The harsh sun beat down on them. Char felt the heat, but wasn’t badly affected by it. She hadn’t noticed on their first crossing, but she was seeing the effects now in the way the others were sweating. The heat seemed to suck the energy out of them. They’d only gone about a quarter of the way, and Char was kicking herself for not waiting a couple of hours for the sun to drop a little lower.

  On normal, flat, un-monster-infested terrain, they should be able to cover a mile in 15 to 20 minutes. Jabat and Intan were slowing them, being constantly alert for monsters was exhausting, and the relentless heat was only making things worse. At this rate, Char estimated it would take more than half an hour to get to the longhouse.

  The delay chafed. The storm in her center pushed at her. She wanted to be on Royce’s trail. The only thing keeping this from being intolerable is that the same part of her also wanted to protect these people. She had to get a handle on these new emotions and drives. They might come with useful gifts, but she’d be damned if a stray bit of DNA was going to rule her life. The Thunderbird part of her was at least mostly aligned with her own way of thinking. What would the other bloodlines push her to do?

  She scanned the area around them, watching for threats. They could handle the birds and centipedes, but they were all out of fire extinguishers and handy lakes if another fire elemental popped up. If that happened, they could only run, and the longhouse would be no protection from fire. Lulu must have picked up on her worry. She sent a wave of reassurance, and an image of her shaking a fire elemental in her jaws like a rag doll.

  Char smiled at the image and sent back a feeling of gratitude. The smile was wiped away a moment later when Declan called out a warning.

  They swooped in out of the sun like jets on an attack run. “Get down, guard your heads,” she called, her hands already forming the pattern for Arc. The spell came together faster than ever, almost snapping into place. She felt like she understood the pattern better, but she didn’t have time to dissect that new knowledge. There were four of the Deathbarbs diving in on sand-colored wings, talons out and tails poised to sting.

  Irina pulled Jalong and Intan to the ground, covering them both with her own body. Jabat did the same to Lina, though Lina struggled against him, wanting to fight. Sergei stood firm, ready to use the crowbar for a little batting practice.

  Char loosed her spell on the lead vulture, and Declan swung his sword at the second as it came into range. The one hit by the lightning fell to the ground, smoking and stunned, but still twitching. Declan scored a hit on the wing of the second, sending it spinning into range of Sergei’s crowbar. Lulu’s leap brought down a third, and her flames roasted it like a chicken on a rotisserie.

  The fourth one got through. It hit Irina’s back, raking her flesh with its talons. She screamed with the pain, but didn’t move from her place, shielding the others. Sergei went mad at the sight. He lunged for the bird, but was too slow. It lifted away again and looped around in a tight arc, whipping its tail to force Sergei to dodge back.

  Char pulled together another Arc spell and shot it off as soon as she had a clear shot. Declan finished off the one he and Sergei had injured. Then Lina’s scream cut through the chaos, and Char whipped around to see her standing over the first bird she’d downed, the one that had been partially electrocuted. The barb on its tail was embedded in her thigh, and its talons were in her calf, but she’d managed to plunge her knife deep into its breastbone.

  The bird was dead, but its final twitches were shredding the girl’s leg. Char pulled the healing potion quest reward from her quick access slot and tossed it to Declan. “See to her. That barb is close to her femoral, so be careful pulling it out.” She checked on Lulu and saw that she had her foe well in hand… or jaw, rather, then turned back to Sergei’s fight.

  Her Arc had stunned the vulture, and Sergei had it on the ground. He was battering it with the crowbar like a berserker, a constant stream of Russian curses flowing from him. She left him to work out his anger issues and went to Irina.

  The woman was in bad shape. The rents in her back were so deep that Char could see glimpses of her ribs under the sheeting blood. Jalong had wiggled out from under her and pulled his mother out as well. Intan stared off into space, rocking where she sat, but Jalong had pulled off his shirt and was trying to stem the bleeding with it. The wounds were too large.

  Irina was biting her lip against the pain, and she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Char knelt next to them, taking in the extent of the wound. She’d given Declan their only healing potion to use on Lina. She had a healing spell, but she could only use it on herself. She pulled out her first aid kit and two bottles of water.

  “Jalong, right?” she asked the kid. His eyes were wide, on the verge of panic, so she did her best to hide her own fear and look like she knew what she was doing. When he nodded, she went on, “Is your English good, or should I call your granddad over to translate?”

  “OK English,” he said, nodding. Irina’s blood was running over his hands, but he didn’t flinch away from it.

  “Here,” she handed him one of the water bottles and set the other at his knee. “Use these to irrigate the wound, try to get it as clean as you can. I’m going to try something; maybe I can heal her, maybe not, but we can’t let this get infected. Understand?”

  “Clean the wound. Got good,” he said, his word choice a little odd, but understandable.

  “Irina, hang in there, OK. Deep breaths. You’re about to hyperventilate. You’ve got to slow your breathing down.” As she spoke, she pulled out her shower bag and fumbled through the pockets, searching for something she’d tossed in and nearly forgotten about.

  “Da. Am trying.” Irina’s voice was tight with pain.

  Her improved affinity with lightning gave Char a better understanding of the spell pattern. She looked at the affinity stones in her hand and picked out the two Flesh Affinity Stones, dumping the other two back into the bag and storing it. She’d been reluctant to use these, worried about giving the system more control over her, but now that seemed like a moot point. If she could improve her Flesh affinity enough to understand and change the pattern of her Mend Flesh spell, she might be able to help Irina. It was a long shot, but other than sewing her up and praying, they didn’t have any other options.

  She checked her screen. Her Lightning affinity was at 65%. Her Flesh affinity was sitting at 13%. She had no idea if this was going to work. Her understanding of the lightning might have come from her bloodline; she could be wasting her time, but it was worth trying anyway.

  Irina bit back a cry as Jalong poured the cool water over her back. He’d pulled away the edges of her shirt and was looking in the wounds, picking out fibers as he went. He was young and scared, but he was thinking. She left him to it and focused on one of the stones.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  [Flesh Affinity Stone}

  Consumable

  Can be used in crafting, or absorbed to

  Increase a Domain Affinity.

  Would you like to absorb [Flesh Affinity Stone]? Y/N

  The mental image of her turning into an electrified flesh blob floated across her imagination for a second, but she ignored it and selected yes. Someone knelt next to her, but her attention was entirely on the stone in her hand as it turned to light and flowed into her. It went straight to her center, settling into her Core, and the part of her Core attuned to Flesh mana grew larger. She checked her screen again. 33%. It had jumped by 20%. She felt hopeful.

  Sergei was there, talking to her, but her Russian was worse than his English. He grabbed her arm and snarled something angry at her. Irina spoke then, her voice strained against her clenched jaw. She put her hand on Sergei’s knee, and he let go of Char. He still looked at her with deep suspicion, but he worked to rein himself in.

  “He worries for me. This thing you do—is magic, da?” she asked.

  “It is, and I’ll explain it later. I’ll teach a whole damned class later, but for now I need to focus. I don’t know if I can make this work, but I’m going to try.”

  Irina nodded. She rattled off something in Russian to Sergei. He took her hand and they spoke while Char turned her attention to the second stone.

  She absorbed it, and her Flesh Domain Affinity rose to 53%. Not as high as her lightning, but maybe it would be enough. She felt Lulu’s heat against her back as her canine friend offered what support she could.

  Now for the hard part. She took a deep breath and shaped the Mend Flesh pattern, but she didn’t release it. It came easier, just like the lightning had. She studied the pattern. As with the Arc spell, she could almost understand it.

  She felt deeper into herself. Flesh had been on the list of Domains that resonated with her bloodlines. If there was part of her that could connect to this magic, the way her Thunderbird blood connected to the lightning, she needed it now. There. A slight hint of familiarity. A sense that the air should be more humid. A connection to her body that went deeper than just living in it. A feel for how the magic should move and respond. Two bloodlines answered. The Nahual part of her knew the flesh, and how to shape it, the other, the Tuatha or the Vanir, she couldn’t be sure which, maybe it was both, knew magic and how it flowed.

  Char stopped analyzing. She let instinct guide her, moving and altering the flow of the magic, finding the place in the spell that anchored it to her flesh alone and twisting it into a new pattern. It still felt off. The spell broke apart and the mana disbursed. She took a deep breath and tried again. She created the pattern with the new twist, and again it failed.

  What was she missing? The new pattern felt right, but incomplete. She tried again, her eyes drifting to the wound on Irina’s back as she started the pattern. Jalong had finished flushing out the debris, and he was using bandages from Char’s first-aid kit to put pressure on the worst of the bleeding. Sergei watched her with suspicious eyes. Her eyes snapped back to the wound.

  Of course. If her hands weren’t full of mana, she’d have smacked herself on the head. Char had removed herself as the default target of the spell. It needed a new target. She rebuilt the pattern in her hands, and this time, she moved the spell until her hands were hovering just over the rents in Irina’s flesh. When the mana touched Irina, the spell snapped into place. She willed it into the injured woman. It flowed into her back, and Char fed it more power.

  The bleeding slowed. The torn muscles started to knit together, hiding the sickening flashes of pale rib bone. Jalong tried to help by pushing the torn flesh together, and the healing went faster. Then Char’s head exploded with pain as the last of her mana ran into the spell and her well went dry. She fell backward, landing against Lulu’s shoulder, breathing hard from the effort, and her eyes blurred from the strain.

  She heard Sergei mutter, “Bozhe Moy!” with a bit of awe in his voice.

  Lulu licked her cheek. The hellhound’s hot tongue felt like a steamed towel against her skin. While she caught her breath, she checked her new notifications, skimming past the kill notifications for the two vultures she’d helped with.

  New Spell Pattern Learned.

  You have discovered the pattern for

  [Mend Other] - Beginner

  ————————————————————————————

  Your mastery of [Mend Flesh]

  has advanced from Beginner to Novice.

  ———————————————————————————

  New Title Earned:

  Arcane Advancement (Bronze)

  You have modified an existing spell

  through your own efforts. Not a task

  undertaken lightly.

  +3 Willpower, +3 Intelligence

  Compared to her other titles, it was nothing special, but every little bit helped. Far more important to her was knowing that she could heal her friends if they got injured. When she’d lost the ability to share vitality with Lulu, it worried her, but now, one more weight lifted from her shoulders.

  “Char, if you have any juice left, we could use you over here,” Declan called. He was trying to keep his voice even, but there was an undertone of strain in it. She pushed herself off of Lulu and looked around. Irina’s wounds weren’t completely healed, but the bleeding had stopped, and there was new flesh where her back had looked like bloody rags.

  Declan was still kneeling over Lina. Jabat was with them. Lina looked pale, and she was shaking. Char pushed herself to her feet and hurried over.

  “That bird pumped some sort of venom into her. The potion healed up her wounds, but it didn’t clear the poison,” Declan explained as Char crouched next to them. Lina was sweating, and her skin was clammy. She had dark circles under her eyes, and Char could see her veins under her skin.

  “My mana is bottomed out. I don’t have any way to purge the toxin… Do you think she can hold on long enough for me to meditate and get some mana back? If I can keep giving her health, maybe she can ride it out.”

  “Please, try.” Jabat’s voice was quiet and full of pain. He’d already lost a family member, maybe two if Intan couldn’t pull out of her fugue. He gripped Lina’s hand and never took his eyes from her face.

  Char nodded. “I need to meditate for as long as possible to get as much mana back as I can. Shake me out of it if she… Before things get too far.” Declan nodded, and Char settled into a lotus position.

  She was still shaky with post-fight adrenaline. The meditation trance kept melting away as her brain raced and her body twitched. She focused on her breathing, immersing herself in the sound of it. It took several long minutes for her to settle enough to slip into the trance. When she felt the ocean breeze and heard the far-off thunder, she opened her eyes.

  The storm was closer to shore. The lightning flashed more often, and the air smelled of ozone. When she looked around, the jungle seemed more dense and more lively. She wasn’t sure, but she thought her Core might be a little larger, too. Her internal world was changing with her. She needed to find a chance to linger here when things weren’t teetering on the verge of disaster. She had so many questions, and she thought she might find some of the answers here if she could just take the time to look.

  It felt like barely any time at all had passed before she felt Declan’s hand on her arm, shaking her. “Char, she’s having a seizure or something. If there’s anything you can do, better do it now.”

  She checked her mana bar. There was enough for one cast. Hopefully, it would buy them some time. She shaped the spell and pressed it into Lina. Her color improved, and the shaking stopped. Her breath evened out. She looked better, but the tremors and sweating were still there. Char’s headache was back, and she knew without checking her HUD that her mana was empty again.

  “She is still poisoned,” Jabat said.

  “I’ll heal her again as soon as I have enough mana. If I can keep doing that, we might be able to keep her going while the poison runs its course. We shouldn’t stay here, though. Declan, can you carry her?”

  He nodded. Char pushed to her feet, wobbling a little as she stood. Bottoming out her mana so many times in a row was not fun. The pain and dizziness receded as new mana trickled in. Irina was on her feet, a little pale and unsteady from blood loss, but mobile. Sergei was at her elbow, annoying her with his mother-henning.

  Declan got his arms under Lina and lifted her easily. Jabat hovered nearby. Jalong got his mother moving, and they made as much haste as they were able toward the longhouse. They had to stop once more when they were almost there, when Lina started to grow too pale and Char used what mana she’d regained to heal her again, but they made it without any further attacks.

  They were all exhausted, but alive.