Jynn's POV
I had seen Tim bleed before.
Every child at the orphanage had seen Tim bleed at some point, the healing demonstrations, the occasional injury during physical training, the times he came back from adventuring work with evidence of having encountered something that had opinions about being encountered. Blood was not new. The quantity was new, and the direction, and the fact that every bone in his body was bending the wrong way as he fell and the sound it made when he hit the street was a sound I was going to be hearing in the back of my mind for a long time to come.
We surrounded him immediately, because he was Tim and he was on the ground and we were his children and we were worried.
Someone found a stick. Then another one got more sticks. Someone esle got tall glass from the floor, the long straight kind that the Theocracy's streets apparently featured as decorative elements. We worked fast and without discussion, the coordination that comes from people who have trained to be a doctor for years, as we straighten the limbs that were bent wrong, tying the sticks and glass against them with strips torn from shirts and cloaks, building improvised splints around a body.
I counted children while we worked. A habit Tim had drilled into me years ago. *Always know how many you have. Always know who is missing before something else needs your attention.*
Two hundred and ninety-eight, everyone is here.
The immediate crisis was the man lying on the street with every bone broken.
"Carry him," I said. "Carefully, Someone on each limb, I will carry his back."
We went to the nearest church we could find. The Theocracy's capital had churches present in every district, the institutional infrastructure of religious organisation visible in every neighbourhood. The Life Church was two streets away and it had light in its windows.
We came through the doors with Tim carried between eight of us, the improvised splints visible, the blood still coming from his face.
The priests looked at us.
I asked loudly whether anyone could heal him.
The examination that followed had the quality of professional assessment, the head priest and two others working around Tim's body. Their faces went through things. The professional neutrality that priests maintained during medical evaluation developed cracks and then abandoned the pretence entirely.
Every bone broken and Every muscle torn. The head priest said, as he told us that he did not know how Tim was still alive.
I asked whether he could heal him.
A Simple Tier three will do, and a payment of Twenty gold coins.
I checked Tim's pockets with the acknowledgment that the coins were Tim's and the emergency qualified as a reason to use them. Eighteen gold coins and three silver. Two gold coins short of the required amount, if you didn't count the silver coins.
The head priest said he would heal Tim when the full payment was available.
Fiad's hand was on the priest's throat before I had finished processing the sentence.
---
Fiad's POV
I let go when Jynn told me to. Not because the priest deserved the courtesy, but because Jynn used the specific tone he used when he was right about something and I knew he was right, and the look on his face when he said *this isn't what Tim would have wanted* hit something true enough to override the thing in my chest that was running with fear and worry for Tim.
I let him go.
Jynn bowed to the priest. I stood behind him and looked at the floor because the priest's face was making me mad, as he had the look, that nobles gave to the poor.
Jynn went to sell Tim's bright crystal, and worn out ring, as the spear and armor were too importate to sell. I watched him go and then turned to the other teenagers and we had a conversation in looks and small gestures that did not require words because we had grown up in the same home.
An hour. We gave Jynn an hour, to get the coins.
But three hours have passed, and we waited long enought.
So we attacked with the guards, which was quick, and cornered the head priest, which was also quick, and I told him clearly and without room for misunderstanding that his life was going to answer the question of whether twenty gold coins was a sufficient reason to let Tim die.
He soon started healing Tim, as time went by. Sweat came off him in ways that suggested tier three holy magic at sustained application was not a casual expenditure. The damage was extensive enough that thirty minutes of continuous healing from the head priest produced little improvement rather than resolution, and I called the other priests in and told them to assist, or I will kill them.
They were sufficiently motivated to assist that all thirteen of them were working simultaneously within two minutes.
As the sun setted, Jynn came back through the door and saw what I had arranged, the look on his face was...not happy.
"carp-buskets"
---
Jynn's POV
I screamed at Fiad for a looong while. He accepted it in the way Fiad accepted things, as he told me that doesn't care if he goes to the dungoen as long Tim is ok.
He had a good point, which I was not going to tell him that, as what he did, was mortally wrong.
I apologised to the head priest with everything I had. The head priest stood up with the exhausted dignity, as told us to leave as we were not weclome in the chruch of Life.
Fiad gave him a death glare.
I gave Fiad a death glare.
Fiad backed down.
We soon left after that.
The children were hungry and there was a large tavern nearby and the cook's face when the full group of hudrends of children arrived and began describing what they wanted to eat.
The youngest ate first. The oldest went last. I ate the food that tasted foul, I miss pizza.
---
We soon were leaving the city when I counted again.
Heacyal. A four years old. Dark haired, small little girl was Missing.
I gave the crystal and the ring to Fiad without explanation. Told him to watch the children, and I ran back into the city.
---
Tim's POV
I woke to faces above me and night sky beyond them.
The faces were children's faces, as alot of them had worried faces.
Fiad was holding a crystal and a ring. I recognised both immediately and asked him to give them to me. He handed them over with the slightly guilty expression.
I put the ring on my right finger. The wild magic in it settled against my skin with the specific quality I had felt when I first took it, as I used the crystal on my other hand.
The tier seven angel came out of the crystal at my request, unfolding above the road. The children looked up at it with the open mouths as they looked up in wonder.
I asked it to heal me.
The angel's healing was thorough my body at a fundamental level. The bones set and knit. The muscles repaired. The neural damage from Limit Breaker: Mind cleared, as I was restored.
I stood up.
Counted children.
Two missing.
Fiad told me Jynn had gone back to the city, for Heacyal.
I nodded and deployed the clones, nine at maximum, the familiar process now running automatically, each one assigned a purpose before it fully formed. One stayed with the children. One went toward E-Rantel with instructions for Hejinmal to come to the slane theocracy to pick up the children.
Seven clones came with me into the city.
We spread through the streets in the pattern that covered maximum area with minimum overlap, the search grid running through the residential districts.
Minutes later I found them.
---
The shack was in the category of structures that existed in every city, poorly built, poorly lit, nasty smell.
I heard Jynn before I saw anything. The sounds of impact, repetitive, as I walked to the door.
I pushed the door open.
Jynn was on a man's chest with his fists moving left and right in the hatefull matter. Teeth on the floor. Blood distributed on the floor. His eyes when he looked up at me as I entered the shack were the dark red, I recognised as pure Rage.
Heacyal was in the corner, Crying. The details of the scene communicated themselves completely and immediately and I processed them with the flat clarity of someone whose own anger had already burned through its acute phase.
I put my hand on Jynn's shoulder.
He looked at me.
"I'll handle this, just go back to the other kids, ok buddy?," I said.
He got up. Two of my clones collected the children and took them out, one with Jynn, the warmth and steadiness of a clone's presence sufficient for the specific need of that moment, as he fell asleep, the other one carrying Heacyal with the careful handling of someone managing a very small, very frightened child.
The door closed.
I crouched next to the man on the floor.
He was conscious, which was a credit to Jynn having such a kind heart, the damage was mostly done on his teeth, and his cheeks. I ran *Light Healing* over the worst of it, the spell doing what it was designed to do, the body responding.
He started to thank me.
I reached up and ripped his face off.
As I left him with the full sensory experience of the pain.
He screamed.
I healed him, again.
Told him, in the calmest tone I ever used.
"I going to make sure, you live a long life, and I will make sure you reget it, EVERY SECOND OF IT".
As I ripped his four limbs off, and heal the stups left behind before he bleeds out.
---
Tim
LeveL:[82] [plus 5]