Loosely Lawful | 12

They lay there, all five of them, heaving for air on the wooden floor. After the endless animal howls and crashing trees, the silence was startling. Kaliko wheezed, eyes squeezed shut as she tried to avoid the oncoming headache of magical exhaustion. Benvolio’s fine shirt dripped with sweat and blood. Sera took a long, groaning breath, and tried to remember the last time she’d felt like this, like Librata’s spirit sat so low inside of her that she’d have to beg and cry to draw her back out.

Above her, Kyle’s chest heaved with a strange, rattling sound. Bright red blood bloomed across his shirt.

Shit.

Sera snapped back to reality. She wrestled her way out from under Kyle, trying not to jostle him too badly, and took stock. His whole back was opened up, split diagonally from shoulder to waist by three deep gashes that carved across the bones in his spine and scraped across his ribs.

She was tapped. Kali was tapped. And Sera knew from experience that Avon’s magic didn’t work quite right for other people. That left Benvolius.

No, Benvolius had said he was almost out, too, which meant they didn’t have enough power between all four of them to fix this. Not unless Sera could find an excuse to bring more out of her connection to Librata. She could, maybe, wedge a contract into the process of pooling magic with Benvolius. It was an outdated way of doing things, but it placed the affair squarely in her goddess’s sphere of influence, which might allow Sera to draw more power than she currently had available.

“Avon,” Sera said, finding her voice. She sounded hoarse. “I need bandages and hot water. Pronto.”

“What?”

“Go!”

Avon scrambled up. They were furthest out from the group, and the least blood-splattered, and Sera shoved at them as they raced through the hostel room door. Kali, looking beautifully bedraggled, crawled out next.

“Kali, I need your sewing kit and your purified spider’s thread, and then you’re going to help me hold the wounds closed.”

“Oh,” Kali said, finally seeing the growing pool of blood on the floor, “yes.” She wobbled, but dug through her bag anyway.

“And Benvolius,” Sera demanded, pulling him up from the floor, “you and I are going to pool whatever we’ve got left.”

“What?!”

She took his hand in a firm shake and stared him in the eye, and Benvolius, to his credit, met her gaze. His lip quivered, and his sweat-drenched hair lay in frazzled lines across his face, crisscrossing with Kyle’s blood.

“Benvolius,” Sera said, her own voice finally evening out, “are you comfortable with magic pooling?”

“I”- He took a short, full breath, pointedly not looking at the ruin of Kyle’s back. He gulped. “Yes.”

“Then repeat after me. I, Benvolius”-

“I, Benvolius”-

Sera took his other hand and leaned in close, touching her forehead to his as the contract jumped out in her mind. The flutter of Librata’s spirt perked up inside her chest. “Do hereby consent to the pooling of magic with Seraphina, on the fifteenth day, of the eighth month, of the four-hundred and ninety-seventh year Post-Consumption, for the singular purpose of restoring health to Kyle. I will provide what is necessary to heal him, or what remains of my pool before I am tapped, whichever occurs first.

“This I swear,” she finished.

“This I swear,” Benvolius repeated.

And then, finally, Librata answered. Magic flooded back into that hole in her chest, crashing forward to enforce the contract between her and Benvolius, and Sera let it rise into her veins to tug at the deep green, pine-smelling power that lived in him. Then, link established, she let go of his hands to meet Avon as they crashed back into the room, hot water sloshing out of the bucket they’d brought.

Sera knelt at Kyle’s side. His breathing had slowed, his back rising and falling only when his lungs couldn’t take the lack of air any longer. His shining silver hair was stained dark red as it fell in clumps across his cheeks. She gestured for everyone to kneel with her.

“I’m going to clean the wound and heal the bones and nerves first,” Sera explained. “Then we’ll move on to the sutures. We’ll start with the central wound, and then the left, and then the right. All clear? No one’s going to be sick?”

Benvolius, still a little green in the face, nodded. Kali tucked a stray hair out of her face, her mouth set in grim determination. Avon was already soaking towels in the hot water.

Tugging her and Benvolius’s magical pool to her hands, Sera waved over Kyle’s back, willing any dirt or particles or gross, microscopic wrigglies to burn away in the purifying wash of magic. She poured energy into his bones, growing back the marrow and porous centers in a slow, hair’s breadth-by-hair’s breadth climb, until she glanced at Kali, and the other girl nodded, and Sera finally topped them off with a solid layer. She unwound time on the damaged nerves over his spine, swallowing back bile as the fibers swung back and forth before snapping back into place as they had been before the cut.

And then, finally, they could do the easy part. Sera checked in on her magic levels, pausing for a moment to breathe as Avon began blotting at the wounds with the wet towels. She’d almost completely drained Benvolius’s magic, and Librata’s spirit was starting to become reluctant, now that the contract had done some of its work. Holding her hands out for the needle and spider’s silk thread, Sera grit her teeth. She would finish this. She’d need to follow-up on the muscle regeneration tomorrow, but she could close his wounds today.

Sera had never been fantastic at all this medical junk; she preferred brute force and power to mend Kyle on the rare occasion that she needed to. The spider’s silk thread glowed with magic as she threaded it, hands shaking almost imperceptibly. She had to settle her wrist and little finger against Kyle’s skin when she finally started sewing.

They worked seamlessly–thank Librata. Avon kept the working area spotless, slipping their hands under Kali and Benvolius’s as the other two pinched the skin together. Kali murmured under her breath, guiding Benvolius even as she sometimes struggled to keep herself engaged, looking at Kyle like this. Sera made each pass of the needle with a confidence she didn’t feel, tamping down the flow of magic to make it last as long as possible.

They made it down the left gash with unbelievable efficiency, closing it up like a zipper. The shining spider’s thread pulsed with magic, slowly knitting skin together in the wake of the suturing. The center gash healed more slowly, Sera’s stitches having been a little less clean. On the third, halfway down the long line of the wound, Sera felt her connection to Benvolius drop. The magic turned white instead of pale green, and her chest caved open. Her hands shook. She reached inside her own soul, digging down for the very last dregs of magic in her, and tried to keep her eyes open.

When she finished, she looked up at the others, her breaths coming short, her vision fuzzy. “Someone has to…”

“I’ll do it,” Avon said, standing. Their face was hard, all right angles and stern lines. The freckles had faded to a faint hint of discoloration. “You’re all running on nothing. Get some rest.”

And so they all did.