Velyan - 1st Harvestwatch 1383
Wolvsbane, Trifectorate Confederacy
"Walls may be rebuilt and crowns recast, yet a fellowship tempered in shared scars endures beyond any ruin. Let this guild be that fellowship, a lantern for every wandering blade."
Helena Dragonbreaker, written in Helena's Guide to the Vanguard
The first thing I tasted was iron.
I knew the flavor: the arcane residue that hangs in the air when a teleport circle tears itself open, the same metallic steam that vents from an overheated blaster on the Great Tifan Wall.
The circle spat us into the upper forum of some city in the Trifectorate Confederacy, and the chaos met us with disarming courtesy. Medical pavilions crowded the marble arches, bright silk beside rag stitched canvas. Lanterns glowed from every arch, but their warmth couldn't drown the chorus of groans mixed with the rusty smell of blood.
I managed three steps off the rune scarred dais, the mithril circuits melted from overheating, before my knees buckled. A brewer spider no bigger than a thumb had nailed me during the retreat. Its fiery sting first, then merciful numbness as the venom shut down every protesting nerve on its way to the heart. An antidote existed, but it cost more crowns than a townhouse in the M and I had spent every coin on gear for a battle now lost.
. Damn thing.
, their knowledge of the bite would not change my fate. Their time, on the other hand, could change others. There were wounds everywhere: orcs with cauterized stumps, kobolds missing half their snouts, goblins holding stomachs with entrails leaking between fingers.
I braced a soldier with a gash from shoulder to mid chest, half dragging him to a triage mat. Then I helped where other Concordant Priests needed help. I wrapped bandages until my vision blurred. Pain was distant; numbness crept up my wrist like an unhurried tide.
"Velyan?"
The voice was gravel wrapped in discipline.
An orc stood ten paces off; the same orc I'd fought beside for eight soul grinding hours on the wall, sixty hours into the siege, if memory served correctly. We'd traded lives back and forth until a surge of flame breathing ants split us. I'd assumed him dead. Now he loomed alive, bleeding from a dozen slashes and welted with bruises
"Qapla. Good to see you," I said.
Qapla crossed the space in three strides and swept me into a rib creaking hug that smelled of sweat, iron, and impossible luck. When he set me down, his grin was far too broad for a graveyard.
"Great to see you friend." He rumbled, "I thought you were ash. Turns out Valaris stands with you yet."
"Or laughs at me. Hard to tell." I managed, swallowing bile and the growing weight in my arm.
A hand like a smith's vice clamped my shoulder. I looked up into the stern face of a half giant cleric whose robe strained across mountain sized shoulders.
"If you can stand, work." He growled, already gliding toward a man with half a face. As the half giant stood over him, words of prayer rolled forward. With it a chorus of screams from the man. The flesh on his face writhed in response to calls to the god of war, flesh knitted in a beautiful weave over bone. Healing by a priest of Valaris would get you back on the battlefield, but it feels like a brand hammered onto raw nerves. The air stank of ozone and fear.
I turned back just as Qapla knelt beside the legless woman I helped bandage mere moments ago, closing her eyes. Another casualty. He looked up and his expression shifted rapidly from grief to alarm.
"Velyan, your hand!" He almost shouted. At once he was in front of me, inspecting the now dead hand. The bite was somewhat swollen, but the story was told by the black lines of venom that traced an elegant filigree up my forearm. I wrenched my hand away from his guilt-stricken eyes.
"Even if the cure sat in front of me, I couldn't afford it."
"How long?"
"Hour, maybe two." Three at most before the heart stops. Words best left unsaid.
"There are hundreds of healers here," Without waiting, Qapla cupped his hands to his mouth and let out a bellow befitting of his size. "CURE FOR BREWER SPIDER BITE! ANYONE?"
The camp around us stilled for a brief moment, the faces of those around us contorting into a wave of confusion before transitioning into one of grim pity. The half giant looked up from his work, murmured a prayer he knew would go unanswered, and moved on to the next patient without a backward glance.
Qapla took a deep preparatory breath.
"Qapla. Enough." I stated sharply, "The cure requires a Journeyman Alchemist, rare ingredients, and has a price neither of us can afford. Save your lungs."
His shoulders s, but he thumped his chest once, "Then I will remember you."
"Well, I'm not dead yet. Calm down."
"Pardon?" The voice behind me was low, warm, and wrapped in a northern accent. "You needed a cure for a brewer spider bite?"
I wheeled around, but before I had the chance, Qapla asked the question that I held.
"You have one?"
An upright white wolf stood there. Blood and plants matted his fur in various places. He wore a tan robe cinched at the waist, at his hip a brown satchel that was filled with potion bottles. Many were filled, more were empty.
"Yes, my master has the cure." His eyes were mismatched, one ice blue, one rich brown, impossibly calm, "He is at the blue tent. He will provide help."
He pointed at a tall blue tent in the distance. Before we could speak, he bounded off, already seeking another soul to save.
My boots moved before my thoughts had a chance to catch up. The numbness diffusing throughout my veins, every movement a distant thud compared to the sputtering of my heart. As the chill spread past the blade of my shoulder, strength fled. I crumpled. Qapla's roar echoed through the lantern lit forum, and darkness swept in like a closing gate.