Orcs are brutes of men. They are taller and stronger than nigh any man and their greatest strength is in frontal combat. Do not match them strength for strength, but fool them as they are lacking in the mind. They often enslave other weaker goblinoids to use as fodder. - Common Monsters

Adrian

When I arrive back at the bank everyone is up, except for Bryan who is still injured. I heard the trio arguing about eating the expired cans in the bomb shelter. When I walk in the three turn to look at me. They are paler than could be healthy, and have lost some weight. K looks the worst of the three.

“Your back” says K, with a smile.

As I walk towards the vault, “I brought food.” Now to let the meat out of the Void Cache, I suppose that I just have to want to. The small barrel of salted fish appears under my hand, I feel something flow out again. I don’t think I have much left.

“Eat, I’ll get the others.”

The trio all but runs to the salted fish, they are hungry. I don’t want to let this happen to K or Lysan again. They are going to be dehydrated after all the salt. Do we have water?

I move to the room where Bryan is resting, Abagail is wiping sweat off his forehead. She looks at me when I enter, but does not say anything.

“I’ll take care of him, go eat there is food in the vault.”

She shakes her head, “not until he is better.”

She must be fasting, she is more religious than Bryan or me. She will have to watch then. I sit down next to the bed. I touch his forehead, he has a fever. The compound fracture on his arm is still there but it is less broken then before K’s spell.

I move my hand to his chest, there are still a few broken ribs. I’ll fix these first, less flashy. I hope Abagail accepts that I have magic by this point. The bruises slowly disappear and the bones shift to their proper places over the next minute. I think I fixed the internal bleeding too, not sure though. I need to find some anatomy books.

Bryan is now breathing easily. Now for the arm, I feel a tension, Abagail is not accepting that I can heal others. Saying anything won’t really change it, I’ll just have to continue. I don’t really know what the bones are supposed to look like, how will I piece together the compound fracture?

Simple fractures are easy, just pull it straight and the muscles align the bones. I’m going to have to treat it like a puzzle. That is going to hurt him a lot, I need to figure out how to numb the pain. I don’t know how to find the nerves, I’m not sure they could be regenerated by the normal process if I killed them either. Sorry buddy you’ll just have to suck it up.

Bryan groans as I slowly move the bone pieces back into the middle of the flesh of the arm. Puss starts to flow out of the wound but it needs to leave anyways. Luckily, I can only find a few pieces of the bone, two large pieces and about a half dozen slivers. I can’t tell where the slivers are to go so I pull them out, the bone can regrow them, I think.

I hope I lined up the bone correctly, as the wound slowly closes I feel that there is something in there that shouldn’t be. The skin around is red and inflamed, am I sensing the infection? Or did something else get in there these last few days?

The skin stops closing as I instead switch to drawing upon Death. I’ll just kill whatever it is. After a moment, I can’t sense whatever was living in the injury anymore and go back to accelerating the healing process.

As the injury continues to close small white wormlike creatures are pushed out. Abagail screams when they fall out the wound. Maggots, I hate those things. Only thing worse than a fly is their juvenile offspring.

“Their dead, don’t worry.”

Abagail calms down about the time the wound is fully closed. Bryan hasn’t woken up yet, he also looks thinner then when I started the healing. Well, it does pull everything out of the person being healed. I turn to Abagail, “go eat. He is better now.”

Without waiting for her response, I stand up and move out of the room. We need water, I didn’t steal any and there is no way that the bathroom will still be holding any. I’ll have to condense it out of the air. Abagail passes me, walking to the vault as I enter the room that K must have broken as there is a large hole in the wall.

I find what I am looking for in the rubble, a piece of metal. I then pick up the bucket in the lobby that was being used to fetch water while I was unconscious, before walking into the vault. It is humid today so this should work though it may be a little slow.

I brush off all the dirt and dust on the metal rod, I think it was from a chair, and focus on creating a weird flame on it. An icy blue flame covers my hand, its cold and the temperature in the room is dropping. The four eating the salted fish look over at me, but don’t seem surprised.

My hand feels ice cold, but I can handle it at least for a bit. Water starts to condense on the piece of metal and drip into the bucket. I stop after a minute, I need a way to suspend this. There is about a half glass worth of water in the bucket, not fast enough either.

It was near dusk when anyone bothered to come to retrieve us for my trial. The soldiers seemed surprised when I opened the door, I didn’t catch what they said but the look on Sunchaser’s face, and the ropes a few nobles were holding told me what I needed to know. They thought I was already dead, they were here to enslave not escort.

K walked up behind me and said something to the group. She is looking better, after getting enough water and food she seems only tired. The sisters are still in poor condition.

“We are to follow them to the trial.”

“Then we go. Lets get this over with.”

Sunchaser and the nobles who I think are from his family mock our group as we let them lead us. Bryan is being carried by Abagail and the sisters, I wanted to help but K whispered that it would break my act.

We enter the area near the front of the palisade, there are over a dozen older nobles sitting in chairs on top of a platform. I guess they are the judges, when are their charades going to end?

K and the judges argue for a bit but very few nod, she is losing the argument. They don’t care if the charge is real or not. They just want an excuse to ‘legally’ take her and the others as slaves. I can see the lust on the younger nobles faces. Sunchaser and the nobles near him are all smiling, I set their faces to memory.

“They don’t care, just skip to trial by combat.”

K looks over at me surprised but nods and turns back to the old men. They smile in response, they want to have the trial by combat. That’s fine I was expecting them to call for one even if K was able to talk my way out of the charges.

An old man walks out from the group that surrounds Sunchaser, Magister Talphith. So, he was aligned with the Sunchasers as well? No, Sunchaser just passed him a small box. Hired help.

“The trial by combat is to the death. Whoever wins gets claim on the others possessions, the charges are also dropped should you win. You shouldn’t have to fight a Magister though, I’ll try to get . . .”

I interrupt K, “no its alright. That means they can’t complain afterwards right?”

She looks at me for a second before leaving the open area in front of these judges. Talphith looks at me for a moment before speaking, “I’ll make it quick don’t worry.”

I rush at him before he finishes his sentence, he is a powerful mage I can’t give him a chance. He ends up finishing a spell before I reach him, a burst of green light travels towards me. Not good, but I manage to evade the thing.

I don’t hear it hit anything, no time to worry I have Talphith within reach. I need to silence him, I don’t know any sonic effects but I’m going to try something else. I touch Talphith before some sort of force pushes me back, but I got what I wanted. Healing is hard because you have to worry about causing problems, but what if you don’t care?

I crash into one of the wooden platforms, my skin broke and I’m bleeding but I should be fine. It doesn’t hurt that much. I look over to Talphith, now he lacks a mouth. His lips have fused together. He looks angry, but he should not be able to use as much magic against me now.

I stand up and brush myself off, Talphith is drawing some sort of glowing glyph in the air. Rune magic to substitute a verbal component? The rune flashes and a bolts of fire flies at me, I manage to push some away with my own control of fire but I can feel the burns on my chest. Silencing him wasn’t enough, I notice a pile of ash as I dodge another bolt of fire.

Bolts that missed me or that green light? Doesn’t matter, I create a bright flash of light as Talphith is aiming another rune at me. He has a few that are circling around him, wards or contingencies? Not sure, perhaps both.

I think I blinded him, at least momentarily, as he messes up his rune and it fades without doing anything. I throw a bolt of negative energy at him but all that happens is one of the three runes orbiting him dim a bit. Wards, it’s a protection spell. There is a limited amount it can block, but it will be specialized. Negative and two other energy types, fire and lightning are the most common damaging spells so it is probably those.

Talphith recovers from the blindness and pulls a hand crossbow out of his robe. Too bad I don’t have any weapons. Should I steal his? No, it will probably fail or backlash. I wrap myself in fire as he shoots a bolt at me, I try to dodge but fail. I am not faster than a projectile weapon. I get struck in the shoulder, the bolt has a glass? shaft. There is fluid in it, is it poisoned? Doesn’t matter I focus on healing and the bolt and the odd colored liquid are pushed out of me.

Talphith is looking at me, he seems angrier. I guess that was supposed to kill me. There are two more runes in front of him. They discharge into balls of green goo flying at me. Probably acid, I can’t dodge both.

I take a risk and pull one to me with Translocation Grasp. They now intersect between us, but I feel tension building. I’m going to have a nasty backlash later. I rush at Talphith as he gloats to himself over his supposed victory.

I get close enough to touch again, this time I put frost fire on his right arm before I get thrown back by something. Telekinesis? I can see ice forming as he starts to draw a rune of fire with his left hand. It looks bad, he is not ambidextrous.

I just hold the frost fire in existence as its ice spreads. I’ve won, he can’t break my magic. Just as I start grinning I hear chanting and Sunchaser runs onto the field, he throws a fire at mine. They both wink out of existence.