When I got up after my rest, I found that there was an ominous set of doors, carved with yet more skull motifs. I could see them, because swirling balls of red fire were set in their eyes.

I approached them, carefully. They looked heavy, but to my surprise a light touch caused them to swing open. Then, an arrow was in front of my face, as everything seemed to slow down massively.

I moved my head to the side, and then winced in pain as my muscles briefly protested. Everything was still moving slowly in my sight, so I began rushing forward. There was another arrow - I jumped over it.

That turned out to be a mistake. A second arrow was coming, aimed right for my chest. A half-formed instinct set my legs shaking, but before I could finish the movement, time returned to normal.

The arrow punched into my shoulder, and with my legs out of position, I went crashing into the ground. Through sheer luck, the satchel landed on my front, keeping my talismans safe.

I scrambled back, slowly getting myself upright, wishing that time was slow again so that I could think.

[High-Speed Reflexes] the voice that was not echoed in my head. The next arrow I snatched out of the air. There were twinges in my arm muscles, as I began charging forward again - I didn’t have time to get a Talisman out of my bag, and I cursed not having one in hand before opening the ominous door.

Back to the present - I had finally found the sources of the arrows, which I was dodging with outright superhuman ease. I vaguely heard High-Speed Reflexes activating again as I slid below a pair of arrows fired by two skeletons that stood at the end of the hallway.

I came up, and slammed my palm into the face of one of them. Then, I twisted, and the skull went flying back, corkscrewing through the air and shattering when it hit the wall as the rest of the skeleton collapsed into a pile of bones.

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A roundhouse kick with the rest of my momentum smashed the brittle skull of the other skeleton, and High-Speed Reflexes deactivated. Once more, I found myself leaning against a wall. It was only now that I became aware of the sweat drenching my body, and the various aches and pains… But first, I had an arrow to take care of.

I grabbed one of my spare scalpels, and laid it on my leg… Which had some very concerning bulges, no that I looked at it. I poked at it for a bit - the muscles were stiff, and tender, but on the whole… It felt fine.

I growled, suddenly. My mind kept drifting, noticing new things. Arrow. Arrow, arrow, arrow. Do nothing until you have the arrow out, I thought to myself. I twisted my neck to look at it. At least the head wasn’t barbed, I thought, as I took up the scalpel and began digging around my shoulder injury. The pain was distant, dreamlike, as blood slowly flowed down my arm.

And then it was out, leaving me with a nasty looking hole in my shoulder, and no cloth to staunch the bleeding. I stared at the injury, feeling like an absolute idiot… and then I was struck by an idea.

I pulled the plate out and let the blood pool on it as I focused on what I wanted. This was complicated by the edges of vision blurring a little, and a general sense of fuzziness setting in…

[Synthesise Spell]

Transmutation, Sound>Blood, Vortex, Constructive Matrix.

I chanted some prayer that my mother had had me recite before bed when I was a child. Drops of blood flowed out of folds in space, and whirled around and into my injury.

When I stopped, the vortex began shrinking… so I started up again, and more blood came into existence. I rapidly lost track of time, especially since my vision and my thoughts kept blurring - I was still losing blood, after all.

Eventually, though, my voice gave out. I gazed woozily at the injury… which was looking a lot better than I had thought it would. By which I meant that it was only leaking a trickle of blood, and was otherwise a mass of angry red scab and scar tissue. Certainly my shoulder didn’t move right when I tried it.

My head lolled back and I looked up, heaving a sigh of relief. It would be utterly awful to die to an arrow now.