Ben’s eyes shifted from Savage, cerulean swirls dancing across his irises. His expression remained flat, his lips pressed thin. After a moment, he replied, “It isn’t safe. The restrictions on him are flawed. If we don’t end him now, who’s to say he doesn’t find some way to get you tomorrow or the next day?”
A growl rumbled in Savage’s chest beneath Ben’s boot. “I…will…” he forced out.
Ben’s head whipped down. “Enough from you!”
Ice crystallized from nowhere, growing up from Savage’s neck and down toward his torso in a slow creep. The revenant tried to reach toward his face, smash the ice before it could solidify, but more just took its place, even as his arms became restricted. It took only a handful of breaths before his entire head and torso were encased in a circular block of ice. His eyes burned beneath that translucent sheen, until even that frosted over.
Savage still struggled inside that restricting ice, but his efforts were slowed, dulled by the frozen prison.
The moving ice had stunned Terry and Tania into silence, forming so suddenly that neither had the time to react. But now that Savage was fully muzzled, Terry realized that his uncle was right.
“I agree. It’s too risky to leave him alive.” He turned to Tania, whose eyes were glued to the frozen Savage. When she didn’t reply, he shifted into her line of sight. “Tania?”
Her eyes drifted up and she suddenly winced as if just realizing how much pain she was in.
“None of this matters right now,” Terry said suddenly. “We need to get you to a healer—”
Space parted suddenly, pinging against his senses at the same moment two auras stepped through the forming portal. He immediately recognized the new arrivals—his mother because of her towering power and Errol because of his distinctive touch on space.
Her eyes took in the scene in an instant, locking on Savage and Ben, before turning to Tania. With a quiet gasp, she turned to Errol.
“Go grab the first available healer—D-rank at a minimum.”
The Traveler nodded quickly before cutting another portal through space and departing. When Penelope turned back to the four of them, her eyes were pure silver. Terry felt her aura, but not the telltale ping of Master of Skill Analysis. He filed that information to the back of his mind as his mother spoke. “Ben, please release Savage.” Her brother opened his mouth to protest, but stopped himself as she raised a hand. “I have him—he can’t move a muscle without my say-so.”
Ben furrowed his nose, glancing down at the prone revenant. Seeing that Savage wasn’t actively bucking anymore, he nodded quickly and stepped back. Savage stood mechanically, as if half-asleep. The ice encasing his face and torso began to melt as if held to a blazing bonfire, dripping down his chest and back, mingling with the dirt from his fight until his fur was matted with mud.
Aura flashed from his mother once more and Savage stepped forward. Terry felt Tania flinch at his side, and unconsciously angled himself between her and the revenant. But after a few steps, it was clear the beast was directly under his mother’s control; his eyes were out of focus now that the ice had melted, his limbs loose and dangling as if the strings to a puppet had been cut.
His mother held out her hand, gripping Savage’s face as she closed her eyes. Terry leaned forward, the academic side of him yearning to examine his mother’s magic. Though she appeared not to be using System Skills, he felt her aura shift and bend so agilely that he found himself staring open-mouthed. It took him a moment to snap out of it and remember to take a snapshot.
The three of them stood in silence as his mother worked—doing what, he couldn’t say. Invading Savage’s brain? Reading his thoughts?
Lobotomizing him, he hoped.
After a few moments, he felt Errol’s touch on space, followed shortly by another portal. He turned from his mother’s work, grateful to see a woman in medical garb rushing toward Tania.
The girl scowled at the frantic attention, but didn’t fight as the healer held a hand over her dislocated shoulder.
Terry found his attention pulled between Tania’s injury and his mother’s aura penetrating Savage’s mind. But his concern for his friend outweighed his curiosity and he turned to watch the healer work as Tania scowled indignantly, as if annoyed to be inconvenienced by her dislocated shoulder.
The healer felt like a C-ranker to his senses and he watched closely—both with his eyes and his aura senses—as she worked.
“Your rotator cuff has been completely ruptured with full tendon detachment.”
“Can you fix it?” Tania asked through gritted teeth.
She didn’t respond at first, her eyes closed tight as her palms hovered just over Tania’s shoulder joint before trailing down to the elbow. Tania shifted impatiently, her nose furrowed as she studied the healer’s moving hands like two vipers slipping through the grass.
When the healer’s eyes opened, blue magic swirled briefly around her irises before dissipating.
“Well, doc?” Tania asked impatiently. “Can you fix it?”
The healer pursed her lips, flicking her eyes to Tania’s, then back to the injured arm.
“Fix? Yes—” Tania’s scowl flipped to a smile, but the healer held up a tempering hand. “—eventually.”
Tania shifted, as if to cross her arms, then winced in sudden pain. “Eventually? What do you mean, eventually?”
The healer adopted her own scowl, matching Tania’s gaze without a hint of trepidation.
“Young lady, your rotator cuff isn’t just torn—it’s shredded. All the surrounding tendons and ligaments are either fully ruptured or about to be ruptured. Not to mention you have a spiral fracture in your humerus. The fracture is actually the simplest to fix—”
“How long?” Tania interrupted, her tone icy. “There are rifts in Mexico City right now. Invaders could be pouring out of them as we speak!”
The healer’s eyes narrowed, her arms crossing in response. “I could probably heal the fracture in a week—”
“A week!”
“—but the tendons, ligaments, and muscles,” the healer pushed on, “could take as long as a month—”
Tania whirled away from the woman, flipping toward Terry with a fire burning in her eyes. “Can you take me to Dr. Wong? He fixed my clavicle in like an hour.” She turned back to the healer with an accusatory glare, but the woman simply raised an eyebrow and returned the look evenly.
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Terry spared a glance for the healer, then met Tania’s eyes. “Of course, I’m sure he’d be happy to help. But I don’t think you should be traveling until she gives you at least an initial boost of healing.”
Over Tania’s shoulder, the woman nodded agreement, though she seemed far less invested in the situation after Tania’s fiery outburst.
“I have other patients who need my attention as well. I’ll give you a pain-killing buff and start the bone-knitting process now. If you’d rather see a private health-care professional, I have no issue with that.”
Tania turned to face the woman, but flinched as the pain shocked her. With obvious reluctance, she nodded to the healer.
Terry’s mother finished whatever she had been doing to Savage—who remained stone-still a dozen feet away—and strode over with a concerned noise.
“Tania, dear! You’re in so much pain!”
The girl shrugged with her good shoulder, which nonetheless made her wince.
“No moving!” the healer ordered and Tania sent her an icy stare. The healer ignored it, speaking to Penelope even as her aura stirred. “She’ll need dedicated attention for at least the first week if she wants normal use of her shoulder joint back.” Her eyes met Tania’s with a casual steel. “I’d suggest bed rest, but I doubt that suggestion would be appreciated.”
Tania scoffed in response and the healer pursed her lips silently.
“Thank you, Lea.” His mother turned her silver eyes to Tania with a stern expression. “I’ll make sure she gets the necessary rest she requires.”
Tania opened her mouth to protest, but a flash of aura left the healer, Lea, causing her to gasp in sudden pain.
Master of Skill Analysis began pinging in the back of his mind, so he activated it and studied the results.
Active powers in Range:
Moderate Analgesia (Lea)
Advanced Bone Growth (Lea)
Collagen Graft (Lea)
Unknown (Ben)
Unknown (Ben)
Unknown (Ben)
An idea occurred to him as he read through the Skills Lea was employing, but he was pulled away from his thoughts as his mother came around Tania towards him.
There was an obvious reluctance in the set of her lips, though the opaque silver of her magic clouded her eyes, making it difficult to read her expression.
“I was just coming to find you when I felt Ben’s power,” his mother started.
He perked up, realizing what that must have meant.
“It’s time?” he asked, a spark of excitement mingling with a hint of trepidation.
She nodded. “Anything that needed my direct attention has been handled. I leave for Mexico City to contain any breakouts…” Licking her lips, she looked off in the distance. “I’m sorry, Terry. It’s just difficult for me to separate the mother from the leader.” When she looked back, her face was pinched tight in obvious discomfort. “I know you need to enter these rifts—not only to become stronger, but to help defend our world from the invaders. The leader in me knows that. The mother on the other hand…” She trailed off, unable to meet his eyes.
Reaching up, he cupped the side of her face, pulling gently until their eyes met.
“I get it, Mom. I really do. I…I told you about the people I lost.” His mind flashed back to Vlad and Flore, both lost because of his secret rebellion against his grandfather. Despite their cordial relationship now, he had never forgotten those that had starved or been murdered because of his grandfather’s pact with the sanguine.
Rather than drift aimlessly through those memories, he pulled himself back to the present. “But this is about more than just me or us. Our very world is being threatened by these invaders.” The anger bloomed from nowhere, filling his chest with heat he hadn’t felt since Dancer had left them all to die to Qui Shen. “There’s no place we can flee, no place we can hide. They’re coming to take our world, enslave or kill us. This isn’t about me or even you. This is about the very survival of humanity on Earth. And the odds are stacked against us. We’re gonna need every Awakened to reach their full potential—and sooner rather than later.” His voice softened. “If that means I have to put myself at risk, then that’s what I’ll do…”
She sighed, her eyes flicking between his as if searching for something. He met that searching gaze, willing his own magic to surface around his irises. She needed to see him as him. Not as her son, not as Terry who’d held her hand and painted superhero figurines.
No, she needed to see him as the man who had defied Emperor Necroton; the man who had fed Wichita; who had freed his city from the vampire plague; the man who had saved the Underworld against all odds.
It didn’t matter that he was still a boy—Wichita had needed him to grow up, so he had. Terraform’s Market had needed him, so he had fought. The Underworld had needed him, so he led ghouls and Awakened alike into battle.
He willed all this and more into his eyes, knowing his mother couldn’t help but see his surface thoughts as well. The realization slowly dawned in her face, the fearful expression of a mother who had nearly lost her son forever, eventually replaced with the proud smile of a mother witnessing her child morph into an adult.
“I still think back to that moment by the canal,” she said softly. “Right before the Knights changed everything.”
He felt his chest clench at her words, the knot sliding up towards his throat. But he wouldn’t allow himself to mourn what once was; there was too much in this life that needed to be done to dwell overlong on the past.
Forcing the knot to loosen, he gripped both of her hands. “The past is worth remembering. But the future is worth fighting for. All I ask is that you let me fight for it.”
Tears slipped free from her eyes, contrasted by the happy smile on her face.
“Your father told me how much you’d grown up, but I didn’t want to believe it.” She snorted, shaking her head, the tears dashing to the dirt. “No more dwelling on the past. Like you said, now’s the time to fight for the future.”
He matched her smile, nodding once before releasing her hands. Over his mother’s shoulder, Tania was still being administered to by the healer, Lea. But despite the obvious discomfort, there were tears dripping down the girl’s cheek that were not from the pain. She met Terry’s eyes with a resolute nod.
“Now you get why I want to fight,” she said. “How can I lay up for a month when our world is being invaded?”
Lea cleared her throat and they all turned to the healer. “The month prognosis is dependent on the standard healer rotation schedule we’ve had to employ.” She looked up to see Tania’s confused expression. “We typically will jumpstart the non-emergency injuries, get the healing process started. Then do maintenance once a day to ensure it’s on the right track. If you had a private healer, they could hypothetically get you back into action in say…a week.”
Tania turned a hopeful look toward Terry, then his mother. “And Dr. Wong is a B-ranker, right?” She glanced toward Lea. “A B-ranker could cut that time down, couldn’t they?”
Lea frowned at that, but eventually nodded agreement.
His mother turned toward Tania. “Tania, dear…Dr. Wong’s on loan from Terrence. He’s working in the healing tent as we speak. His power needs to go to those—”
“One second, Mom,” Terry interrupted. “Let’s let Lea finish up with Tania.”
Then, he took an Aura Snapshot, collecting each of Lea’s Skills in a single swoop. His mother’s eyes shifted in recognition and she nodded briefly.
Tania set her lips in confusion, but the consternation eased as he sent her a message.
[Terry]: I’m starting to catalog Lea’s Skills right now. With my Loan Skill ability, you’ll be able to heal yourself constantly. You’ll be back in the field in no time.
Tania’s eyes widened incrementally as she read his message, eventually culminating in a beaming smile. She moved as if to give Terry a hug, then suddenly realized that Lea was still working on her arm as the pain fought through the analgesia.
Lea, to her credit, didn’t scold the girl for being a terrible patient—though she would have been well within her rights to do so—and gave the all clear a few moments later.
“It’s just a patch job to get her to this private healer,” Lea said. “I’m reluctant to let her out of my care in this state. She should at a bare minimum have a cast to restrict motion. But I can’t force someone to stay in my care.”
His mother nodded in understanding. “Thank you, Lea. I’ll make sure she gets the medical attention she needs.”
The healer looked between Penelope and Tania for a moment before shrugging. “The bone is re-knitting, so try not move it until you get it cast.”
Tania nodded fervently, a new life in her eyes after Terry’s message. Lea narrowed her brow at the sudden shift, then seemed to move on.
“Errol will see you back to the healing tents,” Penelope said. “Thank you again for taking on a special case. It means a lot to me.”
Lea nodded sincerely. “For you, ma’am, it’s the least I could do.”
She left after a few more instructions for Tania, stepping through one of Errol’s portals before it snapped shut behind her.
“I’m gonna get started on these Skills,” Terry said quietly so that only Tania and his mother could hear. “But what are we gonna do about him?” He flicked a thumb behind him where Ben still hovered around the inert Savage.
His mother’s face turned stony as her eyes tracked to the revenant.
“He wont be a problem anymore. I reached into his mind and put him into a deep sleep. He’ll only respond to my commands for now. Your grandfather wont be happy, but he’s proved too dangerous to let loose.”
“I’d say,” Ben replied. “He’s a rabid dog. You can’t collar a rabid dog. You can only put them down.”
“Be that as it may,” his mother responded, “he’s harmless for the time being. Let’s focus on the issue of containment around Mexico City until I’ve had a chance to talk to Terrence.”
Ben pressed his lips tight but didn’t argue.
Terry hated that Savage was the source of tension between the two siblings, but turned his focus to Lea’s Skills—for Tania’s sake.
The first one he dove into, was Advanced Bone Growth.
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