I panicked.

I let go of the spear still lodged in Azarus and sprang away from him clumsily.

“Oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit, oh fuck.” I chattered uselessly, staring at the point that the spear had pierced Azarus’s flesh. My ears were ringing and my world was narrowing. Vaguely, distantly, I was aware that I was having a panic attack. I was familiar enough with them at this point in my life to recognize the symptoms. I was violently knocked out of my fugue when Azarus nonchalantly, seeming without a care in the world, firmly grasped the spear with one huge hand and yanked it out of himself in one smooth motion. He didn’t even wince.

I gaped at him, horrified.

“But, blood…”. I said incoherently, raising one limp hand to point at his wound. I think I was trying to point out how he was going to bleed out now that the wound was unobstructed.

Except, that didn’t happen.

The large stab wound on Azarus’s belly, visible through the tear in his shirt, wasn’t bleeding at all. It was clearly visible, and I could even see individual severed muscle fibers around the entrance, to my horror. But the wound was, disturbingly, clean and blood free.

Azarus reached up to scratch his chin, uncaring about the seeming mortal wound. “Interesting. It’s like your spear didn’t care a whit about me defenses.” He directed his gaze at me finally. “What?”

I was still staring at him aghast. But at least I wasn’t panicking anymore. The way that Azarus clearly didn’t seem to care overmuch about his injury was keeping the panic at bay. I was still concerned, however. I cleared my throat roughly, aware of how dry my mouth had gotten over the last few minutes.

“Are…are you okay?” I asked Azarus hesitantly.

“Yeah?” He said confusingly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

I opened and closed my mouth in increasing astonishment. “I just stabbed you!” I near shouted at him. “You have a huge fucking hole in your stomach! Why the fuck else would I be asking if you’re okay?!”

Okay, I was actually just shouting at him at the end of that.

Azarus looked down at himself for a moment, puzzled. He stuck his index finger into the wound on his stomach and wiggled it around briefly. I nearly vomited. “What, this? It’ll take more than this to take out ol’Azarus.” He said boastfully. He looked back up at me to see the sickened look on my face. After a moment, realization stole across his own. “Ohhhh, I get it.” He let out a chortle.

I stared at him, aghast.

“Welcome to life as an Awakened, Nate,” Azarus told me cheerfully. “This is what it’s like, yeah? Things like your itsy bitsy poke ain’t a real danger to someone like me.”

I just grew more confused. “But…” I muttered helplessly. “When the deer attacked me, I was definitely bleeding all over the place.”

Azarus nodded. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re not even past your first threshold. For someone like me, who is? I don’t got to worry about bleeding all over the place anymore.” He paused for a second. “Well, not unless I get hurt way, way worse than this.”

I was calming down significantly now. Azarus genuinely didn’t seem to care about his wound, and the unaffected way that he was speaking was helping me more than he seemed to realize. I dragged a hand down my face, suddenly exhausted again, even though I had only woken up from a full night’s sleep maybe an hour and a half ago.

“All right, I’ll bite,” I muttered tiredly into my hand. “What’s a threshold?”

Azarus had no trouble understanding my muffled words. “None of your beeswax.” He rebuked me cheerfully.

I took my hand off of my face to give him a gimlet stare, unimpressed with his dodging the question. He smirked and raised his hands in a placating manner.

“Seriously, it’s not something ya should worry about just now. You’re a long ways away from that. Plus, you’re not supposed to talk about it with people before they’re ready, yeah? Ya can influence ‘em too much and fuck it all up.” He told me, semi-seriously. “For now, pay it no mind. Just know, this little pin-prick will heal on its own right quick. See? Already happening.”

I paid closer attention to the wound again, even though it made me queasy to do so. To my astonishment, he was correct. The stab wound that I had left on Azarus was visibly already healing. It wasn’t healing like he had some kind of comic book healing factor. No, this seemed more like vastly sped-up natural healing. The wound itself was visibly smaller than it had been a few moments ago, and it already had some scab tissue growing on it.

I relaxed even further, now that I knew Azarus was truly in no danger. “Still,” I said hesitantly. “I can’t imagine that was pleasant. I’m…sorry for hurting you.” I told him sincerely, if not also awkwardly.

He literally waved it off. “Eh, I got a talent for that. Barely felt it.” He grunted before visibly brightening. “Now, what I’m more interested in is that skill of yours.” He tossed my spear back to me like he had only moments ago. I caught it again. “Try it again. Only this, I just want ya to come over here and try and cut me arm. We ain’t gonna try and fight with the skill again yet.”

I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. I then did the process again a second time, to try and clear out any residual panic adrenaline. Okay, Nate. Your fantasy dwarf friend (?) wants you to use the skill you thought had killed him again. You can do this.

I concentrated.

The Scintillant Blade.

That same rainbow flame appeared around the blade of my spear again. I eyed it warily for a moment. Shaking it off, I walked over to Azarus as he’d said to and stood in front of him. He wordlessly held up his right hand in front of him in an invitation. Hesitantly, I brought the flaming head of my spear closer to his arm. Just like it had with me, when the flame touched his skin, it didn’t burn him. It just kind of rolled and twisted around the surface of his skin. I looked up at Azarus to make sure he still wanted to do this. He just raised an eyebrow at me. Looking back down, I pressed the spear's blade to his skin.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

A gash immediately opened up on Azarus’s arm, even though I hadn’t put any force behind the blade.

I instantly moved the spear blade away from Azarus and took a step back. I was trembling faintly. I tried to steady myself, or at the very least hide it. I needn’t have bothered, Azarus was looking down at his arm in shock.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He muttered in amazement. “Never even heard of something like this.” Lifting his head to look at me, Azarus firmed his expression. “Time to wake the old man. He’ll want to know.”

……………………………………..

After stomping back through the house, with me following quietly behind him, Azarus pounded on Grey’s door until a groggy voice told us to come in. After following Azarus in, I stood awkwardly off to one side as Azarus started whispering something to a still-sleepy Grey. Whatever Azarus was saying to Grey seemed to wake him up fast, however. I was able to watch as Grey went from tired to instantly awake and focusing on me in the blink of an eye. The assessing gaze that Grey was giving me was making me a tad uneasy. I shifted nervously from one foot to another. Grey blinked.

“Ah, how rude of me,” Grey said, smiling disarmingly. “Please, pull up a chair Nathan. I believe we have a few small tests to run.” He gestured to a familiar wooden chair sitting in the corner. Azarus just leaned against an open spot on the wall.

I shuffled over to the chair and moved it to where Grey had leveraged himself into his wheelchair. I sat down in it, aware that both Grey and Azarus had their eyes fixed on me. “So…” I said nervously. “What’s up?”

“Well,” Grey said calmly. “Azarus was telling me about how you two were testing your racial skill, yes? However, he mentioned that you were able to injure him quite easily. Which, frankly, is highly, highly unusual.”

I cleared my throat. “Uh, yeah. I guess that’s what happened.”

“Fascinating,” Grey murmured to himself.

Coughing into his fist to get attention, Azarus spoke. “Why don’t ya show it to him, yeah? Maybe he’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking at.”

I stared at Azarus blankly for a moment before looking around. I looked back at him. “With what?” I said, somewhat exasperated. “I need a weapon to use it.” I paused. “Wait, how do I know that? Somehow, I just know I need something with an edge on it to use the skill.”

Grey had wheeled over to his desk while I was talking and started to rummage around through a drawer. After a moment of searching, he withdrew a small paring knife. Wheeling back over to me, he handed it over while speaking. “That’s not uncommon at all. Instinctual knowledge of what is required to use a skill is a fundamental facet of the System. There you go. Why don’t you try using the skill on the knife?”

Taking the knife and a deep breath at the same time, I concentrated and activated my skill for the third time today.

The Scintillant Blade.

The blade of the knife in my hand erupted into now familiar rainbow flames.

Grey stared at the flames in fascination. “Well, if nothing else it’s quite visually striking.” He hummed to himself for a moment. “This manifestation reminds me of the auroras of the far north. It’s been some time since I’ve seen them, but I’ve never forgotten the sight.”

I paused to take a closer look at the flames myself. Yeah, now that he mentioned it, I could see what he was talking about. The rainbow flames I could conjure did remind me of the aurora borealis back home. Shaking it off, I addressed Grey. “So, how do you want to test this? Do you want me to just cut Azarus or something again?”

“If you could.” Grey nodded. “I wish to observe this phenomenon in action myself. Perhaps I’ll be able to glean something from it. Azarus, if you would?”

Azarus shoved off the wall he had been leaning on silently while Grey and I were speaking. Walking over to where I was sitting, Azarus held out the same arm that I had cut earlier. He cleared his throat and smiled at me. “If ya don’t mind, could ya lay the next cut over the other one, in a kinda cross pattern?”

Grey and I both stared at him, Grey in consternation and myself in horrified amazement.

Grey sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Really, Azarus? Really?”

“What?” Azarus said, smirking and shrugging. “Ladies love a wicked-lookin’ scar.”

I shook my head, wide-eyed. “Whatever you say, man.” I brought the knife up to his arm and laid the blade perpendicular to the other cut. Pressing the blade down on his arm lightly, another gash opened up on his arm just as swiftly as it had earlier. Pulling the blade away quickly, before he could get any more injured, I looked over at Grey.

For the first time since I had met him, Grey had a truly confused look on his face. Leaning back in his chair, Grey rubbed his chin. “I…have absolutely no idea what just happened.” He said wonderingly. “I cannot even sense the flames themselves, much less whatever method they’re using to bypass Azarus’s defenses.”

Azarus’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah? I mean, I wasn’t too surprised when I couldn’t feel ‘em, but you? You of all people can’t feel ‘em?”

Grey shook his head. “Indeed, no. Truthfully, I’m as shocked as you are. These flames,” He said, gesturing to the knife that was still roiling with rainbow fire. “Might as well not exist to my senses.”

Crossing his arms, uncaring of the wounds on his right, Azarus frowned. “Huh.”

Looking between the two of them, I spoke. “Is…that a problem?”

Grey hummed. “Not truly, I suppose. The only problem comes from the fact that we’ll have difficulty analyzing what your flames are capable of. We’ll need to base any conclusions on them purely from observational data. At least for the moment.” Grey sighed. “If we had access to my lab, it would be a different story. I’m sure I would be able to detect something with some of my more specialized equipment.”

“Best I can tell,” Azarus interjected. “Those flames just completely ignore most defenses. They don’t seem to do any damage themselves, though.”

Grey gazed thoughtfully at the knife in my hand at those words. “I wonder…” He whispered.

Azarus raised an eyebrow at Grey. “Ya got an idea?”

Grey nodded absent-mindedly, staring into the distance. After a moment, Grey turned his gaze to me. “Nathan, I have a request. Would you mind testing your skill on me in the same way that you did Azarus?”

Azarus laughed disbelievingly before I could answer. “You’re joking, ya gotta be. It’s one thing for the skill to hurt me, it’s a whole other for it to hurt you. Doesn’t matter how bound your Status is, you just got more weight to ya.”

Grey ignored his words, gazing at me patiently.

I took a deep breath for a moment to steady my nerves. Fuck it, why not. Apparently, knife wounds didn’t mean much to these people anyway. I nodded at Grey, not trusting myself to speak.

Grey nodded back at me and silently rolled up his right sleeve. Apprehensively, I brought my still flame-covered knife closer to his arm. Taking a deep breath and holding it (while noticing that Azarus did the same, despite his words) I brought the knife down on Grey’s arm.

Nothing.

Unlike Azarus, the knife didn’t immediately wound him.

Letting out the breath I had been holding in a sigh of relief, I withdrew my knife from Grey’s arm and mentally canceled the skill. The flames on my knife winked out.

Azarus let out a breath as well. “What’d I tell ya.” He said, crossing his arms. “It’s ridiculous to thi-”.

“No,” Grey said, interrupting him. Directing my gaze back at Grey, I could see that he was staring unblinkingly at the point that the blade had rested on his skin. I felt a shiver run up my spine at the intensity of his gaze. After a moment, Grey pinned both Azarus and me with a stare. “Look closer.”

The both of us leaned closer his arm unquestioningly at the authority in Grey’s voice. For a moment, I couldn’t see anything on his arm. But after a moment, I could see what Grey had at about the same time that Azarus did, based on his intake of breath.

On Grey’s arm was a small incision, no bigger or deeper than a shallow paper cut.