"Hey, whenever you girls decide to get up." I talk to Apricot and Amelia while getting dressed for my run the next morning. "Would you mind heading to the market? I need a few things, namely eggs and dairy. But, please stop by that seafood vendor that Apricot found too. I'm in the mood for shellfish tonight."

The three of us went to bed shortly after the freeze bomb incident last night. It made a good excuse to escape from everyone, especially Adriana before she asked me to make all the sprinklers for the whole city right then and there, or something equally annoying.

"Alright." Amelia yawns up at me. "I wanted to check in at the warehouse anyway, and see how Mom and Dad are doing."

"Tell them I said hi." I lean down to kiss each of them. Apricot tries to pull me back into bed with them, but I slip out of her grasp with a laugh. "Maybe later, Sweetie, I love you."

"Mmm, love you too." With my having escaped her clutches she turns her sights on Amelia instead, and I have to get out of there before I say 'fuck the run' and fuck them instead.

...

"Sir?" Fawne was waiting for me outside of the lobby which Cyril was already manning like a knight guarding the gates of a keep. "I was hoping to join you on the run today, if that's alright."

"Of course, the more the merrier." I smile at her. "Would you like me to make you a set of chainmaille? I only have iron on me, but it's better than nothing."

"I've never actually used it before." She admits. "And, I'm a little out of shape too, so maybe later."

"That's fine, and I can enhance your training just like I did for Gen yesterday." I offer. "Oh, sorry, Flicker." I apologize to the horse when she trots up to the edge of her pen eager to join me on the run. "The girls are going to need you today, so just stay and play with Brick. I promise to run with you later."

"Brick?" Fawne laughs and falls into step as we jog over to the farm.

"Apparently, he's about as smart as one." I reply with a smile. "The girls went looking to find a companion for Flicker yesterday and he's the one she chose. I hope you don't mind running to music." I bring out my speaker box and hold it in a vine.

...

"You weren't kidding about being out of shape." I tease my new guard when we reach the midway point and I stop to give them a rest while I catch some salamanders. Even without the chainmaille, she's as worn out as all the rest of the runners. "Here, drink up. You all can rest for a minute while I go newt hunting."

"How do you guys do this every day?" She asks the rest of the guards who just smile at her.

While they're recovering, I dash off towards the nearest amphibian. The little beastie doesn't even react as I scoop it up into a wooden pet carrier, all thanks to my nature magic calming it down. A handful more soon join it, and I head back to rejoin my running partners.

"Everyone ready to go." They all jump up with a wide grin for Fawne who is surprised to find that she is as refreshed as before we left the office. "That's why they run with me every day."

...

"Just give me a moment to collect the lab and we can head back to the hive." I tell Fawne after she and all the other beastkin drop once we reach the farm again.

"..." She's too busy trying to catch her breath to reply.

"We don't know how he does it either." Bruce laughs from next to her. "His windcatcher is larger than ours and he's wearing a heavier suit, but he's always like this right afterward."

I just roll my eyes to their good-natured grumbling and send my mana inside the workshop to send everything not part of the structure itself into storage.

"Thank you for what you're trying to do today." Cobb walks up to me just as I'm finishing up with the shop. "All of us are friends with or, at least, know someone who's missing anything from a finger to a couple of limbs So, even if it doesn't work, I still wanted to thank you for wanting to help them." The whole group bows to me then before heading off at a jog.

"I am never going to get used to stuff like that." I shake my head and collect all the empty smoothie cups. "Come on, Fawne. I still got a lot of shit to do today."

"Hah!" She barks out a laugh and follows me back to the office.

...

"Is that them?" Elise is waiting outside for me along with Marten, his apprentice, Jana, and a handful of maimed guards. "I don't know much about animals, but can these guys really regenerate their limbs?"

"I sure hope so." I chuckle. "I know Apricot will get pissed at me if I don't leave them off better than they were before."

"I'll take that as a yes." She rolls her eyes at me.

"Follow me, everyone" I push open the door and guide the group inside. "There's a meeting room big enough to fit all of us just down the hall, here."

While walking everyone to the meeting room, I start remotely placing Melanie's lab equipment downstairs. And, the fact that she, Eliot, and Cat were down there to get startled by this act has nothing to do with my decision to do so. Nothing at all.

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"Anyone care for some snacks?" I set out a plate of leftover brownies from the night before along with a couple pitchers of water and enough cups for everyone. "Shall we jump straight into it then?"

Plucking a newt at random from the pet carrier, I feed it a drop of healing sap and knock it out with the sleep spell before placing it on the table. Then, so no one has to jockey for position, I use the microscope spell I developed to project an image of its foreleg for everyone to see.

"I'm going to start with a single finger, are you three ready?" They nod and I can sense the diagnostic spell they cast on the animal. Using the belt knife that Amelia bargained for me back in Southwood, I chop off its forefinger. "This would normally take weeks to regrow, but I'm using my healing sap to speed up the process."

"Fascinating." Martin breathes while watching the finger re-grow in real-time. "I have no idea what I'm sensing, but it's still fascinating."

"I thought it was just me." Jana laughs.

"Sorrel?" Elise prompts knowing that my perception is much higher than theirs.

"It is fascinating." I chuckle. "From what I can tell, the macrophages -large white blood cells responsible for eating foreign contaminants and controlling inflammation- arrive and signal the surrounding cells to revert back into undifferentiated cells that then migrate to the end of the wound and begin to re-grow the limb in a process similar to how embryos form in the early days."

"We don't need the detailed description." One of the guards missing a couple fingers says with a laugh. "Just tell us if you think it'll work or not."

"Let me maim a few more lizards before I get back to you." The whole crowd chuckles at that.

Feeding subject A some more sap, I take off its whole hand this time, just above the wrist. Dialing my consciousness down deep to unravel the process, and find what magic I'll need to duplicate the effect in people.

Replacing A in the box once its hand grows back, I switch to B and take off the whole arm this time. C, D, E, and F similarly lose limbs in the name of science before I feel confident enough to try on one of the guards.

"You're first." I point to the guard who spoke up before. "I'll need to remove all scar tissue first, but even if this doesn't work, you'll be no worse off than before."

"Just do it!" He nods sharply, clearly nervous.

"You three, just try to follow along for now." I say to the healers. "If it works, I'll teach you the spell after. You, drink this, and this." I hand him a shot glass of sap and a smoothie. "Now, Sleep!" I command after he downs both.

"You know that's a little scary, right?" Jana says with a nervous laugh when the guard slumps onto the table.

"Would you prefer he stay awake for this part." I say and start using the cleanse spell to eat away the scar tissue covering the stump of one finger. "Now, please let me focus."

I let the flow state take me and use the god-given knowledge of nature magic to guide me. I don't think this task would be possible without that, at least not in the way I'm doing it. I know that there are other spells that can do the same task, but I have zero idea how they work.

The skin forms first, not a scar, but proper, healthy skin. The surrounding cells all start reverting into fibroblasts, and just like in the Salamander they migrate to just under the newly formed skin.

"Were you able to follow any of that?" I surface enough to ask.

"Some." Elise nods. Martin and Jana do also, though each less sure than the last.

"I'm going to accelerate the growth now." I announce. "This is where we'll see if it actually works or not."

Carefully monitoring everything, I cast a low-level growth spell on his whole body and a stronger one on the blastema itself.

"The joints are forming." I announce, but everyone can see the miniature finger with two tiny knuckles growing out of the stump. "The bone takes a lot of calcium. There's enough in the smoothie for this, but I'll need to add extra for larger limbs."

No one else says a word as they watch his finger regenerate. It's slower than the salamander limbs, and I can sense room for improvement in the spell form, but it works.

"Oh!" Everyone startles when I say that, thinking that something must have gone wrong. "No, he's fine." I reassure them. "I just realized that Apricot will be annoyed that she didn't get to watch me invent a new spell. Her loss, I suppose, she really didn't like the thought of the salamanders getting hurt."

"It worked? There are no issues?" Elise says and all three of them redouble their scans of his finger. "It's formed properly, and growing just like a baby in the womb." She announces a moment later.

"I can still see some room for improvement in the spell but yes, it works." I flood the area with healing sap to speed it up even more. "I'm just speeding thing up right now, I need to see if it will stop once fully grown or not. Okay, easing off... and it looks good."

"There's no malignant growth." Martin announces. "The bone is strong, and all nerves and blood vessels are formed properly. Aside from the baby-like quality of the skin, I'd say he never lost a finger."

"One more to go, but let's see how he feels and get a little more calcium into him first. Wake!" He snaps to in just a second and whips his head around the unfamiliar room, until he spots me. Then, almost as if afraid to, he looks down at his hand.

"..." He chokes up when the finger moves at his command.

While he's getting himself under control, I take some lemon juice and dump in some calcium carbonate I pulled from stone the other day.

"Do, I even want to ask?" Melanie speaks up from the doorway when she sees me drawing calcium citrate back out. She and pretty much everyone in the building has gathered to watch.

"Heh." I let out a soft laugh. "My little sister learned the hard way not to eat too much lime when she mistook a box of flavored antacids for candy." Elise laughs at my words; she's obviously met someone who did the same thing. "Calcium citrate doesn't carry that risk, but still gives the bones what they need."

"Can... can I please stay awake this time?" The soldier asks with a gulp.

"It's going to hurt." I warn, but hand him another smoothie, this time with a spoonful of calcium in it. "Try not to scream." I use the leftover healing sap to focus the cleanse spell, trying to get this part over with as soon as possible.

To give the man credit, he didn't scream as his flesh was being dissolved by magic. He made a lot of noise, but he did not scream.

"Well, that was a fucking stupid idea." He pants out after a fresh layer of skin covers over the wound site. "Couldn't you have just used a knife or something? I think it would have hurt less."

"I warned you." I reply with a shake of my head. "And, this way removes the least amount of tissue, meaning you have less to re-grow after. Now, hush." He squirms in discomfort as the new finger grows, but endures it better than the skinning.

"How long is this going to take?" He asks while staring at the tiny nub.

"I estimate a good hour without the healing sap before it's done." I answer more for the healers than him. "And, likely over a day if you can't stack the growth spells, over a week without any boost at all. But, starting the growth is the hard part, once it's up you can just loop it like I just did to keep it going. Elise, do you want to try first?"

"Someone has to." She nods. "You, Sleep!" She knocks out one of the volunteers. "Sorrel's not the only one who knows that spell." She and Martin laugh at Jana's expression.

***