48 – Warmer

Jonny was no medical expert, but he had seen enough movies to know what an infected wound looked like. He was also pretty sure that this didn’t just suddenly happen. That wasn’t the level of infection that just appeared one night. She had been dealing with this for a while.

No wonder she was so sure she was gonna die…

Igrette stirred, groaning slightly, and while her eyes fluttered as she regained consciousness, Jonny got back to his feet with his hands on his hips. When Igrette fully woke up, she blinked at him a few times, then looked down at her side, where the bandages were still visible. She was still a little out of it, but she understood enough.

“You should just leave me,” she said.

“No,” said Jonny. “You should just stop saying that.”

“I’m dead weight.”

“If you keep talking like that, even if you become literal dead weight, I will still keep dragging you along. I will drag your body all the way across the mountain range if I have to. I’m not leaving you behind. So either give me something more practical to do, or be quiet and let me handle it.”

“Leaving me would be the most practical thing…” she muttered, ignoring Jonny’s glare. “But if that’s not an option…”

She looked down at the wound at her side again, then over at her injured arm, then down at her sword. Without a word, she started untying the sling from her neck, letting the arm fall to her side. She undid the tie on the front of her coat, then slid her bad arm out, exposing the skin and bandages underneath.

Her arm did not look any better than her side. If anything, it looked worse, swollen and purple, and with the same black veins sticking out from beneath the bandages. Jonny was shocked when he saw her flex her fingers on that arm. It had been severed, and broken, and then reattached, and now infected, and somehow, it was still working, at least a little bit.

She then drew her sword, and only then did Jonny finally realize what she was about to do. He made no move to stop her, though, frozen in horror and disgust at what he was seeing. Igrette raised her bad arm, holding it out to the side. She clenched her hand into a weak fist for one last time, and then, in one clean motion, she drew her sword and severed the arm at the shoulder.

The wound barely bled, but that almost made the whole thing worse for Jonny. It was uncanny, and it made him want to vomit, but he kept watching anyway as Igrette closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. She seemed to be holding back the blood through sheer force of will, somehow, and as he watched she concentrated her mana on her arm, and the wound began to scab over. A minute later, it was done, and she was pale and breathing heavily.

“Trying to keep my arm was costing me too much,” she said, panting. “I will be able to fight off the infection better now.”

“How much better?”

“…I still need more mana.”

“So we need a mana well still.”

“I can keep it at bay for a few days, but then it will start getting worse again.”

“How many days?”

“Four?” She leaned back, still breathing heavily. “Maybe five. After that, only God can save me.”

“Four days to get to a mana well…”

Jonny rubbed his chin. Their situation had never been good, but now, for the first time, they had a hard time limit. If they didn’t make the time limit, Igrette was dead.

He could try going back the way they came. If they didn’t stop to rest, he could probably make it there around nightfall. But it would still have been three days since they abandoned it. That was plenty of time for whatever injured the wolverine to move in. It would be a wasted trip, and he knew for a fact that there were mana wells closer. They had specifically gone around multiple of them in the past two days.

The one they had just been at had the highest chance of being unoccupied, but if it was occupied, it was almost definitely occupied by a powerful predator. Meanwhile the ones nearby were total mysteries, but they were much closer. Going back would spend at least one of their precious days for no guarantee, while checking the ones in the immediate vicinity could be done much more quickly.

We’ll save the old spot as a last resort.

“Igrette, where did you say the nearest mana wells were?”

“You want to scout them?”

“Yeah.”

Igrette shifted her weight and winced, letting out a hiss of pain before responding by pointing her finger in three directions, one after another.