“There’s a caravan approaching,” I announced around noon the next day. The road Vaozey and I were walking down had briefly opened up into a clearing when we entered a valley in the early morning, which allowed me to see a significant distance ahead of us for the first time in days. By my best estimate, the approaching caravan was about two kilometers away at maximum. The terrain wasn’t perfectly flat, so judging the exact apparent size of their single wagon was hard.
“What do we do?” Vaozey asked. From how her hand was instinctively going for her weapon I knew what she was thinking, but just like with our own caravan I estimated that attacking them was probably a bad idea.
“They definitely haven’t seen us if I can barely see them,” I said. “We could just wait on the side of the road, but it would take about an hour for them to pass us by far enough that we could emerge and not be spotted. They only have-” I squinted at the figures in the distance, “-four guards and one driver it looks like, so if they’re hostile we could likely win.”
“I’d rather not fight them if they’re just normal people,” Vaozey said, surprising me. “You still have your money?” I had been carrying around the wallet of cash that Aavspeyjh gave to me since leaving Kahvahrniydah, and by some miracle, I hadn’t managed to lose it in the bandit incident.
“Yes,” I replied. “You want to buy food?”
“That, and ask how far we are from the city,” Vaozey nodded.
“They could be Rehvites,” I reminded her. “You said that Towrkah is probably controlled by them.”
“If they are, we kill them,” she said simply. “I assume you agree with me this time?”
“If they make a move,” I replied. “Put your face covering on.” Vaozey blinked at me, then reached up to her face with her left hand.
“Right,” she muttered, removing the scarf and plate from their position on her hip. “I almost forgot.”
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“Hello travelers!” the driver called out to us once we were within talking range. “My, you two certainly are brave, walking along without any protection in these woods.” His words and attitude made me instantly suspicious of him, and his guards looked to have come to the same conclusion about how to treat Vaozey and me.
“We got ambushed by bandits and lost our group,” I lied. “Do you have any food for sale? We have money, and after a few days of eating squirrels we’re a bit hungry.” My request seemed to relax the driver’s guards a little bit, and he slowed his wagon to a stop.
“We can spare a ration or two,” the driver said, smiling back at me. He looked to be reasonably wealthy, wearing high-quality fabric clothing with a finely-groomed hairstyle.
“How far are we from Towrkah, if you don’t mind?” Vaozey asked, trying to raise the pitch of her voice out of its normal croak.
“Two days walk at most,” the driver replied. “Would you like rations for two days then?”
“If you have them,” I replied. “How much?”
“Let’s call it forty ngoywngeyt,” he replied, his smile not faltering for even a moment as he uttered a truly ludicrous price for his goods. The second of silence that followed was tense, but when I got the requested amount of money from my wallet everyone relaxed a bit, except for Vaozey.
“High-quality rations?” I asked.
“Salted and dried meat, yes,” the driver agreed. “Tkahlmoyl, if you would, please grab the goods for our customer to examine.” A few moments later, one of the guards returned with four tightly-wrapped packages. I held my hand out and gestured for one of them, then tried to weigh it. About a kilogram, I measured, Overpriced as it is, this will save us some time, certainly. Unwrapping the package, I could see it was filled with thin strips of deer meat.
“Acceptable?” the guard asked.
“Yes,” I replied, handing the coins to the driver. “Pricey, but certainly what was advertised.”
“Always happy to serve,” the driver grinned. “Be careful when you arrive, we’ve had problems with banditry recently. Just make sure you don’t look like you’re sneaking up on the gate if the sun isn’t out, understand?”
“Do we need a… password?” I asked.
“Whatever do you mean?” the driver asked back.
“Is there something we could tell the gate guards to prove to them that we mean no harm to the city?” I asked. “For example, there was a small interview when I entered Owsahlk.”
“Well, if you have proper documentation and identification, it would certainly speed the process along,” the driver replied. “You, unfortunately, most likely do not. Your… servant? Does she?”
“No,” Vaozey grunted. I hadn’t noticed because she was being quiet, but Vaozey looked to be expending a large amount of effort to keep herself calm, and a single bead of sweat rolled down her forehead.
“My condolences,” the driver apologized. “That being said, we are always looking for new members, so feel free to visit our temple once you arrive.”
“I may do that,” Vaozey replied, her voice calmer and her tone more polite than I had ever heard it before.
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“That seytoydh doymshahjh paamngaazmayjh npoyt,” Vaozey raged as we ate our rations after dusk. “These rations taste rotten.”
“They taste fine,” I replied. “I tried yours, you tried mine, the issue is your tongue, not the food.” I knew Vaozey was just expressing her displeasure with having to interact with Rehvites, probably, but her moodiness was annoying me. For the whole day after we broke off with the caravan, she did nothing but brood, occasionally kicking a rock or smashing branches with her mace. We managed to leave the clearing just before nightfall, which increased the frequency of the latter several times over.
“I’m going to kill them all,” Vaozey growled. “I’m going to get more of that explosive juice stuff and find their temple and-”
“You can do whatever you want,” I interrupted. “I’m not going to be doing any of that unless I can’t leave otherwise. In fact, had I known that ‘relief caravan’ was coming to Owsahlk before our last excursion, I never would have participated. Interesting how almost everyone in the slums knew about it, but you never mentioned it.”
“Oh seyt off,” Vaozey snarled. “I’m not your mother, it’s not my job to wipe your ass for you. You could have asked around and you would have found out about it, don’t blame me for not telling you.” Her attitude is so different from the last few days, I thought, it’s like she’s suddenly back to how she was when we first met, almost.
“I’m not blaming you for anything,” I replied. “The fault was mine, certainly, but you should know that I won’t be so easily pulled into a terroristic scheme like that one again.” Vaozey scowled, then looked down at the scarf and faceguard on the ground beside her. For a moment, her anger waned and was replaced with something else.
“I tried that trick with my hand last night while you were asleep, among other things,” Vaozey said. “Works just like the fingers, no issues.”
“It’s considerably more exhausting to do it with a hand,” I replied. “Worse still with a whole arm.”
“Felt the same to me,” Vaozey shrugged. “Maybe you’re just doing it wrong somehow.” A twinge of annoyance appeared in my chest, but I suppressed it.
“It’s entirely possible,” I shrugged. “It might be worth comparing techniques, but not tonight. We should rest, we’re almost at Towrkah. If we move quickly, we might make it by sundown tomorrow.”
“If you thought that, why did you buy two days of rations?” Vaozey asked.
“Better to be prepared,” I replied. “I’m going to finish this one quickly, then sleep. I’d advise you do the same.”
“Yeah,” Vaozey muttered.
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We both laid down not long after that, with Vaozey taking her usual spot some distance away from me, but I didn’t get to rest very long. I awoke to the sound of wheezing and grunting coming from somewhere to my left. Without giving away that I was awake, I reached down slowly for my sword, suspecting that an animal might be nearby. Cracking an eyelid, I could see that the fire was still burning, so it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two since I had closed my eyes. As I panned my eye in the direction of the noise, it seemed to become more human, then turn into words.
“…can’t get it…” Vaozey winced. Her body was curled in a twitching ball with her forehead, knees, and toes on the ground, arms wrapped tightly around her torso. I checked quickly just to be sure there wasn’t an animal, then sat up, examining her. “…stings like a…” she gargled, sounding like she was about to vomit.
“What’s happening?” I asked, getting to my feet and igniting an orb of light. Could that meat have been poisoned? I wondered for a moment, before spotting an object on the ground that made that possibility far less likely. My hand went to the magic booster vials that I was keeping under my gambeson in the small of my back. Instead of three, I only felt two, because the third one was empty and cracked, laying on the ground beside Vaozey. “What did you do!?” I demanded.
“Drank it…” she choked, wincing and curling even tighter. “I tried… magic on my… it worked on my palm so…” Vaozey began screaming in pain, unable to finish speaking. The sound didn’t stop until her lungs were empty, but she kept trying to scream after that for almost five seconds before gasping for breath.
“Are you suicidal?” I snapped once she was breathing again. “I told you! I warned you!”
“I’m sorry!” Vaozey screamed back. “Gods, I’m seytoydh sorry! Please help! I didn’t think… it would hurt this much!” Unable to keep balancing, she tipped over and fell onto her left side, shaking and shivering as she suppressed another scream. Tears ran out of her eyes, mucus from her nose, and saliva poured out of her lips between gritted teeth. Her left pupil was so dilated that its iris was invisible, while her right eye’s vessels had ruptured, coloring its sclera blood red.
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“You have an excess of magic fuel in your blood,” I said quickly. “You need to dump it now, as quickly as possible. The pain you’re experiencing is from the material turning into solid crystals and piercing your blood vessels. If you don’t use that power now, you’re going to die when one of them causes a bleed in the wrong area of your brain. You likely already have damage, judging by your eyes.”
“Can’t-” Vaozey winced.
“This is not a matter of can’t, you will do it or you will die,” I said. “You can use heat magic, and in this state, you might even be able to use force magic. Put your hand on the ground and burn it, now!” Vaozey took three quick breaths, then nodded, and her left hand shot out, smashing the dirt and kicking up some dust. She made a motion like she was trying to grab the dirt, then shook her head side to side rapidly.
“Can’t focus-” she wheezed.
“Hit the ground again,” I said. “You used force magic by accident, keep doing that.”
“No,” Vaozey responded. “Tell me… how to… fix the burns…”
“You can’t fix your scars like this, I told you,” I shot back. “The process for doing that requires the opposite of what you just did to yourself! The magic booster you drank would have been the last step, to reverse the depletion of your magic.”
“But it worked!” Vaozey yelled out, voice wavering with pain. “I made some of my palm better! I swear!”
“Then do whatever you did in that case, but for your whole body!” I commanded. “I don’t care what magic you use, but unless you’re looking to die in the next couple of minutes you need to start using it quickly.” Vaozey took a few more rapid breaths, then shut her eyes. What little white was left in her skin turned deep red as it flushed with blood, then she shook her head again.
“Hurts too much,” she hissed. “Worse than the fire. Can’t think. Too hard not to scream.” Of course, I sighed in frustration, grabbing Vaozey’s mace from where it had fallen off onto the ground.
“I’m going to break your bones to deplete your magic,” I said. “This is going to be extremely painful, but it’s the only way you’re not going to die from this.”
“No,” Vaozey gasped. “Face, do that.”
“It’s not going to work,” I protested. “You even told me that it wouldn’t work, the face heals too quickly. How do you think it’s going to respond in this state? It’ll be even worse.”
“Magic booster was… blood, right?” Vaozey croaked. “Heard at… mansion. You took… magic from someone… Made it into… I didn’t believe…”
“I’m breaking your legs now,” I informed her.
“No!” Vaozey shouted. “Take magic… my body… put it back… in the vial…”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “You need a-”
“Shut up and do it!” Vaozey screamed, her last work turning into yet another multi-second-long wail. At the end of her outburst, I watched her right eye begin to dilate, and her facial muscles go slack. “At least do that much…” she mumbled, and her body went limp.
“Fucking humans,” I swore in English. As I went to start breaking her bones with the mace to deplete her magic, my subconscious noticed something that made my skin crawl: Vaozey wasn’t breathing. Setting the mace down, I checked her mouth and nose, then listened at her chest, not hearing a heartbeat at all. Lethal aneurysm, I thought, stunned, That quickly? I would have thought that… A sense of calm washed over me as the rational part of my brain took over. There is at least one booster of magic fuel in her cores, I thought, If nothing else, I can recover that. Another piece of my brain didn’t like that thought much, but it was quieter than the others.
Getting Vaozey's breastplate off was difficult because of how limp she was, but removing the rest of her torso clothing was easy. Since I would have to split the sternum, I also took off the wrapping across her chest, exposing her breasts. They looked exactly the same as the rest of her, so I wasn’t sure why she bound them in the first place, outside of some strange adherence to cultural norms. Maybe it was to make the center of gravity of her torso more predictable, I considered, It also probably helped with armor fitting now that I think about it.
After laying her out on her back, I gently pierced Vaozey's chest with my blade, drew it down to her belly, then froze in shock as her skin knitted itself back together. Again, I checked her for signs of life, seeing nothing. Yet, somehow her body was still healing, meaning she was still alive. But how? I thought, pulling open one of her eyes, There’s no pupil response, no heartbeat, is she just healing through brain death? Can someone even do that? Before I could start trying to figure out the details, she began to convulse and choke.
As I held Vaozey down, my mind ran through a number of scenarios and picked out the one that had the best chance of working out favorably for me. Removing the cores will also remove the oversaturation, I thought, Either way, they’re coming out. Kneeling on her shoulders to hold her down, I cut open the skin just under her sternum, then shoved my left hand into her chest before it could reform, feeling around for her heart. The core is just around here, I thought, probing with my fingers until I felt the hard lump I was looking for on the surface of her now-fibrillating circulatory organ. Using my fingernails and some magic for leverage, I detached the piece of flesh and pulled it out, then put it into the vial. Rotating around so I had her belly below me, I repeated the same process with Vaozey’s stomach core, then went back to her chest.
Given the speed of regeneration and how much extra magic fuel she had, if she’s still healing she should have a heart core again, I thought, it doesn’t take very long for magic fuel to solidify or dissolve, so it should be full, or nearly so. I cut open her sternum again, slipping my hand inside, and found the heart core. While it was a bit smaller than before, her heart core had unmistakably grown back. I didn’t think much of the size as I tore it away again, slowing her convulsions until they stopped. Only once I withdrew my hand and noticed that her sternum wound wasn’t healing did I look up to see a pair of half-open eyes staring back at me.
“Did you do it?” she asked, slurring her words. Several questions popped into my head all at once, but there wasn’t time for any of them.
“You need to heal your chest,” I said.
“It’ll be fine,” Vaozey mumbled quietly. “You took my clothes off…”
“I don’t know how it happened, but you’re low on magic fuel,” I said quickly. “In this state, you won’t heal automatically unless an injury is immediately lethal, and apparently your body thinks this hole in your chest isn’t dangerous. You need to fix it, now.” I only pulled out three cores, I thought, she should have had almost six cores of fuel when she drank the booster, maybe a bit less because of air contamination and absorption efficiency. How is she this low?
“Didn’t you say… this was how you could fix the burns?” Vaozey asked, blinking once slowly in the middle of her sentence and almost losing track of it.
“You will die if you-” I began.
“Just do it,” she interrupted. “If I die, I die. If it’s worse… my fault, my choice. I’m too tired to… argue. Need to sleep.” As Vaozey passed out, breathing this time, I thought about her request. Wasn’t I going to do this already? I asked myself, It’s a good test run, but… why do I care if she dies during it? It was a strange question. Vaozey didn’t have much value to me, in fact, she was more of a detriment than a benefit in many situations. Yet, as I looked at her unconscious form, I didn’t want her to die. It wasn’t just that I was ambivalent about it, I found that I actively preferred outcomes where she lived.
This is just my human body doing something to affect my mind again, I sighed, putting my sword away and pulling out a throwing knife. If she dies in the test, it’s because she made that choice, I told myself, It’s not my doing, it's hers, I'm just making the best of it. Starting just below the halfway point on her neck, I began to cut into her skin, separating it from the blood vessels underneath. I was intimately familiar with the positions of the jugular veins and carotid arteries, so avoiding them was simple. Using a bit of magic, I rolled the skin up, then split it vertically beneath the chin as I reached her face.
When I had pulled my face skin off in Vehrehr, I hadn’t seen exactly what I was doing and went entirely by feeling. I knew that I had been forced to tear connective tissue in some areas, but I didn’t grasp the true extent of it. As I skinned Vaozey, I saw all the little contours, all the bits of cartilage, and all the sticking points where one could accidentally leave behind a piece of tissue where it wasn’t desired. Without time and patience, it would be nearly impossible to perfectly remove the dermis from the area in a way that wouldn’t result in uneven regeneration. If anything, Koyl and Vaozey had understated just how complex the procedure was.
When I finally pulled the last bit of scalp off, Vaozey looked like a blood-covered anatomical model. At some point, her chest had scabbed over, but her skin hadn’t even started to grow back up her neck yet. With her eyelids missing, her peaceful rest looked more like illness, and the vibration of her dry eyes was uncomfortable to look at. Saliva dripped out of her teeth and occasionally her jaw muscles twitched, but otherwise, she was serene.
Looking at the cracked vial, I decided not to try to reuse the fuel I had extracted and grabbed one of the sealed vials from my back instead. The blood inside was coagulated, but it didn’t appear rotten, so I prepared the snake tooth needle and slipped it into Vaozey’s right arm, just around the elbow, not wanting to risk more bleeding by going for her neck. I injected the booster slowly, anticipating a clog in the needle, but one never occurred. Once half the booster was in, I saw Vaozey’s skin slowly creeping up from where I had cut it and stopped, withdrawing the needle.
“I suppose I can go one night without sleep,” I said to myself, quickly re-sealing the vial and stowing it behind me. Using Vaozey’s chest covering, I made a spot to lay her head on where she wouldn’t get too much dirt in her wounds, then sat back with the intent to wait until she had regenerated before sleeping. Unfortunately, I didn’t stay conscious for long, dipping into a dream before I realized it.
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Suddenly it was morning, and I was stiff from sleeping in a sitting position. The sun was in my eyes, and I had a headache, so it took me a moment to be able to see properly again. Standing a few meters away from me, facing away, was an unfamiliar human figure with shoulder-length black hair. The person was touching their face with both hands, and when they heard me they turned around, allowing me to see them clearly. Vaozey, with an expression between shock and fear, stared back at me with her new appearance.
Her jaw was wider than it looked when it was burned, with thin lips and a mouth that was also slightly larger than average for an Uwrish woman. There was just over a centimeter between her upper lip and the start of her nose, which had an ever so slight leftward bend to it. The cheeks that had once been gaunt now had a normal level of fat in them, making her face fuller than before and disguising her high cheekbones. Finally, her earlobes were detached instead of being fused to the sides of her head by scar tissue.
“Do you understand how close you came to dying last night?” I asked, glaring at her.
“I’m sorry,” Vaozey replied quietly. Her voice was still the same as always since her throat hadn’t been regenerated. “I just- I thought- I wasn’t thinking. I was angry, and I just-”
“I would have helped you do it safely had you asked,” I told her. “I wanted to test the effectiveness of this procedure using magic boosters, and I was going to use you as a test subject for it if you were willing. That was what I wanted to discuss the morning you told me you didn’t want to hear about the vials.” Simmer, I told myself, She needs to see anger, but not rage.
“I…” she stuttered.
“If you want something of me in the future, you will ask for it,” I continued. “I will assist you until we reach Towrkah, upon which point you will make a decision. You will either agree to follow my orders exactly, or you will never interact with me again.”
“I didn’t mean to steal-” Vaozey tried to plead.
“Yet. You. Did,” I replied coldly, cutting her off. “You say you want to travel with me and help me because it will give you the chance to kill your enemies. I am telling you now that if you want to do anything of the sort, you will never act like this again. Against my better judgment, I won’t kill you for this, but know that I will not hesitate to do so if you act against my interests in the future. If I suspected even for a moment that this act was born of malice and not sheer stupidity on your part, you would not be alive right now. If I suspect malice from you at any point in the future, I will kill you without warning.” There was silence for about three minutes as Vaozey attempted to stare a hole into the ground to avoid looking at me.
“Can you… give me your sword for a minute?” she asked, still not looking up.
“Why?” I asked sharply.
“I want to see,” she replied. “My armor is too dirty, the reflection isn’t clear.” I thought about it for a minute, then drew my sword. Vaozey flinched, but then accepted it when I handed it to her. Holding the weapon out, she used the flat surface to view herself, then handed it back to me.
“It looks unremarkable,” I told her. “You shouldn’t draw much attention if you hide the neck scars. Use your face covering as a scarf.”
“Let’s just go,” Vaozey replied quietly. “I want to sleep in a bed tonight.”