Once the battlefield was cleansed with some blessed tobacco I headed back. I glanced at the cart beside me and took stock, around 12 critically injured men and 5 dead ones. Noticing that one of them was starting to slip, I boarded the cart and began to work. Yanking off the chest plate, I inspected the third-degree burns and blasted flesh. This poor fellow was more than likely hit by a spell, and whoever cast that spell was certainly a novice. I had already performed first aid, but it seemed like that only worked temporarily. I pushed on the area and found that several of his ribs were broken along with a collapsed lung. Probably curtesy of the broken ribs.

I pulled out a newly made pair of plyers and started picking out the bone shards. The man was delirious but was too weak to struggle as I turned him over in case he tries to vomit. I took a scalpel made of bone to the wound and cut off strips of the charred flesh. Despite popular belief, fire attacks rarely cauterize the wound, and the man had obviously lost a lot of blood. Most of it seemingly found that his lung was a great place to gather. As my hands moved, his flesh unzipped underneath the scalpel, and like a piece of fabric, I pulled his flesh back to reveal his innards.

I didn’t have the proper tools, so I resorted to magic when draining the lung. Watching numbly as blood poured out like a faucet, I took a look at my patient. Middle-aged with a sizable build and covered in almost full plate armor. Something caught my eye as I went to get back to business. Gripped tightly in his hand was a silver medallion, and on that medallion was wyvern holding a spear in his claws. A family crest maybe? I shook myself out of my thoughts, his lung was done draining. I placed a finger on the incision I had made and drew out any lingering blood before inflating it back with magic. Since I didn’t have any glue on hand, I took some magic threads and stitched up all the wholes I could find. Once that was done, I closed my incision and took out some actual thread to stitch it up. He was missing two and a half ribs now, but he would live. He also probably needed a skin graft, and what do you know, I just so happened to have some on hand.

I went over to one of the fresher corpses and took off a good foot of skin from its chest. After taking careful measurements I began to shape the piece of flesh to the right dimensions. With a bit of magic, I reinvigorated the cells and placed it on the wound. Taking out a needle of bone, I used it to slowly but surely to merge the original and new addition. I didn’t care much to constantly provide medicine to prevent his immune system from rejecting it, I did something that I would not suggest. Out of laziness, I forced his cells to slowly engulf the skin. Eventually, it will become his own.

I popped the knuckles underneath my glove for a job well done. This should be the thirty-fifth man I have saved on this small trip alone. When the cart abruptly stopped, I noticed a group of ten blocking the muddy path. I jumped down and felt the dirt underneath my boot slip, having turned to mud from the blood and sweat of the day. Nothing I wasn’t used to though. The group was made up of mostly soldiers with only one hooded cleric at the back. I took note of their shields, each depicting a serpent wrapping around a gladiolus. I slowly turned to look at the cart I commandeered and found that it had a different insignia, a silver dragon holding a golden dagger. This may not end well.

I glanced at a man in the back and found him pointing a decently sized war bow at me. Controlling my instinct to attack, I slowly raised my bloody hands. The robed figure in the back yelled in a gruff voice, “We need that cart, gather your belongings, and scram thief. You’re lucky we don’t stick an arrow into you right now.”

The figure tried to hide it, but I could tell they were a she, and pretty young on top of that. I could also feel weakness radiating off her, despite the baggy white robe I noticed that a leg was being favored. I looked for a religious symbol but found none, so maybe not a cleric. I glanced at the men in front of her, despite being garbed in the usual uniform of the defending side, I could tell they were not the normal rift raft. I glanced at their blades and shields, well-worn but not from age. The wood was still fresh and the chips on the blade were brand new. No rolled edges though, well made.

My silence seemed to unnerve the robbed girl, causing her to shift uncomfortably. “You heard me, you scoundrel! Move before these men chop you to bits.”

I slowly stepped to the side and motioned a go-ahead. Five of the nine men crept forward to the cart while the rest continued to watch my every move. I was not really looking forward to dragging twelve barely living men across a battlefield. I thought back to the threat she just threw at me, these men, not my men but these men. An equal rank, or maybe they were under someone else? I watched from the side as the men suddenly began to hesitate, apparently, they weren’t expecting a mass of bodies stacked on top of each other. They probably couldn’t see them in the dark. A voice of rage came from the robbed figure, a distinctly feminine voice, “What do you think you're doing with a cart full of corpses and injured men?!”