Warsinger - Chapter Twenty

The time difference between Taltos and Myszno was about four hours, so we arrived at midday after teleporting. That was just great, because I’d taken my helmet off and had forgotten to put it back on.

"Ow! Ow ow ow!" My scalp prickled as the sunlight hit it, like I'd touched poison ivy with my head. I slapped a hand over it and hissed.

Karalti let out a trumpeting cry as she dropped Cocoa the Hookwing to the ground, then touched down in the tumbled mossy stones of the courtyard. No sooner had she settled than the doors to the castle hospice opened, and Istvan strode out with one hand held up against the wind, squinting at us as two other familiar faces emerged from behind him. Or rather - one familiar face, and one familiar mask.

"Rin? Ebisa?" I called out when my feet were on the ground. “Holy shit.”

"Hector! You're back! OMIGOSH SURI!" Rin squealed and ran over as Suri shakily dropped to the ground. She turned just in time to catch two hundred and fifty pounds of metal and silicone as the diminutive Mercurion tackled her. Ebisa sauntered out into the yard with her hands jammed in her pockets, expression concealed. 

"You're alive!" Rin hugged Suri around the waist, squishing her cheek up against her breastplate. "Thank goodness! We were all so worried!"

"Yeah, still alive all right." Suri ruffled Rin's glassy hair, then smooched her on the head.

"It's good to see you both again." I offered Ebisa a hand when she pulled up beside Istvan. She looked at it, cocked her head, then slowly reached out. I clasped it, clapped her on the arm, and let go. The King's Assassin had forearms like steel cable. "What's the occasion? How are things here?"

"Not good," Istvan said heavily. He looked like warmed-over ass. His long hair was frizzy and rumpled, and his clothes and armor were starting to look grimy. He had deep circles under his eyes.

"Uh oh." Karalti lowered her head until her chin was just touching the top of my hair."He's been drinking again."

"What happened? Is the province coming down around our ears?" I asked, frowning.

"Maybe a little bit. But mostly, it's about Vash." Rin had sobered over minutes, letting go of Suri and returning to Ebisa's side.

“Vash?” Suri’s eyes lit up with alarm. “Is he okay?”

“He’s dying,” Istvan said flatly.

Startled, I bought up the KMS without thinking and looked at my heroes list. “What? He was fine when we… shit. 27% HP?” 

“His body didn’t take to the prosthetic properly," Ebisa rasped, folding her arms over her thin chest. "His flesh is rejecting the artificed arm."

Istvan scowled, and motioned sharply in the direction of the hospital. “I told you that nothing good ever came of trying to mesh flesh and mana! What would you call it, other than dying? Rotting? Decomposing? Because that’s what it’s doing!”

"Tuun! Are you just going to leave us up here!" Masha leaned over Karalti's back, scowling. "What's this I hear about a rejected prosthesis!?"

"Master Masha?" Ebisa craned her neck in surprise. "Ignas sent you?"

"Of course he sent me, you silver scarecrow! Now let me down! While I am very grateful to her holiness for consenting to carry me upon her sacred person, I have had enough of this particular religious experience for the remainder of my life." She shook her gloved fist down at us.

“Hang on! We have to let Cutthroat off first!” I called back to her, before turning back to Istvan. After a moment of hesitation, I stepped forward, and drew the man into a one-armed hug. He stiffened in surprise. To him, I said: “Look, man: if it’s anything, we just bought the best damn healer in the country here. We’ll see what she can do for him, alright?”

“Yes.” He drew a deep breath, let it out, and stepped back. He’d definitely been drinking again.

The three staff Ignas had sent with us – Captain Vilmos, Livia the Chef, and Rudolf the Butler – helped get Masha’s things organized up top while we unstrapped Cutthroat. She dropped to the ground with her claws raised, hissing like a bellows. Cocoa, who had been nosing around the courtyard like a curious puppy, gave a peep of delight and bounced up to the other hookwing with her tongue flopping to one side. Suri ran to Cutthroat as the hookwing snarled and backpedaled, catching her by the reins as Cocoa, oblivious to her impending doom, began to earnestly attempt to jam her nose under Cutthroat’s tail. Cutthroat’s reared her head up, every feather bristling with indignation, and demurely whisked her rump to the side. Cocoa bumbled forward, snuffling curiously, only to squawk when Cutthroat struck her over the head with the blunt club of her wrist.

“Cutthroat! C’mere, you bloody old bitch!” Suri hauled her away, but Cocoa seemed no worse for wear. Instead, she let out an excited chorus of cheeps as Vilmos slithered down Karalti’s wing with Masha in his arms, toddling over to lick the woman’s face and nearly bowling her over.

“Ack!” Masha pushed the dinosaur’s muzzle away as Cocoa wagged her entire body from side to side, her tail lashing like a whip. “Come on, Tuun. Let’s go and see this man of yours and glove up.”

Suri took Cutthroat to the stables while Istvan, Rin, and Ebisa followed Masha and I to the castle’s hospital. It was more like a small medical bay than an actual hospital, with room for six beds and maybe a row of stretchers. The chief medic of the Myszno Defense Force, Lazar Skalitz, was busy using a small mana-powered soldering iron to cauterize the inflamed, abscessed flesh of Vash Dorha’s upper arm. The baru lay there as the machine sparked and hissed, stoic and sweating with fever, staring at the ceiling as the eye-watering stench of infection roiled through the room. As soon as we stepped in, his eyes darted across to us.

“About time you came back.” He leaned up just enough he could see us, and flashed the three of us a broad cheesy grin. Like all Tuun men, self-included, he had Eurasian look to him: dark haired, eyes used to squinting against the wind, the ruddy, rosy cheeks of someone who had grown up on the steppe. He might have been roguishly handsome once, but at some point in his life, he’d had his face smashed in like a windshield. His nose, cheekbones and mouth were crooked with thick scars, his skin weathered from hard years of asceticism and a life spent outdoors. It was good to see he was cheerful, but he was pale, fever-eyed, and visibly clammy. "Let’s see… we have Arshak, an honored elder of the Churvi, if I’m not mistaken, and who's this? Lord Dog, returning from his tour of pissing on every lamp post between here and Dalim?"

Istvan looked aghast. "Vash!"

"That's Voivode Dog to you, you dirty peasant." I grinned back at him. "I just finished 'Your Gracing' Taltos after Ignas called us there."

"Hah!" Vash sunk his head back onto the pillow. He was fighting the fever, but his thin face was starting to look practically skeletal, cheeks hollow and unshaven. "Dirty peasant is right. This damn machine arm is rotting me alive."

Lazar was last to react. He looked up from his work and nearly jumped out of his chair, startled to see Masha glowering at him from the doorway. His eyes narrowed, then widened behind his spectacles. Then, awkwardly, the tall, crane-like man scrambled to his feet and bowed deeply. "By the gods! Masterhealer Masha of-"

"Yes, yes, Master Masha of Mastertown," the old woman muttered, hauling her trunk on wheels behind her. "What has happened here? Ach, that stench... did you louts go through ALL of the surgical steps before attaching this Artifact to our gentleman's shoulder? Proper handwashing? Proper sterilization?"

"Y-Y-Yes, Master Physician." Lazar was as giddy as a schoolgirl at her first boyband concert. He watched her set up her station like she was an angel fallen from heaven. "I worked with the Master Artificer over there, and we properly cleaned, sealed and dressed the wound, provided aftercare... antiseptics..."

Masha sniffed, eyes narrowing. "Yes, but this castle was recently occupied by the undead, wasn't it? Mounds of shambling rotting flesh... you can only imagine the contagion they carried. Artificed prosthetics are always a gamble in the cleanest operating theatres of the land, let alone in a place where the dark humors of the dead hang on the air."

"Then we'd better just cut it off, or unscrew it or however you detatch metal from a man." Vash sighed mournfully. "I'll just have learn how to jerk it with the other hand."

"Vash, I swear on the Nine..." Istvan pressed his lips together and pinched the bridge of his nose.

The monk leered. "I'd have you to do it, Arshak, but there's ladies present."

"Oh, you're a fiery one, aren't you?" Masha cackled as Istvan turned the color of a strawberry and sunk down out of sight in his chair. "That's good. Means you're more likely to pull out of this. Alright... Lord Tuun, you're studying the grand arts of healing. Let's see if you can diagnose what's wrong with our lecherous friend here and start the cure."

I swallowed. I'd been slowly learning the medical skill trees of Archemi since I arrived in the game, but I'd never had to diagnose a friend before, and never in front of an audience.

"Do you mind if we have a bit of privacy?" I asked them. "I, uhh..."

"No, Tuun. Steel your nerves." Masha clicked her tongue. "If you're nervous in front of others, how would you fare in a busy hospital? Make your assessment. Infections can turn very quickly, and this man already has a bad fever."

When she stepped aside I got a better look at what had caused Vash to start slowly losing hitpoints in the KMS. The prosthetic limb had been fitted after he’d lost his arm punching a swooping dragon right in the face. The arcane blowback had shattered the limb to the high upper arm, so Lazar had amputated it from the shoulder. The artificed limb Rin had made for him was easily as good as the sophisticated BCI prosthetics I'd seen in the Army, capable of very delicate motions and even possessing a sense of touch. However, it was radically obvious that something was wrong. The flesh around the edge of the prosthetic was necrotizing, turning black. The muscle and tissue above that was inflamed and red. Lazar had cleaned out several abscesses.

I ran through the basics first. I had enough levels in Field Medicine that I could take his temperature with my hand and know what it was: in his case, 105 degrees, which was bad enough to soon become fatal. I didn't even need the augmented reality assist the skill gave me to have a rough idea of what was wrong - he had a serious case of blood poisoning, and the only reason he hadn't gone into shock and died was because he was as tough as old boot leather.

Archemi's healing skill tree took the medieval system of the four humors as the basis for administering medicines. The NPCs had a basic understanding of germ theory and the importance of keeping medical tools and surfaces free of bugs, but no antibiotics. Herbal and alchemical potions took their place. The former were generally safe, the latter only safe for people like me, dragons like Karalti, or other creatures immune to mana.

My AR highlighted areas of diagnostic interest on Vash's body with a soft blue glow. The glow was concentrated on his prosthetic arm, naturally, and more diffusely around his chest and neck. As I watched, the light crept little by little toward the center of his chest and up toward his face.

I frowned down at it. “Okay… first thing first. Istvan, I want you to go wait outside.”

“No,” he said quickly.

“Look at me.” I shot him a dark look, and whatever he saw in my expression made him blanch. “I’m the count here now. That’s an order.”

“You heard him,” Vash croaked.

Rin went and caught him under the elbow as Istvan hesitated. “Come on, Istvan. We’ll go get something to eat. Well, for YOU to eat, because I like, can’t, but you know what I mean.”

As we piled on, Istvan rubbed his eyes and grimaced. "Fine… I'll be back in ten minutes."

“Should be all we need.” Provided Vash didn’t have a heart attack.

They left together, and when they were out of earshot, Vash grunted and lifted his eyebrows as he looked to us. "It's not good, is it?"

"No. You've got a serious case of blood poisoning. The infection's headed toward your heart and you’re about five minutes away from it seizing up," I said. "I'm surprised you're not dead."

[You gain 5 Skill EXP: Field Medicine!]

“It’s coming.” Vash scrunched his eyes up and settled back against the pillows. "I can feel Burna's shadow starting to slide over me. Maybe I got too cocky, eh?”

"Ai yai yai, why did you not use a Bloodscour potion, or even better, medicine to regrow the limb?" Masha asked, turning between me and Lazar.

"None of us know how to make those," I replied. "I'd planned to go to the university and pick up more recipes, but the Demon slaughtered most of the academics and physicians there."

"No! Even Masterhealer Porov?" Masha gasped. 

"Yes. The vampire targeted the university specifically," Lazar said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I was trained at the college, but we never covered alchemical medicines..."

"Alchemical?" Vash scowled. "Mana?"

"Perhaps." Masha poked me. "Hector, I agree with your diagnosis. You're of a level now where you should be able to see what you might be able to treat his infection with."

She was right. Now that I'd worked out what was wrong, the Augmented Reality options had changed. The light was now in different colors - black around the dead flesh, and bright glowing red everywhere else. When I focused on each area, tooltips appeared. Some of them were specific, giving me potion suggestions - the fever-reducing Goldenseal Tincture, which looked like it would only temporarily bring his temperature down - and the list of ingredients I would need, but one of the potion recipes and name was obscured, and the surgical tooltip was just a row of question marks. I didn't have enough training in the Herbalism and Surgery to know what they were.

"Goldenseal Tincture first, and then… do we have to remove the implanted parts of the prosthetic and take the arm off?" I asked Masha and Lazar, looking back.

"No. Taking it off will only make the infection spread faster. You must treat that before any surgery." Masha poked a finger at Vash's arm, not touching him, but close enough that he preemptively winced. "All that exposed bone and blood and muscle, no no no. I think his body can be coaxed to accept the artifact, but that requires some special medicines. Garlic and Goldenseal aren’t strong enough for blood poisoning that has reached this advanced stage. We must brew Bloodscour, but there is a problem. It requires two rare ingredients I do not have: Cat's Eye Mushrooms, a fungus that only grows in Hercynia, and a herb called King's Grass."

"You know what..." Breathless, I checked my inventory. In among the eighty pounds of old armor and all the other random shit adventurers hoarded - bits of cloth, pelts, string, leather - I still had some of the four herbs I'd collected for the Trial of Marantha. I actually still had a lot of the Cat’s Eye Mushrooms - over fifty of them, because I'd taken extra of everything just in case. "I have both of those. How many do you need?"

Masha blinked in surprise. "Five mushrooms, and five bundles of King's Grass."

I only had six bundles of King’s Grass. It was an essential ingredient in the Dragon's Blood potion I needed to drink every week, but no way in hell was I going to let Vash die. I pulled both herbs from my Inventory and handed the weird bulbous mushrooms and the blue grass to Masha. "Here."

"Oh... how kind of you." She clasped them to her chest, and tottered off out of the room. "Come with me, Lord Tuun. I'll show you how to brew this."

"Take your time, by all means!" Vash called to her.

"Hush. I have to finish debriding this dead tissue anyway," Lazar scolded, pulling his mask back on.