“No use worrying about that now. I’ve got everything laid out so you don’t have to rifle through their pockets to find anything cool. I only touched the corpses, though, so there’s still some looting to do.” Maggie finished with a smile.

  “Shouldn’t we go see the [Healers] first?” I asked. The pain killer Maggie gave me yesterday was still doing its job, but I could feel the pain trying to claw its way back into my consciousness.

  Maggie reddened, embarrassed, and shot me an apologetic grin.

  “Sorry, got excited. The looting is my favorite part. Bran’s right though. Healing should be the priority.”

  “Will someone steal the stuff?” Ellen asked.

  “They might try, but while you guys were out, I set up some wards and carved the Guild symbol beside the doors. Nobody with half a brain will try to get in while it’s up, but if they do, my wards will let me know.”

  The symbol, carved even on the interior of the doors, looked like a stylized sun with a wavy cross through the middle. I hadn’t known how the right of conquest would work with the Guild. Part of me assumed that since Erhard, the Guild’s patron deity, was Mera’s husband, it would be baked into the System.

  Our exit from the warehouse meant making the hours long journey through the maze that called itself a city. I started out trying to use my crutches, but as time passed, the pain got worse and worse until I needed Maggie’s help to walk. Although Maggie held ninety-five percent of my weight, by the time we passed our sixth district, even moving my leg forward was an act of agony. I tried not to let my pain show, but at multiple points I collapsed and Maggie had to hold me up.

  By the time we reached the Guild Hall, Maggie was not only holding me up, but she had a hand on my leg so it wouldn’t move as much as we walked. It made me look like I was using her as a crutch. The height difference and the fact she was crouched to hold my leg only added to the effect. I’d been in similar situations before where an elder had to carry me back after an injury, but never had I been as embarrassed as I was then. Maybe it was the new environment, all the eyes, or that these were not my people, but by the time we got to the Hall, I was flushed red, more in embarrassment than in pain.

  When we walked into the common room, Maggie was the only one who didn’t look ragged. This early in the morning, the common room only had sparse patronage, but I was glad to see that people seem sympathetic to our state rather than dismissive. When we got past the tightly spaced tables to the bar, a different [Bartender] from yesterday pointed us to a well-hidden staircase without a word.

  As we crossed the room, a man stood from one table and walked towards us. Grim faced and short of stature, the man looked like a gargoyle. A thin scar traced his chin from neck to mouth, and he slicked back his thinning grey hair to the point it shined in the sunlight. Without a word, the man came to my side and lifted my other arm around his shoulder to take on the rest of my weight. With Maggie on one side and the man on the other, all I had to do was move my good leg as they carried me down the stairs.

  The space that greeted us was cold. Plain stone furnishings carved from plain rock left the space feeling like a cave rather than a house of healing. The wild-looking young man who sat behind a roughly hewn stone desk did not help the impression, either.

  “Name’s Cassius.” The man said and patted me on the back. Snapping my attention back to him from the room.

  Cassius didn’t wait for a response and by the time I turned to look at him, he’d given my weight back to Maggie and was already halfway up the stairs.

  “Thank you!” I called at his back, and he gave a little wave in return.

  Maggie set me down in one of the cushioned stone chairs that lined the walls and walked up to the desk. Before she could even cross halfway to it, the wild man behind the counter rolled his eyes.

  “Just because the bumpkins are hurt doesn’t mean they can skip the line. I registered them as soon as their badges crossed the threshold. You’ve got to wait.”

  Maggie stopped, and I couldn’t see her face, but her posture stiffened. She continued, steps firmer than before.

  Maggie leant over the desk; the [Receptionist] refused to move away, which allowed her to whisper in his ears. I don’t think we were meant to hear, but because of the construction of the room, all her words were easily audible.

  “I am Maggie Highriver. Daughter of Frank Highriver, and niece of Tia Highriver. A member of my flagship party is maimed and if he is not seen to in the next ten minutes. Divines help me. I will inform my family and ruin your entire fucking career. Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear.”

  As Maggie spoke, the man leant back, his eyes going wide until they stretched across his face. Maggie barely leaned back from the desk before the scrape of stone-on-stone echoed into the room and he dashed back behind a curtain.

  The four of us exchanged looks. Nora looked uncomfortable, while Ellen and Mika seemed amused more than anything. Maggie flashing her name like that wasn’t a surprise. We knew her parents were important and using that to our advantage was to be expected. However, this was the first time it really clicked with me the kind of power her family’s name had over people in the Guild.

  The [Receptionist] returned a couple of minutes later, Maggie having never left the desk, flanked by two people. The first and more imposing of the pair was an older man with a head of well-trimmed salt and pepper hair. His beaked nose was so jagged and misaligned that he must have had it broken a dozen times.

  Part of me suspected the breaks were a conscious choice rather than a lack of one, because even lesser healing skills could ensure his nose was straight if they set it before it got healed. Briefly I scanned the parts of him left unclothed and noticed that he sported a wide collection of crisscrossing scars. That he still had scars as someone who was presumedly a powerful [Healer] told me he either practiced some kind of wound collecting tradition or his own healing spell could not heal scarring.

  Wound collection was a term I’d read in a book from the Hydralgo Dominion about the tribes that once lived on the plains they conquered. Almost offhandedly in a footnote, the author mentioned that after Dominion soldiers adopted the practice from the tribes people, it quickly spread to most warrior societies on the continent. These practitioners kept the scars from opponents they respected and healed the ones from those they didn’t and looking at the [Healer] before me I suspected he practiced something similar; after all, what was the Adventurer’s Guild besides the biggest warrior society in the world.

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  Hidden in the elder's shadow was a baby-faced girl, who looked fourteen at the eldest. Heavily overshadowed by her elder, her nervous glances at us told me that was probably a positive in her books. Unassuming as she was the fact that she was here, after the stunt Maggie pulled to get a [Healer’s] attention fast meant she probably had at least some talent in the skill.

  Maybe she was unawakened and was just that talented with magic that she could already free form healing spells. However, given that she was following the older man, I would’ve bet she was his [Apprentice]. If one at the very beginning of her apprenticeship.

  The man’s eyes roved the room like a hawk and settled onto Maggie with the weight of a falcon spotting a bunny. Maggie inhaled and squared herself to him. The [Healer] marched up to her until they were almost chest to chest and loomed down at her.

  A sneer settled over his features as his eyes flicked to us. Like Tia, he scanned each of us one at a time. When his gaze landed on me, I tried to meet his eyes but physically could not bring myself to raise my gaze past the man’s throat. The [Healer’s] eyes went back to Maggie’s before he gave a sigh and walked to be before the chairs.

  “My name is Orion, [Head Healer] for the Dustreach Guild Hall, this is my [Apprentice], Tilda. Who amongst you requires the most attention?”

  Where before the man gave us all a cursory glance, he now took each one of us in. His [Apprentice] doing the same behind him.

  “This is all the Highrivers can manage?” The man asked, his eyes on Nora.

  Maggie snapped something back, but her response was lost to me when the man’s eyes landed on me. Instinctively, something in me flinched. I expected pain, for aura to slam down and overwhelm me. I expected the amber eyes to return, but it never did.

  The [Healer] scoffed and turned to look over his shoulder at Maggie, who still stood near the desk.

  “I knew you were desperate, but associating with one of the forest savages is a new low. Even for a Highriver.” He sneered.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I tried to stand. Pain flared in my leg and my strength fled me. I tried to continue, but the pain overwhelmed me and I flopped bonelessly back into the chair, panting. The room got loud around me, but I had a hard time hearing what everyone was saying because of the blood that rushed past my ears. With a white knuckled grip on the chair arms, I raised myself to a hover when it registered what people were saying around me.

  “You godless bigot –“ Nora’s words trampled over Ellen’s insult even as it came out.

  “How dare you!”

  Even Mika was coming to my defense. He’d taken a step forward and pointed an accusing finger at the [Healer] during his own tirade as he shouted the man down for the insult.

  "Really Orion? You want to play this game? You’re really going to withhold treatment from an apprentice?”

  Before Maggie’s statement, spoken like a judge sentencing execution, Orion had stood there in abject confusion. His eyes roamed over the three Tier 1s and 2s who called him down and he even shot a glance back to his [Apprentice] asking if she could believe this.

  After her threat, however, the man grew a little paler. His cheeks lost a little of their healthy flush and his eyes widen.

  “Margret.” Orion stated flatly, like he was speaking to a petulant child who threatened to tell their parents on him.

  “I wonder what the [Glory Hunters] would have to say about this?”

  [Glory Hunter] was the class given to all of Erhard’s priests, and they were the ones who truly ran the Guild. Anyone who got past a certain rank within the bureaucracy or, as an adventurer, had the option to join their ranks or stall out at their current rank forever.

  Maggie and the elder locked eyes in a silent battle of wills, neither willing to break first. In the end, it was Orion who broke away first.

  “You’ll have to be the one to work on the forest dweller. I will not sully my hands on him.” Orion muttered to his [Apprentice] before he stalked off deeper into the Healing Hall.

  Forest dweller was more a statement of fact than an insult, but the tone the man delivered it in was enough to make me want to try to stand again.

  The [Apprentice] looked after her master with a confused expression before she turned back to us.

  “I’ll take you in one at a time. Ma’am, if you could help me with the large one.” The mousey apprentice said.

  Maggie picked me up again and together the little girl led us into the ward and towards a curtained off alcove cut into the rock of the mesa. A red striation barely visible near the ceiling. Once we were past the curtain, Tilda closed it again and bowed to me.

  “I apologize for my master’s behavior.” I thought she might continue, offer some excuse for his hatred of my people, but she remained silent; bowed at the waist and content to wait for my answer.

  “Your apology is appreciated.” I said in return.

  I meant it. She seemed genuine in her remorse, and while I appreciated the apology and washed her of fault for the insult, I did not forgive. Savage was not something I considered an insult. But her master’s tone spoke volumes and until he apologized himself, I would not forgive.

  “Thank you. Ma’am, could I get your help in placing the patient on his stomach, please?” Tilda said and pointed at a table cut of stone and polished to a mirror finish that ran along one wall.

  Maggie complied and gently lifted me onto the stone. The table was warm like a heated blanket and I felt muscles I hadn’t realized were tensed, relax as soon as I made contact with the stone. Idly, I acknowledged to myself that some spell was working on me at the moment, and that I was grateful for it.

  The sound of scissors gliding through cloth echoed lightly around the small space as Tilda removed the blood-soaked bandages from my leg. There was a fresh jab of hurt as the small woman tore away the bandage and broke the scabs that formed last night; exposing my raw flesh to the open air again.

  “Bite.” Tilda said and held a small leather strap before my mouth.

  I did so and tensed again as she placed something cold on the opening of the wound.

  “I am about to insert a mana focus into the wound to guide the healing. This will hurt.” Her voice wasn’t unkind, just clinical.

  I couldn’t speak through the gag and just nodded my understanding, eyes focused on the swirl patterned curtain in front of me. Part of me had hoped Tilda could heal without pain like they’d been able to in Woodsedge. I dismissed the thought as soon as it arrived, though. That would deny Decay its due. This was a wound that should have crippled me for months and if I was on my own within the Weeping Forest would have been a death warrant. I could bear pain for the gift of life.

  I felt Tilda straighten the rod along the back of my thigh. The focus caressed exposed nerves as it moved and plunged slightly deeper. The movement hurt, but not as much as the warning led me to believe.

  Stood in front of me, Maggie’s eyes never left the [Apprentice]. Without a word, Maggie offered me her hand. I took it and bit down on the leather strap.

  The chime of metal on metal rang out in the small alcove three times in rapid succession, accompanied by my muffled screams as Tilda drove the mana focus into the wound like a tent spike. The pain was quick and sharp and punctuated by the clack of my teeth as I bit through the leather.

  Once the original pain faded somewhat, I focused on the cold, dull throb of the wound being touched by metal. A feeling I honestly preferred to the ripping, agonizing discomfort of thorned vines slithering through your flesh like so many snakes.

  “I’m ready to begin as soon as you are.” Tilda said.

  I shifted the leather around in my mouth so I had a fresh piece to bite before I held my thumb up and gave the [Apprentice] the go ahead.

  Nothing happened in the room for a long moment, forcing me to live within the feeling of the warm table beneath me and the cold spike of metal in my leg as the smell of ozone built in the air. It started off subtle, like the hints of past storms, but slowly built in intensity until it smelt like I stood within the blast radius of a chained lightning bolt.

  The silence shattered as lightning cracked around the room. The bolt ground itself into the rod in my leg. Muscles spasmed and pain flashed. My vision blacked out briefly, but the spasms and pain localized only to my upper thigh.

  Once the initial pain faded, it felt like I’d had a bad cramp and seized up. More than pain, however, was the discomfort of feeling my flesh reach out in tendrils to connect with and join others. Worse still was the slithering discomfort of my own muscles moving to guide the two pieces of my hamstring to reconnect.

  “Lightning huh?” Maggie grunted.

  “Can’t help our affinities, unfortunately.”

  Affinities were rare things. A person was born with them and no matter what you did, you couldn’t gain or lose an affinity. I didn’t know much about them because before this, the only person I’d ever met with one was a woman with a Joy affinity. She’d run the only tavern in Twin Oak until her son came of age and took over; she’d then retired to the village council. Still, if the girl was a talented healer with an affinity as well, I could understand why the Hall’s [Head Healer] accepted her as an [Apprentice].

  The spasming in my leg lasted only a couple minutes after she cast the spell and with it went the pain that hounded me since I was hamstrung.

  “You should be able to walk now, but you’ll need to relax for a few days if your leg is to fully recover.”

  “Thank you.” I said as I gently rolled over and gingerly placed my feet on the floor.

  Cautiously I stood, half expecting for my leg to give out again, but it held firm. I took a step and placed all my weight on the foot; it felt weak, but more so like it was sore than I’d lost any strength. Curious, I gently ran my hand over when the cut was. Part of me expected to feel the circular scars of the vines or smooth skin. Instead, a jagged line of raised flesh spanned the entire back of my thigh.

  “Sorry about that. I’m not good enough yet to heal something as substantial as your injury without leaving a scar. Though you’ll notice your arrow wound healed clean.” The girl didn’t sound as apologetic as she had when she apologized for her master. Just plain clinical.

  “it’s fine. A fresh scar is nothing to be embarrassed by.” I said, and checked my other thigh to see that she was right and that the small arrow wound there was gone without a scar.

  We left the alcove to quiet cheers as my party mates stood to congratulate me on being able to walk again. I thanked them and we quietly chatted with one another for another hour as one by one the rest of my party took turns heading into the alcove with the girl. Occasionally, as someone returned to the seating area, I caught glimpses of the elder, his expression a thunderhead. Eventually, they saw all of us, and after a round of thanks to Tilda, Maggie led us back upstairs for a meal.