Chapter 116: Consequences

Solfis stopped on the second roof, placing Viv down on the flattish roof’s surface with gentle care.

 

“We’re not joining the others?”

 

//Your high willpower is keeping you fully functional, Your Grace.

//However, you are bleeding out.

//I need you to take the flesh-mending potions.

//Now.

 

Viv had a few of the life-saving vials on a bandoleer at the small of her back. They were still intact but as soon as she touched one, a spear of agony made her flinch. She looked down and saw her right hand covered with a grimy glove of blood. A black gash in the middle of her palm lanced atrociously. She twisted on herself instead to get the vial with her left hand and realized the armor was soaked. A deep laceration on her side oozed blood, crimson flesh and pale skin revealed under the cut armor. The blaze of the warehouse reached a crescendo and a flame rose above the roof to bring light to the darkness. Only then did she see the bloody footprints she had left behind. Viv realized that she was not okay.

 

“Alright,” she said.

 

A bite and the stopper was off. She poured the precious liquid on her flank and watched skin cover the wound as if it had only been cosmetics she could wash away. The new dermis was pale, smooth, and very soft. Vulnerable. She decided to do her leg next. That wound was worse.

 

A bit of the flesh had been shredded to the muscle, forcing her to push jutting tissue back in with an awkward finger. The strange mix of magic as potent as sci fi tech and using her filthy fingers made her chuckle. She was feeling light-headed.

 

“Oh that’s not good.”

 

Adrenaline was pumping her lifeforce away with every beat of her heart. She poured the rest of the potion and felt a peculiar sense of stretching when things returned to where they were supposed to be. She could still see some exposed meat but there was no potion left.

 

//Another vial, Your Grace.

 

Viv used the second of two to finish healing her leg. The third ampoule contained a general-purpose antidote instead, and would be of little use right now.

 

//Now for the right hand.

 

“Fine.”

 

Despite her pain tolerance skill, it hurt a lot to unclutch her fingers.

 

“I think it hit the bone.”

 

//That is correct, Your Grace.

 

Solfis then grabbed her arms, forcing the liquid down on the gash and pushing a knuckle against her palm, setting a broken bone in position. The witch’s ordeal was short, but long enough to introduce the neighborhood to a collection of French expletives.

 

//The bone is set but it has not fused back.

//Please do not move this hand until you have seen a health professional.

 

“FUCK YOU!”

 

//She who anticipates suffers twice.

//Is it not one of your mottos?

 

“Solfis, you are supposed to be on my side. We sass other people and act obnoxious and they hate us for it. How dare you turn on me like that?”

 

//Changed taunt module setting to: hypocritical.

 

“Ugh. Alright, fuck it. Let’s group up with the others.”

 

//Agreed.

//But first, drink the potion’s remaining contents.

 

Viv bottomed up what was left of the crimson liquid and immediately felt better. Her legs grew less wobbly while her vision cleared up noticeably.

 

“This is some good stuff.”

 

//I would hope so.

//At seventeen silvers a pop.

 

“Ouch.”

 

Viv had just burned through six gold talents’ worth of money in under a minute. Worse, she was sure some of the liquid had ended up on her bloodstained armor instead. The waste annoyed her. Even though the circumstances were unusual, it grated. Solfis did not give her time to brood though. He picked her up and kept jumping from roof to roof.

 

Around them, the city was coming to life, but it was not a good life. Crews gathered in small squares and landmarks. Viv could already see a pitched battle breaking out a few streets away. The crashes of broken doors gave a counterpoint to the screams of women and children in this hellish symphony. More fires erupted in the distance as she watched. The next jump revealed a pair of prostitutes gutted at the entrance of an alley.

 

“What the fuck? It’s only been a minute! They can’t already be…” Viv whined.

 

But the world didn’t care and the women stayed dead. Solfis didn’t slow down either. The skeletal frame smoothly jumped down and dropped her in front of a circle of rough men and women in armor. Some looked a little worse for wear. Sidjin broke through the protective detail and hugged her before she could react. He pulled back and looked at his own off-white armored robe which was now stained red in multiple places.

 

“Err, are you alright, darling?”

 

“Physically I am. We can talk about it later. We should leave the lower districts before it goes fully bad.”

 

//We will retreat to an undercity entrance.

//You two must not be seen in the noble quarters in blood-stained armor.

 

“I could get a change of clothes,” Viv admitted.

 

“Then let’s go now,” Sidjin said.

 

He sounded so calm and composed. Viv was not having a good time. Despite knowing on an intellectual level this wasn’t her fault, that the riots were inevitable so long as proper authorities allowed it to happen, she felt deeply unsettled. It was just starting and it was already so bad. Even Afghanistan had not affected her that much, at least that she could remember. Maybe she was just naive.

 

“Focus, darling. You can’t help if you’re dead,” Sidjin whispered.

 

The group adopted a loose square formation with the casters in the middle. It was clear that the goons were unused to organized fighting from the awkward way they left gaps in the wall, but it would probably not matter. They ran. Normally, the streets would have been dark at this time of the night, yet the glows of distant arsons bathed everything in an infernal red, turning the familiar avenues into grimmer versions of themselves. The air smelled of blood and ashes, an acrid stench that stuck to Viv’s tongue. They passed by several corpses. A minute later they came across two dozen looters dragging a family out of their home. The two armed groups hesitated. Viv didn’t. She aimed at the man holding a young boy by the scalp and blew his head off. The looters dispersed.

 

They didn’t stop. The rescued civilians didn’t wait. They gathered to leave.

 

//Your Grace.

//You seem to care about the fate of civilians.

//Yet they are not your people.

 

“You know about altruism and empathy, Solfis.”

 

//Would you like me to use my means to protect them in your name?

 

“Yes.”

 

//You have to pick one ethnic group.

 

“Anybody who breaks doors down to kill civilians should be fair game.”

 

“You cannot spare them,” an unfamiliar voice spat from behind.

 

Viv turned in shock. She and Solfis always spoke in Imperial, a dead language few aside from scholars and casters ever used at all. The goon who had spoken had the lighter greenish skin of an Enorian and an accent, but she was still surprised to be addressed by an educated thug.

 

“If you spare them, they grow up and kill you,” the man added with conviction.

 

“We don’t judge people according to what they might do in ten years,” Viv corrected. “Which is why you still live, by the way. Solfis, pick whichever side is the most convenient but rein the people in. Anyone who breaks down doors to kill children is a coward anyway. They’ll listen to a group of scary men in dark armor.”

 

//ORDERS ACKNOWLEDGED.

//But first, we must get you back.

//You are in enough trouble as it is.

 

Viv thought the golem sounded like some psychotic AI mom right now but decided to keep her observation to herself. Since the tavern was quite far, it took them some time to reach it. Two other marauding bands found them but wisely decided to turn around after a good look at them. Most were muscular men and women with hard eyes and surprisingly good weapons. The first had been made of northerners, the second of a mix of ethnic groups. They came across a barricade manned by pale-skinned Helockian natives, those wearing actual gambesons. Shortly before they arrived, a young Hallurian boy dragging his sister saw them, rushed in their direction, then turned down an alley at the last moment. The following mob of blood-crazed northerners smashed against Viv’s group a moment later. The melee was short, violent, and one-sided. They disengaged. Viv did not pursue.

 

“Clever boy,” she muttered.

 

//I have recorded his profile for potential later recruitment.

//We are almost here.

 

The city had devolved into a nightmarish landscape, blazing with the fires of hell on a background of screams. It was far too late to try and stop anything, Viv thought, but she’d be in the hospital the next day. Making plans and seeing a future took her mind away from the bodies.

 

A barricade blocked the way deeper in. Solfis had the thugs jump to a nearby roof rather than negotiate for passage. The militia of southerners and Hallurians holding the defenses didn’t try to stop them and they found a known entrance a moment later, hidden near a warehouse. One of the goons removed her hood, revealing the harsh traits of Lim the Fell-Handed. The grim northerners led Viv and Sidjin back to the room where they had left their stuff. Viv had to wash herself quickly using frigid water. It left her shaking. The bath turned pink and her old clothes felt strange on her skin. Cold too.

 

“You are too pale,” Sidjin said. “You must have lost a lot of blood. Your hand is wounded too,” he said.

 

Viv lifted her right one. A subcutaneous hematoma expanded from the pale new skin. A purple circle expanding out. It still hurt.

 

“Right. We need to get you to the faculty and have you rest a little. You can help later.”

 

“I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

 

“We’re all hypocrites, Viv, but we don’t all try to fix it. You must rest.”

 

Lim took the pair on a small skiff and rowed them to the back of the city. They ran up the shore and found the back entrance to the Academy locked and guarded. Viv was still let in after the wards verified her identity. She walked through the back of the park with its meadows, pleasant air coming from the sea, the ponds, the sorcerous light in a daze. Here, everything was peaceful and dandy while innocents died only a few kilometers away. She could jump on the walls and use a long view and there would be murders to see. Nausea filled her. Should she have stayed? But Solfis and Sidjin were right. She was exhausted.

 

Viv almost bumped into the crimson-clad form of the dean. The man stood on her path with a staff that glowed a soft red. He didn’t say anything. Viv didn’t say anything because her mind was a blank. His face was a mask.

 

“Are you done?” he finally asked.

 

Viv’s tired mind conjured up an answer. Was she done? For tonight, yes. For Sidjin’s defense, also yes.

 

“I am,” she replied.

 

“You should have heeded my warning. Every action has consequences, now you must live with yours.”

 

A little bit of anger pierced through the fog of exhaustion.

 

“This would work well if I were asking you to wipe my ass, but I’m not, am I? Out of the two of us, only one had the power to stop this atrocity and it wasn’t me.”

 

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“Why do you have to be so headstrong?”

 

“I’d be dead otherwise.”

 

The dean glared.

 

“I’m starting to regret admitting you here, but you would have probably caused more damage if left loose. Go to the infirmary first.”

 

Viv resumed her walk, but the dean wasn’t finished.

 

“One last thing. You think I did nothing but that’s not true. I did what I could to minimize the bloodshed with the tools I had. Tomorrow, you will do so as well. Report to the administration after the first bell.”

 

“I can go to the healing faculty by myself.”

 

“People can survive without an arm. The urgency is to save and stabilize people, not make them whole. You will report to the administration building to help with search and rescue. This is not a suggestion.”

 

“… very well.”

 

Viv went to the infirmary, a small building with a sleep mage in blue robes, an intern of sorts. The woman used a spell to make sure her metacarpals were in the right place despite Viv’s innate resistance to life mana.

 

“Sorry about that,” she told the persisting girl.

 

“No helping it,” she replied.

 

A more complex potion finished healing her. Viv returned to her dorm room and crashed down. She was asleep in seconds.

 

***

 

The city is on fire.

 

But no one attacked!

 

Viv woke up to crimson eyes widened in honest concern. Arthur’s large head rested on her chest, propagating heat in the already warm light of light summer dawn. The dragon’s lustrous black horns caught a reflection and shone green and red for an instant.

 

“The citizens have turned on each other,” Viv replied.

 

Humans turn on humans very often.

 

“Not enough food. They gather by origin and fight each other for it.”

 

If not so soft and squishy.

 

Move on and find food.

 

“Yep. Anyway, I’m going to help a bit.”

 

I come as well!

 

Find small humans.

 

To worship me.

 

Recruitment drive!

 

“I’d appreciate the assistance.”

 

Viv didn’t change, though she did wash her face to clear off the sleepiness. What surprised her to most was that she was feeling fine, physically. Potions could be insanely potent, especially those that did so much. She was pretty sure she had drunk the equivalent of three months of elite knight pay within a few hours.

 

But she was a caster and casters were above, that was how it was.

 

Viv swallowed the fact that much potion could have stabilized at least three dying people and decided that she would make it up today. The door closed behind her, but she found Ereska waiting in the main room. The pale woman had dark circles under her eyes and she was loaded for bear with a bag and a solid robe filled with pockets.

 

“You are going to help as well?” she asked.

 

“Yes, although I absolutely have to. The dean ordered it.”

 

“You can fill me in on the way.”

 

Viv did so, staying vague on purpose. They grabbed sandwiches at the refectory and filled their bags, then they rushed to the administration building. A busy Darla directed them to a carriage that departed immediately.

 

“I’m surprised they’re just letting you out,” Viv told Ereska.

 

“They know that I’m not on good terms with my family because of their stance on the riot. They probably judge that it is easier to send me with an escort than to prevent me from escaping. Some of the younger students remain under strict supervision but accomplished casters like ourselves are too difficult to control.”

 

“Always surprises me that the Academy isn’t enforcing more stringent oaths on their students,” Viv mused.

 

“It shouldn’t,” Ereska replied, eyes half-lidded. “Many places of learning tried it. Only the Academy remains. But I digress. What did you have in mind? In terms of helping, I mean. I always thought your specialty was killing things.”

 

“And cutting things, and lifting them now.”