The monk was not going to be fine if she wasn't fully healed. I knew it, she knew it, and anyone else who saw the scene knew it. Given that she was the healer, I take it that she meant we had the time to heal her. Crouching down I got a closer look at her. The monk’s shoulder was likely dislocated, but the elbow was cut almost fully through. The bones were clearly visible from the open wound, as the saintess seemed terrified that a single touch while healing may kill the girl. That did raise some questions better saved for later. Blood that pooled out of her now soaked her shirt, turning it a dark red. The first time I jumped out of the way she likely took a claw to the arm, or had to defend her vitals with her arm to survive. I haven’t seen many head injuries before, but I imagine something hit her head and knocked her unconscious, otherwise, she would have gone to the one person in our group who can heal.
The saintess looked at me. Silently pleading with me to have no bad news.
“Help me hold the two ends of her elbow together while I try healing this last part. My lessons on healing skipped a lot of things. I'm trying everything I can but I know it shouldn’t look like it’s been severed. My hands are shaking too much to help.” I reached out with my shield arm, although I had dropped the shield at some point after the fight. I grabbed the monk’s forearm
The saintess nodded while trembling, she put a dainty hand on both halves of the wound and forced it mostly shut.
“Should I force it tighter so the skin touches? It might bend at a bad angle if I do.”
“YES! HEAL HER! Make a decision because the longer you wait the more she bleeds!”
The saintess screamed with a ferocity I never heard from a clergy member. Light came out of both of her hands and the skin sewed itself shut with a thin line of discolored skin. She looked visibly exhausted, barely holding herself up.
The thief ran over, likely either hearing my screaming or wondering why I had stopped here and not called them over.
“What happe-oh no. That’s a lot of blood.”
The saintess only nodded, putting her hand in front of the monk’s mouth to feel for breathing. It was only now that she finally looked up at us. Her face was pale; sweat dripped down it like she sprinted a full lap around a fort. For a noncombatant who likely hadn’t seen many hardships, she did a remarkable job with whatever pushed her to this point. She looked at my face with a tired smile that quickly faded as she saw my arm.
“How bad is your arm?”
I turned so that it was behind my body. She was tired enough and I wasn’t going to force her to heal even more now and risk her passing out. “Not sure how bad it is as my armor hides everything.” She gave me a look that I couldn’t quite discern, but I figured it was disapproving of my comment. “I’ll take it off now, give me a second.”
I looked at my vambrace, now completely unsure how to take it off something that was wrapped fully around my arm with the two ends that usually separate folded into one another. Actually, I did have an idea, but it involved cutting into my arm to get under it.
I tried reaching under the metal, but quickly realized I truly didn’t have a plan. The thief quickly said “Pardon me” and stepped in front of me with what I could only describe as lockpicks for illegal entry. I grabbed his wrist, not willing to be helped by the tools of a thief. He just looked at me calmly. “We need to see how bad this is. Please don’t fight me on this.”
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I let go of his wrist. With practiced movements, he removed the pin from the latch on my vambrace. How he learned a skill for breaking latches is something I will not think too hard on.
Under my armor, the skin was torn up. The compression from the armor helped staunch the bleeding, but we just removed it. It was also bending where it clearly shouldn’t have.
The saintess waved me over to her, so I held out my arm for her to look at.
“So saintess, how are you so calm with healing now when you previously were barely able to focus on healing me?”
“Last time an assassin was trying to kill me. It was the first time I had ever been attacked, and I was panicking. This time it was a bear that was focused on you and not me.” She paused looking at my broken arm to look me in the eyes. “Also I was and still am completely terrified. I don’t want to die in an unknown body without knowing what happened to my original body or if I can go back. Everything about this stresses me out and I feel like if I stop to think for even a few seconds I’m going to have a complete mental breakdown and never stop crying. I left her bruised on her chest because I had to prioritize the important injuries first.”
“Out of curiosity, do you need to visualize things for your magic too?” The thief leaned forward to look at the monk. Other than being pale and unconscious, she looked fine. Then the thief knelt down and examined the fixed arm.
“Well I imagine the injured part I want fixed and then I imagine magic adding, removing, or moving parts of the body until the problem is gone. How do you create an image with magic? If you were to use it, I mean.”
I thought for a second, then answered. “I don’t use magic, but I would imagine it as commanding troops. People move when ordered, forming defensive positions or breaking through defensive formations.”
The thief was lifting the monk’s shirt when the saintess shrieked. I would too if I saw someone taking advantage of a wounded ally. Instead of putting down the shirt, she grabbed it from him and lifted it to reveal almost her lower rib cage. As risque as such a position was, it was the discoloration on her stomach that got my attention.
“No no no no. The bruises weren’t this big last time, I didn’t think it would get this bad.”
The saintess had gone into a near panic, seeming very close to the mental breakdown she mentioned earlier.
“Did you heal the blood loss?” The thief was quicker to ask the important question than me.
“No, I focused on keeping her from losing blood by fixing where she bled out. Her bruises weren’t big enough to warrant immediate fixing like her neck and arm. I wanted to take a breath and not overuse my magic but I don’t have time for that anymore.” She looked me dead in the eye. She looked calmer again as she seemed to make a plan in her head.
“Louis, I will heal your arm later. Right now I need to push myself and hope the light healing I do inside of her with a general image is enough to end all of her internal bleeding and let her live. I promise, somehow I will fix your arm later. I’ll spend a week removing the dead tissue because that is likely going to get bad. We probably won’t have to cut it off.”
She spoke fast as she began to heal the monk. I only just processed what she said about amputating my arm when she collapsed on top of the monk.
The prince walked over to us. I’m not sure what he was doing, but he saw the saintess collapsed on the monk. Her hands were underneath the other girl’s shirt.
He gave us a very disappointed look. “I sincerely hope you two didn’t pose them like that for a laugh. That would be some very undignified humor.”
The thief just shook his head. I didn’t say anything either. What could one say to such a strange accusation? “So on an entirely different topic that doesn’t make me want to throw up, who’s hungry? I cannot wait to eat the bear. I hear only nobles eat them.”
Unfortunately, I was thinking about a different thing entirely. Amputation? Me?