It was over. Ixalia looked around and saw no more assailants rushing to harm them. The final pair just exited through the doors and left them open behind. Liman bought them a respite, probably with his life.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. That didn’t help, Ixa could still see the sword sinking into the man, two icicles in his chest. The image was burned into the inside of her eyelids and no amount of head-shaking could dislodge it.

Eyes open once more, she reviewed the mess they were in. There were several more bodies on the floor and a different set of moans and screams, but it looked no different than a moment earlier, only with no one moving on the room’s periphery.

Jerry and Perry were still fused, did they have those ears even before? She couldn't recall. They were trying to get up, and helping Peter untangle from them and sit.

Hugo was dead and his countryman was walking to his body. The two didn’t know each other three weeks before, but quickly hit it off.

Beatrice sat on the floor rubbing her elbows and staring at the two corpses before her. Nerman was lying unmoving, unlike Loui who was ineffectually shoving his intestines back into his belly, only for them to fall back out once he reached for another handful.

With Ingrem, Liman, and Sidy, there were only a few left. Zev, still unresponsive, then one, whose name she couldn't recall, who was kneeling next to another woman, putting pressure on a bleeding leg stump. And Neibrt who was attempting to stand up, looking dazed.

That was three mostly hale people and then three more at least capable of locomotion.

Ixalia waited for something more to happen, but so far nothing did. No one rushed in to finish the job and none in their group seemed to be doing anything truly productive.

She always thought that in a high-stress situation, when the fight or flight responses fired, she would freeze. Unable to act one way or the other. It might have been a bad mindset for someone who aimed for a job where lives were on the line, but that was what she thought nonetheless. The last few minutes and her current thought would have shown her the error of her ways. If she stopped to analyze any of it.

Several seconds passed as she looked at what needed to be done. She couldn’t move right now so she’d need the others to do it for her. They were in some formal room, evidenced by furniture pushed to the side. There was not enough to fill all of it and there was something resembling a wooden dancefloor. A set of double doors were where the men left through moments ago and several smaller portals were at various points along the walls, most probably going up to the balconies.

We got to start doing something, we can’t just wait for the next thing to happen. She recalled the way Ingrem always hollered at them and how the Head Medico reigned when on duty.

The girl channeled her inner Kert and clapped her hands. Which she instantly regretted as her right arm swished through empty air and pain raced down her left as she instinctually tried to move it. After a second for the ache to abate, she dropped her chin down and formed an 'o' with her lips. She hit her cheeks and in lieu of a proper clap emitted three hollow-sounding clops.

“Ok, guys, we’ve got to start doing shit. Neibrt, take Betty and close that door and barricade it with tables or something,” she turned to the third healthy individual, removed the second tourniquet from her pack, and threw it at him. "Hey, green shirt! Use this, you know how to, right?"

“Who put you in charge?” Beatrice just stared blankly at her, but Neibrt voiced his protests at being ordered. The last man was meanwhile fumbling with the item he was provided, obviously unsure of how it worked.

“Do you have a better idea?” Ixa shot back.

“No, but that doesn’t mean I gots to listen to you.”

“If you don’t want to end up like Hugo, you should.”

“That is… You can’t…” That obviously shut him up.

“Just for now, okay, until we get things sorted out.” And that got him moving. Just not in the way she wanted.

“And fuck you too.” Neibrt turned back around, returning to whatever he was doing with Hugo. Beatrice just continued staring forward, flinching at every even remotely louder sound. Her eyes were spread wide open with little behind them.

Great work, Ixa, keep that up and you’ll have to do it yourself. Be a little more insulting and insensitive while you’re at it.

“Perry, Jerry, you ok?” The girl asked next.

Connected hands were raised in answer and both spoke at the same time. “No.”

“Other than that, are you hurt?”

Their reply stayed the same. “No.”

“Can you come over? I’ll check you over. Peter, you too.”

They did as she bid, standing up and moving. But both in opposite direction, Perry going to help Peter stand and Jerry to Ixalia. They nearly fell down as their arms drew taut. If it happened in a TV show, she might have laughed. Seeing it with her own two eyes, there was nothing funny about it. It was just a morbid reminder of the predicament they were in.

The farmer never stopped looking at his hands, knocking them on each other and poking his body. Until her looked up at her and spoke as he came closer.

“Ixalia, your legs…” But she stopped him with a raised hand.

“Don’t. I don’t want to know. I can’t know. Not if I am to stay functioning as I am. The hand’s bad enough, I have no room to deal with more.” She was getting some feedback from her lower half, but it was all messy and she couldn’t make any of it out. At least it wasn’t pain. “Now, show me your hands.”

The sight was gruesome. Crab claws sprouted from his wrists through the middle of his palm. His fingers were in a coronet around it, looking like all the bones connecting from the first knuckle to the wrist were lost while the ones in the finger segments grew longer, making his skin stretch almost to the point of breaking.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, to which he simply shook his head.

“Can you move your fingers?” At her prompting his digits wiggled. It looked horrendous. “And the… uhm… claws?”

Nothing. “I can feel them, but don’t know how. Like when you sit on your leg weird and can move it but not feel it, but the opposite. I don’t know how to explain.”

“Frankly, if you knew, I’d be worried more.” Ixa joked and began casting a set of simple spells, starting with the tried and tested. “Good news is, other than the obvious, you’re good.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“And the bad?” He asked, worried now.

“That I have no clue how to go about fixing you.” She waved at the crustacean pincers.

“Figures. If you knew, now that’d be weird.” The farmed tried to return the joke, but his tone spoke of a deep anguish and it fell flat. His eyes seemed to be screaming for someone to get those things off of me!

“If you can, can you look over the others? See if there’s anyone I could still help?” She asked softly, trying to find something for him to do. To pull his mind away from having to think.

He just silently nodded and walked away and she started over with the couple.

“How does that work?” talking under her breath to herself, she wasn’t expecting a reply. It came anyways.

“Just about how you’d expect, my hand is still mine.” Said Jerry.

“And mine, mine.” Spoke Perry.

"It's as if you used superglue, just a flesh-melting variety." Continued Jerry and as he finished, Perry picked back up.

“Yeah, it’s weird.”

As she examined them, their hands were still distinct, but the skin where they contacted became one instead of two. Both had dermis, but the layer of dead cells was gone and they shared one epidermis. She never spoke to them while they were together like this, so she asked.

“Were you always so connected, I don’t mean the hands.”

“What do you mean.” They asked in perfect unison.

“Exactly that, the way you speak, one right after the other, continuing where the first one left off. Or like right now, exactly the same way both at once.”

“Huh, that’s new. Didn’t happen before.” Again, they chorused like one.

Ixa cast a new spell and used her vein-finding method. She found out that their nervous and circulatory systems were connected and growing more so. They were literally becoming one.

“Okay… okay. How do I put this…” she thought for a moment and then tried to explain as best as she could. Once again, there was nothing she could immediately do. Not with her current skillset. Both seemed to take it in stride, not even batting an eye at the situation. After they talked her out of doing more for them, they agreed to go barricade the obvious entrance and look around to see if there were more.

Ixa didn’t get a respite after that.

Green shirt was dragging the injured woman her way and she had to prevent herself from yelling at him to stop. A trail of blood was left after them and the stump was still squirting blood.

“Please, help her.” The man pleaded and Ixalia got to removing and reapplying the lifesaving instrument he failed to use correctly.

"I'm sorry, but what were your names again?" she asked as she worked.

“Lubosh and that’s Lubomira,” he pointed at himself and then the woman, who was very obviously trying not to scream in Ixa’s face.

“Ok, Lubosh, are you hurt in any way? No? Can you go help P and J then, please?” He looked from woman to woman and then decided that he was of no use here and ran off to join the pair struggling with moving a giant table.

Finishing with the strap, she gave the woman some strong painkillers and started binding the leg in gauze. “Sure, I’ll see what I can do.”

When she was done, the healer addressed the woman. “Can you help me with Sidy? I need a pair of hands, mine is a bust.” She first pointed at the girl lying next to her and then her shriveled arm.

“Ok, what do you need me to do?” Lubomira strained through teeth gritted in pain.

She wanted to go help those seriously injured, they needed her more, but she couldn’t move, she already tried. Luckily that was when Zev woke up with a whazzat? One look around and several confused words later, he shoved any inquiries for later, don his 'medico coat', and followed Ixalia’s instructions without question, moving to help Louis, Liman, and check over Ingrem and the others still lying about.

That taken care of, Ixa began guiding the woman next to her in what she needed her to do. She started bandaging Sidy’s arm, working her way to the hand. She first carefully removed any bone splinters that grew out and shoved those that belong to where they were supposed to be. She had to remove several bits of flesh with a scalpel spell but did manage to squish the two halves together before binding them.

Knife spells and ones made for cutting, in general, were fairly common, the scalpel one was just a specialized variation of it. If used with care, it could separate material without breaking the surface or anything the user didn't want. It did not cut per se like one would imagine a blade would. It was simply separating cells at the molecular level, without harming them. That meant it could be handled by a skilled surgeon without drawing blood.

It wasn't all-powerful, with such utility came the price of having to know precisely where one was to make incisions or risk botching it entirely and hurting the patient. Ixa had to double cast a diagnostic spell to gain that knowledge at the same time as she made her cuts. She missed her mark many times during the course of the operation.

She got better as she went and by the end of it, she made few mistakes.

Then she had no more distractions and tended to her own arm. Not that there was much to actually do. It was a write-off. Maybe people back home would be able to do something about it. More realistically, it would have to be cut off and regrown, which was time-consuming and costly. Not to mention that there were only a handful of mages capable of such miraculous magic. And they were busy and expensive.

Several times as she was occupied with different matters, Zev came and wordlessly collected bits and bobs from her pack, bandages, and the like. Always with a stone face and a distant look in his eyes. He might have seemed like a rock in all this. Ixalia knew him long enough to see the minor slouch of his shoulders, the minute tremble to his fingers and the slight tick under his right eye.

He was at the end of his rope, being held by sheer force of will. And maybe, just maybe, if his glances at her legs were any kind of a tell, she’d like to believe that her holding it together helped him do the same.

She still refused to look below or take any meds. She had to keep her head clear, not muddle it with painkillers strong enough to dull the sensations coming from her left side.

“Ixa, it hurts. What happened?” a voice so soft she almost overheard it came from the girl’s arm.

“Shhh, Sidy, it’s all alright, everything’s ok. I’ve got you.” She cooed to the girl as she brushed hair from her face.

Her friend’s eyes opened and then nearly popped out of their sockets as they landed on her wound.

“What happened?” Sidy repeated.

“The same that did to your hand. Mana poisoning.” Ixa replied and earned a scowl in return.

“You promised that nothing would happen to you!” The other woman accused.

“I said I’ll be fine, and I am.”

Placated for the moment, Sidy looked her over and when her eyes landed where Ixalia’s legs would have been, her still scrambled mind made her say the first thing that came to it, mouth clapping before she could reign it in.

“Why are you a snake?”

***

Contrary to what Helena believed, no massacre was happening. Quite the opposite, actually. The serpent demon seemed to be trying to take charge of things and at first, it looked like it'd be ignored, the fiend having rebuffed it in some way.

Pain clouded her mind and she had trouble making out what was said.

Then the demon spoke to its fellow aberrant, who followed its commands and began blocking the entrances. After, perplexingly, a man dragged a bleeding woman to the blue-hair.

It sent him off to help the other demon and began tending to the mangled leg.

A demon saving a human? And a human seeking an aberrant for help? What the hells is going on? Helena couldn’t wrap her head around the bizarre sight. It went against every precedent of demons going after people and killing them on sight.

In fact, the priest was wrong from the start. The serpentine demon wasn’t, in fact, ripping a woman’s arm in half. It was stopping the bleeding and putting it back together. The injured woman it was ministering to was helping it now. After it bandaged her, it seemed to caress her with affection. The fuck?

All the while the man going around and looking over everyone else, even the priest’s own people, passed by several times, taking things from the demon’s pack with nonchalance.

Helena might have imagined it, but she thought she saw something akin to respect reflect in his gaze. Directed toward the woman on the ground. No, not the woman, but the demon.

Nothing prepared her for the next sight. The injured brunette came to and spoke, somehow shocking the demon. Its eyes dropped to her lower half and it panicked. It started poking and prodding at its tail as if it was the first time it had seen its own body.

They all seemed to be doing well with each other. But if the demons didn't do all this, what even happened? Don't tell me, did we do it? Did the ritual go awry somehow? And if it did, have we just attacked the survivors? Human and otherwise?

She blacked out for a bit and when she came to, the twins and one of the other men, the one in the green shirt, who was helping them, were dragging the blue-haired serpent in Helena's direction. She didn't fight whatever was going to happen, she was too tired for that.

But the paladin didn’t need to. When they got to her, the aberrant spoke. That was when Helena got the second shock of the day. When she attributed her previous nonunderstanding to the pain, she was wrong. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the outsiders. She couldn’t understand them. Neither of them.

They spoke in a similar, yet different language.