Book 2 Ch 33: Gratitude

Running quickly down the road, Michael was impressed with the speed and grace of his aelven escorts. While his own footfalls were heavy and firm, theirs seemed light, as if their feet were only barely touching the ground with every step. The closest Michael had ever seen to that had been Pyotr when he was fighting.

It was a twelve- or thirteen-mile run before the other Gemini mercenaries came into view. Michael was barely breathing heavily, but his escorts had started to slow a bit, one just a hundred or so yards behind Michael and Syl having slowed so that Pyotr wouldn’t be alone on the road as he slowed. He sprinted the last leg to the others and was greeted at the front by the twins.

“You ran here to heal?” asked Finnegan, with a serious look on his face.

Michael nodded.

“Quickly then, follow me,” he replied, exchanging a quick nod with Tai who kept the others moving.

Finnegan moved Michael to the center of the group where a number of people were bandaged, or had arms in slings, or were even dragging themselves forward with makeshift crutches. In the center of that group were a number of people actually being carried on pallets.

Michael moved to those on the pallets first. He recognized Trina, the young diviner and healer in the center of them. He raised a hand to heal her, but found that she was uninjured.

“She exhausted herself healing others,” croaked Ollie from behind him. “Reminds me of a certain someone.”

Michael whipped around to see that his friend had a burn across one side of his face and a thick scar across the other. He raised a golden hand to his friend, finding that the majority of the damage that had been done to him was actually in his throat.

Ollie swallowed. “Thanks, that’s much better. There were these fucking lizard people. They sent smoke at me and the other mages, made it a lot harder to use words as a focus and cost us a lot of magicka.”

Michael listened to him as he started going from pallet to pallet. The injured were numerous, and the damage they’d taken was severe. He could detect the start of some healing on one of them. It hadn’t been enough, but had definitely kept them alive until that point.

Michael was rested, well fed, and stronger than ever, but still he tried to be conservative about his healing. He focused on mending the problems that were major first, nicked organs and arteries, wounds nearing infection, anything fatal. Once that was done he focused on injuries that would reduce mobility and effectiveness as well as quality of life. When that was done and he was certain he had enough in him to finish healing everything else, he worked on healing anything that would be particularly painful.

When he was done he was panting hard, but there was only a bit of darkness at the edge of his vision. He left the small cuts and bruises for their natural healing, or for when he was recovered. He wanted to heal everyone as quickly as possible, to spare them suffering, but if he wasted all his energy and became a liability or wasn’t able to heal something else unexpected that would be a much greater problem for everyone.

“By the divine, I didn’t know that this was something a healer could do,” said Finnegan with his eyes wide.

Michael smiled. “As you say, it’s ‘by the divine’ that I can do this.”

“You’re worse than a missionary,” said Marcus, clapping him on the back from behind. “Glad to see you’re alive.”

“Same to you. Though, I suppose shooting things from a distance makes things a bit safer for you.”

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“You’d think, but when you’re fighting squids on land it turns out that they can cross a short distance very quickly.”

“Squids… on land?” asked Michael.

“Yes, and their suckers hurt like hell,” he held up his hand showing the back of it along which were a number of circular scars.

Michael touched a golden forefinger to them and they sealed.

“Where’s Davi?” asked Michael, fear suddenly gripping him.

“He’s okay. He volunteered to stay behind with a few others to help with some cleanup.”

“Thank the gods,” he said.