Inside one of the customs offices of New Dale, Gus lays on a table unconscious, bleeding at a horrific rate, awaiting for any medic to arrive. The guard who brought Gus there rushes around, searching for anything to use for first aid. I don’t know what to do to help. I look over at his bleeding left hand. It is just covered in blood and his flesh has been peeled off of his palm, hanging but still attached. The sound of blood dripping onto the floor reveals a small puddle of blood has already formed. The guard brings over some sheets, tearing them into smaller strips. “Wrap these around his hand, and raise his hand up a little”, the guard quickly orders. Taking one of the sheets, I wrap it around his hand, and it is immediately dyed red. I go to grab another sheet to wrap around, and I see the bright redness of Gus’s blood has already covered my hands. I’m going to be sick. “He’s your friend right? Hurry up and get more bandages on that wound if you really want to help him.” he scowls at me, while wrapping a bandage around his forearm. I wrap another around. The blood seeps through instantly. I grab another bandage as the guard tightens the sheet around his forearm tightly. I wrap another bandage, and again it gets soaked. Another, and another bandage. After the fifth bandage, the blood stops seeping through.

The door swings open as another guard barges in. “Have you called for Esther yet?” the new guard asks, shouting. “Not yet, I don’t know if the other guards called for her. I’ll go grab her.” the first guard says, flustered. As he leaves the room the new guard shouts to him, “Have another guard get Esther. I need you to go grab a hare, and quickly”. He nods, grabbing another guard as he runs to fulfill his orders. The new guard comes over to Gus, and quickly inspects his hand.

“Has the bleeding stopped?” he asks, still inspecting Gus.

“I think so, once the other guard tightened the bandage on his arm the bandages stopped getting soaked through”, I responded.

“Does he have any other wounds, or is it just his hand”

“It should just be his hand”

“Take the soaked bandages off his hand, and apply a new wrap”

I nod and quickly get to work. Taking off the soaked bandages reveals just how much blood he has lost simply by the change of weight in the wraps. Gus grows pale and his breathing starts to slow as I wrap the new bandage around his hand. The new bandage remains mostly white, slowly turning a scarlet red as Gus’s breathing could barely be heard.

“Good, the tourniquet seems to have stopped most of the bleeding. I need you to step back now. Don’t touch me or Gus till Esther gets here.” he says staring me straight in the eyes. He grabs the bleeding hand, and rests it on Gus’s stomach. The guard closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and lightly touches Gus’s shoulder with his right hand’s index finger. Underneath the guard’s sleeves, a glow appeared from his right forearm.

“What are you doing to him?”, I quietly ask.

No response.

“What are you doing? Why won’t you answer me?”, I say starting to get louder.

I start to see my left hand glow slightly. I forgot I can’t be loud. This would be the worst time to have a monster come and attack. The thought of also having both my gems found out while Gus is unconscious appeared in my mind. I can’t let Gus down, especially when he can’t help me.

There still is no response from the guard. I look back down to see that Gus’s bandage is still mostly white with the same amount of blood as when I reapplied the bandages. Now paying closer attention, I don’t hear Gus breathing. Shit, what happened. I go around the table to get the guard’s attention. He still has his eyes closed. It also seems as if he isn’t breathing. His gem is still glowing the same as it was from the start. I don’t know what to do.

Twenty minutes have gone by. Neither of them have taken a single breath since his gem lit up. The bandage also hasn’t become redder in this time, and Gus’s skin has remained the same paleness. I feel as if I’m the only one in this room. The door opens bringing the first guard back in, with him holding a hare by its ears in his hands, and an old woman with a cane following behind him. “You’re back! The bleeding stopped, but I don’t know what happened, they both went quiet 20 minutes ago. Neither of them have breathed or moved since his gem lit up.” The elderly woman walks over and takes a quick look at Gus and sighs, “Him again…”. She pulls up a chair next to Gus and takes the hare from the guard. “Go ahead and disconnect them” she tells the guard sitting down and handing him her cane. The guard takes the cane, and moves the other’s index finger off of Gus’s shoulder. The light from the guard's forearm fades away. Both the guard and Gus start to breathe again. The guard opens his eyes seeing both the old woman and the original guard. “Good to see you again, Esther.”, the guard says, stepping away. “Good to see you as well, Hadon. Now I need one of you to hold down this hare in my lap, and the other to undo his bandage”. The two guards do as she says and get to work immediately. The one who undid the bandage puts Gus’s wounded hand in her left hand while she holds onto the front left paw of the hare in her right hand.

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A very dim light appears from the arm holding Gus’s hand. Gus and the hare start to writhe in agony. The guards move in to hold both down, as to not complicate the situation any further. In the matter of a few seconds the paw gets absorbed layer by layer in a rather horrifying fashion. The hair appears forcibly pulled off by an invisible force and absorbed into Esther’s hand. In the same moment the skin gets absorbed revealing a small amount of muscle and bone underneath. In the next moment the rest of the paw disappears, being absorbed, leaving behind a closed off nub right before the joint of the rabbit’s paw. The hare no longer appears to be in pain and calms down rather quickly, even though it is now lacking a paw. There is no bleeding or scarring at the nub where the rabbit’s paw used to be. Looking back at Gus’s hand, bone starts to form in his hand rebuilding the deteriorated bones of his fingers. Muscle soon follows rebuilding itself all over his palm and fingers. Lastly, skin is reconstructed all over his hand with any of the skin that was damaged sloughing off and falling to the ground. Gus stops writhing in pain, and the guard lessens his grip till he is no longer holding him down.

“I’ll handle these two from here. Both of you may return to your posts. Thank you for helping this idiot.”, Esther says to the two guards. They nod back and leave. Esther slowly stands up, grabs her walking cane, and whacks Gus on the forehead with it. “Wake up you waste of biomass”, she says in an irritated tone. She is a scary lady. Still on the table, Gus puts both his hands on his forehead to relieve the pain of the bonk he just received. “It’s nice to see you as well, Esther.” Gus says, still pale from blood loss.

Esther walks over to me with a worried expression, “Are you fine? Were you injured anywhere?”

“Ehhh, no. I’m fine. Gus only got hurt helping us get away from the Badgerbear” I reply, with a nervous smile.

“Oh… Is that so?”, she says, going back to eyeing down Gus.

Gus and I spent some time explaining to Esther how we ended up in this situation. She understood the need to get out of the area just by how dangerous a single badgerbear was. Esther just hated how every time she has seen Gus in the last decade it was because either he required serious medical attention or he was causing problems. These two seemed to have a bit of history behind them that seemed like that of siblings. I don’t know what it was, but I just got that feeling.

Gus brought up that I was a fresh eternal, and that he was helping me learn the ropes. He said he was wanting to show me around town, but Esther quickly shot him down. She said that first, he needed to clean up the mess he made everywhere, and second he would need to rest for at least a few days to recover since he lost a ton of blood. Realistically, he should rest for multiple weeks, but she knows he wouldn’t stay put in a single city for that long. Instead, she said that she would show me around New Dale seeing as she also knows the place better than Gus anyhow. Gus mentioned how I would also need to get citizenship sorted out. She looked back at him saying she already had everything ready to go. With that, both Esther and I left to go explore the town.