Time. The Tutorial! If he could get the man into the Tutorial, Blaze was certainly good enough. But how could he do that? The Voice didn’t let people enter when they wanted or needed to; they went in when it decided they should. The only exception was Serenity.

He didn’t have a way to bring anyone with him. The only other being who’d come into the Tutorial with him was Curio, and Curio seemed to be “his familiar”. That didn’t help.

Unless the reason Curio had come was because he was on Serenity, rather than their connection?

There wasn’t any way to have the man be “on” Serenity other than carrying him, and Serenity didn’t expect that to work. It probably needed to be closer than that. All Serenity could think of was a way to envelop the man. He’d carried Rissa; maybe he could do the same here. That ought to be close enough. He’d just have to not use Merge.

If this didn’t work, Serenity knew it would kill the victim. He wouldn’t be able to stop it; he had to keep his Death Incarnate gathered around himself to protect himself from the rot-creature, and once that killed enough of it, the man would start to die since it was all that was keeping him alive. If they were lucky, Serenity would know in time to use Merge and recover information, but most likely he’d just die.

It was worth the risk. He was going to die anyway, and this had a chance of success. It wasn’t high, but a low chance was better than none. “I have an idea. I think I can take him into the Tutorial with me; there are some good healers there.”

Russ nodded. “Nothing to lose. We’ll try to get the rest of the mess cleaned up while you’re gone.”

“I won’t be gone that long, but if you can clean where he’s standing it would be a good start.” Serenity looked at the others. He didn’t really want to show this off in front of Red and Katya, but making a big deal of it would probably be worse than just doing it.

Serenity shifted his form. As always, the Void Sovereign form was comfortable and felt less confining. He flowed over and around the man as he started to slump; he should have set the man on the ground before he released him. Maybe he could do more; he didn’t have the Void Protector skill yet, but its existence said there was more he could do.

He’d carried Rissa somehow, after all! He simply had to figure out how.

Katya and Red both exclaimed something. Serenity didn’t have time to deal with it; Russ would have to.

Serenity reached out to the man and felt something strange. Acceptance, perhaps? Agreement? It was positive, whatever it was. Consent, perhaps? That was something the skill mentioned, after all; there had to be a reason.

Whatever it was, Serenity suddenly had no problems supporting the man. He tried to form a protective shell around him; the best he could manage wasn’t armor, because there was no way the man would be able to move, but it did feel protective.

He felt his Incarnate neutralize the layer of rot covering the man’s body. Serenity knew he would have to do more than that to get it all, but he was confident he could manage, as long as he had a good enough healer backing him up.

This was the best he could do. Serenity reached out to trigger his entry to the Tutorial. The sooner he got to Blaze, the better.

[Tutorial will begin in 00:05:00]

Serenity felt himself relax. This was going to work!

Blaze hated this kind of Tutorial. It wasn’t the required playacting that got him; that was actually sort of fun after the seriousness of most Tutorial variants. It also wasn’t the fact that this was almost identical to the Tutorial scenario he’d completed when the Voice found his planet. He’d thought it was unrealistic and events had proven him correct, but it had still been fun.

No, the problem was that the species you had to play was partly based on your Paths, and because Blaze was primarily a Healer, he always ended up as something tiny and cute. Mages were elementals this time; it was better than the skeletons with flames instead of heads they’d been last time as far as Blaze was concerned.

The physical instructors were beast-people; they always stayed the closest to their normal physical form. This time, the crafting trainers seemed more or less human, even if they were split into a tall and skinny body type and a short and squat body type. The distinction probably meant something, but it really didn’t matter to Blaze.

At least he could feel better about what he’d ended up with than the administrators. They probably wouldn’t be doing too much teaching, since they’d all ended up as inanimate objects. Ekari was a signpost of some sort. She could display messages and notes. She could talk, too, but she wouldn’t when students were around.

Ekari’s situation didn’t make Blaze feel better about his own. He’d ended up as a sprite. The only good thing about being a sprite was that he could fly; he was only about four inches tall. It wasn’t like it even made sense for Healers to be small; while some could get away with simply using healing spells, anything more advanced could require being able to move people to where they needed to be. Yes, you could use a spell or an assistant, but it was generally better to invest in yourself. Attributes helped, but you had to have the muscle to back them up, and as a four-inch-tall sprite, he didn’t.

“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?”

There were a couple of short, startled yells from the same direction as the shout. That definitely wasn’t what he was used to hearing at the beginning of a Tutorial, even one of the scenarios. It wasn’t really Blaze’s job to check it out; in this scenario, he wasn’t needed to triage the newcomers. He could wait for them to come to him; in fact, unless there was an emergency, that was exactly his role.

This particular scenario was one of the ones that tended to take individuals rather than groups, and it seemed to specifically select for people who were in a certain range of physical ability. Blaze suspected that was because it required that ability to complete. Sometimes people would come in with injuries that could be relatively easily healed, but for this scenario there was rarely anything worse than that.

Blaze headed towards the commotion anyway.

It was in Arrival Square, of course. There was a small group of people staring at someone in the middle of the square.

Or was it something? It looked like a shadowy black … something. Cocoon was the first word that came to mind, but it certainly wasn’t made of webbing. There was a strange sensation coming from it; it seemed intimidating and dangerous, but not deliberately so.

It was the same sort of feeling Blaze had gotten the first time he saw a Phoenix. The Phoenix was beautiful and impressive, but he’d felt the sheer heat it emitted along with his flames and knew he didn’t want to get anywhere near it, no matter how much he had in common with it.

Blaze flew up near the thing, closer than the ring of staring people. They weren’t close enough to tell what it really was.

Identify

Nothing. Was it not a thing then?

Analyze

Still nothing.

Fine. Inspect

Blaze felt mana pour out of him as he used the far more detailed Skill he’d picked up in the early days. Its cost was high, but it worked on absolutely everything.

Blaze was surprised to see two results.

[Preservation Cocoon (*, *)]

[Injured Human (?) (**)]

Blaze hated it when the Skill told him there was more to learn. Sometimes it was trivial and sometimes it was vital.

Given the name, the “Preservation Cocoon” had an obvious purpose. It wasn’t a magical item he’d ever heard of, and it seemed unusual for this world, but worlds were big places and the unusual happened. He’d identify it more if he needed to, but he’d concentrate on the injured person first.

**Blighted (transmittable, contained, sentient)

Contained? Well, that had to be what the cocoon was for, then. He’d have to heal through it. Blights could be nasty. He might or might not be able to heal it; it all depended on what sort of blight it was.

Blaze swooped down and settled on the cocoon. He was surprised when his feet sank in as though it was simply the shadows it looked like; he’d somehow expected a Preservation Cocoon to be solid. He knelt and reached for the injured person, but as his hands entered the shadows it was like something realized he was there. His hands stopped as though they’d run into something, but he knew it wasn’t the patient; they weren’t nearly as low as his knees.

//??//

There weren’t any words, but perhaps the cocoon was alive? It hadn’t revealed anything to Identify, so that was not only possible but likely. Some civilizations worked almost exclusively with biological magic; perhaps there was something like that on this “Earth”.

“I need to check on your patient. I’m a healer; I need to know how he’s hurt before I can heal him.” Blaze felt a little silly at explaining it to something that was probably not intelligent enough to understand his words. It was worth a try; if there was a way he was supposed to work with the cocoon, he didn’t know it.

//protect//

The word was very soft, but clear. Blaze blinked, startled. The cocoon was smart enough to understand words? That was unexpected. It could be a very good thing or a very bad thing.

Blaze checked his mana. It was lower than he really wanted to do a major healing and still use Inspect again, but still high enough that he’d be able to do some healing.

Inspect

[Preservation Cocoon (Death Affinity, Stasis, hidden)]

The Inspect took more than twice as much mana as Blaze had expected. He doubted he had enough mana to reveal what was hidden. As it was, he’d probably only seen it because he’d realized there was something more to the cocoon.

Or the cocoon could really be an instructor. That seemed unlikely, but Blaze couldn’t rule it out. He’d Inspected instructors in other scenarios, and hidden did often appear; Blaze thought it was probably because the Voice didn’t care if he knew there was more than he could see, but it still wasn’t going to tell him what it was or who they were until they told him. It still seemed unlikely; the Voice never interfered directly to save someone’s life. Indirectly maybe, but turning an instructor into a stasis cocoon was far too direct.

Stasis made sense if it was preserving the patient from further damage until he was healed; Death Affinity didn’t.

//protect you?//

Blaze made himself think about it instead of following the rabbit-trail of what the cocoon was. He had a patient to treat, or at least diagnose. “No, I’m not your patient. I need to check on the person you’re holding.”

//dying. rot//

//fungus//

//stasis//

//rot you//

//protect//

Blaze puzzled over the words for a moment. Was it really as simple as it seemed? “The patient is dying and you want to protect me from what they’re dying of?”

//yes//

//protect?//

One side of Blaze’s mouth quirked. He never thought he’d use a shadow as a protective device. “As long as you don’t put me in stasis right now … yes.”

//protect//

The word almost sounded scolding. Blaze wanted to say that it was telling him that wasn’t protection if it wasn’t needed, but that was probably just his imagination.