Witch's Vein and Blood Stains (ereri)

1. Fae or Foe

The witch was not what they had expected. 

The young man that materialised out of the dark forest shadows looked more like a lost soul that had adopted the wild, feral look of his surroundings than a learned spell caster. He was dressed in a faded green tunic and muddy brown breeches, and the patchwork rucksack slung over his bony shoulder to match the rest of his haphazard appearance did nothing to alleviate the king's men's concerns. This was the trusted witch who was to save the captain's life?

The captain in question lay on a cushion of cloaks at the centre of their watchful circle, black hair plastered across his sweat-slick skin and eyes fluttering restlessly under the spell of a sinister dream. His lips were blue-tinged and cracked like he hadn't drunk water in days, and webs of veins an unnatural shade of black mapped dark rings around his sunken eyes and across translucent skin.

"You are not Hange," One of the men more familiar with this neck of the woods said cautiously. 

He stepped forward and made to draw his sword, and the motion seemed to prompt the others into action. They crowded closer around their fallen master, hands on the hilts of their own weapons. The figure could be another demon under the guise of a human; it wasn't unheard of, and they had already had one too many brushes with the supernatural creatures of the Dark Woods to not be wary. The boy paused at the fringes of the clearing, just close enough that they could make out his features under the dappled shadows of the canopy. His eyes were a brilliant green that put the foliage around him to shame, standing out bright against tan skin and lips a little too red to be natural. Messy brown hair framed round cheeks, a single thin braid tied with a crimson ribbon emerging from the mess and dangling just behind his left ear. His figure was boyish and wiry and his features youthful, but his frame was packed with the lean, sinewy muscle of a farmer's boy. He watched the group with the calculated alertness of a wild animal assessing a risk, his green eyes flitting between each soldier and the patient they guarded. When he spoke, he did so softly and without moving.

"I am Hange's apprentice, Eren."

"How do we know you're not lying? How do we know you're not a demon?" This time it was Gunther who spoke up. He stood up straight, but his shifting eyes betrayed his underlying panic. No one liked the Dark Woods, the thrum of dark magic could be felt by each of them, alive and shifting in the darkest shadows just out of sight. They'd all heard the stories of what lurked in its heart, but nothing hammered in just how vulnerable and out of their depth they were quite like seeing Levi lying half dead before them. It was a sight that would make the bravest man quake with fear, but apparently not this boy. Eren stared flatly at Gunther, his expression unimpressed.

"We really don't have time to be asking pointless questions right now. Let me attend to him."

"How do we know you won't hurt him worse? Or kill him?" The other men grumbled in agreement and Gunther nodded, his confidence renewed by his comrades support. Eren's brows furrowed slightly with frustration.

"Your Captain is dying. Leave him be and he will die before you can get him to an alternative healer. You can let me save him now, or to leave him be to die a far slower and torturous death as you try and figure out if you have any other options, which I will confidently say you do not." 

The grim report made the soldiers hesitate. They exchanged uncertain looks between each other, and seeming to reach an unspoken agreement, slowly parted to give the boy clear access. Eren waited a moment longer, just in case, before slowly approaching. He got to work swiftly, placing his medicine bag down and rummaging through the contents. The Captain's leg was the source of the injury; a deep demon bite on the outside of his left thigh. It had left long enough to have the venom set in, and the congealing blood oozed with a tar-like black residue of supernatural venom. Eren had tended to wounds like these plenty times before as was expected when you lived on the fringes of the Dark Woods. Enough villagers and foreign travellers tried to broach the forest themselves without a seasoned guide to supply enough patients to the overworked witch for Eren to have mastered his hand at such. He set to work quickly, using his own dagger to cut away at the remaining tatters of leather trouser leg that was impeding his work.