Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

A Foot And Half A Calf

Opening her eyes upon the realization that she was alive came as a struggle to Mana. The first peel only barely squeezed a minuscule gap in between the eyelids, but the radiance of the encroaching midday stabbed at the eyes of the young woman painfully enough for her to learn to take it slow the hard way. A meek chill ran down the magician's gut all the way down to her calves and feet.

Mana's left leg had been equipped with a fuzzy woolen sock and wrapped with ample cloth to keep it warm. The tights of the ninja magician had been cut up, from the looks of it, gently and using a pair of scissors. Their stringy remains, alongside Mana's sandals, laid beside her bed. It was of no shock to Mana to wake up in a hospital bed, though her memories from the grueling fight returned to her in segments, wildly and out of order.

There was a warm cover neatly placed over her right leg. Mana still felt the painful twinges in her right calf, though they weren't immediately painful and mind-robbing. Shige and the town's healers must have given her something for the pain, or maybe they kept her asleep and the drug they used to do so still hadn't shaken off. It wasn't that all-encompassing, cruel, unrelenting, and uncompromising sharpness, but a dull and toothless, phantom pressure around her ankle, nibbling to her knee.

Just as Mana tried to tilt her head, the true crown of torment resonated down, forcing the magician to wince and moan in pain as she grabbed her forehead to rub and ease it gently through the process. A soft and orderly wrap of bandages laid over her head meanwhile Mana's face her been decorated with band-aids. From what she could recall, she almost drowned in her own blood, so she was probably concussed and bruised all over, hence these bandages.

Mana wriggled up a little, using her elbows like a fish used its fins to swim, but... Something about her motion felt off... The weight attribution over her body felt... Off. The pressure around her right calf just up and snapped away. Where her left leg felt like a lazy clog that tangled in the bedcover, the sheets, and everything in its way, her right leg moved surprisingly smoothly and didn't get tangled in anything at all. This curiousness made Mana flip her bed cover.

A depleted scream filled the hospital corridor, causing those that stayed and watched the door on the outside to jump up and rush into Mana's ward. Prabba and Endo promptly tackled the door and entered the ward, meeting the sight of Mana shaking frozen stiff in the same position she had when she moved the covers. Her right leg had been covered up from the thigh to the knee by a white hospital gown while from the knee down it went fully wrapped up in an excess of rubbery bands, layers of cotton, and just about anything that shut blood out from drowning the bedside. Mana's right foot didn't have a thick woolen sock, keeping it warm because there was nothing to keep warm.

"Shit... We really didn't want you to find out this way..." Prabba ran her hand up and down her face, strolling through the ward and back while Endo sulked with his arms crossed. "We wanted to guide you through it gently but... We couldn't watch you twenty-four-seven and... We just missed you waking up."

"My leg..." Mana muttered, her tanned face had gone pale as she fell on her back, finally regaining some semblance of freedom to her muscles but only enough to flop on her backside and begin panting in panic.

"Don't be such a drama queen, it's just a foot and maybe half your calf," Endo said with a grumbly tone. "For getting as cocky as you did, you got off pretty cheap. You could've gotten yourself killed."

Mana had been gravely injured before. She's had her extremities messed up and broken before, but she's never had to face such severe consequences. It almost felt unfair. While when she remained blissfully ignorant of her amputated foot and "half a calf" before, thoughts were slow to seep in her head, now all manners of clouds drifted over her airspace. Mana wrapped and cradled her head, squeezing it hard, pinching her temples to wake up from this nightmare before pounding the bedside while gnashing her teeth and gnawing on her lips until she drew blood.