Chapter 6: Sir Aldhelm

The Presence cracked between my fingers like ice. White light swirled around my fingertips then raced into my body. It disappeared after it reached my wrist.

At first, it was hard to say what had actually changed. I didn’t feel any immediate adjustment to my body. But after a few seconds, my chest began aching. I fell to my knees and pressed my hands into the soil.

That couldn’t have been from my injuries. I hadn’t even gotten hit in the chest.

“It’s always like that,” Romance said, marching over to me. “It’s worse the first time—or you’re just not expecting it. It’ll pass in a few seconds.”

After a few seconds of what felt like the worst acid reflux ever, the sensation passed. When I stood up, my body felt slightly different. Slightly more real. At first, my footsteps felt heavier with each step, but that might have been a placebo.

Shave gathered two more Presences from the fallen orcs and passed them out to whoever had killed them, then motioned. “Come on. We’ll get you back to camp.” He patted my back. “You need to see a healer, lad. Get it bandaged enough that you can walk, then head back to the camp. The others will clean up the bodies. You’re entitled to the scrap metal from the fallen orcs you slay, but they’ll keep it in Slowbend until you place an order for a weapon.”

“We have healers?” I asked.

“What, you thought we just bandaged ourselves and hoped for the best?” Ticks said, his voice returning to its old cold tone. As we passed a fallen Dupe, he grimaced.

“Well…kinda. I didn’t see any.”

“That’s ‘cause our healer also doubles as our camp’s cook,” Romance said. “Rumour is, she and the captain have a little shwhiiip now and then.” He flicked his thumb up and cast us a grin.

Trench pounded Romance on the shoulder, his chainmail-covered knuckles clanging on Romance’s pauldron, then said, “That’s not the sound sex makes. But alas! He is uneducated in the ways of the fairer sex.”

“You don’t see any brothels around here, do you?” Romance shook his head. “The Fleshknitters shoulda bred the call of nature out of us when they were making us.”

I laughed under my breath, then said, “I’m not sure if that’s what ‘call of nature’ means.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’d rather not feel it.”

The banter helped take my mind off my leg as I wrapped it. We trekked back to the camp, and I was starting to wonder if they were nattering on purpose to keep my mind occupied. The others hounded me, asking about where I was from, and I tried my best to answer. There was no point in keeping it a secret.

However, I didn’t tell them what the technology was like. Instead of a film student, I called myself an apprentice playwright, which satisfied all but Ticks—he quoted something about ‘the immorality of poesy,’ and after that, I tuned him out.

When we made it back to the camp, I settled down in the central clearing with the rest of the injured Dupes, and the healer came around. She was a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair, wearing a sky-blue dress and an apron, and most importantly, a white armband with a red leaf embroidered in the center.

Shave, who sat beside me, nursing a gash on his arm, said, “That’s Hild.”

“She’s not a Dupe.”

“Not at all. She’s a druid.”

I tilted my head.

Registering my confusion, Shave explained, “Druids are most often healers, though some of them have other nature-manipulating abilities.”

I nodded. After a few minutes of waiting in silence, it was my turn. Hild knelt down beside me and grumbled, “Don’t move. What’s wrong with him?”

“His leg, ma’am,” Shave said.

“Ah, I see it.” She leaned over my leg and held her hands over the wound on the back of my leg. It wasn’t bleeding as badly now, but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant when she practically ripped the bandage off my leg. “He’s skinny, isn’t he?”

“He’s working on it,” Shave replied in my stead—I was too busy wincing.

“You couldn’t have been a little more gentle with that…” I muttered.

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“I don’t have time.” Hild pressed her hands onto my calf. “You’ll live either way.”

“She only has enough Presence for three healing abilities,” Shave filled in. “And one heal, if she goes quick, can spread between ten Dupes, repairing minor damage. The battalions up north would have more druids embedded, but we haven’t needed many until now.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a tingle erupted in my leg. It began itching, and I craned my neck over to see. Muscle folded back together, blood clotted, and skin welded overtop itself, creating a tight, red scar. I leaned forward, about to itch it, but Hild slapped my hands away. “Don’t touch it for a day. My healing is basic, and it’ll give you a nasty scar, but at least you’ll be alive.”

I stood up and tested my leg. It still tingled, and it itched like hell, but I did my best to ignore it. Aside from the itch, the leg held my weight well enough. I hobbled at first out of instinct, but I could walk fine.

I jogged to the palisade, where I found Romance and Trench. They were both standing next to a heap of bodies dragged in from the forest. Four Dupes had died, and their gear had been stripped off them.

“Normally, we’d burn them with their armour on,” Trench told me. “But we can’t spare the gear.”

“I’ve heard that the soldiers in other lands get their bodies sent home,” Romance said. “In Palan, they bury them deep in tombs, and in Vanemarch, they send them off to sea in a ship, then shoot it with flaming arrows.”