A Shield of Faith (BOOK 4)

Chapter 27

MARIA

Blood. Bones. Pain. It came with the territory of her chosen path of a Warden chirurgeon, where she found her battlefield among stacks of books and closing wounds and mending harm done by the cruelty of the world. Derelict maulings. Bites. Pestilence. Turns of study on the world's weapons against those who lived upon it, with her focus on the most lethal of them all. The Corruption, the core left behind in someone's body to chew up their soul, and a rejection of their immune system in violent, bloody bursts. Convulsing flashes, though her research notes detailed different responses to the Corruption's swallowing intent. Flashes nonetheless, no matter what form they took. Anatomical drawings of those halfway through the transformation, she made notes between her checks on Yuven, who hadn't moved an inch. Her mug of herbal tea sat in a small coaster, the foamy bubbles within steaming with a soft scent of flowers.

Underneath her piles of texts she borrowed from the Asairai lodge, she double checked all her research and sourced them back to the original documents with updated information and understanding at what she faced with her mind instead of the crescent blade she left in their room, sat against Yuven's. Thumb against her lips, she turned the pages and listened to the rolling carts of other Healers outside, their sole focus on their only deathly ill patient since Kayal. Sweat and mire hung across the walls, and she made a note to clean out the dirty buckets full of coagulated black blood Yuven expelled for careful study and then respectful disposal in the fires of the volcano, a being of pure force and power. Yuven shifted a bit with a soft, ragged breath past his lips, his gray capped feathers limp against the pillow. Maria reached forward to a new page in the patient ledger in preparation, but brought his attention to him when he squeezed his expression tight then opened his eyes at her.

"Are you thirsty?" Maria grabbed one of the phials of water mixed with a dose of stardust to quell his pain. "If you can't drink all of it, that's fine. A drop is better than none." Her hand found his to help him grab it, and she came closer to help him sit up, hooking her foot around a new bucket to drag it closer. Lavastone in her palm, she pressed it against Yuven's temple to equalize her magick with the fever rushing through his body, the same fever chewing at Fenrer with much more ferocity than the man on death's door. Little strange... but it's more than likely because all his life Yuven's dealt with feeling like this.

He pressed the phial against his lips, and Maria counted as he took careful, dry sips. Until he lurched with a quiet, alarmed, "Maria," when a cascade of tangled blood dripped past his lips and the lavastone seared at her skin in warning.

"Bucket, Yuven, don't hold it in," she said and sent her magick into its bottom to levitate it into the chair right beside him as he threw up into it. Frost swept across his beaded pupils, but he retained awareness as she hurried over to the ledger to mark down the time on her moonwatch before returning to his side. A throaty, wet hiss left through his teeth when the expulsion went through its first wave. Maria breathed upon an ember in her palm, then tossed it into her crucible to heat up her most recent crushed mixture to make the liquid component melt and bubble against the herbs to create the thick syrup. Another wave, another violent reaction of his body when he wheezed out his life. Another mark on the ledger to add to the multitude.

In the end, a lot of her work was a waiting game.

Yuven's lips went white at its lull, death's hand around his throat when he swayed and the frost sprinkled into fatality. Maria hurried back over to his side before he dropped. "Easy, Ice Knight," she whispered through the rock in her own throat and set him back across the bed and reactivated the air stones in the divots of the mattress to help him breathe. With her patient settled, she dragged the cart of buckets back to the door to push it outside for one of the others to sweep up and take to the alchemist hall deep nearest the volcano's bowels. Ancients... Hands on her hips, she closed the door again and sent wisps of flame into the lamps beside the door to try and choke out the stench of death looming over them both. And I have to send one of the other Healers to check on Fenrer... I think maybe I can keep track of the progress depending on Fenrer's reactions... these waves are impossible to predict... Maria checked the time on her watch when Yuven calmed, writing it down in the margin beside the start.