DRIFA

…Well that puts a wrench in things. I want to heal Ismund, and I will, but I… don’t really want to have two out of three people in our group inebriated.

I pursed my lips.

At least it’ll be a bit before then since I can’t exactly heal Ismund right now. I switched my bandana settings to talk to Abs. Maybe If I do it slowly enough he’ll only be buzzed?

I wasn’t sure.

I can still help a bit though.

I looked over my shoulder to see Abs. He was staring at the fire like that would put it out.

At least he’s not angry at me.

Ismund sat there looking in the general area of the fire too.

It might be rough going forward, between those two at least.

I sucked on my teeth and shoveled through the things in my bag until I found some spare bandages I’d bought.

“I’m going to… uhm, set your jaw in place. Are your… teeth lined up?”

Ismund looked somewhere close to where I was and shook his head.

Shoot.

How do you fix that?

> [Put the jaw where it is supposed to go.]

I know.

“Do you think you can fix it yourself.”

He rolled his eyes and nodded.

He hesitantly grabbed the area where his jaw was swollen, moved it a little but stopped as his eyes and brows scrunched together. A tear ran down the side of his face.

I don’t think that’s going to work… I also think he’s going to have to open his mouth for this to actually work.

I bit my lip.

“I-I’ll do it Ismund.”

I looked up at me skeptically with a poorly hidden wince on his face.

“Please?”

He ‘looked’ around himself and sighed. After a few more moments he waved in a “go on” gesture, but Ismund still didn’t look too happy about it.

“You’re going to have to open your mouth.”

He didn’t look very happy with that. He spit some blood onto the ground before eventually opening his mouth very, very slowly, clenching his fist so tight I thought the skin would rip over his knuckles.

It was worse than I thought; I cringed back and covered my mouth with a hand. The teeth on the left side of his mouth were all crooked, turning in and resting on his tongue, practically just floating there. I couldn’t really see any of his gums because of all of the blood welling up around it.

How do I fix this?

Ismund was currently glaring at nothing in particular, but he seemed to want me to hurry up.

I put my thumb on the teeth he had on the left side, avoiding the broken teeth, and placed the rest of my fingers underneath his jaw, touching the purple skin. Even that much was making him pull back from pain.

He needs to hold still.

I glanced at Abs.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I would ask him to hold Ismund still, but I don’t trust that he won’t hurt Ismund. At least right now.

I looked back at Ismund.

Better make this quick then.

I turned my wrist in a sharp motion. Ismund clenched his eyes and let out a shout I couldn’t hear, getting his bloody spit on my arm and face. His jaw was almost in the right spot.

Sorry!

“Maybe the announcer was right about you being a baby! Can’t handle a bit of pain.”

Ismund react to Abs. Weather it was because of the pain, or not caring I wasn’t sure, but I finished the job. After roughly turning his jaw again, it looked like it was in the right place. As soon as I let go Ismund spit out another, larger wad of blood on the floor. The place would smell of it at some point, I’m sure.

I felt bad about it hurting him so much when I corrected it, but I couldn’t do much else for it.

“I’m almost done.” I whispered, mostly to myself.

I tried to dust the blood off of my hand only to realize it wasn’t frozen, so I wiped it on the floor.

I guess our blood only freezes sometimes? It froze to keep his wound shut before with the boss battle… Maybe it only freezes when it’s healing? That’d make sense. Otherwise all of our blood would freeze inside of us.

Taking the bandages from earlier, I started to tightly wrap his mouth shut so the bone could start healing a bit, or at least not move. Once I was done, I cut the bandage and put the roll back in my pack. I looked at my work.

Not too bad. It’ll work.

Abs seemed to think otherwise.

“Ha, look at him, Drifa! Good work. His cheeks are all mushed together and he can’t use any of his stupid toothpicks for a while.” The large man let out a gasp, “Y’know what he looks like? A mummy! The, uhh, the ones in Egypt or whatever. They hid in strange geometric shapes in the desert. Did you know that some people thought they were made by aliens? They’re stupid. They were obviously made from the mummies. Why else would they sleep in ‘em? I don’t think Ismund would be smart enough to make a pyramid.”

Abs seemed to be having a great time. Ismund… Ismund looked like he wanted to punch Absinth, bury himself in a hole, and speak his mind. In other words, he was burning a hole in the ground with slitted eyes doing his best to not clench his jaw. Ismund never seemed to get the same kind of angry Abs got. Really angry at all actually. He glared a lot, yeah, but that’s usually just him being prickly or extremely irritated or something of the like. He never really barbed people with words, at least where they could hear them. He didn’t hit people or anything rash like that either.

Okay, there’s still the acid covering him. I can probably keep it from getting worse with hot water. I can’t do much for his eyes yet. Hopefully they’re still fixable; they have to be, there’s magic.

I got up to look for a bucket until my memory kicked in.

Right.

I let out a snort and turned my knife into a massive pot.

I still need to get snow though, and there’s none in here.

“I’m going up the hatch to get snow, Abs!”

After scooping up the snow I carefully made my way down the latter doing my best to not spill anything. Once I was on the arena’s platform again I put the bucket beside the fire so it could melt.

“What’s that for?” Abs blurted out.

I gestured at Ismund’s red skin that was slowly getting worse, “The acid’s frozen but it’s still hurting him.”

“Oh! Sorry,” he snorted, “Forgot that he was weak enough to get hurt by Pineapple juice.” He smiled at Ismund with dead eyes.

Ismund didn’t react.

A while later the bucket was full of warm water. I dipped my finger in it to test the temperature.

Should be good enough, It’ll melt the icy acid off of him.

Grabbing two of my shirts from my bag I wrapped them around my hands so I could hold the hot metal handles of my giant pot and dump it on Ismund. Or at least try too, it was too heavy for me. I hadn’t really brought my strength stat up since coming here. Well it had gone up by roughly 200 points, and had gone a long way to helping me keep up with Ismund. Nothing to sniff at. The main reason I couldn’t carry the pot was because it was larger than myself and more than twice my own weight.

I don’t really have an option.

“Abs!”

His head whipped in my direction.

“What is it lassie?”

Can you dump this on Ismund?

“Sure I can.” he said in a slimy voice.

“But slowly so the ice melts!” I added quickly.

Abs nodded, grabbed the pot and stomped over to Ismund.

“Bath time!”

He deliberately aimed for Ismund’s face, no doubt to agitate him, but it was for the better in the end. His eyes still had frozen acid on them.

“Slowly.” I reminded him, a little worried.

“Don’t worry!”

Abs let go of the pot with one hand and patted me on the head. As he was looking away he missed a little.

“Oops.”

Once he was done, he dropped the pot haphazardly where it fell on it’s side and hit my toes and weird boots.

“Ah!” I yelped.

I yanked my foot back and then crouched so I could squeeze the toe in my hand. When I looked up again Ismund’s mouth was trying to fight against the bandages so he could frown.

All the acid seemed to be gone, which was good, but the damage was more visible now. His visible skin ranged anywhere from pinkish red to a dark red with indents where the acid had eaten away at it. Some of his medium length hair had also fallen apart from the acid now that it wasn’t frozen in place.

He needs a haircut.

My hand drifted to my mangled wrist.

Not that kind… at least yet.

The colour of Ismund’s eyes were all washed out, riddled with red, and didn’t looked like they were shaped quite right. It also looked like some of his eye had melted and weirdly attached to his eyelid. But he could close them properly now and there wasn’t going to be further damage, so that was good.