“What happened? Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, instinctively searching around us to check for a threat. Seeing none, I turn back to him questioningly.
You...I felt a drain upon me from through our connection. I receive his message with dismay.
“Did it...hurt?” He doesn’t answer immediately, and when he does, it’s full of uncertainty.
Yes…? But not like a wound. More like a loss. I understand. Kind of. What I took must have literally been drawn from River. Maybe from his own mana pool, if he has one? I hesitate. The majority of me is screaming to just do it, rip whatever I can from River – I’m dying.
Even now, the small amount of health I managed to regain is being stripped from me bit by bit. I’m probably losing a health point every four seconds – better than it was before, but still unmanageable. I need to at least outpace the effects of the poison until they wear off but my mana regeneration takes about a minute and a half to regenerate enough for another Lay-on-hands. Even if I meditate, that only increases the amount of mana I regenerate by one unit per minute or so – not enough to help me. Ideally, I could find a way of clearing the poison from my system, but to do that I’m going to need even more mana.
But if it means ripping something away from someone else? Something that maybe they need? How can I ask that of River?
In the end, I don’t have to. Even while I’ve been sitting there silently, my thoughts racing to find another option despite feeling the pressure of my impending end, River has clearly been going through his own thought process.
Do it, he says, his tone firm. I blink, a little taken aback. Is he really saying what I think he is? He must feel my question through the Bond as he sends a wave of affirmation. Take what you need to live and overcome this poison. Despite the time pressure, I want to make sure he’s certain.
“Are you sure? Even though it hurts you? What if it damages you permanently?”
I have faith that you will hold to your word to save my village, even if I am rendered useless to you by this service. It’s more of a desperate hope than a certainty, but I nod in acknowledgment, feeling metaphorical chains bind me in return. For what he’s done and is prepared to do, I will do my best to help his village, even if it means Dominating them one by one to make sure they leave the area and then setting them free. For what River’s offering me now, I’ll go against my own principles if it’s the only option left to me. I don’t send the detail of my thoughts to him, but he feels my commitment. Then do it.
My health is back down to a sliver so I don’t hesitate for a second longer. Slipping into the trance, the state easier and easier to achieve as I practise it, I touch the Bond I have with River. It takes a few increasingly desperate attempts to copy what I did before, but I succeed eventually, even as I once more sense the connections around me withering away.
This time when River hisses and I feel pain come at me across the link, I don’t stop. Guilt suffusing me, I continue nonetheless. Drawing steadily, I drop out of the trance to quickly cast a Lay-on-hands as I sense that I’m right on the wire again. With a bit more leeway, I slip back into the trance and start drawing again, only taking two attempts to succeed this time. River hisses in pain again, and I stop when the flow seems to become harder to draw. Opening my eyes, I see that he looks worn out and haggard. His skin has lost colour, and almost sags on his frame, and his posture is slumped. Guilt claws at me again, but I can’t focus on that right now. If I waste the precious mana he’s given me by wallowing in guilt, I’m only compounding my selfishness.
Instead, I note that I’ve regained about half my mana pool and immediately channel that into my body. Following the mana with my mind, I search out the poison in my system. I soon discover that it’s truly a nasty one: my brain, my liver, my heart, my lungs, my kidneys...most of my major organs are under attack. With my school-level ideas of anatomy and the knowledge I gained from the Lay-on-hands stone, I figure that the best thing to do would be to void the poison from my body. With the choice of opening a vein or pushing it through my kidneys, I decide to do the latter: I figure losing more blood is not a good idea even if it gets rid of the poison more quickly.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Working with haste, aware that the mana I have is limited and sensing that I won’t be able to draw any more from River right now, I use my magic to push the poison around. Fortunately, it doesn’t resist in any sort of way, so the main job is making sure I don’t miss any bits – I don’t know if it’s something that could self-replicate and don’t want to risk it. The speed is a little limited to my pulse rate, but I keep the poison clumped up and direct it through the intricate network of my blood vessels until I get it to my kidneys and through.
When it lands in my bladder, I pull back until I’m settled into my body, rather than feeling like a speck of light travelling through it. Just in time – my mana bar is back down to the merest sliver, probably only a couple of units away from running out. I fumble with my trousers, unbuttoning the fly and reaching inside to free myself. Wishing I was strong enough to at least crawl away from where I’m resting, instead I just lean onto my side and try to aim my stream so that it’s going downhill away from me. It’s dark yellow and stinks, more than just ammonia polluting the air. With a sudden thought, I cover my nose with my off-hand, hoping that the poison isn’t effective when air-borne as well.
After rearranging myself and doing up my fly again – since this is no area in which I’d like to expose such a precious part of my anatomy – I lean back to lie down. I dearly hope that nothing attacks us now as we’d be sitting ducks. Except for, ironically, the only bird of the group: she could just fly off. It’s pretty crazy that I’m in a worse state after fighting some table-sized ambushing predator than after fighting a horse-sized fire-breathing salamander. Then again, one of my other near misses was also from a venomous trap-making spider. Being poisoned is really something I need to be careful about, clearly. Though the idea I’ve had before comes back to me: if I could turn that power against my enemies…
I take a couple of moments to verify that indeed my health is no longer ticking down. It’s not, but it’s not above ten percent full either – I spent all the healing mana in clearing out the poison and only the barest minimum on repairing the damage it left behind. I open my eyes to look over weakly at River.
“How are you feeling?” He wordlessly sends a similar sense of weakness over to me, though his is more...drained. Actually, it’s very familiar – the sensations similar to the ones I get when my stamina or mana are exhausted. I resolve to check him over with healing magic when I can, but I don’t get the sense that he’s in danger. Right, that makes it clear what I need to do next then. “Can you keep an eye out?” I ask my Bound. Not that we could do a huge amount, but forewarned is forearmed, or so they say. He agrees, sending a feeling of tiredness and discomfort but readiness to do what he can.
Then, on second thoughts, I send the same message to the bird, since she’s actually in decent condition. She agrees too, though demands some more meat in payment. Feeling like rolling my eyes, I point out the salamander corpse to her and tell her to help herself. She replies with a feeling of fullness: clearly, she meant later, not now. Sighing with frustration, I agree to feed her later and she sends me back a feeling of satisfaction. If everything’s going to be a negotiation with her, that’s going to get annoying fast.
Still, with that all sorted, I slip back into my meditative trance. It’s interesting, but since my frantic attempts to draw mana along the Bond from River, I notice that my connection with him is stronger, more obvious in this world where connections are what define my environment, far more than any physical nature. After noting that, though, I relax my focus, allowing my mind to wander along the different links rather than trying to focus on any one in particular. My ability to affect the Bonds is something I’m going to want to experiment with, but not here and not now.
By the time I come out of the trance, my mana is almost full, meaning that probably a little more than twenty minutes has passed. It’s dark but the rising moon makes it possible to see outlines of things. My health has increased a little, but my regeneration rate for that is so slow in comparison to my mana that the fact that it’s climbed by a noticeable chunk means a fair bit of time has passed. I cast a Lay-on-hands on myself, repairing the damage the poison did. That’s a lot easier to do without the poison working against me faster than I can heal myself and I still have half my mana pool when my health has climbed to almost its maximum.
Feeling significantly better, I push myself to my feet and go to check on River. I’m still tired, the kind of healing I’ve just been doing taking mental energy more than physical stamina, but my body feels pretty much back to normal otherwise. Even as I walk, I pull out a chunk of grilled meat. My mouth is dry and I’d love a drink, but nothing would convince me to go back into that forest to search for water at this stage.
River twists his head to look at me as I approach.
“How are you feeling now?” I ask him.
Still drained, though it is less all-encompassing, he replies. I crouch to put my hand on his shoulder and send healing magic into him. As I continue pouring mana into the spell, I start frowning. There’s...something there, but it doesn’t appear to be anything I can affect with my healing magic. Even when I try to direct my magic to what I half-sense is there, it just slips around or through whatever the thing is, not affecting it in the slightest. All I can do is heal a few small things here or there and then withdraw.
“I think it’s just something you’ll have to recover from in time,” I say to him finally, trying to speak with a confidence I don’t feel. At least, I hope that he’ll recover from it in time, because if not…
Wanting to move rather than sit down and continue meditating, I move over to the salamander corpse and start skinning in large sections, filling my Inventory with the large pieces of hide. After a while, River joins me silently, butchering the meat that I’ve revealed to the air. I glance at him surreptitiously. He is looking better, fortunately. His scales have regained some of their colour, and his skin isn’t looking quite so loose on his frame. He’s still not moving with the energy I’ve seen from him so far, but hopefully that will return too.
After a while, the nagging sense of messages waiting gets on my nerves. Since I’ve already got enough hide to cover me head to toe four times over, I bow out of dealing with the corpse, leaving it to River as I sit down and open up my message panel.