Diana marveled at all the extra preparation that Kalyah had skipped over because she planned to do it all herself. The boy had to be set to a certain level of sleep, eyes and nose pinned shut to keep them free of debris, his mouth given a crude respirator (not as nice as a temple’s, she lamented), and fluids given to him. Since he had been brought out of the frigid stasis, bodily processes had begun again, and no prayers could substitute for basic needs. The bed was cleared, a sheet of holy and clean cloth underneath him, stiff to hold him up. Diana helped in all the moving of the man, she felt useless watching. Stephan threw on a neat apron and guarded his hair and beard in a cap and mask respectively. On his arms he slid tight gloves to his elbows and affixed zooming goggles to his face. The equipment made him appear far more serious, and he was moving much more carefully. A mechanism under the bed raised it to a better height for such a long surgery as well.

Though there would be guards around the open flesh, Kalyah took every precaution. Fighting an internal infection with prayers was faster than with chemicals, but better to prevent it first. She drew lines of white energy from ear to ear, running along her nose, doing the same for Diana. The sketched out spell flashed, bringing up a transparent ward to guard their faces. The Healer kept going, protecting the boy from the Druid armor, even changing out the front of her vestments and warding the new ones. She went to the Witch, attempting the same process. Casually Fia swirled her finger, walls of energy stretched out across an entire half of the room, running to the door and all around the operating table. Kalyah inspected the barriers and the other, finding them satisfactory.

“Alright, which limb first?” Kalyah asked the mechanic.

Stephan dialed in his goggles thoughtfully, bringing up a swirl of figures on the neon green surface more arcane than any foreign source of magic Diana knew. “The arms, more articulation, the legs will be last, as they’re easier,” he said calmly.

Kalyah pointed from left to right.

“Right, from the muscle growth, he was right handed,” the mechanic said.

“We’re going to do them all equally well. This is to return his entire function,” the Healer said firmly.

Stephan nodded. “I’m not planning on half-assing anything, I’m just prioritizing what is most important,” he said.

“They all are,” she said, removing the bandages from the stump.

It had healed somewhat from the clean cut of whatever had brutalized him. The gorey bone and muscle made Diana wince, recalling her inability to turn away from the mortal wound of her sister. A swan throat sliced open to the dark recesses of her windpipe. She fixated on the ceiling, her tiger sending her reassurance and the brief rush of joy. An image of a blooming flower, the Daisy that gave this man his skin back. She repeated in her head, life, life, life, help the living. Your magic grows stronger with each bit of it you expend, a trained muscle, she thought. This is good, this is what she was meant to do. Take it, plant it, grow something better. The sorrow for her sister would wait. The hate for Blodwyn would wait. She had to keep growing her magical muscles. Her mother had let her go instead, she had trusted her to do it, to take her place. Blodwyn had been trapped once by her blood, she could do it again. No, no, stop thinking about that, she berated herself, fingers laced together, joints popping, the webs of her skin in agony as her wrists shifted around.

“Princess, can you please apply the Numb Spores?” Kaylah asked loudly.

Diana looked down from the grain of the wood ceiling that her eyes had landed on. She nodded, setting her teeth. From the wooden clasped pouch on her belt she conducted the spores out, the particles of black bloomed out into small inky mushrooms, a half dozen in total. On Kalyah’s instruction she set them along important points of the boy’s arm all the way up to his shoulder. If she didn’t temper and control the distribution of their strong paralytic spores, then a jolt of pain could wake him from this sleep. They were driving into his bone, spreading bases into his muscle, and connecting to his tender nerves. Setting her fists together and with a deep breath, Diana entered a meditative state, focusing on her relatively small role for now. Once the cuff and base was attached, she would be easing the organic to the metal with more Daisy sap. She knew meditation, most of her deals with sources had been achieved with long stretches of sitting in one place. Aiko projected its slow and steady heart beat, harmonizing with her even and quick one in a kind of music, a ritual drumbeat that she enjoyed.

It was Kalyah that had the hardest work, following along with Stephan, whose duty was by no means easy. From inside his pack came an army of spidery machines to assist him, powered by his own magic. Any time that he took a moment to breathe, they all froze perfectly in place. The anchors were set in first, gruesome work requiring many shakes of the fungi. The Spiders slowly fed in the metal cording, their fangs replaced by tools. Kalyah kept the marrow in place, free from infection, and guided the machines on which nerves and muscles to take. Then the cuff was set on, adhered to the skin last with Daisy sap. The limb, a sleek set of metal sheets that yielded some like skin, hissed as it snapped onto the cuff.

Stephan laughed as he had the Spider climb over the forearm and watched the boy twitch at the sensation. “I’ve never done this, oh gods!” he cried. It was two hours of work to do it, they were all sweating, tired. “The next three will be even easier, I swear!”

“A break, goddess I am happy, but we need a moment at least man!” Kalyah said, wavering in place.

Four more hours had passed by the time they were finished, dawn was coming in the porthole windows attached to the far wall. It wasn’t the other side of the ship, but they were added to give some light to the cabins. The bluish black in their illusion was no lie, even though the three surgeons could feel every hour like a ton of bricks on them. After releasing Jonah from his operating sleep into a healing one, where he could wake, but wasn’t forced to yet, Kalyah sat down in the plush easy chair. She swore she would only rest a moment, but was swiftly snoring, her head back in an unhealthy angle. Stephan collapsed sitting against a wall, his Spider machines all bundled up and deactivated before he could stuff them into his pack again. Diana, equally exhausted because of her age and training, despite her lesser role, had shut her eyes, laying across her tiger on the couch, giving a similar promise to the Healer.

The ever watchful Witch had sat on the armrest the entire time, even while they ate and rested between the hours. She huffed now, aware that her quarry had evaded her interest for another night. Her Mimic sprung from her shoulder, taking the shape of a particularly powerful Orc woman it had seen some centuries ago, long dead but useful. The green powerhouse carried off the Priestess and mechanic as if they weighed nothing at all, placing them in their respective beds. In the meanwhile, the Witch tried to convince the tiger to carry off its master.

“Oh, I know you’re strong enough to ferry her off to bed, I’ll watch the boy until he wakes, someone must,” Fia reasoned with a grin.

The tiger’s lips curled up, baring its long fangs, a low growl started in its throat.

The Witch returned a sneer. “Have I disrespected your master? She’s a child to me, she needs to respect her elders,” she said, running a painted purple finger along her own porcelain face. “Not that I look a day over her age.”

The tiger kept its threatening stance, inching forward as its master slid down behind it.

Fia glared at it. “Her grandfather had a wolf, an overprotective bitch, like you,” she said coldly. “Your master is stone tired, this ship crashing wouldn’t wake her. You’ll show this to her, I know. So let her know this, I mean no harm, I am only trying to help. Some find my nature as stiff and sharp as my brews, but that is what you get when you mix in all the horrors of war. The assassination is nothing compared to what I have seen, what I have lost. Consider yourself lucky that you have lost only one sister. Your grief is annoying, your aura clouding up the air.” She splayed out her fingers, leaning down towards the princess and the tiger. The familiar lunged protectively out as a crackling air of a Witch spell played along her finger tips. Fia didn’t flinch as the beast was so close its hot breath wet her nose.

Diana’s armor and outer clothes phased off her, falling onto the ground below the couch. She grumbled in her exhaustion, shivering in the cold, even her hair had broken out of the braid. The Witch threw a blanket atop her, wiping her own face with it first. The tiger was confused as it watched her every move.

“Don’t ever think I am cruel now, beast,” she scoffed. “Such a petty animal spawned from the land sources. The stars are more powerful than you will ever know.” She sneered in disgust. “Wake the girl the moment the boy rises, I have more important things to do than wait around here any longer.” With a heel turn she clicked out of the room.