74 - Savage Wounds

  Sougath briefly glanced up toward the fat moon in the sky before it reoriented on Joe and the unconscious Hah’roo.

  “We still have time,” the beast snarled. “You four have fouled up my first attempt tonight,” it stated, waving his arm at the wreckage where a leg of the flayed body peeked out from the broken boards. Joe looked and saw the writhing within the corpse was now still.

  But,” the beast let that last word out in a long drawl, “I have enough time to start over with you, little healer. We may not need to waste this night after all. Let’s hear how your soul dies.”

  Sougath stepped over the fallen noble and began to descend the stairs. Terror poured down the stairway, trying to crush Joe under its weight of dread. Yet it failed again.

  Joe knew he was probably doomed, but his [Iron Tenacity] allowed him to keep his mind intact from both his own fears and Sougath’s. With a clear head, Joe looked at his legs and healed. As he did, he let his new understanding of {Bone} teach him.

  In his wound-sight, he could see blood clots and some slurry-like calcium filling the breaks in his bones. They were far from healed, but this was the most effective bone break repair Joe had performed so far. If he was careful, they might hold him up.

  “I don’t think so,” Joe tried to bluster. His voice sounded hollow even in his own ears.

  Knowing he couldn’t leave Hah’roo, the best thing he could think to do was to take her with him. He looked up and found the biggest section of the broken second floor he could see and prayed it was still somewhat solid. The moment his focus locked in, he and the dancer vanished from in front of the werebeast. Joe rolled her off him and immediately tried to hide with [Whisperstep].

  Thanks to the angle and the teleport, Joe had pulled off his hide, but he doubted it would last long. Joe heard the beast snuffling the air, like his dog, Ripple, tracking a scent. He only had seconds.

  The gong rebounded through him once more.

  Joe was not sure what a baleful being was, but he was pretty sure Sougath must be one, otherwise, why else would the mark make such a shift?

  The Night Skinner’s chuffing grew increasingly more frustrated. Joe knew that sound well. Whenever Rip lost a scent, he made almost the exact same noises.

  Even better, Joe could feel a breeze blowing off the comatose galeling, spreading her scent away from her body. The monster would have a very hard time finding them with his nose. Granted, all Sougath had to do was walk back up a few steps, and its eyes would find them.

  “I know you are still here. Do you really think you can hide from a perfect hunter?” the monstrosity growled.

  ‘No. But I’m not giving up yet,’ Joe thought.

  He could feel the fractures remaining in his half-healed legs, even though the pain from them was being diminished by the [Vanguard's Diadem]. He still had most of his medallion’s jump pool. It wouldn’t last long if he kept moving Hahroo around with him, so Joe used a trio of hands to quietly pull an old tapestry over her prone body. Then, he used the medallion to shoot away from her to another stable-looking spot.

  Now, he needed his legs back.

  Joe placed his hand over the breaks and pictured his [Deaden Flesh] spell. He missed [Crystal Mind] for this task; it would have kept his focus tighter. Up until now, every time he had used the curse, he had released it like a punch. This time he tried to let it flow out of his hands slowly. He gently trickled the magic into the area around the cracked bones. He could see his femurs were no longer fully broken, but there were several angry red lines crisscrossing both bones. As soon as the pain faded enough to be bearable, Joe let the rest of the spell dissipate.

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  Joe levered himself to his feet using a beam for support and cover. He spotted Thunderstruck in the wreckage below. Reached out with [Helping Hand], he yanked his quarterstaff from a pile of broken planks, slapping it into his hands to steady himself.

  As the weapon flew upward, Sougath snarled loudly. The towering beast stepped back and found Joe.

  “Looking for me,” he goaded the werewolf, beginning to target his next jump spot, even as he spoke.

  “You think to mock ME!” Sougath seethed, reaching up and grabbing the floor over his head, preparing to haul himself up to Joe or pull the floor out from under him.

  Before it could do either, a groan of shifting wood sounded from under its feet, followed by a divinely empowered bellow.

  “MIGHT OF THE RIGHTEOUS!” Azbekt roared from somewhere under the heaped pile of timbers and furnishings.

  For the first time since meeting the spiteful bully, Joe was overjoyed to hear the dwarf’s tempestuous voice.

  The myrmidon surged out of the wreckage as a mighty giant. He stood almost as tall as the werewolf but he was so broad he took up half the room. He was holding Hah’roo’s cable, and he swung it at the Night Skinner. The move lacked all of the dancer's grace, but the strength behind it caused the weighted rope to whip around the wolf-beast’s neck several times.

  The enlarged champion yanked Sougath across the room to where he stood. As Azbekt hammered blows into the prone beast, Joe focused and jumped to Valloc’s side.

  The site was awash in blood. In Joe’s wound-sight he could see the Count’s life pouring away. He placed his hand on the man’s chest, right over his heart, and started pushing healing as quickly as he could, trying to replace the lifeblood the nobleman was losing.

  Next, he tossed out his [Helpful Hand] and dragged the severed arm to where he and the Count lay. It was such a mangled mess, that he did not know if he could attach it.

  Having a third hand turned out to be incredibly helpful. He drew the tattered shirt out of the wound and started pinching bits of muscle together. As he worked, his medically-enhanced vision told him what scraps of flesh belonged together.

  As he worked, Joe found he was using [Healer’s Touch] in a new way. Instead of pouring as much health as he could into the mass of savaged flesh, he was targeting specific sections of severed tissue and bone and welding them back together bit by bit. It was slower, but reattaching an arm required finesse, not brute force.

  Whether it was this refined method or just the sheer amount of healing needed to reattach Valloc’s arm, Joe’s [Healer’s Touch] level up again, breaking the rank twenty-five threshold. An alert appeared up at the edge of Joe’s sight, but he didn’t have the headspace for it yet.

  Blocking out the dwarven war cries and the inhuman howls, Joe kept operating as quickly as he could. Soon he discovered a different problem. As he bound the arm back to the Count’s shoulder, he began to see clinging red corruption wriggling in the jagged wound. Joe doubted it could be anything other than the werewolf’s curse of lycanthropy.

  Joe fired off [Purge] but it had no effect. ‘Duh!’ [Purge] was for status conditions. This was something physically wrong.

  Targeting one of the scarlet tendrils, he hit it with [Dispel Rot]. The red taint recoiled from the spell so violently it spurted from the wound like a popped pustule, splatting carmine goop onto Joe’s chest. The thick droplets looked less like blood and more like wormy crimson cottage cheese. Joe was pretty immune to gross bodily fluids, but the wriggling wet splat revolted even him.

  It took him several more uses of the spell to drive out all the saliva-infected blood he could see. By then, he had the arm attached as well. It was far from fully functional, but at least it now had a chance to be with more magic and time.

  The Count also had a number of conditions besides his arm, the most debilitating was [Shock]. Joe was not sure how many of the rare-level [Purges] he needed but he ran out of time to find out.

  “Ware, outlander!” Azbekt shouted from below. “Do not let the fiend escape! Stop him!”

  Joe looked up to see Sougath bounding up the stairs at him. He grabbed his staff and stood up on his semi-asleep legs. As he settled into the pose the Count and Hah’roo had taught him, he realized what ridiculous impediment he made.

  “With what!” Joe shouted back at the dwarf, waggling his staff. “This?”

  The Night Skinner tore right through him.

  Talons ripped into Joe’s stomach, slicing through the padded armor, flesh, and intestines. He was lifted into the air as the beast’s fangs descended. The teeth sheared into his flesh. Joe felt bones break and the burning sear of the creature’s drool filling the jagged wound.

  Worse of all, the mark on his arm erupted in an almost caustic agony. It was as if Sougath’s Mark of the Moon was attacking the Mark of Death.

  The werewolf tossed his savaged body away. As he fell, Joe's sight blackened in an ominously familiar way.

  ‘Not again!’ his dying mind cried.

  Plummeting towards the jagged ruins of the floor two tall stories below, Joe did not want to find out if he could survive any additional damage.

  Joe slammed into the pile of debris, luckily hitting a ramp of fallen floorboards instead of a tangle of sharp wooden shards. It knocked the wind from him and removed half of the health he just recovered, but before [Punching Bag] expired, Joe had enough health remaining not to.