[coronatiger]

When Wolfram had concluded his investigation, he transformed back into a human and came out of the alcove. He agreed that the deal was mostly fine, but there was one token which he would not relinquish, for the was a fragment of a soul in it. Xipil believed the soul in question had belonged to an animal. Wolfram considered this for a few minutes, before accepting the sale of the sixth token. He agreed that the fragment came from an animal and that it was too small to be of any use to the animal. Since Ælios was well-intentioned, Wolfram wouldn’t stand in his way.

I got the tokens from Wolfram and passed them on to Ælios, who made a show of studying them before handing over the last two boxes of healing salve. Ælios said he wanted us to leave, and that he did not want to learn what just happened in the alcove. I promised we’d go soon enough, and Ælios sat down in a corner to wait.

Xipil, Wolfram and I discussed briefly who should test the salve. I convinced them to let me be the test subject. If the salve contained some toxin, I would be better equipped to handle it than Grogg or Wolfram, who were both more heavily injured than me and as far as I knew had no protection against poisons. Even if the salve was harmful to me, and I’ve heard plenty of stories of magic going terribly wrong, I was unwavering in my belief that You wouldn’t call me home today. The pain Ælios had warned me about couldn’t be that bad, could it? At least not as bad as my period cramps.

The salve stung a little when I applied it to my wound, but not more than any mundane ointment would. I knelt on the floor, beginning my meditation, for I needed to restore my venom. After a couple of minutes, I couldn’t concentrate any longer. It was as if every beat of my heart blasted another lightning bolt against my chest. Unwilling to appear weak to my friends, I steeled myself and kept a smooth face. I tried to find solace in the fact that my cramps were completely muffled.

All my will-power was used up in the fight against the intense, throbbing agony. After about five minutes, I gave up on the meditation and went over to Yana, sat down next to her and rested my head on her shoulder. “Are you all right?” she whispered. Of course, she had seen through my pretense. “It burns!” I whimpered after making sure that Xipil’s attention was elsewhere and that he was probably far enough away not to overhear. He was hanging out the small window in the alcove. Wolfram just said to tell him when I was healed, when he saw my eyes were open.

Xipil asked if he should have Ælios wake Korro and Nillet so they’d be ready to go when we were. Watching Xipil, I could tell he was in pain. When I asked him about that, he denied it, and he didn’t want me to examine him either. With the pain I was going through myself, I wasn’t in the mood to press the matter, so I just told him to speak to Ælios about the patients. I closed my eyes again and tried thinking about anything other than the pounding of my wound. It was impossible, so I was glad when Xipil came back and unintentionally set up a welcome distraction.

Xipil asked if we should test the salve on Wolfram, since it obviously didn’t affect me the way Ælios had said it should. Wolfram wanted to look to see if the salve was working, first. I lifted my head and looked at Yana. “Did Wolfram just ask if he could look at my boobs? What do you think about his impertinence?” Despite the pain, I managed to show Yana a glimmer of humor. She picked up on it, of course, and we spent some time teasing Wolfram, before I lowered my neckline and showed him the wound. Wolfram was clearly uncomfortable, but he noted – as I did – that the wound looked a lot older than just a couple of hours.

Wolfram decided it was worth trying the salve, so he took off his shirt so I could apply the medicine. Hylda joked that she was envious. She regularly flirts with him, and she is more Wolfram’s type than Yana and I are, although I must say Yana is far more beautiful than the orc woman. It’s probably a size thing.

Wolfram tried to pretend that it was nothing, but after a few minutes, the pain was evident on his face, at least to Yana and me. Teasing Wolfram now would only be cruel, but it was very tempting to do so to distract myself from my own pain. I put my head back on Yana’s shoulder and closed my eyes, hoping it would go away soon.

Xipil reported lightning somewhere to the west, and Kraa began to make noise. In my weakened state, I couldn’t see the spirit raven, but I saw the needle it had in its beak, having pulled it out of Grogg to wake him. Grogg exclaimed that the dragons had arrived and put away the needle. Xipil informed him that Palo was coming from the east. I was uncertain how he could tell, since the hatch opened to the west, but Xipil seemed confident in his remark.

Grogg and Hylda made the troll ready for battle and then Hylda began packing. “Are we leaving?” I asked. “Should we ask to be put ashore, or do we wait here for Nulius to ask for help?” Xipil’s reply was that only Palo had arrived. Yana and I began packing too, so we would be ready to leave on short notice. Wolfram and Xipil both thought we should go ashore on the east bank, Xipil because the western shore was Larma territory, Wolfram because we had talked about going east to the ancient ruin city in the mountains. We needed someone to help us translate the old language there, though, but Xipil was sure Pak and Groman were on their way. All the while, Xipil was glued to the hatch, and he reported that a giant cyclone blocked the sun in the west.

Grogg expressed impatience to get off the ship, so I asked if I should go and hear if we could be put ashore. Yana pointed out that if I left these rooms, then we had no choice but to get off. I would have liked to believe that I would have remembered Nynos’s warning, but with the amount of pain I was experiencing, I wasn’t quite myself.

I opened the door out of the lab and yelled for Nynos without actually stepping outside. I didn’t even poke my head out, in case someone observed me and counted that as “leaving”. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t have mattered, since we intended to disembark as soon as possible.

Nynos came running, and I asked if he could be so kind as to provide a rowboat for us. He said he didn’t want us to take the blame for what was happening, so he promised to be quick. I assumed he referred to the dragon attack, but how Nulius would conclude that we had anything to do with it, I didn’t understand. However, rational thought might not be straightforward with dragons around. I commended myself for keeping a cool head. Before Nynos ran off, he muttered that he had never seen priests so stressed out before. Well, not every cleric has the protection of Your coils.