the harvested parts to the Guild. Iris processed it all for 34 Denars, fussing concernedly over Exill’s bandaged forearm.
Back at the Inn, Exill dragged himself to the stool and let out a sigh. From now on, he would have to stand by for any messengers from the network of healers he had contracted to. Aside from Perg, he had reached out to two other clinics in the Outer City, offering his services for tasks often outsourced to butchers.
This was how he spent most of his afternoons and evenings these days, on standby for urgent operations. It was dull and tedious. He idly summoned his Card and started recording the level gains for the day on the clay tablet.
“You were 18?”
Envy had snuck up behind him and inspected his card. Her eyes were thoughtful.
‘Damn! How much did she see? I was too careless...’ his heart stopped for a brief moment. If she had witnessed the number of jobs he had assigned, it could quickly turn into a disaster. Exill had realised very early on that his powers were unnatural, and it was understood that when people didn’t understand something – they feared it.
A smile tugged at the corner of Envy’s lips, enjoying the worried look on his face. Such an opportunity to tease couldn’t be wasted, “No wonder you are still a virgin, after all, you are a cute little boy.” She squeezed his cheek, turning it red.
He slapped her hand away and stood up, outraged she had snuck up on him and was now treating him like a little kid, “What is your problem, what made you think it’s alright to sneak up on someone and infringe their privacy?” There was more acid in his voice than intended, perhaps due to the worry his secrets had been revealed.
This in turn caused Envy to step forward, inches away from his face. The Vampire was just a bit taller than Exill and she emphasized this as she glowered down at him, her earlier smile all but evaporated, “Why don’t you order me to respect your privacy?”
Exill sighed.
In spite of the deal they had struck, Envy would suddenly lash out at him from time to time. He had hoped to have earned her trust, but her wariness ran deep, the wound left to fester too long.
Still, her attitude was markedly better than before, apart from the incessant teasing about how he was a cheapskate virgin. ‘I bet she would somehow weave the fact I am six years younger into her repertoire,’ he thought dejectedly.
To de-escalate the situation, he tiredly raised both arms in surrender then lowered himself back on the stool, picking up the clay tablet to continue his work. He expressed disappointment much as a parent would towards a child acting out.
Envy returned to the bed and sat cross legged, knowing she had lashed out again. No matter how hard she tried, something would trigger an aggressive response. Perhaps her heart refused to fully trust him. There were many strange things about the Witchdoctor, like his murky background or the incredible display of strength despite his young age. Up till now, she had believed he was closer to her age because of the mature aura he exuded. This was just another example of how little she knew about the man who had promised her everything.
The Vampire inwardly blushed as she remembered all the lewd acts she had done to someone so young, no older than her brother...
That train of thought was abruptly cut off before it could go any further and the room descended into a state of uneasy silence. However the discomfort was entirely of Envy’s making and she continued to sit there on the bed, while Exill scribbled notes in a strange, coded form. Apart from maintaining her equipment and exercising, there was nothing for her to do.
She let out a quiet sigh.
In that small room, sound travelled easily and Exill looked up from the clay tablet, catching her in a rare vulnerable moment that made him pause in thought. He had been too preoccupied with tasks to empathise how she might feel, cooped up in a small room all day. In a way, she was still confined in a cage of his own making, exchanging Diallo’s iron cell for this small decrepit room.
Berating himself, Exill brooded on what she could do until a suggestion formed in his mind. What he was about to propose was not without risk, “Take my field guide and hunt in the Labyrinth. You can keep what you earn. There is no need for you to be stuck in here with me.”
Envy stared at him impassively then packed up her belongings and snatched up the mercenary field guide off the desk, stepping out of the room. Caught in her receding footsteps were Exill’s worries, wondering if he had made the right decision.
Isolated in that dank, dilapidated room, he cocked his head and returned to studying his clay tablet. It would be another long afternoon of waiting for emergency summons, and for the first time in a long while, the muted embrace of loneliness enveloped him.