“Stop!” someone yelled at him as he decided to make a run for it.

He’d watched Joram take a lightning bolt to the leg before passing out a few seconds later. He didn’t know who was casting those [Fireball]s, but he was certainly glad for it, as they’d likely saved Joram’s life.

So, he ran. Once he got there, he nearly choked on the smell of burn flesh, then nearly retched when he saw just how bad Joram’s leg was burnt.

That shaman has to be at least Rank C, he thought as he grabbed Joram’s wrist, wondering at the odd sensation, and pulled him over his shoulders.

“Oof, what’s this guy made of?” he grumbled as he hurried back to the gate as fast as he could under the weight of at least sixteen stone’s worth of crazy human.

He didn’t miss the sound of an arrow whizzing past his head, but certainly hoped that they didn’t get hit.

Luckily, the goblins were paying more attention to the people shooting arrows at them than him, so he made it back to the gates, then practically fell over once inside.

Careth paused long enough in chewing him out to help him with Joram, then gave off as he called for a stretcher and a [Healer]. Reldan was grateful that Careth was calling for help, because just that short run had nearly wiped him out.

The sounds of battle lasted for a few more minutes before the gates were ordered to be opened again so that a group of hunters could go out and take care of the rest of the goblins that had scattered. During that time, Reldan had helped Joram onto a stretcher, then followed them to the clinic on this side of the village.

He was anxious about Joram’s chances of surviving such a blast. His face was white as a bone left in the sun and he could barely see his chest moving.

“Just, what happened out there?” he mused, trying to distract himself.

“Goblin dungeon.”

The voice nearly caused him to piss himself before he realized that it was the Chief.

“Probably getting to the critical point where we’ll be seeing more [Shaman]s than we’d like,” she said, then continued, sounding thoughtful. “But why is the dungeon growing so fast?”

Reldan could only shake his head as he watched Melois tend to Joram’s charred leg. Getting a better look at it, it was worse than he’d thought. He could see bone through the side of Joram’s thigh. Not only that, but he wasn’t sure how his lower leg had managed to stay attached.

It was weird to look at, because above the scorching, his pantleg looked fine. Likewise, below mid-shin. His shoe even looked fine, if odd-looking. But between those two points, everything was a charred mess that reminded him of new hunters cooking their kill out in the forest for the first time.

Which caused his stomach to churn enough that he needed to look away again.

“Step outside and get a breath of fresh air,” the Chief ordered, giving him a light push to get him going.

He didn’t argue.

* * *

Celys stared down at Joram and wondered if they could save his leg.

She’d seen wounds like this in the past and none of them had turned out well. And, given her limited healing capabilities, she was fairly sure that she couldn’t save his leg.

Nor could any of the [Healer]s in Kirkwall, as that kind of wound needed something more potent, like [Regenerate], or something close to it.

Melois turned to her, eyebrow raised in silent question after having cast another healing spell.

Given the number healing of spells already used, and what little they’d done for his leg, she shook her head then looked to where the bone saw hung from the wall. She could wait until Joram awoke to ask him what he wanted to do, but without knowing how long that would take, she was hesitant to go that route. For if she waited too long, then rot would set into the wound, causing much worse damage to him. Possibly threatening his life.

But would he forgive them for taking his leg?

She didn’t know, but she’d have to live with it.

“Do what you need to do to save his life,” she finally said, watching his very slow, and very shallow, breathing.

Melois nodded, then ushered her to the side so that she could pull a standing screen over to block anyone’s view of what was about to happen.

* * *

Joram woke, wondering where he was as he took in the wooden ceiling. He felt like trash that had been run over by the garbage truck.

He took stock of how he felt. Pretty much everything ached, though his right leg felt like it was burning. Grimacing, he tried to reach down to give it a rub when he noticed two things. Well, three if he counted Avi standing by his bed.

The first was that someone was slumped over and sleeping on his bed. On the left side. The second was that his thigh was wrapped up in bandages. Which reminded him of his encounter with the damn goblins. Then getting hit by… a lightning bolt, if he could trust his memory.

‘Yes, it was a lightning bolt,’ Avi confirmed from his side. ‘A very powerful one, might I add,’ she finished, then looked at his right leg.

His eyes followed hers, then stopped. Confused, he wiggled his toes and found that the sheets on the left moved, but not the ones on the right. If anything, it just made the burning in his right leg worse. Concerned, he reached down and pulled the sheet aside and gasped.

Where his leg should have been was instead a heavily bandaged stump, leaving him only a bit of leg just below his hip to look at.

“What?” he asked, knowing what he was seeing, but not believing it.

‘None of the healers in this village are strong enough to regenerate such damage,’ Avi said, sounding oddly… compassionate. ‘For fear of gangrene setting in, they chose to amputate your leg instead of risking your death.’

He nodded at that, both understanding their reasoning and numb to everything that surrounded it. Their decision. His leg.

“Did they save my shoe?” he asked, clinging to the first thing he could.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, shaking her head slightly. ‘You should rest. Close your eyes and go through the meditation exercises Altaea left for you. They’ll help.’

Nodding, Joram closed his eyes once more, preferring that over the sight of his missing leg, and soon fell into deep [Meditation], calling upon his new Skill to help keep him calm.

* * *

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Myra woke briefly, thinking that she’d heard Joram speak, but found that he was still asleep.

“A dream,” she murmured, shaking her head, then noticing the displaced sheet.

Confused, she got up and reached over to cover him back up again, careful to not disturb his leg, but also careful to not look at what else had been uncovered.

Once she sat down again, she repositioned in her chair to get more comfortable. She’d been there since Reldan had shared what had happened, hoping to be there to help Joram through what was most likely going to be the most trying time of his life.

But it seemed as though she’d grown too tired and had fallen asleep. So, she got up again and stretched, working out the kinks and knots that had formed from her terrible sleeping position. She also rubbed at her bum and slower back, as they weren’t happy with the hard surface of the chair that she’d pulled over.

So, she paced as she thought, working blood back into her complaining muscles.

Considering how strong and fit Joram was, she felt that he would take the news of losing a leg especially hard. So, what could she do about it?

Not too much, she had to admit. But, given how brilliant he was, she thought that maybe she could steer his interests towards more academic pursuits. Maybe he could be a teacher in the village. Or perhaps, if his reading and writing skills grew sufficiently, he could become a scribe. They didn’t need both legs to work.

But maybe he would enjoy more hands-on activities? He was, after all, an amazing cook. She idly wondered if he’d gotten the [Cooking] Skill yet. Could that be why his dishes all tasted so good? Perhaps he could give cooking lessons? Or maybe open a small restaurant?

Well, given that Kirkwall only had just over two thousand people in it, restaurants were few and far between. Never mind that they weren’t terribly profitable. Well, maybe his would be? She would certainly frequent a restaurant where he either cooked or oversaw the cooking.

But would he enjoy it? She’d seen just how… ferocious he could be when he’d summoned that blue sword of his. Would he truly be all right if he could only do things from the sidelines?

Ultimately, she didn’t know enough about Joram to even make half-way accurate assumptions as to what he’d want, or do. So, what could she actually do for him?

She could be there for him. Listen to his worries. Help distract him….

Myra’s face turned bright scarlet as she tried to banish that last thought, suddenly very glad that it was dark in the room. She quickly turned to peek at Joram, but found that he was still asleep; much to her great relief.

Then it dawned on her.

She really like Joram.

She really didn’t know why she liked him. If anything, she should dislike him for giving her the red sauce of death. But he’d treated her… like a person. A bit like… a child. A spoiled child, she admitted a moment later. But then he’d gone back to treating her like a person… after she’d stopped acting like a child.

Had that been it? No. Maybe?

She’d been used to being treated with… delicacy over the years because of her temper and stubborn streak. Upon further reflection, she supposed that she’d unconsciously grown to dislike people who’d treated her like that. Or had treated her as a prize, if she thought about the young men her age.

But Joram? Sure, he’d stared at her ears, and tails when they’d appeared. But had stopped when she’d pointed out how rude it was. He hadn’t… had that look that most other young men got when around her. Like they could win her if they tried hard enough, or something stupid like that.

Thus, lost in thought, Myra paced back and forth for the rest of the night before finally taking a seat beside Joram again, then promptly fell asleep while leaning on his bed once more.

* * *

Joram came out of his meditation while Myra was pacing, but didn’t want to disturb her obviously deep thoughts. Well, nor did he really want to talk to anyone else just yet, as he was still in a bit of a funk.

So, he kept his eyes closed and chose to instead review the principles Psychometabolism Discipline, or Egoists, as they were more often called.

Given how broad the topic was when considering just how many races and species there were, he was very glad that Altaea had created her own section regarding High Elans. So, that was where he focussed most of his attention.

It was fascinating stuff, going into such detail that your typical first-year university biology courses would be considered elementary in comparison. And that was the introductory stuff.

But he had nothing but time at the moment, even if he really wanted to get back to his apartment/house to see what kind of damage those damn hobs had done to his place.

Then, once Myra passed out beside him, he was about to get up and get going when another woman showed up. He quickly closed his eyes again, hoping that she hadn’t noticed because she’d been focussed on Myra when she’d come into the room.

Anyways, he made sure to keep his breathing regular. Nurse types, and that’s what the woman had looked like, tended to be perceptive when it came to their patients, so he tried to appear as though he was still asleep.

It got especially hard when he felt the sheet being pulled away from his right leg, causing a bit of a draft down below. Which made him realize that aside from the bandages on his leg, he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing under the sheet.

The difficulty increased once again when he felt her checking the dressing on his… stump. It caused it to… itch and burn enough that he slipped into meditation so that he could quiet those firing nerves.

“You know,” the woman said, almost causing him to twitch in surprise. “[Meditation] is doesn’t present at all like regular sleep,” she said, poking him in the hip, causing him to actually twitch.

Annoyed, he opened his eyes to regard the woman. He supposed that she would be closer to forty or so, probably younger than he was… before becoming a High Elan, that is. He wasn’t sure what foxkin considered attractive, but he thought she was rather pretty in that bookish, kindly, short of way.

“I’m trying to get used to being about twenty percent lighter,” he said, not knowing the Common word for ‘percent’ yet.

She blinked at him, then back at his stump before looking at him with a bit of a puzzled look.

“What does that mean?” she asked, looking genuinely curious.

“It means two parts in ten,” he said, reducing it to a fraction instead.

“Oh, that makes more sense,” she said, nodding to herself before getting back on topic. “So, how do you feel? Any pain? Do you still feel your leg?”

He didn’t know if bedside manners were a thing here but if they were, she’d have gotten failing marks.

“It itches, but is otherwise… fine,” he replied, rethinking the ‘kindly’ portion of his earlier assessment of her.

“Well, the itching is normal,” she said, dismissing that bit. “But it is also normal for people to continue feeling as though their limb was still there. It takes time to get used to these things,” she said, for all the world sounding like she was an expert in the field. Well, given how easy he’d lost his leg, perhaps she was an expert in the field.

“Can’t you be a bit nicer about it?” Myra suddenly demanded from his side, startling both him and the nurse-lady.

“Myra,” she said, sounding disapproving. “There’s no use in honey-coating it. It has happened, and the best thing for everyone involved is to accept it and move on. Life doesn’t wait for lumps on the road, after all,” she said, sounding like she was repeating an old proverb or something at the end there.

He did agree though. But at the same time, he also agreed with Myra. Bedside manners were a thing for a reason. Heck, if he’d been any more prickly, he might have done something rash, like [Ego Whip]’ing her into a vegetative state.

For her part, Myra looked like she wanted to chew the nurse-lady out, but astonishingly held back.

“Then if you’re done, could we have a moment alone, please,” she asked sweetly, sending a shiver down his spine.

“Don’t keep him awake too long,” she replied sternly. “He’s still recovering from his injury,” she finished before pinning him with a Look as well before leaving the room.

What the hell was that? He wondered before curiously looking over at Myra, wondering what was on her mind.

It took her a few minutes to gather her thoughts, or perhaps her courage, before she finally spoke.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said, ears drooping as her head bowed. “If we’d taken your report of goblins more seriously, especially after the attack we all went through, then maybe you wouldn’t…” she trailed off, sounding quite miserable.

He thought about it for a bit, though. Sure, if they’d sent out a small army, then maybe they could have done something about it without too many casualties, or deaths. But given the number of goblins that had come, he was sure that any small group they’d have sent would have been wiped out.

Heck, if there hadn’t been those two shamans to deal with, he was sure that he could have held out on his own. But, casters were a game changer when it came to fighting. Heck, he’d have to get back into the mindset of being a caster himself if he wanted to survive here. As he’d learned, being a target, a readily visible target, would just lead to an early grave.

“Hmmm, I don’t think that you would have had the numbers to make a difference,” he said, shaking his head a bit.

“But there were only a couple dozen of them chasing you,” she said, looking confused.

“Yeah, when I finally got here,” he grunted. “I’m pretty sure that I managed to kill more than half of them on the way here,” he said, fixing her with a stern look.

Her jaw dropped as she stared at him, dumbfounded.

“No, way,” she managed to get out after working her mouth for a few seconds.

“Way,” he said, suppressing a grin as he thought about Wayne. “A running battle kept me alive. If I’d have stayed, I would have died. If they’d shown up in those same numbers the last time, we could have all died,” he said, trying to impress upon her just how serious it had been. “All told, I’m still lucky,” he finished, though he didn’t feel particularly lucky right then, missing his leg and all.

He thought he’d gotten through to her, and perhaps he had. But not in the way that he’d intended, for her face crumpled up before she began wailing, tears spilling down her face.

Well, crap.