3.16. The City Can Be Dangerous

Dura’s team stayed behind to report Salu’s murder to the gate guards. The reasoning was that if we left without doing so, it’d likely cause a stink with them later and we’d need to be cleared of wrongdoing since we’d technically be fleeing the scene of a crime. That, in turn, meant being subjected to forced truth-telling again, which... No thanks. Not ever again, not if I can help it.

Mumu wasn’t willing to wait for the guards, so the teams split, leaving just Haol, Tegen, Teila, and me to follow after her. None of us was happy with the situation, and for the first time, I saw our team argue.

Haol and Tegen waited until we were out of earshot of Dura’s team before starting. They must’ve coordinated it too, because they tag-teamed her good—the two of them working together, never questioning her judgement, but stressing the increased likelihood of us all getting killed if the hunt continued like this.

Mumu was one of my best friends in this world, and I’d done my best to convince her to pause the hunt so that the hunters could recover, but she’d grown up with Haol and Tegen. They’d known each other for a couple of decades before I’d come along, and their words registered where mine hadn’t. There was as depth of trust between them that was astonishing in its depth. I saw it—I literally saw it—as spirit energy flowed between them in streams of silver-gold-gray.

While the adults argued, I felt tense at times, like she was holding herself back from interjecting. Honestly, I was the same. A part of me wanted to join the argument and build on the things I’d said to Mumu earlier, but I also held back. Mumu already had a mulish expression on her face, and she’d only dig in more if the argument turned into a dogpile.

We were all stressed by the hunt for Borba and anxious to catch up to him, but we were also afraid of what would happen when we finally did. At the same time, we were also grieving over Inleio’s death, as well as the deaths of the other hunters and villagers. These were people my team had known their entire lives, and all that stress, all that grief, and all that turmoil was coming out now. None of the hunters yelled, they didn’t speak above a whisper, but the painfully raw emotions were there for anyone with eyes to see.

Haol and Tegen were in the midst of pausing and Mumu was taking a breath—she hadn’t said anything yet in reply, but she was about to—when a blow struck me in the chest, lifted me up, and threw me against a nearby wall.

Alarm-pain-confusion spiked through me, and Yuki instantly spun up both Dog’s Agility and Iron Heart, to speed up my reflexes and prevent further damage.

I’d been caught flat-footed, and it took a couple of precious seconds just to understand what had happened. By then, I’d already started to slide down the wall into a heap—my body not responding as I needed it too.

The pain was incredible, and my breathing became thin and wheezy. There’d been a brief jolt of adrenaline, but then my blood pressure dropped, and everything started to feel distant. Everything except the pain, but then that started to fade too. When I looked down, I saw that a crossbow bolt had punched through my armor and buried itself into where my heart would be.

I could’ve easily panicked. Any reasonable person would’ve, but there was clarity instead. Warmth too—like there was as hot stone buried deep inside me radiating heat throughout my bod. I’d never felt anything like it, not even when I’d almost died to the kalihchi bear.

My hands refused to move, so Healing Water was out of reach. I had to settle for Nature’s Spring. I looked up to see Tegen’s tall back guarding my body with his own. To the side, Haol dumped his water skin on my chest, and I felt cool healing energy flow into me.

My consciousness stabilized, and I felt Yuki gathering themselves around me heart. There was a sense of deep wrongness there—a black mist spreading from the quarrel’s head.

Their Dog’s Agility wasn’t doing any good, so they let the spell lapse, and cast Nature’s Spring in its stead, using their own qi so that the spell ran doubled. They also manifested tendrils around my heart, intending to create space around the quarrel, but the black mist burned, and they were forced to transform fully back into qi.

“Eight? Can you hear me?” Mumu’s face came into view. “We’re going to remove the bolt—hold on.”

She lifted my armor out of the way, and cut my jacket for easier access to the wound. When she was done, she signaled for Haol to proceed. He used a knife to draw line above and below the shaft, then he slipped a couple of fingers inside and maneuvered the bolt free. Once it was out, Mumu immediately cast her Healing Water, dumping the entire contents of her water skin onto my chest.

I checked my Status, and saw that it hadn’t been enough.

Conditions
Occupied (Evolving*), Lethal Wound (*), Poisoned (*)

“More,” I croaked out.

“I’m out of mana,” Haol said.

“Same here.” Mumu began to infuse me with Nature’s Spring. “Tegen, switch with Haol. Teila, you help too.”

Tegen did as he was told and knelt beside me, while Teila crouched at my feet. Their fresh, green qi suddenly poured into me, adding on to spells from Mumu, Yuki, and myself. The black mist had been contained by the earlier spells, and this five-fold Nature’s Spring helped keep it at bay.

The Lethal and Poisoned conditions still remained, but I was able to jerkily grab my water skin and bring the Healing Water runes to mind. The spell washed over me until the skin was empty. Then, Teila grabbed Tegen’s, and put it in my hand.

I cast the spell again, and—finally—the Lethal Wound condition disappeared from my Status. I wasn’t in the clear though. Not yet.

Conditions
Occupied (Evolving*), Poisoned (2*)

I felt queasy, and my chest began to burn. Yuki?

The poison isn’t made from qi or mana. It looks to be all physical, so we’ll need more water for more healing spells.

My breathing had evened out, and I was able to say, “I need more water. The wound’s closed, but the bolt was poisoned.”

“Haol, how do we stand?”

“No threats in sight.”

“Eight, can you check with your spirit eyes to make sure?”

I tried to prop myself up, but my arms felt weaker than they should be. Mumu went to stand guard with Haol, so Tegen and Teila had to help me. Once upright, I looked around, but I only saw the ghosts of the dead looking on with interest. Borba was nowhere in sight.

I’d been keeping an eye out for him, but somehow, he’d still managed to surprise me with his attack. My spirit eyes should’ve spotted him, even if he Camouflaged. Unless he found a new way to hide?

“Nothing,” I said. “Just ghosts.”

“Are you sure?” Mumu didn’t turn to talk. She kept her eyes on the buildings around us. “No one’s in hiding?”

“Borba’s not here.” The feeling of heartburn steadily got worse. “We should go. I need water now.”

“Not Borba,” Mumu said. “He doesn’t know how to use a crossbow. This was someone else.”

My thoughts froze. That... that’s right. Borba had been just a regular, every-day sort of hunter before turning dusk. The man had never held a crossbow in his life.

The attack had been an assassination attempt. On me.

I fought the steadily more painful burning in my chest to look again, this time examining every spirit to make sure they were truly a ghost and not someone using Camouflage.

“It’s clear,” I said.

“Good,” Mumu said. “Haol, go.”

He took off running to the nearest door. There were a couple of wooden boards hanging from a rope beside it, which he clapped together. An old matron came to answer, short and thick like a dumpling.

I trusted Haol to get me the water I needed, so I focused internally on pushing Nature’s Spring to its limits. Yuki, Tegen, and Teila had continued casting the spell too, so my efforts were well-reinforced.

Not too long after, a group of men and women muscled a big basin out of the nearby door and carried it towards me. Then, they proceeded to slowly pour water over me. Gallons and gallons spilled out, and I spent all of my mana along with it. And then, when that wasn’t enough, Yuki emptied out their mana tank too.

Fortunately, that did the trick, and the Poisoned condition cleared.

I signed to my team that I was healthy, and the tension running each of them sagged. They all breathed easier.

Once it was clear that the water had served its purpose, the residents asked about what had happened. They were a lively bunch, talking loudly, and that caught the interests of the other people living nearby, which caused more people to come out into the street to hear the news.

I stayed sitting throughout. It’d been such an incredibly long and disturbing day, and I needed time to get my bearings. From being drugged and interrogated to almost getting killed again, I really needed to catch a break.

I had questions—so many questions—but I set them aside for now. I wanted nothing more than to zone out, commune in the comfort of Yuki, and call my family. I also needed to check on Ikfael. It hadn’t escaped my notice that she hadn’t done anything while I’d been at the edge of death.

At least the wound looked completely healed, not even leaving a scar. I supposed a dozen casts of Healing Water would do that.

Holy hells, but that poison was incredibly tenacious.

Like it was meant to resist healing spells, Yuki said.

Or at least our healing spells, I thought.

Any decent assassin would’ve done their research, right? They would’ve known what spells I had available. Honestly, I would’ve been dead a couple of times over if I’d been on my own. Even Yuki and I combined might not have been enough. More than ever, I was grateful for my team, for my brothers and sisters of the hunt.

Teila and Tegen stood in front to shield me from the crowd, while Mumu and Haol answered questions and offered profuse thanks for the help provided. I needed to express my own gratitude, but it was difficult working up the energy to stand up.

“Make way! Make way!” a voice called from down the street.

My first thought was that the land soldiers had arrived to investigate the disturbance, but when the crowd parted and I peeked to look, I saw a motley group of six fashionably-dressed young men and women, none of them exactly steady on their feet.

“We heard there was a need for healers. Make way!”

The speaker was an imperious young man in his early twenties. He wore a green tunic trimmed with white fur over... leggings. They were also trimmed with fur, but otherwise looked like they’d come straight out of a 1980s shop window or catalog.

Makul the Journeyman Healer (Human)

Talents: Magic Is As Magic Does, Secretly Studious, Ringleader

Having three talents was pretty good for someone his age, and Ringleader was right on the money, since it was obvious the others in Makul’s group were following his lead through crowd. None of them had more than two talents, though, and those that they did have leaned towards either medicine or magic—things like Partial to Anatomy, Natural Doula, Brushed by Mana, and Lover of Magic.

What was more incongruous was that fur-trimmed leggings were apparently a hot trend among young healers; they all wore them. One ambitious set also was also fringed, like you’d find on cowboy wear. In my previous life, I hadn’t exactly been known for my fashion sense, but even I could tell you that it was hideous.

I just couldn’t wrap my head around how I’d just been attacked, but was now being approached by a bunch of aerobics instructors.

No, I can’t let myself get distracted. They were healers who just happened to be conveniently close by—people who I might’ve owed my life to if they’d been faster to arrive.

“Well?” Makul asked, turning around in a circle to address the whole of the crowd. “Where is the patient? Bring them out.”

A few of the residents pointed in my direction, but Mumu stepped in the way. “Thank you, but the situation’s been resolved.”

“What? What’s that? But we were having such a wonderful party, and then one of you—” Makul peered at the people in the crowd, but from the way he squinted, none of them seemed to be familiar. “Anyway, as I was saying, one of you called for our help. Said it was urgent and a matter of life and death.”

The residents shook their heads; none of them had gone to go get help. Most hadn’t even known anything was happening. They’d come outside because everyone else had.

“Some good person must’ve panicked,” Mumu said. Her voice was mild, but her hands were clenched. “And gone to get help when it wasn’t needed.”

At the same time, I saw how Haol kept a hand on his knife and Tegen stepped away from me to pick up his spear. Teila quietly helped me to stand, and put me behind her.

It wasn’t just me who was suspicious of the healers’ sudden arrival.

That said, the spirits of the healers indicated nothing but drunken confusion, even Makul’s. From the way his kept puffing up, it looked like he just wanted an opportunity show off in front of his friends. The dominant feeling among them was of enjoying the attention being given to them. They were too far gone into their cups to notice or react to the hunters’ quiet hostility.

“So there was no attack?” Makul asked, disappointed.

“Oh, there was,” Mumu said, her voice becoming pointed, “but we’ve dealt with it. The wound has already been healed.”

That got the healers’ wandering attention. Mumu’s words cut through the drunken haze, and each turned to focus on her. I sensed qi flowing their bodies, and their eyes cleared as the alcohol in their systems seemed to burn away.

They saw us then—really saw us—with our armor, our buckskins, and our spears.

Makul’s expression became more guarded. “You’re hunters.”

“That’s right,” Mumu said proudly. “From Voorhei.”

Makul reacted to our village’s name, but not the others. If anything, he became even harder to read, but at the outer edges of his spirit were sudden flashes of antagonism and... curiosity.

“The city can be dangerous; the hunters and trappers who visit are not always civilized. Which one of you was attacked? As a grace from this one’s Healer’s Lodge, I will examine them to ensure they are truly unharmed.” Makul cleared his throat, as if were lecturing the crowd. “Hedge magics are not always as effective as they are claimed to be.”

Well, it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to spot me being guarded by the hunters. He started moving my way, but Mumu blocked him.

“He is under my care, and you will not touch him.”

None of the healers was drunk anymore, and while Makul stood his ground, the vehemence in Mumu’s voice caused the others to step back.

Mukul looked her up and down. “My understanding is that our two lodges are engaged in some delicate negotiations. Surely, we should do what we can to foster cooperation between them. After all, without cooperation we would be nothing more than savages. Without organization, we would be prey to the wild beasts living outside our walls.”

Mumu had been a mess for days now—her spirit covered in black clouds, boiling with grief and pain—but in that moment, she stilled. The whole of her paused, and then the black clouds billowed like a bomb had gone off inside her core. A faint silver light shone between the gaps.

Mumu took a breath, and then another. She looked around like she was waking up from a dream, and said, “Another day, young healer. We'll cooperate on another day. For now, my hunters are badly in need of a good night’s rest.”

She brushed past Makul, ignoring his protests, and signed for us to follow. So, we did, walking past him and the other healers. Before we left entirely, though, I stopped by the dumpling-shaped matron who’d provided the basin of water. I thanked her personally for her help, and palmed an eltaak into her hand. The matron smiled, and the coin vanished into a pouch at her waist.

As soon as we were out of sight of the crowd and the healers, Mumu had us move into our standard hunting formation, with her in the lead and Haol watching our backtrail. We also maintained trail discipline and didn’t talk except for a handful of signs to coordinate.

The going was slow as we snuck through the city, but with recent events as they were, I appreciated the caution. I wanted nothing more than to rest and sleep, but I forced my eyes open and kept them scanning for hidden dangers. Even Yuki did their utmost, extending Camouflaged tendrils as far as they’d go to increase the range of their qi sense.

Honestly, the whole thing was a blur, but we eventually made our way to an inn at the boundary between Nathta and the Butchery. All I registered was that it was three stories tall with stables to the side before Mumu picked me up into a crushing hug.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was a fool, risking the living for the dead.”

I sighed, and the worry I’d had for her melted. “Yes, yes you were, but fortunately foolishness is a curable condition, assuming you learn from it.”

Mumu nodded and set me down, so that she could hug Haol and Tegen in turn. She whispered apologies to them too, but I couldn’t quite hear because Teila glommed onto me.

“You have to stop doing that,” she said, tears in her eyes. “This is twice you’ve almost died.”

“Believe me, it’s not anything I’m doing intentionally. And actually, it’s more like my fourth or fifth time.”

Teila pulled away just enough to turn me around and look me in the face. “What?!”

“It’s a long story, but come on, I’ll tell you inside. No, tomorrow. I’ll tell you tomorrow. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

But Teila didn’t want to let go, and it took Mumu lifting her up to break the hug.

Inside, Susu’s team waited for us, and they started to speak about sleeping arrangements, which fortunately already included teams sharing rooms and hunters standing guard. They’d been worried about Borba attacking in the middle of the night, and all we had to do was include unnamed assassins into the mix of potential dangers.

Upstairs, in my team’s room, Tegen volunteered to take first watch. I dimly noted that the bed was a futon, the blankets were wool, and then, just before I went out, I heard him asking Mumu, “Who’s young? You and the healer are the same age.”

###

I started to dream of being strapped to the front of a roller coaster carriage. The land around the ride was hazy and indistinct, but ahead the tracks twisted in what would surely be a stomach-churning jumble. Monsters lined the path too, their sharp claws ready to cut me as I passed.

Behind, I heard Sondo’s voice. “What have you done now, Ollie? I heard you got into a fight with the other boys. That’s the third time this year, and I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice—”

A pink fairy flew into view, carrying a hunting knife that was much too big for them. “No. No. No. No nightmares. Not tonight.” They used the knife to cut through the multiple leather belts tying me to the carriage, and once I was free, the roller coaster faded from view.

It was replaced by a hot, sunny Oregon summer day. I was at the fair, and my kids—my first kids Alex and Daniel—were running nearby. I had a half-eaten funnel cake in one hand, and Helen’s hand in the other. Yuki flew around us both in a lazy circle, enjoying the view and the feeling of contentment suffusing the scene.

Helen smiled to see me looking at her, and reached over to wipe some stray powdered sugar from my chin.

When I kept looking at her, she asked, “What? Do I have some on me too?”

I shook my head. “I’ve just missed you.”

Alex and Daniel ran to me and grabbed onto my legs. “What about us? Do you miss us too?”

“Of course!” I handed off the remaining funnel cake to Yuki, and picked them both up to spin them around. “I’ve missed you the most!”

They laughed, I laughed, and Helen and Yuki too. Then, later, we went on some rides, gentle ones and nothing that spun. We ate corn dogs with mustard—that was a fair tradition in our family.

And because it was a dream, the sun never set on our day. Eventually, though, it did rise, and I felt myself being shaken. I held my family close one last time, giving them each a hug, before I let myself wake.

“Thank you, Yuki,” I whispered as the fairgrounds faded.

“Thank you, Ollie/Eight,” they whispered back.

We each took comfort in knowing we’d be facing the next day together.