16. Spider Dawn III_Super Supspider

Doctor Long was having the Best! Day! Ever!

The beginning was a bit tedious, perhaps. But now? Now was great. Doctor Long’s new colleague was there, and he was much cooler than that trio of humans ever were, and now the two of them were doing important doctoring together.

Not that Doctor Long understood the word “doctor.” But it felt strongly in sharing the same life purpose as the big purple hooting non-human it was currently doing stuff with, therefore whatever it was they were doing was who it wanted to be.

Doctor doctor doctor! I hope we never stop doctoring! I bet we can keep doctoring for another entire day!

Doctor Long had found a home, a purpose, and a place. It did not have its own doctor’s office, but if it did, it would have motivational posters that said “A Stabby Day is a Good Day,” and “Smile, You’re Being Stabbed.”

The general idea was present, even if the specific words weren’t.

Doctoring is the best! Wow! I found something even better than stabbing, and it’s stabbing when stabbing is also doctoring!

The healing room Doctor Long shared with Doctor Purple was much better than its previous place where the only living things were kept in tanks on a shelf. Doctor Long felt very happy indeed with so many plants all around the room to crawl on and crawl under. Plus, it had a friend to stab occasionally, and there was a feeling in the air of doing something that mattered.

The tiny scorpion rustled excitedly from under the leaf it had hidden under as Doctor Purple completed another circuit of the room. The other doctor did not break the rhythm of his stomping and hooting as he grabbed up the little scorpion and twirled around with it, stroking it lovingly, receiving another doctorly stab in return.

The scorpion did not mind being grabbed by Doctor Purple. Doctor Purple was not sneaky or scary. He grabbed obviously and directly, with the joyful spirit of a child—but unlike the last time the scorpion had been grabbed by a child, Doctor Purple’s grab was competent and did not hurt Doctor Long at all. In fact, Doctor Purple had even sung a song that made the stiffness in Doctor Long’s right pincer go away.

Doctor Purple was so great!

Life was great!

The two danced the dance of healing for many hours.

******

Healer Porti-loth got the <> and time-sensitive spells out of the way first. The basic, boring, technical healing that even a student should be able to do, if students weren’t so <>

But this healing was for Zeridee-und’h, and she was the only tolerable thing about Earth Ambassador <> Bash-nor. Therefore, Porti would lower himself to using every tool in his <>, so that Zeridee would definitely make it through the long-form of Porti’s proper healing spell.

“You and me, little healer’s assistant,” he told the scorpion.

His healer’s immunity spell had worn off in those first hours of working on Zeridee-und’h. He was no longer protected from the scorpion’s sting, or from the hallucinagenic substance contained within its venom.

It just so happened to be one he was familiar with, and he pondered that fact as he double-checked his calculations of the potency and dosage.

“Coincidence?” Porti asked the scorpion. “No. You were most certainly modified to be something meant for me. For Artonans. Some Avowed is making a fortune off of you.”

Porti-loth frowned to himself, judgementally imagining an avowed removing perfectly good animals from nature so that they could modify them and profit off of selling them as drug machines. Which was different from what he was doing, because he was using his little assistant for <> healing purposes.

Porti-loth then frowned deeper, realizing that any competent drug lord would keep the scorpions a secret, milking the venom themselves to keep control of the supply, and pretending it was made through some difficult proprietary process.

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“You must be a secret, okay?” Porti told the little thing, hoping to make it through his current century without getting on the wrong side of a <>. “You must have died tragically due to oceanic anomalies. Returning you is not safe for me, therefore it is wrong, therefore you are mine forever.”

Earth had its flaws, such as the <> rules on Anesidora regarding recreational substances. But despite that, or perhaps because of that, it had been a good out-of-the-way planet to lay low since last time. And Porti wanted to keep it that way.

“Shall we begin?” he asked his eager assistant, who indeed had begun stabbing him right away.

The stinger pulsed in his skin and Porti felt an immediate <> through his body. The glint of the bright hospital light off of the scorpion’s tail caught his eye and he felt a deep appreciation for the scorpion’s cooperation. He’d thought he would need to grab its stinger and inject it into himself, but the little assistant had done its job well.

“Incredible,” he sighed at it. “<> to the Avowed who trained you to be so willing and diligent. They are never getting you back.”

Porti-loth took just a minute to monitor his feelings and vitals, aware that there was a dying Artonan girl in need of healing. From what he’d calculated the scorpion’s venom sac could hold, combined with the potency of the sample he’d measured, he would need to do a spell to slow the effect of the drugs if the scorpion had injected most or all of its capacity.

Fortunately his diagnostics showed that he was within the dosage that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow under normal conditions, or on any other planet. He could let the drugs course through him <> by spells, and go for another hit once it began to wear off. This calculation aligned with his observation of how he felt, and so he decided he was fit to proceed.

“Ready for the healing and the healing, my love?” he asked the scorpion possessively.

The official Artonan policy on healing under the influence was that for a certain class of more traditional healing spells, a little bit of <> was, well, traditional. Sure, there were Hn-tyon like Esh-erdi who had <>, and who believed in <> and good intentions, but most of Artona was more of an ends-justifies-the-means society.

The traditional healing spell involved dancing and chanting for a full day without rest, covered in blood, while trying to be in the mindset of being in a proper healing grove rather than in a hospital room with a few potted plants. Porti fully intended to do it under the best conditions possible for himself, which would thus also be the best for his patient.

If he got the healing done right, no one was going to look too closely at how.

And he was Healer Porti-Loth.

He would get the healing done right.

Porti set the little scorpion down onto a plant, where it scooted under a leaf. Since he’d already done a minor healing on the scorpion he would be able to easily re-target it and track it down if needed.

“Time to heal my patient,” he said, removing his sleeved healer’s coat to reveal <> underneath.

Porti-loth took a wide stance on a patch of soil within his makeshift grove. His patient, Zeridee-Und’h, lay before him. He lay his bare hands onto the wounds he had suspended from bleeding as part of his earlier set of <> healing spells, and began invocating in a low tone.

When Porti lifted his hands they dripped with Zeridee’s blood. He smeared his hands down his body, starting with both hands on his face and moving all the way down to the spot where his bare feet met a patch of earth on the floor.

Her blood showed richly against his purple skin.

The hooting began.

******

Ten hours later, the hooting was still gaining strength.