Prysmcat

  “I think we should start watching for a pce to camp,” Serru said. “We’ve made quite good time, I would say, even with slower periods and pausing for lunch, and pushing too much will ultimately just tire us and slow us down.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re coming up on a river soon, if I’ve judged our distance today correctly. If so, I might be able to catch us some fish for supper.”

  “That would be cool. I’m not compining about travel bars, bread, tea, and assorted fruit, mind you, because it’s all better and more effective than I expected, but...” The suggestion of fish actually surprised me, since people here did not eat meat, whether farmed or hunted; the idea horrified Serru, since sometimes people reincarnated as animals.

  My jacket might look like leather, but it wasn’t. Serru had expined was woven fabric or thin felt soaked in a kind of flexible resin that tore too easily without the foundation. It was waterproof and windproof and moderately warm, could be dyed many colours and was durable, and depending on several factors it could have variable degrees of stretch. All that without killing anything. I wasn’t going to argue.

  Maybe no one reincarnated as a fish.

  “A bit of variety is always nice.”

  We crested a hill, and found not only a slope down, but at the bottom of the slope, a deeper ssh through the ndscape, twisting its tree-edged way out of sight in both directions. Three or four meters below us, a river was clearly visible.

  “Man, you’re good,” I told Serru.

  She ughed. “Just familiarity with the area. There’s a bridge, but also a route down to the water near it.”

  “Got it. Hold on.” I waited until she’d linked her arms around my waist, and sped up to a trot.

  Moments ter, we saw the bridge, which was made of wood but looked sturdy and well-maintained.

  Serru slid off my back once I came to a halt, and pointed. “See the slope there? It’s not a bad climb down to the water and back up. We should camp at the level of the road, though. The river looks high right now and it can rise even more very quickly.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Honestly, I don’t understand why there isn’t a shelter here near the bridge. I suppose no one has gotten around to it yet, but it would be a good pce for one.”

  “Yeah, it seems like it would be. Do you want me to just stay up here, then, and start setting up camp?”

  “That would get us to supper more quickly.” She reached into her satchel and drew out a cylindrical basket with a retively-small lidded mouth. “Line, net, and basket to carry fish in. Here, in case you need anything out of it to set up camp.” She ducked out of the strap of her satchel and passed it to me.

  I just held it, dumbfounded. Serru never let that satchel out of her reach, for understandable reasons: it held virtually her whole life. And she’d just handed it to me?

  “It won’t bite you,” she giggled. “It might be organized differently but it should work the same way yours does. The ground would likely be better for camping on the other side of the bridge, but you’ve learned enough by now that I’m sure you can find us a good pce.” She slung the basket over one shoulder by a wide dark strap, and began to pick her way down the slope carefully.

  I hung her satchel on my shoulder and shook myself into motion. Across the bridge, right.

  Midway, I paused to look down over the railing. The river was broad, studded with rocks in the shallower water near the edges, and the trees and grasses along its banks did suggest that the water currently reached farther than it normally did. In that shallow zone, the water was clear, rippled around the rocks, but not moving all that fast. In contrast, the much deeper and darker central channel was devoid of obstacles, surging with waves, carrying branches and leaves and sundry other debris with it at high speed.

  For a heart-stopping moment, I thought that was Serru I saw in the water.

  It wasn’t, though. I could still see her on the shore, rummaging in her basket.

  I shouted her name; she looked up, and I pointed at the filing body coming rapidly up on her position.

  She flung the basket in the direction of dry nd and waded into the water, with much less caution than I’d have preferred.

  I bolted back to the end of the bridge, and switched impatiently to having two combat-booted feet because I was quite certain I could never make it down intact with four hooves.

  “There’s rope in my bag,” Serru called to me, over the surprisingly-loud sound of the water. “Throw me one end and hang on to the other!”

  “Don’t get yourself killed!” I still went digging for the rope while closing the distance. This wasn’t the time to argue.

  “I don’t intend to!”

  I wrapped one end of the rope back and forth several times and looped it around itself, to create a makeshift weight, then tossed it to her; she caught it neatly, wound it around her waist twice, and tied it with what looked to me like a solid knot. I hoped fervently that it was.

  I dropped both bags high enough that the water wouldn’t catch them, and looked at the other end of the rope, still in my hand.

  If that water was as fast as it looked, it could pull her and the rope right out of my grasp, or pull me into the current with her.

  I switched hastily back to my centaur form. With the rope around my waist twice and tied with the best knot I’d ever picked up, I spshed into the shallow water at the edge of the channel, which wasn’t the safest location but should mean that I could keep her from repeatedly hammering into boulders. It came up above my knees, and it was bloody cold. All four hooves solidly pnted, I looped the rope around my lower arms and gripped it.

  Serru could swim.

  Really well, as it turned out.

  She reached the stranger in the water, ducking as their filing turned in her direction. With little rope to spare, she got an arm around them from behind.

  As the sck ran out, I was instantly grateful for the preparations. It was still a physically uncomfortable jolt that staggered me, just enough for one hoof to slip and need to find new purchase.

  More worryingly, Serru was jarred violently enough that she nearly lost her target, but she clung to a handful of fabric. I could only watch her struggle with my heart in my throat, wishing desperately that I could help but knowing I had to stay where I was. An eternity ter, she wrapped her infinity scarf around their torso from behind, slid both of her arms through the loops up to her elbows, and crossed her wrists against her own chest.

  Which was my cue.

  Fighting the current, I pulled her in, hand over hand. Intermittently, I stomped a forehoof down on the rope, making sure that it wasn’t going to go far even if my half-frozen hands lost their grip. That seemed armingly possible, and more so the longer it took. It felt like an agonizing battle of gaining only inches at a time, worried every instant about the dangers of Serru’s prolonged exposure to the cold or inhaling water or being injured when the current tossed them both around. That trick with the scarf probably helped, because I wasn’t at all sure how she’d have been able to keep numb fingers locked well enough to hold them. The fact that our rescuee was no longer fighting was serious cause for concern in itself. I needed to get them both to dry nd!

  As it turned out, centaurs came with pretty decent strength stats.

  “I think he’s unconscious,” Serru panted, letting go carefully of her scarf so I could hook both hands under his armpits and drag him towards dry nd. She crawled out into the shallow water herself on hands and knees, coughing and spitting water and shivering, but nothing suggested immediate distress.

  Our rescuee, on the other hand, was in bad shape: motionless, making no effort to clear the inevitable water from his lungs, which meant he was almost certainly not breathing.

  I switched back to human, trying to ignore the lurch of vertigo that felt stronger than usual, and dropped to my knees beside him. His skin was cold.

  There was a pulse, faint and slow and thready.

  He wasn’t breathing.

  I leaned down for two quick breaths into his sck mouth; as I straightened, I ripped clothing out of the way, found the right spot, and ced my hands together. CPR would be the same anywhere, right? Any humanoid physiology should have basically the same reaction to forceful rhythmic pressure. As I hummed AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’, using the drums in the mental pyback to keep the rhythm steady, I felt a rib crack. There was no response from him at all, even though I winced without missing a beat. He’d still been struggling when Serru reached him, he’d been in cold water, he still had just a hint of a pulse... it wasn’t beyond hope. Twenty-nine, thirty. Two more strong breaths, listen for any trace of lung sounds, and back to it.

  “Nathan? Can I help?”

  “Get yourself warm.” I fitted the sylbles around the rhythm of the chest compressions. Was this going to work? I wasn’t getting any response at all, no coughing or sputtering, no autonomic response. Was he too far gone? “Wait... grab my bag?”

  Dripping wet, she obeyed. “Medical kit?”

  “Yes.”

  She brought both out—I noticed peripherally that her hands were shaking but I didn’t have time for less-urgent issues—and set them on the rocky ground beside me, in easy reach.

  How long was long enough? There was no backup coming, no equipment, no trip to a hospital where a doctor could make a decision. I didn’t have much stamina left; CPR is exhausting if it’s done right, even if you’re fresh to begin with, and I wasn’t. How long before I’d be unable to sustain the force and speed, another two sets, maybe adrenaline would give me three?

  “Red heart,” I said, pausing for two more quick breaths, listening in vain, then resuming.

  She flipped open the red box with the star, and dropped to one knee beside me with the red gss heart on her palm.

  I reached thirty again, paused to check his pulse. It was even weaker and extremely irregur.

  I took the red heart, and id it directly over his.

  There wasn’t much to lose, really. I wasn’t going to be able to save him, deep down I knew that.

  I closed one hand into a fist and csped the other around it, took a deep breath, then smmed the outer edge of my hands down into the red gss heart with all the strength I had left, like I was trying to drive the gss one in far enough to meet the muscur one beneath.

  I heard bone crack again.

  The red heart sank deep into his chest, and continued to sink, vanishing through skin and bone.

  Our drowning victim took a shuddering gasping breath, then began to cough violently. I heard a moan of pain, which wasn’t much surprise—coughing like that was bad enough without cracked ribs as well. I extended one of his arms upwards and rolled him hastily onto his side, doing what I could to avoid making those ribs shift, so the water he was hacking up could drain out of his mouth instead of being aspirated back into his lungs and causing further damage.

  “Oh, well done, Nathan,” Serru said. “I feared we were too te.” She’d pulled a bnket out of her satchel and wrapped it around herself, which was probably some help but it was getting wet from contact with her sodden clothing.

  “Almost,” I said. “But not quite. Get yourself warm and dry. That’s seriously important.”

  “I can look after myself, I promise. I’m going to use a Recovery potion, and then all I need is dry clothes, hot tea, and a snack.”

  I had no reason to doubt that she could assess her own condition and needs.

  As for my patient, I didn’t think he was likely to be up for swallowing any potions right away, no matter how much he needed them. I needed injectable forms of them. You never saw anyone in a game who couldn’t swallow a healing potion even if they were on their st hit point.

  Wait, I had a painkiller spell, right? It did mean having to switch yet again, back to centaur. The vertigo was worse this time. Apparently back-and-forth too fast wasn’t a great idea. My avaible mana was dropping, but then, I’d just changed four times in quick succession.

  I spun hastily through the centre wheel of my golden dispy in search of the spell I wanted.

  Anodyne: Reduces physical pain in a subject. Scable.

  The outer right-hand slider was glowing softly blue at the eighty percent line, with a little red marker on one edge hovering at about the same distance down again; the other was filled with glowing white for the bottom twenty percent, but no marker. This wasn’t the time to experiment with advanced settings. I just id one hand on the shoulder of our casualty, and fttened the other palm against the centre of the wheel, the way I remembered from my dreams.

  I felt a fsh of heat that reminded me of that tiny sun soaking into me, and saw the hand on my patient glow gold briefly.

  The pitiable moans eased up.

  Which was just as well, because heartbeats ter, the coughing turned into vomiting. Most of the river water would be in his stomach, not his lungs. I really wished I could check...

  Wait, I could check Vitals. That was a good thing. That was always a good thing.

  It cost a lot less than Anodyne had, about as much as switching forms.

  My golden dispy was repced by five horizontal lines of dashes. The centre range of each was green, shading on either side to yellow and orange and red, except one that shaded from blue through green into red. Each had a clearly-visible marker showing a current level, and each was belled in golden letters. Above it, text read “Human Adult.”

  There were no numbers anywhere to tell me exactly what the readings were, but it was better information than I had a minute ago.

  Temperature was slowly sliding as I watched from blue towards the green range.

  Respiration juddered all over, but then, he was throwing up.

  Heart rate was high, but adrenaline triggered by physical stress and pain will do that.

  His blood pressure was climbing gently and, as I watched, it stabilized solidly in the green. So did his oxygen saturation, although that took a little longer.

  All in all, that looked positive to me.

  He still had a lot of damage, though. The treatment for just about anything here involved Quickheal but it might be a while before he could swallow.

  I spun through my wheel to find that one, then hesitated, looking at the sliders on my right. After Anodyne, the outer one had dropped by twenty percent, to where that red marker had been. I hadn’t deliberately checked but it was pusibly the same for Vitals. That probably confirmed my specution: current avaible total, cost of current spell, what the total would be afterwards.

  The inner one was hovering halfway between the ten and the twenty, and the little red marker was, I figured, fifteen below the current level.

  Recklessly, I slid the inner one up to twenty-five, and saw the marker of the other one drop to indicate thirty-five.

  Pleased that I’d confirmed that aspect of my new skills, I gave him the twenty-five-point version.

  He shuddered, and kept vomiting, but just healing damage wasn’t going to get rid of the excess water.

  When he finished, he y there panting for breath.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m a paramedic. You don’t need to get up yet. Let’s roll you over onto your back, and I’ll look you over for injuries. Then you can sit up and I can wrap those ribs for you so they can heal faster. Okay?”

  He nodded and made a wordless sound that was clearly an affirmative.

  Serru helped me roll him and tucked my bag under his head as a kind of pillow; I fshed her a quick smile.

  It would be much easier to reach him if I was human form, but I was probably going to have to carry him, and all these changes were getting to be too much. I’d just have to manage.

  Very carefully, I lowered myself to the ground on the opposite side of him from the vomited water and bile, equine legs tucked under me, and leaned down to give him a thorough exam.

  Which turned out to be greatly complicated by the Anodyne spell I’d used.

  I finally sighed, helped him out of his clothes enough that I could wrap his ribs snugly with a Bandage—might as well do that while the pain reduction sted—and while he gingerly put his jacket back on with assistance, Serru and I made pns.