ASV 101

Lord's Towers VIII 

Nobody expected the battle for Lord’s Towers to be over so quickly and peacefully, if it could even be called a battle.

What little defenders there were who refused to surrender were dealt with either by Val’s forces or their own comrades wishing to save their lives.

A city once known for being one of the cruelest, most slave-dependent cities is now deposed from its royal bloodline and conquered by those who used to be slaves.

And now it is a city with no idea of what the future has in store for it.

With the fighting over just as quickly as it began, everybody able to helps out in rescuing those trapped beneath debris from the fallen towers does so. Fortunately, those within this city where access to aether has always been minuscule have developed other practices to help out the injured and sick. Even most of the city’s slaves know how to treat some basic illnesses with simple techniques.

There are eventually more people willing to help others than there are people who still need help. While those still helping the few who need it focus on that, Val has gathered everybody in the city – the freed slaves, now-ex-nobles, the defenders, her own forces, and anybody else in order to deliver a speech about what is going to happen next. However, Hero decides to sit it out.

He’s never been a fan of standing around for speeches, and he’s already seen Val speak enough.

Furthermore, he’s exhausted.

He can’t remember the last time that he’s ever felt this thoroughly tired before. Is it because he no longer has aether? That’s what he assumes. Just like how he no longer has aether to give him superhuman strength, speed, and durability, he now finds himself without much endurance – or rather, not nearly as much as before.

Hero returns to the camp set up outside of the city where Fara and Sloo still are.

Even just walking from the city back to the camp is a struggle.

The camp is empty for the most part now.

Naturally, Sloo and Fara are the first to greet him when he returns to the camp.

He almost collapses as soon as he finally reaches them.

Enough time has passed that Sloo is ready to consume more of his blood. Both Hero and Fara can tell that she’s hungry by how her hands instinctively reach for his own hand that she has been eating from.

Fara wishes to stop the hungry slime, but she knows Sloo will only grow more uncontrollable the longer she goes without eating.

“It’s okay,” Hero says, offering his hand to Sloo.

He may be tired, but he has enough blood to spare for her.

Sloo latches onto the same wound as she has been. It doesn’t get a chance to properly heal with how often she has to use it. Without aether, he no longer has any enhanced healing ability. He is just as mortal as everybody else now.

There will be no more being stabbed dozens of times and shot full of arrows, no more cutting himself to show off how quickly he can heal, and no more recklessly throwing himself into the face of danger knowing that he will survive without a doubt.

Everything he does – he has to be careful and strategic about anything and everything dangerous from here on out.

It is not something that he is used to.

Fara rubs his shoulders and strokes her fingers through his hair as Sloo eats.

“Sloo, can you – can you drink mine as well?” Fara asks her.

Sloo looks over to Fara and tilts her head as if asking if Fara is sure.

“Try it,” Fara confirms.

Hero doesn’t want to let Fara do it, but now that Sloo is actually consuming more of his blood, he feels himself growing weaker than he thought he would.

It turns out that losing blood every few hours isn’t exactly a sustainable thing no matter how strong one may be.

Hero understands now why blood slimes are as dangerous as they are. They just require so much blood in order to survive.

Sloo places a hand on Fara and then transfers the acidic slime within her body to where her slime meets Fara’s skin.

Fara wants to scream out in pain from just how badly it hurts. Her skin is being melted away until Fara is able to send a few tendrils into her arm, and then it hurts even more when Sloo’s slime and tendrils begin drawing blood out from Fara.

Yet, Fara resists letting either of them see or hear just how much pain she is in.

She learned a long time ago how to resist showing pain.

In comparison to what she’s been through, this is nothing. More importantly, this is for Sloo’s sake.

Alas, it is a futile effort.

Sloo pulls her hand away and then sprays Fara’s absorbed blood out onto the ground.

“I think only Tarthan blood will work,” Hero says.

Fara looks down. She hates that she’s not able to help Hero with this.

She gets an idea.

“What if we dilute it then store it? Heln taught me about diluting liquids to stretch them out so that they’d last longer since things usually aren’t needed at their full strength. Sloo, stop drinking and give me a few minutes,” Fara says, quickly getting up from her spot on the grass to run off.

She returns a few minutes later with a mug mostly full of water.

Carefully, Fara holds Hero’s wound over the mug and allows his blood to drip down into it.

Sloo hungrily watches as his blood is mixed into the water. She looks disappointed that it’s being diluted, but if it means making things easier on Hero, she wouldn’t mind.

“That’s enough. I don’t want you losing any more blood,” Fara says, setting the mug down before wrapping a cloth around the wound. “Here.” She holds the mug to Sloo.

Sloo dips a couple of fingers into the diluted blood and begins sucking it up into her slime.

She could easily separate the blood from the water if she wants to, but she tries out Fara’s suggestion.

It isn’t as satisfying as pure blood, but Sloo gives a thumbs-up.

“Yes! Hero, if we do it this way then we won’t have to worry about you using so much of your bl—”

Hero collapses.

When he wakes up, he finds his arm tightly bandaged, Sloo sleeping on top of his chest, and Fara attending to some minor injuries of other soldiers. They’re inside one of the camp’s medical tents.

“Mornin’,” a familiar voice says to Hero’s side.

He looks over and sees Wohran standing next to him.

“Passed out from blood loss. You never are going to listen and just take things easy, are you?” Wohran asks.

Hero smiles and weakly shakes his head.

Wohran grumbles, sitting down in the chair that he’s pulled up next to Hero’s bed. “That girl of yours there,” Wohran says, pointing at Fara, “is somethin’. Kind, pretty, and knows her way around stubborn men and injuries. She’ll be a great help. I’ve never been much of a physician myself – was always just healin’ folk. But now that I can’t quite do that anymore, people like her are going to be more important than useless old dwarves like me.”

Hero feels bad about the choice that he made when he remembers that it is going to have such a huge effect on people, Wohran being one such person, but he still believes that he made the right choice.

“Interestin’ world we live in now. No more magic. No more redheads able to punch through steel. Young girls like her being more important than old vets like me. At least bein’ a ‘husk’ isn’t as bad as it sounds so far,” Wohran continues.

“She purposely made it sound worse than it is. Was trying to scare me – scare us,” Hero explains.

“Some creator she is to be scarin’ her creations like that. Would’ve liked to give her a few words of my own to let her know how I feel about puttin’ me out of work.”

Hero chuckles, but he stops himself from laughing too hard so that he doesn’t wake Sloo up.

He even sees a rare smile from Wohran.

While Fara is busy tending to some others’ minor wounds, Hero tells Wohran about what else Aorilae showed him. In particular, he tells Wohran about those white constructs that he saw floating amongst the stars. They were almost like ships. Some were small, some were large. There were some structures that looked like giant rings and others that would land on small, floating chunks of rock. He was also shown glimpses of other worlds – at least, he assumes that they were other worlds. Some had skies of purple, others had skies of green. Some had multiple moons visible at night, others had giant rings from nearby worlds visible in the sky at all times.

Wohran has to cover his mouth to prevent himself from laughing loudly enough to wake everybody in the region up!

“Floatin’ ships all the way up there? I didn’t know you were a jester, Hero,” Wohran says, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “Purple skies? Two moons? I didn’t know that a Tarthan could have such a vivid imagination. Some fantasy world you live in.”