A knock echoed on the door. “I’m coming, I can hear, you know.” said a young looking woman as she moved towards her door. She was on the smaller side with very dark brown hair, but her eyes were unique, they were dark, almost bck, but they glowed a mystic shade of blue. Her skin was pale despite many years in the sun, pristine and unmarked. She was dressed in the traditional garb of a mage, flowing brown and blue robes that did surprisingly little to hide her figure as her bust strained against the fabric.

  With practiced ease she navigated around her table, and reached the old wooden door at the front of her house. Despite its age it remained sturdy, fashioned from local ironwood timbers, it was stronger than some castle gates, especially since her family and past incarnations had spent centuries imbuing it with powerful defensive wards. Her family home here was better fortified than the town, powerful wards shielded the walls, sealed the windows and protected the doors.

  Opening the door, she was greeted with a rather panicked-looking face, “Horon? Is something wrong?”

  “You don’t know!?”

  “No, should I?”

  “You are a five million-year-old god, how could you not already know!?”

  She gave him a look, “And neither one makes me all-knowing. I’m the Goddess of the Cycle, not the Goddess of the all-seeing eye. What happened?”

  “Right, right, what was I thinking? There’s been an accident.”

  She sighed, “and that’s what you should have started with.” as she rushed over to her potion shelves and started collecting supplies, “How many were hurt?”

  He watched her, “About a dozen, um why are you grabbing potions?”

  “Openly using divine magic is a recipe for chaos, besides the rest of the town don’t know me as a god, they know me as Arlie Contrey, High Mage and local vilge girl and when was the st time you saw me cast a powerful healing spell?”

  “Um, not often... yeah potions have always been your thing.”

  “Exactly,” she replied with a potion kit now ready to go. “Where did it happen?”

  “A hunt gone wrong, the party is at the town square now. Apparently they were fleeing a flock of Ryrks when they ran into a Spineback.”

  “A Spineback? Those are usually fairly gentle, which idiot pissed it off?”

  “I don’t know, all I heard is they got attacked by it. Only good news is the fighting scared off the Ryrks.”

  That seemed natural, Ryrks weren’t particurly brave, they would only attack when they had numbers. What they did with their victims wasn’t that pleasant either, as she rushed to follow Horon she asked, “Speaking of Ryrks, was anyone stung?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Hopefully not, their venom isn’t pleasant.”

  Horon merely nodded in agreement as they hurried to the vilge square. Stepping into the square she was greeted to the sight of local vilgers caring for the wounded hunters who were id out on thin pallets. Likely the best they could do on short notice, moving the hunting party into proper shelter would likely have been next on the list, but for now triage was important.

  Arlie rushed ahead of Horon and joined the vilge folk. Kneeling beside the nearest, a hunter, a young woman she began to assess her wounds. A spike had skewered her through the belly, someone had wrapped the wound but she was already looking pale. Worse, the bandage was bright red, already soaked through, the girl likely wouldn’t survive without treatment. She pulled one of her more potent potions, thankfully the girl wasn’t awake for this. Ripping the bandage off, she poured the potion into the wound which began to glow as the magical concoction took effect. The torn flesh visibly knitting before her eyes but did nothing for her paleness. For that Arlie pulled another potion out, and propped her up, to get her to drink. It took just a little effort, but the second potion would help her recover.

  Arlie didn’t stay for long, or chat with the onlookers, instead moving to the next person in the line of beds. They didn’t have any life-threatening injuries, just a broken leg, so Arlie moved on. They could be treated ter, the ones with more serious issues needed to be patched right away. A hand span passed as she moved between the wounded hunters, treating them as required, while her potion supply rapidly dwindled.

  Before she knew it, she was applying her st potion to a young man. His injuries mended themselves before her eyes and he started to breathe more evenly. He’d managed to avoid major bleeding injuries, but the poor man had been smashed into a tree, his ribs broken among other things. Without proper treatment, the man likely would have experienced a lingering death and she wasn’t proud of having to move past him previously. Her gaze then fell on the first man she passed, the guy with the broken leg very much still had one and she had no potions to give him.

  “So how are things looking?” asked someone from behind her.

  She looked back to see the vilge chief's familiar features, but her face wasn’t smiling today. “I’ve treated everyone I could, but I’m out of potions now.”

  “What do you need to make more? I could send some people to get supplies.”

  “I’m afraid one of the ingredients will be quite hard for the average person to obtain. I’ll do that, but I’d need some blood lilies, fireblossoms, and everglow moss.”

  “If those are the easy items, I shudder to imagine what the hard one was.”

  “The gel of a Solune pnt. Not only is the pnt hard to find in the wild, the gel is naturally toxic and worse, getting close to the pnt makes one vulnerable to a nasty sickness. My magic protects me, but your average person doesn’t have those defenses. I’ve got a source out in the woods, so it won’t take me too long.”

  “Toxic? You need something like that?”

  “Lots of things in medicine are toxic, blood lilies are also toxic if misused. With Solunes they are wonderful regeneratives, but only after they’ve been properly purified.”

  “Alright good luck with that. I’ll get a party together to find the other three.”

  Arlie nodded and moved to get her supplies. Horon walked up to her, “If you are going somewhere, do you need me to get the others so we can go together?”

  “Only up to a point, but a trip together might be fun. It would be like old times.”

  He smiled, “Just what I was thinking. We haven’t done anything really since you, well, you know, and came back home.”

  She giggled and said, “No we haven’t. Meet me outside my house in a handspan, don’t be te.”