Burdened with rations taken from the train, the little wooden cart struggled down the rutted switchbacks of the trail leading out of the forest. It was too dark to see anything, even without the fog. There were extra blankets in the cart, so Seth and Quinn were both protected from the elements, and by the time they broke out of the forest the night's chill had fled. They came upon a field of pale stones, barely visible in the darkness. Distant sounds were muffled by the light snowfall. The wind smelled of death.
As the darkness lifted Quinn made the unfortunate discovery that the field was covered not in pale stones, but in corpses. Mud mixed with blood and bile in huge puddles that consumed the path, forcing the little cart to veer off onto the banks on either side. A sudden break in the clouds overhead revealed, for just a few moments, a frigid blue sky. A shaft of golden sunlight burned away the fog toward the west, illuminating a white tent nestled in the frosted grass at the apex of a nearby hill.
Pairs of young men carried stretchers up and down that hill. The oculomancer trotted up alongside the cart on her horse. "The tent hasn't moved," she muttered. Then, louder, she said: "Young men, Heritor Kiera resides at the top of that hill. She has a kind heart, and she will pay well for every one of her father's soldiers brought to her for healing. You won't find better pay anywhere in the camp, I promise."
"I thought ethermancy didn't work," Quinn said.
"Maybe she isn't using ethermancy?" Seth offered.
The oculomancer said nothing. She kicked her horse into a canter and left the cart behind. Seth hopped off the cart and tumbled in the grass. Quinn tossed their bedroll packs down, and Seth caught them both effortlessly without looking. Unlike his brother, Quinn carefully clambered off the back of the cart.
Even before they reached the top of the hill, they came close enough to hear the screaming within the tent. As they approached the top, a pair of young men carrying a stretcher intercepted them. They were about the same age as Seth and Quinn. The unconscious soldier between them had been eviscerated. His belly had been opened like a huge bloody smile, his bowels tumbled out across his bloody stumps for legs, and what remained of his lower legs was stuffed into his armpits.
"I think it's over for that fellow," Seth whispered.
When they reached the threshold of the tent the two boys rushed through and dumped the man onto a shining brass table. There was so much blood in the tent that Quinn mistook it for some type of sacrificial altar.
A blonde woman stood in the center of the room, her once-white hospital uniform so soaked with blood that it had nearly turned black. With a face filled with determination, her hands began to glow with shimmering green light. For a fraction of a second, Quinn saw the ethermancy at work. It looked like faint cyan fog, floating lazily, filling every corner of the tent. Suddenly it was sucked toward the blonde woman, where it passed through her heart and vanished. Green light burst from her hands, enveloping the broken soldier with a green haze.
As if they had a life of their own, the man's bowels began to rearrange themselves within the empty cavity of his belly. His lower legs slowly floated down, reorienting themselves, the bones and muscles and tendons regrowing, reattaching. With a brilliant flash of green light the man convulsed and then gasped for breath. Immediately he released a terrified, blood-curdling scream.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Seth and Quinn stood just outside the doorway of the tent, completely dumbfounded by what they had just witnessed. After a few moments the man seemed to calm down, and after a few gasps for breath, he rasped: "My princess. My princess. Thank you." And then he broke down and began sobbing. A pair of plump nurses plucked him off the table and carried him away.
"Astonishing, isn't it?" a kindly voice asked.
It was a graying man with narrow eyes and a warm smile. He wore dark blue robes, darker even than the soldiers' uniforms, which Quinn found somewhat familiar.
"I was certain he was doomed," Seth admitted.
"The Princess Kiera is an exceptional mender," the man replied. "By the grace of Mother Summer, the Princess has discovered the strength to perform such miracles. Forgive me. I serve Princess Kiera as the chief of her personal staff. Are you both Lucia's men?"
"We are now," Seth said vaguely. "We've come to help out. With the injured soldiers, I mean."
"I will add you to the rotation. It takes three or four teams to carry a single soldier all the way from the front lines. We also rotate each pair of runners to prevent any one pair from spending too much time close to the front line."
"Everyone is exposed to the same risk," Seth said happily.
The old man took their names and sent them on their way. As they were walking down the hill, Quinn whispered: "Brother, there was a Heritor in that tent."
"I saw her," Seth said. "However, I am absolutely certain that she would not be interested in our flying machine."
"What makes you say that?"
"Please try and empathize with her, brother. She is a mender, not a soldier. If we gave her the designs for our flying machine, she would correctly assume that we are trying to make a new weapon."
"Maybe we could come up with a flying machine that could be used to transport injured soldiers?" Quinn insisted.
"That would need to come later, I think. I was the one who flew our kite. I was the one who took that risk. Can we both agree that, even if we succeed in inventing a flying machine, it would be very dangerous, potentially for many years? That level of risk is something that soldiers on the front line could tolerate, but not injured soldiers in need of a mender."
"But there is a Heritor, right there, at the top of that hill. Can't we at least try?"
"No," Seth said firmly. "Don't mention that poor woman again. We found our army. I'm sure that there will be plenty of other Heritors lurking around here. Maybe we can find one that doesn't spend all day soaked in the blood of screaming soldiers."
As they descended the grassy hill, a handful of soldiers approached from the opposite direction. The lead soldier had hair the color of burned coral, and he wore a full set of shining plate armor. His spear, which was easily a head taller than the man himself, appeared to be crafted from a swirling blend of metallic blue and crystalline red. Three Blaine family soldiers marched behind the man with their rifles held across their breasts.
Together, the three soldiers dragged a fourth man bound in thick steel chains. When he slipped on the muddy grass they yanked hard, causing him to scream. His hair was very dark green in places, but mostly oily and bloody brown. His robes resembled the ones worn by the fireman on the train, except instead of being black and red, they were white and dark green. His face and his fine robes were both completely soaked in blood.
"I'm a Heritor!" the young man cried. "I have rights! I HAVE RIGHTS!"
This provoked the tall man with the spear to spin around and smash his face in. Bloody teeth scattered across the grassy hill. His eyes rolled back as he lost consciousness, his mouth drooping open to release a waterfall of blood.
"Collect those teeth," the man with the spear bellowed, pointing at Seth and Quinn. "Yes, YOU. Kiera will want them. Stop looking at me like that, you idiots. DO AS I COMMAND."