At least a hundred thin strips of meat were hanging from sticks over small bonfires. Despite this, we barely got any meat out of it after spending a few minutes actually cutting through the hard fur and skin. The bear was going to go bad before we fully prepared it.
It was a struggle for me to grab long sticks and stab them into the ground. It took a few attempts each time, but I got them standing. Pain shot down my arms as I did so and I had to stifle a scream. Depending on how I moved my arms, there could be bone visible, which mildly concerned me. All adrenaline had left me by now and I was feeling the full pain of trying to work with a broken body.
It was clear that I had severe damage in both arms now, and it was not something I could ignore for long. While I wasn’t an apothecary or healer by trade, I saw enough amputation patients to know that without the saintess I might have needed to cut my career as a swordsman short. That was a possibility that I needed to push out of my mind as the very thought terrified me. Thankfully such a thought process was unneeded because, again, the saintess will solve it.
I was setting up yet another drying rack and grabbing sticks to keep the fires slowly burning. The thief was cutting the meat out of the bear and preparing it as I asked him to. I would have liked to do it myself, but my fine control of my hands was gone right now. I would have also liked to start skinning the bear, but it was incredibly hard to cut. The prince was keeping watch for other animals that might try to attack us for the meat. It was a good idea, but he honestly just looked like he didn’t want to do any physical labor. He still had to start the fires for us, given our utter lack of normal firestarter. It was around the time we started putting meat on the seventh basic rack that the monk woke up.
“AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
All three of us were upon her quickly, trying to calm her down. The prince clamped a hand on her mouth to keep her from attracting anything with her screaming, to which she responded by instantly twisting his wrist and nearly breaking it. At least, his screaming made it seem that bad. The thief and I were trying to tell her everything was going to be okay and to calm down, but we had to scream over the prince and her to be heard. She calmed down… eventually. I think she broke the prince’s wrist before she calmed down though.
“Where is it? We need to leave! It probably has our scent! We can heal me later, we need to leave now!”
The thief took a few minutes talking her down, calmly explaining everything that happened. The prince and I sounded like actual heroes from his recounting. We stood against the odds and looked death in its big bear face.
The monk looked at us while still lying on her back, disbelief written all over her face. I had to stop him at the part of the story with me grabbing and slowing the beast while looking like a dead soldier haunting their murderer. There was so much wrong with his recounting of the tale.
“I’m sorry about your arm, I’ll try to be your arms for now,” Faith spoke softly while looking up at me with gratitude. However, her statement left a lot unanswered.
“Why would I care about you being my arms? I just need to wait a few hours and then get healed when the saintess wakes up.”
“Did nobody really tell him about this at any point?” The prince was shaking his head at me.
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“Given the cause of his fever, you should have realized how little he knew of magic.” The monk was glaring back at the prince, who in turn was cradling his wrist as if it was as damaged as my arms.
The thief and I were confused as to what we were missing. However, I now am curious why my fever went away suddenly, again. The prince turns to me, pausing for a moment to find the right words.
“Using magic you should focus not as much on the wood that burns in a forge as the forge itself. I believe such an analogy would make sense to you. When you overexert yourself using magic, it is not that you need to wait for more to burn, but for the forge to be repaired as using magic after exhaustion is dangerous. In this case, the forge fixes itself, but the analogy I had with villages and taxes would likely go over your heads. She damaged herself and needs to wait to heal you. Likely for about a week. I imagine by that point you will be nearly useless as both your arms fail you. During that time she will be useless too.”
The expression on the prince’s face near the end was hard for me to decipher. It looked like some mixture of pity, disdain, and at least something else. At the very least it was clear he was looking down on us for getting injured.
“Well, it’s a good thing you are volunteering to stand between the others of our group and danger now. Because I’m sure you would do great at protecting the others like I was able to.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I burned a bridge. I knew it, but I wasn’t willing to take it back. A good knight is willing to lay down life and limb for what they believed in, and despite my minor self-sacrifice, I was being insulted.
Flames licked at the prince’s fingers, he opened his mouth to say something but instead turned around to leave.
“That was… we need to find a way to stay together as a team.” The monk spoke quietly, then grabbed my shoulder and forced herself to stand.
“What was that about the fever?” The thief grabbed the monk’s arm while demanding answers.
The monk shrugged and tried to pull away, but the healing must not have returned all of her strength as she was unable to. I moved to grab her other wrist as she began twisting her arm to quickly break out of the thief’s hold.
“Ok, ok, I’ll tell you”, she whispered to us while looking in the direction of the lazing prince. “He told me not to tell, but the monastery has seen something like this before and the prince agreed with my conclusion. It’s fairly hard to explain.”
“Simplify it”, I spoke harshly, only reigning in my annoyance after hearing how much it infected my voice.
“You are the problem. Your magic is reacting to your desire to rid yourself of magic the best way it can, it’s beginning to kill you. When it’s at its worst you cannot tell you are unconsciously using magic because you are likely too inexperienced with magic and the hot feeling is confused for the feverish feeling. ”
As she finished, I couldn’t speak. Magic had to find a way to ruin my life in yet another way. I held my head in my hands. Why? WHY? Why did I have to be cursed with magic? I felt a fever begin to form again, now knowing it was my damned magic. The knowledge that my hatred of magic made it worse did nothing to lessen my long-time anger against it.
I felt a hand on each of my shoulders, both the monk and thief trying to support me in case I collapsed.
“He knew. The senior knight who came with me knew how much I hated magic and didn’t even try to argue against me getting this path. He knew. He just didn’t care.” I looked up to the thief, remembering them asking for him to be executed. “I’m the same as you. They probably brought me here wanting me to die.”
“I believe that goes for the monk too, though for her I don’t know the reason.” The prince’s voice called out behind me. At some point, he came over to our conversation, likely because something was obviously happening here, and spoke with far less pride in his voice than usual. “I can easily imagine why your personality and house would be hated. The thief we already heard part of the story. The saintess might have backup bodies or souls for all we know, but I can’t imagine she is any less disposable than the rest of our group. And yes, before you ask, the royal family sent me here with the hope that I would die.”
Feeling kind of numb at this point, I weakly shrugged off the two trying to help me and got a piece of jerky. I was going to have a lot to think about.