We should broach the subject, I suppose, she allows, yawning widely. Inside her cavernous mouth, I notice something odd. It's a flash of white in deeper red, but not in a place which should house one of her teeth.
“Have you got something trapped in your mouth?” I ask curiously.
It is nothing. A bone got stuck in the wrong place, she dismisses. It will work its way out in time.
“Doesn’t it hurt, though?” I ask, a little concerned. “And won’t it become infected?” If this was Earth, I’d be more worried about that, but this is a world of fantasy healing – perhaps Kalanthia’s body is strong enough not to be taken down by a mere mouth infection.
Kalanthia gives her version of a shrug.
It has happened before. It was unpleasant, but I survived it.
I fix her with an exasperated look.
“Kalanthia, you could just ask me for help. Healer here, you remember?”
She eyes me with an intent gaze, though I sense that there’s a little uncertainty behind it.
Your healing is not dependent on the Bond between you and your subject?
I hesitate. Honestly, she has a little bit of a point there.
“It helps, sure – something about the Bond allows my magic to work the way I want it to, where without the Bond the body I’m trying to help often resists me. With you being significantly more powerful than me, it’s true that I’m not sure how much actual healing I could do without a Bond between us.” I quickly continue before she accuses me of angling for Bond with her or something. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. And even if I can’t do any proper healing, I could at least pull out the bone that’s stuck in there and put healing salve on the injury to help get rid of any infection.”
Testing has proved that I can put most potions and healing-infused salves in my Inventory without them losing effectiveness. I still haven’t worked out the pattern among those which did lose their efficacy – I’ll need more tests to try to work that out. I also tested a number of the potions the samurans use to see which work on me. My fears that not all of them would have turned out to be true, though it’s not as bad as it could have been. Most do still work without bad side effects which means that I have a good ten each now of healing, stamina-boosting, and magic-replenishing potions for emergencies.
Since I don’t know if Kalanthia would react any better than I do to the potions, I wouldn’t give her one. The salves, however, have proven to react the same to me as to the physiology of the samurans, so I suspect that they would work well enough on world-hopping nunda too.
If she agrees, of course.
Kalanthia eyes me for a long moment, her gaze searching and not entirely friendly.
I will not chain myself to you in any way, she says firmly. I suspect her will at the moment is as immovable as the stone that she controls.
“That’s fine,” I put up my hands in an automatic gesture of surrender. “I’m not asking you to. It will probably limit how much I can help you, unless you can actively control your body’s resistance to my magic, but I will do what I can.”
You don’t have to help me at all, she points out, her tone still very guarded. Given the little I know of her history, I’m not entirely surprised.
“I want to help you,” I say honestly, trying to relax my own mind and project my feelings of sincerity at her. “You’re my friend, and I don’t like knowing that you’re in pain when I can do something about it.”
Ever since I became able to heal, I’ve found that I’ve gained more and more appreciation for the Skill. I’ve come within a hair’s breadth of losing those I care about several times, but Lay-on-hands, and then later, Flesh-Shaping has meant that I’ve actually lost very few of my Bound. My heart – and the place where the Bonds were – still aches at the deaths which occurred in the fight with Raven, but I’m guiltily grateful that my closest companions were not among them.
Fine, Kalanthia responds, jogging me out of my renewed sense of grief. You may try to help me, she permits.
I might be offended at how she makes it sound like a concession to me rather than help for her, but I sense the poorly-hidden fear behind her words. I don’t know everything about Kalanthia’s history, but I know she’s had a bad experience with Tamers. Heck, I wonder whether she might even have been Tamed in some way and broken free, or perhaps she got away before the Bond was instituted. Either way, allowing me in so close has got to be nerve-wracking even for her.
“Alright,” I say gently instead. “Please open your mouth as wide as you can.” Who knew I’d retrain as a dentist at this stage in my career? I ask myself with amusement.
The massive nunda hesitates for a moment more, then opens her cavernous mouth almost as widely as she did earlier when she yawned. I see the problem spot – it’s indeed a bone which has been driven right into her gum at the back. It must be pretty painful, despite her stoicism.
To reach it, I have to lean far into her mouth, maybe even half-climb inside. Shifting as close to the area as possible, I lean against her teeth.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“I’m going to lean into your mouth now,” I warn her. “I will try to minimise the pain as I deal with the injury, but make sure you don’t bite down, OK?”
I’m prepared, Kalanthia replies, her mental tone falling slightly short of an attempt at emotionless – she’s nervous. More than me, I think, despite the situation.
It should make me feel scared to literally lean into a massive predator’s mouth which stinks of meat and a hint of rot. She needs to put far more effort into not biting me than she would into chopping me in half. But there are two reasons I’m only slightly nervous.
One, I genuinely don’t fear that Kalanthia wants to kill me. She’s had ample opportunity to do so – she doesn’t need me literally putting myself in her mouth to be able to do so. Two, even if she did separate me from my legs, I’m almost certain that I would be able to regenerate them with Flesh-Shaping. I don’t know how well I’d fare if my heart, lungs, or brain were destroyed, but I’m sure I’d be able to regenerate my limbs with enough mana. It would be a bit of a pain, though – literally.
Focussing on the injury and doing my best to ignore the stench, I gently place my hand on her tongue for support. It twitches beneath my touch but then stills again. I wordlessly ask Aingeal to come forward and light things up a bit for me – dentists and surgeons would love having their own fire elementals, I’m sure.
The bone is embedded deeply in the gum. I gently touch the flesh around it and feel Kalanthia flinch in pain. The gum beneath my fingers is hot and already becoming infected – apparently it is something that even Tier three beasts have to deal with. Or whatever Kalanthia’s rank is.
“OK, I’m going to try to numb the area a bit with my magic,” I warn Kalanthia. “Try to let my magic work, please, or I won’t be able to affect it.” She makes a grumbling rumble which sounds surprisingly like Lathani’s plaintive yowls, only much deeper and stronger.
Sending my Flesh-magic into the local area, I focus on temporarily deadening the nerve endings. There is a significant amount of resistance to my efforts, but not, I suspect, as much as if I was trying to do this without Kalanthia’s permission and cooperation. It’s fortunate that I’m not trying to do any more than I am, though – I really suspect my abilities to actually do any healing are going to be significantly limited. But if I can get the bone out, clear out the infected tissue, and then slather salve on, it should help Kalanthia’s body heal the rest of it by itself.
The slight relaxation of Kalanthia’s tongue and jaw muscles indicates to me that I’m having an effect here. I still check with her.
“Is that better? Has the pain gone?”
It has, thank you Markus Wolfe. Her tone sounds so relieved I find it hard to understand how she could operate normally with such a painful wound in her mouth. But perhaps it’s just practice and self-discipline.
“OK, I’m going to pull the bone out now.”
The problem is that the bone is so deeply embedded into the gum that there’s very little sticking out for me to grab. Then I feel like slapping myself as I realise that I’m once again forgetting about magic.
Touching the top of the bone, I focus on sending my mana into it, saturating it. My attempt takes time, but the investment is worth it: I not only manage to saturate the bone itself, but also the bone fragments which have splintered off into the gum. Pulling the bulk of the bone out would have just left the splinters to fester. By using mana, I’m able to meld the splinters with the bone they came from and make sure that I pull everything out at once.
Removing the bone is as simple as lengthening it at the same time as narrowing it. A handle forms and I pull the long piece of bone free like I’m drawing a sword from a sheath. I wrinkle my nose at the rotting smell coming from the wound and fluids on the piece of bone itself.
Looking at the offending piece of bone, I see that even before my changes, it had to have been at least as long as my forearm when it went in. A nasty injury even for her.
“I’ve got the bone out now,” I update Kalanthia. “I’m going to try to remove the infected tissue from the wound. Can you feel any pain?” I check while dropping the bone out of her mouth.
No, she answers swiftly.
Nodding in satisfaction, I once more dive into the wound with my magic. Removing the infected tissue is actually easier than deadening her nerve endings was. Though I can’t know if my guess is correct, I would say that the body knows that the infection isn’t part of it, or shouldn’t be part of it, and so has started to reject the areas affected. Either way, it’s easy enough for me to sweep the area clear, dumping the stinky fragments of meat out of Kalanthia’s mouth with a grimace.
Finally, I pull an all-purpose healing salve out of my Inventory and start spreading it over the area. I don’t let it go into the hole itself – I’m too concerned that the bacteria on my hands might introduce a new infection, and I can’t control the healing salve with magic. But I spread it over the gum and around the hole. Kalanthia’s magic will have to do the rest.
“I’m going to reactivate your nerve endings,” I warn Kalanthia. “It will hurt, I’m sure, so don’t bite down in surprise, OK?”
I will not, she promises. Nonetheless, as I reverse the effects of my magic, she jerks suddenly. Fortunately, she has enough self–control not to actually bite me.
I would have done this from a distance except that I’m having a hard enough job controlling it even from this close. It’s not as simple as just removing the effects of my magic – I actually have to put as much effort into reactivating her nerves as I did into deactivating them. Maybe even more, particularly as her body starts resisting the pain I’m causing her.
But finally I’m done and I withdraw from her mouth with gratitude – even if I was fairly confident of my safety, it was not a comfortable position. Nor a particularly fragrant one.
“How are you feeling?” I check with her, concerned by the pained look in her eyes. “I can deaden the nerves again, if you want, while it heals a bit more. I didn’t want to because I’m worried that the nerves might heal incorrectly by themselves, but-”
No, Markus Wolfe, she interrupts me. The pain is significantly better than it was. No longer does my jaw feel wrong, but only that it needs time to heal. I am…I am simply grateful for your efforts.
And now I understand the look in her eyes. It’s not pain, it’s painful gratitude. It’s the feeling when someone helped in a way that was completely unexpected, when they noticed something you didn’t want revealed, but that you’re grateful they saw nonetheless.
“It’s fine,” I say to her a little briskly. I know how raw I felt the few times it happened to me. Gentleness wasn’t what I wanted then. I suspect it might not be what Kalanthia wants now. “I can’t let Lathani’s mother stay in unnecessary pain. Nor my friend,” I tell her, attempting a tone that brooks no defiance. “Now, we were talking about the samurans.”
She looks at me in complete exasperation and lets out a disbelieving huff.
Had I not been certain that there was no way you could have known of my injury before this morning, I would have suspected you of setting up this scenario.
“What do you mean?” I ask, completely confused.