Camila’s news had rocked him. So, if he was being honest, had the hug.

  “What do you mean Charlie isn’t waking up?”

  “They aren’t powerful healers. Mostly they are like we were our first day. They barely have a single skill, and they can use it a few times. Well, they started by hitting everyone with multiple castings of that healing spell. That was enough to get me up, was enough to get Sarah up too. The others as well. Charlie looks a little better, but he hasn’t woken up. Even after like three of them including Dr. Chen did everything they could for him.”

  David nodded, levering himself to his feet.

  “Show me?”

  Before Camila turned away she spoke in a rush. “When this is over we need to talk, in private.”

  Then as though she hadn’t said anything she headed off, her hesitant steps made it clear that everything wasn’t perfect with her, despite being up she wasn’t back in peak condition, and he noted that she was unconsciously cradling her arm.

  Now he was relaxing in the safe zone, he could feel the soothing buzz that washed away stress and moderated trauma. It wasn’t enough, he was holding it together, but he could feel the grief and rage bubbling below the surface. He had to go back for Billy, and he still didn’t know what had happened to Mark.

  Right now he concentrated with half of his attention on regenerate. His injuries were bad enough to give him access based on the emergency protocol, watching or more accurately feeling the healing work was fascinating as well as causing him considerable relief.

  He knew he had suppressed notifications waiting to be called on, still he had ignored them as he healed and just decompressed.

  He knew how to do that because of Charlie… He shook himself. Focus, he continued to let regenerate work. Like everything else it seemed that the Obelisk and the System were happy to accept payment for the options they offered, at least if you knew how to ask and pay.

  As they approached the medical area one of the people nudged Dr. Chen and she moved quickly over to them. Her voice had that patient, compassionate detachment that Doctor’s always seemed to have when they were sharing bad news.

  “David, we have done everything we can for Charlie. Unless a hospital is cleared, powered and an emergency room and surgical suite are fully staffed there is nothing more that can be done for him. It’s up to him now. We can hope that he wakes up but his injuries appear to be more serious than any of us can diagnose.”

  “Let me see him?”

  “Right this way…”

  She took him to a tent, more one of those pop-up pavilions that big families have for gatherings. It wasn’t lost on him that while they had set up several cots for multiple people but most of them were being cleaned, presumably after the patient recovered and walked away after a short period of time.

  “If you need anything any of the volunteers can help you…”

  By the time she spoke and stepped away David was processing the scene in front of him. Katie sat in a folding camp chair on one side of the cot, and Mark was kneeling on the ground his head in her lap. David didn’t see anything, definitely not the streaks of tears running down Mark’s face.

  At least that was what the nod he offered the other man said.

  Sarah wasn’t anywhere to be seen, given the state everyone was in he didn’t know if she had gone to get clean, to grieve alone, or to run some errand.

  Carl was on the other side of Charlie’s bed. Also in a camp chair, with both of his hands bandaged and splinted.

  David finally looked at Charlie, he was still, completely still. Which wasn’t natural, not for Charlie who always had this kind of enthusiastic energy about him. He looked shrunk somehow and his head was wrapped in clean white bandages though you could still determine that there was a visible dent in his skull when you looked closely.

  “How is he?”

  It was a lame, stupid first question but it was what David had right now. With that out of the way he moved on right on to asking softly. “What do we know?”

  Katie gently shook Mark, “babe, do you want to answer? You know this stuff best.”

  Mark shook himself and his deep voice came out rough, the distress he had felt clearly not ameliorated by the quiet push of the Obelisk.

  “We basically have one healing spell. Well, I can get a second, but I haven’t earned the experience to unlock it yet.” He sounded almost defensive as he continued. “Those skills you unlock at higher skill levels are expensive. Like, really expensive to gain. I don’t know how Charlie was so glib about having one…”

  Before he could wander off on a tangent David spoke softly, focusing on his friend.

  “So we have a whole lot of Infuse, but nothing else?”

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  Mark shook his head. “We have regular medicine. Not like hospital good but I would say Dr. Chen has managed to replicate a lot of the things you could get at urgent care and that really makes a difference.”

  There was quiet respect for the craft of the Doctor in his voice, giving David the sense that managing to replicate urgent care in a tent in a park was not a small thing.

  “So, he has the best of both worlds working for him?”

  Mark nodded, “it isn’t enough though… I can’t help him.”

  He sounded bitter, like he was somehow responsible.

  Katie pulled him close and started speaking softly to him, while she took care of him Camila spoke from behind David where she had stood through the brief run down.

  “So, normally we would ask Charlie what System thing we were missing that could help. But we can’t. So, you have to use that brain of yours to figure it out. You are damn nearly as good as he is at this computer game crap.”

  David didn’t even take offense, then he closed his eyes and started to run a mental checklist.

  One thing stood out. He couldn’t have been that stupid, after all the times they talked about it…

  David needed to verify. So, he started by asking.

  “Do any of you know for sure that Charlie ever actually bought health?”

  Everyone looked at him sharply. Katie shook her head immediately, Mark spoke softly, unsure.

  “Umm, I talked to him a couple of times about how important it was so I could treat him, and he told me not to worry, he understood… He never actually said he bought it though...”

  Camila just shook her head and muttered under her breath. “Estupido, if you put us through this because you didn’t listen, after what happened to Katie, to Sarah. Men!”

  David would have felt the generalization was unfair if he wasn’t sharing the sentiment that Charlie had been incredibly stupid.

  It all fit together too well, he was consistently the most powerful caster. The offensive hammer, even possessing an extra skill, likely an expensive one. David already knew how expensive buying skills from the Obelisk was, he was benefitting from regenerate right now only because he burned spirits and others lacked his exploit letting them store large quantities of experience.

  Now to verify. David focused, within the safe zone his spiritual hearing was less effective due to the ambient noise, still he dismissed it. He couldn’t tell if someone had health, hell if it wasn’t Nath related it was pretty likely that it would just make a noise that might tell him something with enough experience, or be silent.

  Mana Sight on the other hand would work. With a mental flex David turned his newest skill on, as power flooded into his eyes he began to see a new range of colors, magic and more importantly magical nuance became visible.

  It told a blindingly obvious story. Looking at each of his friends, except Katie, he could see the cool blue framework of the Infuse spell. Each of them also had threads of crimson energy flowing through the blue pattern clinging to their injured bodies. He couldn’t really see into them but enough was external for him to make it out clearly.

  Each of them also had clear signs of the blue network eroding as it carried the crimson energy, Health he was sure, where it needed to go.

  Charlie was different. He had a LOT more blue energy wrapped around him, with little to no signs of degradation and absolutely no crimson energy flowing through the system of stacked and duplicated channels woven around his head and body.

  “That little idiot. I’m going to wake him up so I can kill him…”

  David didn’t realize he was speaking aloud until Camila commented wryly.

  “If you can do that, I’ll take a turn killing him too…” There was raw hope in her voice.

  David nodded then fired an inquiry off to the Obelisk.

  System, I have a critically injured individual who does not have the Health resource. He has been stabilized with casting’s of Infuse. Is there any way to transfer resources to him to facilitate recovery.

  The response came back almost immediately.

  [HEALTH TRANSFER IS POSSIBLE VIA THE OBELISK. HEALTH CONVERSION IS ALSO POSSIBLE VIA THE OBELISK. THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL NEEDS TO INITIATE CONVERSION. BOTH THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL AND THE DONOR NEED TO INITIATE TRANSFER.]

  David asked his next question immediately.

  The injured individual is unconscious, is there any way to unilaterally transfer Health?

  The reply was a little surprising.

  [ONLY LEADERS AND DESIGNATED HEALERS CAN TRANSFER THEIR HEALTH VIA THE OBELISK WITHOUT RECIPIENT CONSENT. MANUAL TRANSFER IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO LEADERS AND THEIR APPROVED DESIGNATES AND IS NOT ADVISED OUTSIDE EMERGENCIES. NO BASIC SKILLS ALLOW FOR EMPATHIC HEALING.]

  David didn’t even pause asking a final question as he pulled up his System.

  How does a leader designate Healers?

  [THE LEADER MUST TOUCH THE PERSPECTIVE HEALER AND SEND A SYSTEM REQUEST TO THE OBELISK. THE HEALER MUST ACCEPT THE SYSTEM PROMPT.]

  David found the title and bought the first level of it. One hundred XP vanished and he was a system recognized leader. An immediate message appeared in his vision.

  David just waved it away and immediately reached out with his new authority and requested a health transfer from himself to Charlie. An angry red notification greeted him.

  He checked his system, he would barely be able to give Charlie 5% of his Health pool before he was cut off, He was still healing after all. He might be able to extend it a bit with Convert, though that wasn’t efficient.

  Then he looked at his friends.

  “Right, who had health to spare?”

  They all looked at him blankly, and he realized they had no idea what he was talking about or what he had just done.

  “I figured out how we can give our Health to Charlie. It’s not efficient but it will give him the fuel to recover.”

  The responses were immediate. “Me, let me go first.” “Heck yea, do me, I’m not doing anything useful with it.” “Dios Mio, just do it already.” “Can he benefit from my regenerate? You should probably do me.”

  It turned out that the Obelisk didn’t agree with Carl and Camila as both had too little health left over from treating their own injuries.

  Mark and Katie though. They were both pretty much brimming with health they could spare.

  David smiled as he and his friends sat waiting for Charlie to wake up. The flood of relief they all felt at being able to actually do something changed the dynamic instantly.

  When Sarah reappeared, she looked at them curiously, her head like Charlies was wrapped in bandages and she was moving slowly and carefully, clearly not over her ordeal.

  Camila gave her the good news.

  “Charlie’s going to be fine, David saved him too.”

  What are you most looking forward to seeing more confrontations with in upcoming chapters?