I lowered my head, the message clear. I was being given a chance, but it came with a heavy price. The unspoken words hung in the air: You are mine now. My responsibility, my burden, and my secre
The chaotic symphony of pain in the medical tent was a stark contrast to the quiet she'd found in Lyra's command post. The air, thick with the scents of blood, sweat, and antiseptic herbs, made Selene's head swim. Soldiers, their faces pale and drawn, lay on rough cots, tended to by a couple of weary healers. The low moans of the wounded were punctuated by the sharp clatter of metal instruments and the hurried whispers of those giving orders.
The Beta soldier who had been tasked with her care, a woman named Ava, looked pale and green. Her gaze flicked nervously from Selene to the wounded around them. "I'm sorry, Miss Selene, but I think I'll just go and guard outside," she said, her voice strained, before quickly exiting the tent.
"Don't mind her," said a young healer. "Some people don't have the stomach to handle this." He introduced himself. "Hello, Miss, I'm Robin."
"My name is Selene. Are you the Chief Healer?" she asked.
"Oh no, sadly… he died a couple of days ago," Robin replied, his voice heavy with sadness. "An arrow. We were infiltrated. A couple of soldiers were able to enter our tent, and there's only a couple of us left. If it weren't for the General, there might be no one left."
He had given Selene a simple, tunic-like dress to wear, and its plainness felt both a comfort and a mark of her new anonymity. She stood just inside the tent flap, a silent observer in a world of suffering. Her eyes, still wide and vacant, scanned the room, but her hands, clasped tightly in front of her, had a faint, restless twitch.
Mistaking her stoic reaction as a novice's awe, Robin began to demonstrate his work. "All we have to do is to clean, stop the bleeding, and bandage the wounds.Theres a lot of soldiers needing care and we really lack man power" He gestured toward a soldier on a cot whose shoulder was bleeding. He picked up a rag, dipped it into a bowl of murky water, and began to dab at the gash. The soldier cried out in pain, his body tensing against the touch.
Selene watched, her hands twitching with an unbidden urge. Robin's method was slow, painful, and far from effective. The soldier's blood continued to seep through the rag. A powerful, ancient instinct surged through her, a deep, intrinsic need to mend what was broken. It was the same need she felt in Lyra's tent, the feeling that her hands were not her own, but vessels for a long-forgotten art.
She looked at Robin, then at the soldier. His face was a mask of pain, his eyes squeezed shut. She remembered Lyra's warning, the quiet fear in the General's eyes. She sighed and pick up the cloth "clean and bandage the wound got it"
It was fine at first she was able to pull back and controll her instinct as much as possible but as wounded soldiers get worst her resolve is slowly crumbling down...
Suddenly a soldier she was treating suddenly gasping and clutching her heart..she took a last breath and just second she was still, lifeless..
Selene quickly touch her, a sudden electricity flowed from her finger tip..
The lifeless body suddenly gasp and taking another breath..
Selene's heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat of terror. She had broken her promise to Lyra and, in doing so, had put herself in unimaginable danger. She quickly scanned the tent again. Robin was still preoccupied with another patient across the room. The other soldiers, all wounded, were either groaning in pain or lost in a semi-conscious haze. No one seemed to have noticed the small miracle she had just performed. The soldier, who moments before had been a lifeless body, was now breathing, a faint, rattling sound that was music to Selene's ears.
The patient on the cot beside her, a young man with a bandage wrapped around his head, was still. Selene breathed a sigh of relief. He had been "asleep" through the whole ordeal.