She wasn’t quite sure what the substance was, but it burned like high hell even through the Fog-intoxicated stupor.

“Lift your arm a little higher, please,” Zef asked, and she did as she was told, stretching her wounds open with the motion.

“Homunculus Eye…” the cyclops uttered, leaning in further over the edge of the tub to get a good look at her wounds. She squinted, furrowed her brow, and surprisedly remarked, “Looks like the muscle fibers are already reconnecting, no scar tissue at all… Don’t think I’ll even need to stitch you up. How much Liquid Vigor did you drink?”

“Uh… Half a bottle, I think?” Zel wagered, then turned to the markswoman with a mischievous grin. “Does that mean you won’t kiss it all better?”

“Really? You’re doing this now?” the blonde admonished, soaking a fresh ball of cotton in disinfectant before somewhat forcefully swiping it against Zel’s wounds with a pair of medical tweezers.

“I’m about a-as close to be-eing at your mercy as I could get,” she responded, briefly hissing in pain at every swipe as the aggressive liquid burned away more than just the bacteria in her wounds. It felt, and to some degree smelled like it was partially cauterizing the wounds with a mere touch. “M-maybe making horny comments is a defense mechanism.”

“Sure it is, and I’ve secretly got a second working eye,” Zef chuckled, only half-jokingly. Zel started to gently pull away the rest of the bandages as the water reached her chest and melted them away, baring her claw-scored flesh plainly to see. Whilst Zef squinted at the deep stab wounds in the amazon’s back, she leaned forward in the bath and shut the water valve, stretching her wounds open to a point where her back began to bleed again.

Before she could return to a relaxed position, she heard the words, “Wait, hold on, stay like that.”

There was the squeaking of leather and clattering of metal, and she felt a metal tool slip deep into one of the stab wounds on her back, stretching it open. It was followed by long tweezers, which pulled out of the wound a stinging fragment that she hadn’t noticed through the rest of the pain before.

“Is this… A fingerbone?” Zef’s bewildered voice questioned, and Zel saw her turning it around and examining it when she finally leaned back.

She squinted at it, cocked her head to the side, and nodded, “Uh-huh, pretty sure. Fucker got his claws in me before I kicked him away, pretty sure a couple broke off inside.”

“What was the beast anyway?” the markswoman questioned, dropping the fingerbone onto the bathroom floor and picking up the cotton ball again, continuing to press it into her wounds to let the vile disinfectant seep in. All in all it was rather awkward, and it quickly became obvious that she couldn’t easily reach Zel’s back without painfully pressing her arm against the edge of the tub.

“Some poor soldier that had used an old ritual to turn himself into a man-eating monster just before the end of the war,” she said through a pained grin.