“What’s your name?” Tristan asked the young woman.
“Steffany,” she replied. “Steffany Millsman.”
“Ah, your father owns the mill here?”
She nodded and pointed to the windmill on a small hill on the outskirts of town. Thankfully, it was in the same direction Tristan was going to be traveling. “Yeah. Up there.” She took the lead and got enough in front of him that he could talk to Felicity at a whisper level.
“How was your prank last night?”
Felicity sighed, “I won’t see it bear fruit, since you slept in his room. I was hoping the wife would find the brother-in-law’s undergarments and they would have a conversation about personal space that is really uncomfortable.”
“That’s not too bad of a prank.”
She smirked, “I toned it down. Originally, I was going to propose taking her undergarments and putting them in the brother-in-law’s bed, to make the husband think his wife was cheating on him.”
Tristan was shocked by that. “That’s evil,” he whispered back.
“A mean prank, sure. Sometimes pranks are better if they are m-e-a-n mean.”
Tristan wrinkled his nose and frowned, “You’re not doing those type of mean pranks around me, got it?”
She sighed, “Yes, Lord Tristan.” She pouted and dug her paw-claws into his armor’s pauldron, “You’re no fun.”
“You can do something a little mean to my half-siblings when I get home.”
That brought a light that seemed to sparkle out of her green eyes, “Okay! Revenge for years of picking on you?”
“Something like that.”
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The mill on the hill was busy. Villagers were there with bags of crops, delivering them, and taking sacks of flour back to their homes. There were actually two mills; one millhouse run by the wind, and the other next to and behind it was run by two donkeys pulling the grindstone around and around.
Steffany brought him to the house attached to the back of the windmill, and Tristan entered. It smelled like freshly baked bread, and there was an undercurrent of another scent that pierced into his mind with how well he knew it.
Rotten and decaying flesh.
Grimacing, he followed Steffany as she went into a room and the wave of stench hit Tristan like a mace to the face. He fought back the need to retch as he saw a portly woman laying in a bed. She was covered from mid-calf to torso with a blanket, and she was sweating profusely. Her ankle was disgusting.
We have to cut that off, Tristan thought. It’s way past gone. There’s no way she’ll survive. He rifled through the memories of his grandfather’s first-aid section of the dragonslayer manual. Okay. First, we’ll need ropes and cloth to tourniquet the limb. Then, knock her out – preferably with an herb concoction of poppy milk, hensbane, and mandrake. He looked at the teenage girl who had tears in her eyes.
“Magic cannot do everything,” Tristan said, letting his voice fill up with as much regret as he could. Years of manipulating my voice for the court, coming into play. “I am sorry. The best thing to do is to give her an herbal remedy to render her unconscious, and remove the foot.”
“You can’t!” the teenage girl replied. “She’ll be unable to move.”
“It’s that, or she dies.”
“You’re a mage!” she shouted as she ran to the other room and returned with a bulging sack of coins. “Fifty gold! Fix her!”
Damnit. “I can’t,” Tristan muttered. “I’m restricted from using rejuvenation.”
“But you’re a Human!”
Tristan shook his head, and Felicity flew in front of his face, “You should not reveal your heritage to some random peasant. Just leave.”
Sound advice in this case. Tristan stood up, “You never know who has what heritage,” he replied as he left the room. “I can brew up the analgesic potion if you gather the ingredients from an herbalist. And I can cut off the foot. But there is no saving it with magic.”
The teenage girl began sobbing, and Tristan felt a pang of guilt. I wish I could help you, he thought. Think. Is there any way I could use my spell types to help out here?
He turned sideways and waved Felicity over to the corner. Whispering, he asked her, “Imbuement. Can I imbue consumable items with spell types I don’t have access to?”
“No,” Felicity replied. “You would need essence from a person who had access to that spell type helping you mid-process; for scrolls at least. This girl doesn’t have an essence crucible, so they couldn’t supply the necessary essence despite being able to access rejuvenation. If you want to empower a potion and make it into an elixir? That is doable without any other particular spell type or essence of another person.”
And this girl isn’t a mage, he thought. I doubt she has a bloodline appropriate “What about using a flora spell to change an herb into something that could help?”
“Third Order. I don’t think you could do it.”
“Is there anything in the Fey Realm that could help?”
She thought for a few seconds and then shook her head, “For Elves and Fairy Dragons? Yes.”
“What…what are you talking to?” Steffany asked as she suppressed her sniffles.
Tristan turned around, “Oh, uhm. Nothing, just talking to myself, trying to think of a workaround.” He shook his head as he glanced at Felicity who also shook hers. “There is nothing we can do except amputate.”
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The teenage girl nodded, “I have the ingredients. Mom kept a stash of medicinal herbs.”
Tristan walked over to their small wood stove, grabbed a small pot, and fired up the stove as he poured in some water. Steffany brought over a box with well-labeled bottles full of the herbs that Tristan needed. The poppy seeds, thankfully, were already suspended in alcohol and so that tincture was ready. He added it to the slight layer of boiling water. He added the dried hensbane roots and a little bit of hensbane oil. Lastly, he took the mandrake root, cut off the outer layers, and put the slivers into the blend.
The girl was looking over his shoulder as he worked. “How’d you learn this?”
“I’m still a beginner mage,” Tristan said. “But I’m a trained dragonslayer, and part of being any type of warrior is learning how to do some basic medicine and first aid.” He moved the pot to the coolest part of the stove to let it simmer and thicken up for easier administration. “Now, we need clean cloth, rope, and plenty of water.”
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The slurry was prepared, and Tristan had bottled it and then set to shaking up the substance until it lost the goop-like consistency it had congealed into and became more fluid. Still a bit thick, but not water-like in its feel.
He had tied off the cloth above the ankle, right around the shin, set up the buckets of water, and had everything ready to go. “Remember,” he said to the girl who was holding a small pair of tongs, “You need to be ready to grab the little tubes that will squirt the smallest amount of blood. Then, pull them out a tiny bit, and push the hot iron against them.”
She nodded, and was shaking slightly, but Tristan put a hand on her shoulder, “You can do this. If you don’t, she will die from the infection. This is the only way to help her live. I know a wood carver in town who could make her a simple peg once the wound heals up.”
“I…I’ll try my best.”
“You washed down with soap? All the way to the elbows? Scrubbed hard?”
“Yes sir.”
Tristan nodded and turned to his grisly task. Thankfully, it would be quick and efficient. Pulling his sword which was strong enough to cut through dragon’s scales – plus whatever other artifice was upon it he had not tested yet – he placed the length of metal to his side. Leaning over to the woman, he poured the fluid into her mouth and then massaged her neck to help it flow down.
When she relaxed and sank into her pillows, he knew it was time. “Ready?” he asked as he grabbed his weapon.
“Ready.”
Tristan raised the blade and in one smooth, swift motion, chopped off the foot. There was a slight whimper of pain, and he immediately dropped the sword and grabbed the tongs from the shaky-handed teenager. I figured I’d have to do all of it, he thought as he quickly pulled the veins out, cauterized them with the hot iron nearby, and then began packing the wound with an herb poultice, before wrapping it in clean cloth.
Steffany was hyperventilating, and Tristan turned to her. “It’s okay,” he said softly as he put a hand on her shoulder, gripping slightly. “She’ll be fine. Just make sure you swap out the bandages and poultice every few days. When it starts to heal over, make sure you let it air out a bit before re-bandaging.”
She broke down crying and nodded, “Th-thank you.”
Tristan nodded, “Let me write the instructions down. Do you have parchment and ink?”
She numbly walked over to a cabinet, produced the items, and then set them down before sinking into a chair. Tristan quickly penned the instructions before setting it aside to dry, and walked over to Steffany. “It’s going to be fine,” he said as he gently squeezed her shoulder.
The girl nodded, “Thank you…”
Tristan left the building and shut the door behind him. He let out an exhausted sigh and rubbed his face with his hands. I wish we could have saved the foot, he thought. But this is her best chance to live.
Felicity flew around him for a few seconds before landing on his head and making kitty-biscuits on his skull with her paw-claws. “You’re an interesting Elf. Helping people for free?”
“If I’ve got the power to help people, I need to try.” Tristan began walking around the mill and back to the road, heading on the long trail back to the capital. “I know I can’t help everyone, and I’m not naïve thinking I can save every person in trouble…but for a few hours of my time, I helped save a life. That’s something.”
He walked on in silence for a few minutes before Felicity spoke, “How do you know herblore?”
“Grandfather insisted,” Tristan replied. “Bertram, Gisele, and myself all learned how to prepare concoctions and tinctures. ‘You never know when you’ll need to fix an injury’, is what he used to say.”
“Are you as skilled in combat as you are with herbs?” she asked with a bit of sardonic flair.
Tristan chuckled, “I never beat Bertram or Gisele in a duel. But I wasn’t trained to fight people – I was trained to kill dragons.”
“How?” Felicity asked. “How do you train for that? Dragons are big, and your little sword won’t do much.”
“If we find one, I’ll show you. But that’s also why my armor isn’t full plate. It’s got gaps for more mobility. And no need for a helmet, since against dragons there is no point to having one.” He tapped his temple, “One crunch or slash is all it takes. Much better to have full visibility.”
Felicity kept making her kitty-biscuits on his head, “Well, good. Helmets are annoying anyways. Your hair is a nice perch.”
Tristan chuckled, “As for how we trained, grandfather made enormous wooden puppets, covered with metal plates to replicate scales. He set up pulleys that would have the puppet move in every which-way a dragon could.” Tristan thought back to the enormous dance hall that had been converted to their training space, with rafters running the whole rooftop that his grandfather used to control the puppets.
“He trained a bunch of different servants to pull specific ropes to simulate a dragon fight,” Tristan said, as he reminisced his grandfather shouting commands as the young man worked his way up from fighting a small, whelp-sized dragon, to a full-on adult size. “He didn’t have us train on anything larger.”
“Why?”
“Well, the way he put it, is that once they reach adulthood, they keep their fighting methods. They’re not dumb beasts…dragons from the Elemental Realms are intelligent, cunning, and can think just as well as people can.”
“I noticed you didn’t say that fairy dragons weren’t dumb,” Felicity said with an upset, slightly disappointed sound.
Tristan ignored the comment and continued, “Any fighter can adapt on the fly, but when you’re a dragon, and you’re the apex predator for a region, you don’t have to change your style of combat because no one can challenge you.”
“Did you beat the puppet a lot?”
Tristan’s mind went back to that time, and he replayed the memories as he walked. “When I was younger? No. Eight years old, I got the snot beat out of me by those puppets – granted, when I was small, they put cloth padding on the claws and teeth. Eventually…I was ten when I beat the whelp sized one. Then I slowly went up in size.”
Felicity seemed eager at this point, and her snarky-ness had seemingly vanished. “Oh? What are the different sizes?”
“Whelp is the smallest, followed by juvenile, fledgling, adult, and after a long, long time, wyrm.”
“Ahh. Fairy dragons don’t have phases like you have for these other dragons. Do they come in eggs?”
“According to grandfather, yes.”
Felicity giggled, “Wow, how rote. No imagination whatsoever.”
“How do fairy dragons reproduce?”
“The Matriarch makes us from magic. A special fruit that can manifest a miniature essence crucible. When it’s time to be born, she cracks it open.”
Tristan glanced up at the fluttering wings on the edge of his vision, “You have an essence crucible also?”
“Duh. It’s how I do spells. A fairy dragon gets bigger not by age, but by essence crucible capacity.”
Interesting. “How old are you then?”
“I’m twenty years old!” she proudly exclaimed. “And I’ve got a big essence crucible capacity for that short of time! What do you think I’m doing the whole time you’ve been walking and not talking? I’m spinning my crucible. You should, too.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. Walk in silence for a bit, take in the sounds of nature, and build up our crucibles.”
She sighed, “But it is so boooorrrring. We need to get you to travel faster. I want s-p-e-e-d.”
Tristan smirked, “Unless you can help me grow wings or get big enough for me to ride you, or you carry me, not happening anytime soon.”