“Lawrence, are you in?” Fen called from the entrance of my home.

I had just finished polishing off my second bottle of whiskey when the call came. My mortar and pestle sat on the table beside the bottle; full of a mixture of herbs and plants that could be found growing around the cove. I cast cure poison on me to lessen the effects of the whiskey as I pushed past the curtain, down the hall, and to the front door.

“Yeah, everything….” Drunkenness flushed through my mind and temporarily staggered me, “Everything okay?”

“We got new Efrans here, and Paul was wounded. Can you heal them?”

Ah. Finally, the chance to be useful. I cast a couple more rounds of cure poison to make it easier to walk out of the house and down the slope without falling over. Clio followed me to drink some water down at the well. While on the way down Fen gave me a rundown of the last dive that he, Dylan, and Paul took over, and how they found this group of enslaved individuals. As we neared the entranceway back to Earth, they came into view. All of the deermen and Ir. Fen cast a spell of translation on me so I could understand them.

They shook and shivered as Jenna worked to bring them clothes that would fit their bodies; though the deermen had to make do with large sheets that fell over their broad shoulders and down to their knees as there was nothing else that could be done, so they were left in torn linen pants and these sheets until the crafters could make something for them. She wrote things in a little notebook she kept on her person.

“Ah! There you are.” She said as she glanced over to Fen and I. “A few of them have bruises on their side, and scour marks across their backs, can you help with that?”

I nod, and Jenna leads those with injuries over to me, while Fen leads them down into the town; his hands tucked behind his back as he steps lightly over the cobblestone roads. We sit them down on the side stone wall that stretches around the orchard. Jenna carried a small bag with a first-aid kit inside in case there were any bad infections. Neither my Lesser Heal nor my Medium Heal could cure infections like gangrene.

Most of the injuries are just as she described; bruises and bumps, or fresh whip marks. The worst was an Ir man whose leg was bent in a bad way. There was nothing I could do for him with my abilities, so I told him that and he sighed. Jenna tore one of the branches off of a nearby tree and fashioned it into a makeshift cane. Once we have actual dedicated healers instead of hybrids like me we would have his leg fixed, is what I told him. He said he understood, and once I finished healing up his other injuries he joined the others, hobbling away with his makeshift cane.

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“How’s Dylan doing?” Jenna asked as I cast a few Lesser Heals on a deerman, who thanked me once the pain lessened.

“I’ve been told she’s been doing well. I haven’t really gone out with her and Paul yet. Are you worried about her?”

“Of course. She’s my only niece.”

“Has her mother tried to get in contact with you?”

Jenna scoffed.

“Her mother’s in prison. Possession.”

Right.

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, and I think it’ll be good for her.”

“Is she your older or younger sister?”

“Younger.” She answered wistfully as I moved to heal a young Ir girl. A child by any standards.

Some of her wounds had begun to grow green scabs over them. I scraped away the scabs with my thumbnail, and Jenna handed me a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She parted the fur around the infected wounds and poured the hydrogen peroxide inside the wound.

“We can’t heal you just yet, alright?” Jenna talked in soft tones, “If we do you could get really sick, so come back to me for the next three days, alright?”

“Oh..okay.” The young Ir says.

She winces and hisses as Jenna pours a cap full of rubbing alcohol over her back and wraps her back in heavy gauze.

“Why did you ask me to let Dylan join the war?” I asked as the young Ir stood up and I moved over to the next. An elderly deerman with fairly minor wounds.

“I told you she was having night terrors ever since coming back from the dive where that Monica woman found her, right?”

“No, I don’t think you have.”

“It’s heartbreaking.” Jenna said, “Dylan...well she’s a unique girl, and now she’s shut up as tight as a clam, you know?”

I finish up with the deerman and move on to the next. This one was in a pretty bad shape as well; his hand had been severed. Stealing bread from one of his masters, he said. The wound, though cauterized and not bleeding, was still oozing and hot to the touch, so much like the young Ir girl there was nothing much I could do. Jenna wrapped his arm in gauze filled with plenty of antiseptic, while I treated some of the stuff I could heal.

“So you think fighting be a form of therapy for her?”

“Maybe. I don’t know…” Jenna sighed, “But when she does sleep, she doesn’t scream anymore.”

“That’s good. What exactly happened to her in there?”

I move on to the last wounded Efran and heal him promptly. He thanks me and heads down to join the others in getting clothes, and seeing what they could do to help out around the cove. Most will be sent on fishing boats; some will be used for construction whenever some of the humans go out to buy more supplies for the upkeep of the town.

“She doesn’t talk about it. She just says she was hurt a lot. How’s Nyt doing?” She responded in an attempt to steer the conversation in a different direction, I supposed.

“I don’t know.” I answer, “I’m not able to interfere.”

“Why not?”

“According to Atar and Fen, she needs to commune in complete isolation.”

“Can’t you do that, like astral projection thing?”

I shake my head.

“That disturbance of mana that I’d cause would be detrimental to her attempts at contacting her god.”

“Do you think she’ll be successful?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t know. Honestly.”