I feel goosebumps form over on my left arm, looking down I find a black aura spread over the skin on the back of my hand, the one holding the creature's spike in place, blocked under its own armpit.

The dark aura would be invisible if not for the tone difference with my wrist but I recognize it anyway. It's doing something with flow! Shit, this being is intelligent enough to use flow while I don't have anything left.

“Fuck.” What do I do? Nothing, for now, it's too late to let go of him since the construct is already applied and freeing him will not improve the situation. “Fuck.”

My hand is starting to feel itchy. Am I imagining it? I wait a few seconds as the feeling worsens. No. “Fuck!” I stare hard at the back of the being's head, trying to read its intentions as the itchiness becomes almost unbearable. I throw another look at my hand and it seems to be glistening, except I'm not sweating.

Another moment passes and the itch goes with it, leaving a burning sensation behind as the glistening seems to spread further up my arm to cover my wrist while the black aura follows along, seemingly floating above the effect.

“I need help here!” I throw towards the fighting with enough panic projected in my voice that even the panicking part of myself is temporarily relieved.

“Keep holding him! We've almost got this!” Lady Lance answers me with a yell.

I stare at my arm as the aura envelops my whole wrist, the burning sensation is worrying me more than the itching did despite the fact that my survival instincts are apparently rating it lower in urgency.

The being makes another move but this time I spot the moment when he pulls on his flow to do something else and decide to simply let go, preferring to save my left hand more harm and lose an easy hold than to let something worse happen.

But unfortunately, it is too late to salvage the situation as the being simply releases a low powered wide area fire construct behind his back. The burst of flame is as brief as it is effective, it instantly ignites the patch of glistening skin covering the back of my left hand and wrist.

“He's burning me!” I yell, completely panicked this time.

I grab a corner of my cloak and wrap it around the fire in an attempt to smother it, it seems to work from the exterior at least as the flames are hidden from view, but after a few seconds of the scorching pain not lessening in any way, perhaps even spreading up my arm, I let the cloak go and it falls back to my side, smoking hot but not burning.

One of the being's spikes scrapes past my left breast, leaving a small but painful line behind. Fear and rage fill me as his latest attempt to murder me barely misses while my arm is still burning, filling my brain with a blistering agony. I throw my hands around the being's head, exploring around its neck and looking to find a good grip on the single piece carapace covering it.

I find the carapace's seam and slip my fingers inside, clutching my phalanxes so hard over the edge that I feel at least one nail breaking. I start pulling with my arms, going so far as to press a foot between the being's shoulders to add leverage as I attempt to rip the asshole's head off.

I feel as much as I hear the clean crack that his spine makes once I've pulled on the head enough but I don't stop, the point was to rip it off and I'm not stopping now. I keep yanking hard on the thing until, after a short while, the head suddenly comes off the shoulders, dripping with viscous brown blood.

The next thing that happens is the return of my hearing as the lunatic that has been yelling in them until now, going “Aaahhhh”, stops. I throw a last glance at the head, sadly noting that I haven't managed to rip it off entirely as there remains a lone artery connecting the head and the body. I let go of the disgusting thing. On second thought that was probably me yelling.

I half-lower half-drop myself to the ground. I end up in a sitting position, exhausted, with all my flow reserves spent and a left arm in sizzling flames all the way up to my biceps now, forcing me to keep it extended to the side to avoid spreading the flames.

I pull on the sleeve of my shirt, feeling lightheaded as odd hazy figures walk trough my field of view and gather around me. I feel my consciousness somewhat fading as someone puts their hand on my shoulder.

“Can you stop it?” I recognize Leomi's voice trough the haze of pain clouding my thoughts.

“I can throw energy at it and that would smother it, a subtler solution would take about as long to devise as it would take her to burn completely, ten times over.”

“Okay, throw energy at it then.” Lady Lance says, stating the obvious.

“It would take more energy than I have.”

“Okay, use mine then.” She continues, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the obvious reluctance in the other one's voice.

“I refuse to. We need you at peak condition now more than ever, you cannot consume your reserves to save a peasant's arm.”

“She's here because we asked for her to come.” I can almost hear the frown she must be wearing in her voice.

“That is both true and inconsequential. We simply cannot afford to burn our reserves on that wench right now, there are too many unknowns.”

“The construct is spreading as we waste time, we need to cut her arm off, now.” Yvonne's voice breaks in from behind me, cutting trough the debate.

What? No! I try to get up but a wave of pain immediately crushes my attempt. My arms are all I have! I feel hands take hold of my shoulders from behind, holding me tight and steady.

“You're killing me!” I manage to force my mouth to spit the words out in a raspy voice.

“We are not.” Lady Lance answers from somewhere to my left. “Do you trust me?” She asks as I writhe around to try to escape despite her reassurance.

“No.” I cough out the word with the last vestige of my strength, slumping down into the hands supporting and holding me immobile from behind.

“Hold her arm straight out!” Lady Lance snaps.

“It's burning!”

“I don't fucking care.” She spits between grit teeth, anger seething in her voice.

I feel my left arm move thanks to a wave of pain sent trough the last nerves remaining in my upper arm, the same ones that knock my consciousness straight out when a sword cuts trough the base of my shoulder.

--- --- ---

I wake up, feeling weak but not drowsy, because of a shock regularly impacting me. The impact is coming from the hard support holding me up by pressing on my lower ribs and stomach, the thing is lifting and then lowering to hit something hard and sending the vibrations back into me.

I open my eyelids and find myself looking at hard leather fastened tight to someone's body. The next thing I find are straight black hair swishing above me, I follow them down to their root to glance at Lady Lance's face but upside down.

Her traits are tense while her teeth are grit together in effort, she is quite obviously fatigued. It takes me an embarrassing while to figure out she's carrying me on her shoulder, worse still I only figure it out because of the moving tunnel behind her.

I feel the weakness of my muscles but worse is the shaking in my hands, I bring both of them up and find that my right hand is indeed shaking. Unfortunately, it seems like my left arm is stuck somewhere in this position because I can't seem to move it but I can feel my left hand shaking the same way as my right hand did, maybe the arm's circulation was cut, stuck between Lady Lance and me so it fell asleep?

My best attempt to speak with my parched throat comes out as a groan, I know from experience that a sleeping limb can be dangerous if it stays that way too long so I weakly bring my right arm up and try to tap Lady Lance's elbow to call her attention.

“We're stopping.” I hear her say.

My hand never did manage to tap her as my hand cruised trough empty air, luckily she seems to have felt me move as the first thing she does it carefully put me down on the ground against a wall before taking out her flask of water and bringing it to my lips.

The water's effect feels like a fountain of youth as it takes the liquid a few moments to infiltrate and revive the dried husk of my mouth, as soon as it is able, I start greedily swallowing the liquid.

“Take your time.” She says, taking the neck of the flask away for a second before putting it back up to my lips.

I resume drinking slowly, shifting on my position to get a better feel of my body. I move my left shoulder forward in an effort to bring the arm attached to it in my field of view.

“Don't move your … your wound too much. You need to conserve your energy.” She puts the tips of her fingers on the base of the left side of my neck, gently and carefully pushing me back against the wall.

“My wound?” I ask. Oh right, I was burning. My face winces involuntarily at the memory of the scorching pain. “Did you treat the burns?” I ask, throwing a look down at my left arm.

I keep staring at empty space for a long moment, baffled, before my eyes travel up my left side, looking, but all I find is a bandage around … around nothing, there isn't even a shoulder anymore, my body just … ends there, no arm, no stump, nothing.

The bandage is wrapped all around my chest. It was laid over my clothes but blood seeped trough all the way, leaving a large red stain covering my entire left side down to my waist and half of my left chest.

My … my life is over. They fucking killed me. I suddenly feel lightheaded as my anger flares and disappears, leaving me with an empty sadness and worried about my future.

Options go trough my mind one at a time only to be rejected with barely a thought. Can't live on selling flow reserves alone, training horses … takes two hands, no one will take a one-handed apprentice, can't burden Father for the rest of his life or my brother as he starts his, street begging? No, at some point I'll hit a dry spell and starve to death, low-end high-risk jobs? Even if they hire me, its high-risk low-end, I'll likely die within a year. The only option I can think of that would work is one I won't take, not out of ego but because of my preference. It would just be too much.

I'm utterly fucked. “Hic.” Completely done. “Hic.” The sudden hiccups throw my head upwards and back a bit. “Hic.” I feel tears gather in the corner of my eyes, blurring my vision as an uncontrollable fit overwhelms me. “Hic, hic, hic.”

I see a movement trough the blur as I feel an arm pass under my right armpit, slipping behind my back and pulling me closer to a chest into a wrapping hug as Leomi's other arm carefully avoid the wound as it goes around my waist to pull me closer. “Hic.”

My moment of panic recedes as she cradles me in her arms. I bury my face into her neckline as tears regularly roll down my cheekbones to drop onto the hard leather and disappearing further down. I remain there for a long while as my eyes seem to be channeling the entire supply of water I just drank into tears.

I feel a hand shake my shoulder so I tear my head away and look up, finding Yvonne with a gentle smile.

“Come on, we need to change your bandage and get going.” She says.

“Okay.” I say so quietly that I also nod to make sure she understands.

Lady Lance's arms unwrap themselves from around me before helping me back into a sitting position against the wall, she stands immediately after and leaves me alone with Yvonne, too quick for me to even catch a glimpse of her face. I tried edging sideways, but her face was low and hidden behind her shoulder, as she turned away.

Yvonne's hands are already busy untying the knots keeping the bandage in place, occasionally taking out her knife to expertly cut away the pieces of cloth that are too soaked with dried dry blood to manipulate.

I soon find myself looking down at my shirt, the whole left half of it red with blood and a few rips while there is a ring of dried sweat marking the area around my right armpit. I feel a pinch of embarrassment but can't find myself to care until Yvonne's hands start pulling at the shirt, visibly trying to take it off me.

“Wait! Stop! I don't have anything under!” I splutter with urgency, throwing looks around us and behind her.

“So? I don't swing your way.” She shrugs. “We need to apply a proper dressing to your wound and they're not even looking this way.” She nods somewhere to her right, towards where Lady Lance went earlier.

This time my cheeks do flare up as I stop resisting while she carefully slips the shirt over my neck and slides it down my right arm, I do however find enough strength to immediately cover my breasts with my forearm as soon as the shirt is past my wrist.

I do my best to maintain total coverage while Yvonne utterly ignores me, busying herself with applying a balm somewhere around where my left shoulder should be. I find myself daydreaming slightly about Lady Lance, hoping that I would catch her trying to steal a glance from a shadow in the tunnel and then we would …

A sharp spasm of pain shakes me out of my reverie as Yvonne's hand brushes over a sensible spot. I turn my eyes to the left following the pain but instead of finding flesh, I see a patch of charcoal black flash surrounding bright red bloody meat, there two odd white things in the middle of the … wound. Is that bone? One is C shaped while the other is a small white oval just above it. My mind is thrown back to all the memories I have of cattle being carved for various occasions. We truly are just a collection of meat and bones.

The realization doesn't trigger many feelings, I mostly just accept the reality of it because none of the information is new. All I lost is a simple useless bit of ego. I turn my head away and grit my teeth as Yvonne does her best to apply the balm without provoking pain by pushing on the flesh too hard.

I try to get my mind back to my daydream with Leomi but I immediately realize that any glimpse she throws towards my chest will inevitably also contain the nauseating piece of butchery located near my left breast and I am now catching myself hoping that she never does see me.

“Don't worry, there isn't much burnt flesh and the scar on your breast will be straight.” Yvonne says as she puts the balm away and takes a roll of fresh bandage out of the medical supplies box laying on the ground next to her.

I scoff, having almost forgotten the small horizontal red line on my left breast since it hurt so little compared to the constant nagging pains coming from my a … wound in waves.

She takes my elbow in a firm grip, lifting my arm so that she can put the end of the bandage roll against my lower ribs before lowering my arm over it to hold it in place as she takes the roll and makes passes with it around my torso, expertly covering more of the wound pass after pass.

Once the bandage is holding itself in place somewhat, she firmly lifts my right arm above my head by once again leveraging my elbow, caring nothing for my exposed breasts as she finishes the dressing by passing the last lengths of the bandage across my chest and around my neck several times, before finally tying both ends of the fabric together in a knot and throwing me a clean shirt that I hurriedly slide on.

“We need to move. Soon.” Patrick says, his voice seems to be approaching us.

“Give her a minute to get her bearings.” Yvonne throws over her shoulder.

“It's okay.” I say with a raspy voice. “I'm ready.” I add, trying to stand up but underestimating the weakness of my legs.

I see Patrick and Lady Lance approaching, alone. The others … are probably gone. He is wearing an impatient expression as I fail to get up while Lady Lance's face remains neutral throughout, I almost see her lower lip twitch but I imagine it must have come from the shadows dancing on her face, projected by the torch in her hand.

I gather my feet under me and place a hand on the wall to get myself up to my feet, legs shaking a bit but otherwise holding. I try to gather some flow but find my reserves nearly depleted. My body must have been trough worse than I thought if it directly consumed the flow's energy.

“What's the rush anyway?” I ask to buy enough time for my short breath to stabilize.

“Later.” Patrick snaps as he turns around, starting to walk off already.

Yvonne picks up the supplies backpack I used to carry and fits it over her shoulders. I stay behind her as we start walking, Lady Lance taking position behind me while Patrick lights up his torch and leads the way.

I attempt to take a few steps without my hand to the wall, using it as a crutch, but I almost crash into the wall when I let go. My whole sense of balance is disrupted, walking habits I've spent a lifetime with are completely unable to compensate for the lack of a counterweight to my right arm.

After a while I manage to settle into a somewhat upright gait as I test letting go of the wall completely. It works for about a couple hundred meters before fatigue starts setting into my waist muscles who are working extra hard to compensate. I stop forcing myself to remain straight and slump a bit to the right, finding a new balance that seems to work.