What We Do to Survive

The street was abuzz with activity, but Orion stood rooted to the cobblestones, barely aware of the chaos. A burnt out ruin stood where a fine two-storied shop had been days earlier, a pair of mages still firing fire-suppressing spells into the smoldering building. He could feel the last traces of magic struggle and die under the constant barrage. Orion did not believe in coincidences, and those traces were all the evidence he needed. This had been no accident.

Orion inhaled slowly, tasting the acrid tang of smoke and ash in the air. Someone was going to pay for this. He didn’t care if it was an attack on Lea herself, simply a casualty of a separate conflict, or even just a business rival’s scheme. Something like this could not go unpunished, would not go unpunished.

He exhaled sharply. First though, he needed information, and he needed it now. If they had so much as touched a hair on his Lea’s head, the person who had done this would rue the day they were born.

Reaching into an interior pocket, he withdrew the small amulet that all Avalon students were ‘encouraged’ to carry when outside the Academy, and used a small bit of magic to attach it to his jacket. He didn’t tend to wear it out like some students did, he didn’t like to advertise his current status, but here it would hopefully give him some much needed semblance of importance. For a moment he wished he’d worn something slightly more impressive, he was no longer wearing the pieced together outfit of his first outings, but his clothing was still that of a simple laborer. It would have to do.

He glanced around, then marched towards the most official looking person he could see. The tall, uniformed guard barely bothered to turn his head. “Please stand back, citizen. This area may not be sa–”

I didn’t have time for this shit. Magic rose within me and I briefly focused the entirety of my attention on the man. He stumbled over himself mid word and turned fully to look at me, eyes widening under his helmet.

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t recognize–” he glanced briefly down at the amulet, “–My apologies, good mage. How can I help you?”

“The people?” I asked sharply, “Was anyone in the building?”

“Ah, well–”

For the second time, I let my mana flood out of my body and briefly wash over the guard. His legs buckled momentarily and he swayed drunkenly before refocusing on me. “Was anyone in the building?” I asked again.

“Yes, good mage. Three were pulled from the building before the flames could spread fully. Two men, the owners I believe, and their adult daughter.”

I frowned. He wasn’t telling me something. “And?”

“Well… they weren’t in good shape when my men got to them, good mage. All three were badly beaten and the woman was–”

Without any conscious thought, my magic spiked again and he hurriedly shut up. “Where are they now?” I all but growled. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I noticed that the poor guard looked utterly terrified, but I was too angry to care. I was afraid if I let him finish his sentence, I wouldn’t be able to see past the red haze at the edges of my vision.

“Th-the gu-guard center,” the man stuttered. He straightened slightly, nervously fidgeting with a buckle, “I can have one of my men take you there?”

“Then what are you waiting for?” I asked sharply. I turned to look at the cooling ruin, scowling as I remembered the irreplaceable pictures and whatever other precious memories my Lea had built in this place. “Save what you can. Ensure nothing is… misplaced during the cleanup.”

“Yes, good mage.” He nodded shakily, then turned away, scanning the slowly dispersing throng that had gathered on the street. “Harth, over here!” he called out loudly, and a young-looking guard rushed over to join us.

Harth glanced between us quickly, then clapped his free hand on his chest and slammed the butt of his short spear against the ground. “Sir?” he asked quietly.

“At ease. Harth, please lead this good mage to the guard center. He is free to visit with the brought in victims as he pleases.”

“Yes sir!”

With one parting glance at where the mages were finishing off the last of the embers, I stalked after the young guard as he briskly led be back towards the city center. Hopefully what I’d just done wouldn’t come back to bite me. I didn’t really have the power or authority to order anyone around, but with any luck no one would question it. My amulet said nothing about year, and Avalon was very flexible about the age at which it accepted students, so as far as the captain knew I very well could be a near-archmage level spellcaster. Rules and laws tended to become rather flexible at those echelons of power. Combined with what I was rapidly learning was an excellent technique for intimidation, I doubted he would do anything he thought would piss me off in the near future. I could smooth over any ruffled feathers later. For now, this would have to be enough.

As we went, my mind raced with plans and theories. There were a few things I needed to know, Who had done this? Why had they done this? And most importantly, what I could do about it. Hopefully Lea or her uncles could tell me something. Baring that I would have to go back and question the guards. Unfortunately, I was afraid the fire-suppressing spells, combined with the clearly magical flames, had likely wiped away any potentially useful traces of the culprits magic. Well, assuming other magic had even been involved.

If none of those options panned out, I did have at least one lead. Well, five leads really. I only knew of one group that had targetted my Lea before, and it was high time I payed them a visit. Even if they weren’t the ones responsible today… well, I wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving right now.

As much as I didn’t like the option, it might also be worth trying to contact the Earthshadow heiress, if she didn’t already know what had happened. She clearly cared deeply about my Lea, and even if I wasn’t sure how I felt about their relationship, I doubted she would take this lying down. If she’d been incensed by an attempted beating, I had no doubt she would be furious about such a brazen attack on her former romantic partner. Still, she should pray that this wasn’t in some way her fault, perhaps some jilted’d partner’s way of striking back at her indirectly. Powerful heiress or not, her Name would not protect her from me.

Most of the thankfully short walk passed in a blur, though I made sure to keep all my senses peeled the entire trip. I found it unlikely that this was something meant to target me, I had been careful about covering my tracks and didn’t really have any active enemies in Avalon that I knew of, but that was no reason to let my guard down. If nothing else, if it was those idiot childern than they might have hired someone to do what their combined skills could not. The pendent the Myrddin had given me, its enchantments still just as inscrutable as they had been when I’d first received it, hung heavily against my bare chest, hopefully shielding me from the prying eyes of any overly-curious mages.

The guard center was a small, walled complex only a few streets away from the Avalon portal. My guide led me through the manned gate and towards a two-storied stone building covered with several layers of wards. I analyzed them briefly, then dismissed them as irrelevant. They were simple protective spells, under which lay a moderately powerful healing field meant to stabalyize life-threatening injuries within its bounds. Nothing particularly dangerous or unusual. From what I’d read, it was a rather standard design for small-scale healing halls.

The building was nearly empty when we arrived. I waited silently as my guide exchanged hushed whispers with the only nurse I could see in the entire wide-open first floor, tuning out the sharply hissed words, then followed after him as he led me up a flight of stairs. The second floor appeared to be divided into roughly a dozen smaller rooms, and the guard directed me to where I could sense three faint mana signatures just behind the wall.

“Through here, sir,” he said, opening the door and taking a step back.

I took one step into the room, and, for the second time that day, was almost overwhelmed by raw, burning rage. My oldest, dearest friend lay all but naked on a hard cot, the burnt and bloody scraps of what had once been a dress leaving nothing to the imagination. Bruises, oozing abrasions, and horrible burns covered nearly every inch of her body, and both her arms were twisted in ways human arms were not meant to move. Despite myself, my eyes drifted lower and my teeth clenched painfully as I saw white slime pooling in the narrow gap between her parted thighs.

They’d done nothing for her. In fact… I hadn’t realized I could be this angry as I saw the manacle looped around her more-intact ankle, a short chain connecting it to a metal hoop in the floor. I scanned the room, noting the similar manacles binding both of Lea’s uncles as well, ensuring the somewhat less injured men weren’t going anywhere either.

I took a few shaky steps forward and dropped to my knees beside the head of the cot on which she lay. Patches of her beautiful silver hair had been torn roughly from her scalp, and the rest of it was soaked with a disgusting mix of fluids, both her own and those of dead men. Both her eyes were nearly swollen shut and blood leaked slowly from her broken nose and between cracked and missing teeth, then down her cheek to drip onto the already stained wood. Her breathing was slow and ragged, but even the clearly agonizing rise and fall of her chest gave me hope.

A gauntleted hand clapped down on my shoulder, nearly sending me sprawling in surprise. A gruff voice spoke up from almost directly behind me. “You can’t be here right now. This is a matter for the city authorities. I don’t know who–”

I slowly turned my head to look up at the guard who dared try and pull me away from my Lea. He wasn’t even a mage, I could feel only the barest spark of magic at the core of his soul, less potent than even that of some children I’d seen playing in the street. Who did he think he was, ordering me around?

“Back off,” I growled.

The man scowled, puffing himself up like a pufferfish. “Now look here sonny. I don’t know what a peasant is–”

I tuned him out, turning back to stare at Lea’s mangled body. She was alive, but I didn’t have to be a mind reader to sense the nearly palatable waves of agony rolling off her like heat from a bonfire. A painful wave of hopelessness flooded through me as I studied her many injuries. I didn’t even know where to start treating something like this. Anything I did might just make everything worse, interfering with deeper injuries I did not know how to diagnose. I’d never taken a course on healing magic, nor any of the specalized anatimy classes beyond those needed for self-transformation.

The hand on my shoulder squeezed down and the guard tried to grab my wrist. I managed to resist the urge to blast him through a wall, instead simply slamming my elbow back and up into the leather chestpiece he was wearing. He choked and stumbled away, clutching his bruised belly with his hands.

My guide rushed into the room a moment later. I felt him glance rapidly between us and was thankful when he made the right choice to go help his colleague instead of trying to do anything to me. I would hate to make a mess of things here, it might even force me to grab Lea and rush back into the relative safety of Avalon, but I would not let some aging idiot get between me and one of the most precious things left in my life.

“Why are they chained down?” I asked quietly. “Have you called a healer?”

“Its… uh, its just a… safety precaution, thats all. We… we don’t have a healer on staff for commoners. We ah, just typically wait for victims to wake up and see if they have someone they can request.”

I closed my eyes and silently counted to ten. ‘They’re probably too poor so we were going to leave them to die’ I translated. At least they’d brought them under the wards, probably because it didn’t cost them anything to do so.

Standing up, I jerked my head towards the door. “Stand back,” I ordered, and both guards rushed to comply. Mana singing in my veins, I rapidly cast the few diagnostic spells I knew, trying to see how much time I had.

The results were… mixed. From what I could tell, it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d initially feared. Her injuries had been inflicted with much more finess than it looked from the outside, designed to cripple and inflict pain instead of kill. Several bones were reduced to all but splinters and without serious healing she would never walk or use her hands again, but none of her major organs had been seriously damaged. I had a feeling whatever the guards had done to transport her had done nearly as much internal damage as whoever had attacked her initially. Bloody incompetence was what it was.

Biting my lip, I launched several cursory spells at her uncles as well. They were in much better shape, bruised and battered but it looked like they would heal even without magical intervention. Good. Lea would have been devistated if they died, but I didn’t have the time or mana to work on all three of them. My Lea needed expert healing, and the faster the better, else I feared that even if she survived some of the damage would linger for decades to come. Perhaps I could have convinced the guards to summon their own healer, I almost guaranteed they had one on staff, but I wasn’t keen on trusting them with such a thing. Thankfully, I’d learned the perfect magic I needed for this very recently.

Digging into one of the deep pockets on my pants, I withdrew a small potion vial and popped the cork out with a finger. This wasn’t what it was made for, the potion itself was meant to enhance mana regeneration, but it was the most magically conductive fluid I had with me in sufficent quantities.

I mentally drew the cupfull of blue-green potion out of the vial, then split the floating mass into three even sections and got to work. The circle formed quickly as I drew the needed twenty-seven runes from memory. The exercise itself was not too difficult, this was one of my more practiced techniques with pure mana manipulation, but stretching the meager amount of fluid far enough took all my focus. The circle ended up much smaller than I would have liked, the lines drawn with barely more than a millimeter of liquid and I had to use some of my focus to ensure the potion wouldn’t bead and ruin everything, but I managed it in the end.

The moment I finished, I flooded the circle with mana, charging each rune almost simuletaniously and enveloping Lea in a soft red glow. At my direction, spellforms wrote themselves in the air around the circle, twisting slowly as they began to sink inward.

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth as I felt the strain of using so much mana all at once pound painfully against my skull. The last time I’d done this, I’d had much more time to charge everything and had used a much more powerful, specialized ‘paint’ to form the runes. Still, I pushed through it, forcing the mana to obey as I almost gently wrapped the last strands of mana around Lea’s twisted limbs.

With a nearly audible snap, everything fell into place and the oppressive weight of mana vanished in an instant. Lea’s body froze mid-breath, a single drop of blood still hanging off the sharp edge of her cheekbone. I tentatively reached out and ran a finger down her cheek. Both her soft skin and the horrific burns that marred it felt like smooth, cold stone under my touch. Just in case, I cast a simple diagnostic spell meant to check for breathing and a heartbeat. It washed off her immobile form, finding no living thing to latch onto.

“I’ll be back to check on the other two later,” I said into the silent room. “I will be very upset if anything happens to either of them.”

“Yes, good mage. I’ll make sure they are well taken care of.”

“Good. I’ll be taking this one with me.” The manacle around her ankle sprang open under the touch of a simple unlocking spell, the unenchanted offering no resistance to even such basic magic. “I’ll need a cloak, or perhaps a blanket.”

“There should be one in the closet just outside?” offered the gruff, older guard, his voice hoarse and tinged with fear.

“Fetch it.”

He did and I wrapped the thin brown blanket around her, hiding her injuries and nakedness from the watching guards. After a moment, the older of the two stepped forward, one hand still held protectively over his chest. “We release her into your care, good mage. On behalf of the third guard regiment, I ask that you bring her back to give a statement once she has recovered.”

I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I’ll consider it.”

“That is all I ask.”

Neither of them tried to stop me as I picked up my ‘parcel’, carrying her cloth-wrapped body under my arm like I would a melon, and left. It wasn’t the most convenient or dignified way of doing things, but it was at least vaguely subtle and my magically enhanced muscles had no issues with the weight.

The nurse I’d seen before stepped in front of me as I approached the door. “Excuse me sir,” she said in a small voice, “I’m sorry, but may I have a name for the register?”

I looked down at her for a moment, then shrugged. “Orion. Of Avalon.”

She nodded quickly, eyes wide, and hurriedly stepped out of my way. “Thank you, sir.”

I nodded and left, mind racing as I weighed my options. I could take her to Lightcastle, they clearly had both the facilities and experts needed to care for her. Judging from my previous visit, they would even be willing to do it at no additional cost. However, that would advertise both of our locations and leave us in a very public and open space.

I could see a few alternatives, but none of them were perfect. I could take her to a private healer, but that would likely be expensive, time consuming, and I would have to find one first. My hastily-cast stasis would hold for a few days, but I would rather not carry around a frozen body while I searched. That seemed like it could lead to more than a few misunderstandings and potential complications.

Next, I could try and take her to the Earthshadow mansion and hand her off into the care of their family experts. I was confident they had at least a few healers on staff, or could easily bring one in on short notice. Considering Lea’s relationship with their heiress, I had no doubts they would be willing to help. However, this came with its own concerns. I was loath to put myself or Lea in debt to a noble house. I wouldn’t say I knew particularly many nobles, but if Adonia was anything like them she would happily use this to pressure Lea into her proposed relationship.

Finally, and the option I liked least, I could take her to Avalon. It would cost me either a favor or several of my precious points, but it would not be particularly difficult to find someone capable of healing my precious Lea. Bringing her in would be similarly trivial, registering her as a research subject would take minutes at most and I even had an ‘official invitation’ to take her with me if I ever had to argue the point before the faculty. After all, the guards had ‘released her into my care’. Sure it was dubious, but I knew for a fact that Avalon wouldn’t actually care, even if I had been kidnapping a random citizen. It was an arguable point, and that was enough.

Still, I loathed the idea. Exposing one of my biggest weaknesses so openly went against everything I had been taught and believed in. It would be like climbing into a dragon’s nest to retrieve a random bauble, a horrible risk for only the most meager of gains. Sure she would be healed, but it would also tie her to me in a very concrete, impossible to hide way. I didn’t think I would manage to go through my next four years without making any enemies, and I was loath to put her in a situation where my enemies would see her as a way of getting to me.

I stepped out of the guard center and sighed softly. Ugh.