Left arm, I thought, feeling the hands that initially grabbed Falko starting to tug and twist. I focused on strengthening the muscles and tendons, keeping the zombies from tearing off his arm. Then a crack and a pop, the ulna in his forearm breaking through the skin. Falko let out a scream and I felt the temperature drop even more as Isabella increased her assault. I bit my lip, suppressing my own scream, focusing instead on popping the bone back into place and sealing the wound.
Right leg next as my own leg spasmed in phantom pain when teeth sunk into the gastrocnemius in the back of the leg and tore away a mouthful of meat. "Shit," I muttered, emphasizing regrowing the missing flesh while searching the blood stream for any sort of virus or disease. I let out the briefest sigh of relief when nothing out of the ordinary presented itself. "At least the necromancer isn't using a virus to raise and control his zombies."
More hands grabbed and pulled in different directions. More teeth sunk in and tore away pieces of flesh. My own heart pounded in my chest, separate from Falko's own pain and terror. I focused on slowing his heart to prevent him from both bleeding to death and going into cardiac arrest. This was going to be the real test: triage.
I did my best to ignore the pain. Pain tells a person when they've been injured, and where. When your injuries are everywhere though, pain becomes overwhelming and you need to use your mind to prioritize what needs to be fixed first. I put some passive attention on Falko's heart, again keeping it beating at a steady pace. More focus went to the injuries that broke skin - teeth ripping out meat or hands digging into soft parts. I focused on re-connecting veins and arteries, and re-growing the body around them. Broken bones I could ignore for the moment as long as they were still within the body. Viruses that the zombies might be carrying in their mouths also got a low priority, at least everything I sensed wouldn't kill Falko within the next thirty minutes.
Then the phantom pain vanished. One moment of horrific agony just replaced by an emptiness. It couldn't be over, I thought remembering all the undead swarming us in the great hall. Directly in front me, Liza and Isabella continued their attacks, and just further passed them, a dozen or so zombies ripped into Falko as others came around the corner. He couldn't be dead, or I'd have felt it, which meant only one thing - the pin was out! "Shit," I said as I got to my feet. "Falko! Burn! Burn everything!"
Whether Falko actually heard my shouts, or if he realized I was no longer suppressing his magic, I don't know. The temperature in the corridor simply plummeted to near freezing for a second. The air around Falko rippled with heat, then became an inferno. I turned my head, the flames too bright to stare at directly as they engulfed several feet around Falko's body. Once the fire ceased and the air cooled enough that it didn't singe my skin, I sprinted to Falko's side followed by both of my classmates.
"Is he okay?" asked Isabella as I dropped to a knee next to Falko.
Now that I could make physical contact with him, I knew for certain. "He's alive," I said, focusing on the injuries that needed the most immediate healing. "Could the two of you hold the hallway for a bit. I just need some time."
Isabella looked reluctant to leave but Liza dragged her along out into the corridor. It took a couple minutes but I got a majority of the major injuries fixed-up: bite cavities filled in, a punctured eye regrown, a liver partially healed. A mangled hand I magically deadened and amputated, leaving it physically attached but not functional or really connected to anything. It was the best I could do in the time I had and hopefully there would be time after to get it fully healed and operable. Falko's breathing was still shallow and he didn't open his eyes the entire time, but he'd make it.
I found the pin in the mouth of a charred corpse nearby when Isabella and Liza rushed back into the corridor. "I left a sheet of ice blocking the path, but I'm not sure how long it will hold," said Isabella, pausing when she spotted Falko awake and the pin in my hand.
Before she could take the pin from me, Falko, with a surprising amount of strength left for someone in his condition, pried my fingers open and took the pin himself. "Quit playing around," he growled as he stared at the token. "We know why it has to be me. Fire isn't precise, at least not the way I use it. I'm pretty useless in this situation. We can't expect Henry to heal the injuries from both zombies and burns."
Slowly, Falko raised his head and our eyes locked. I didn't have time or energy to heal the superficial scars or minor scratches. His face, as a result, was a web of lines like the worst jigsaw puzzle imaginable. Several teeth were still missing. His eyes though, his eyes were sunken, barely visible in his gaunt face. He was a man who faced death and survived just on the verge of it. In his eyes, I saw a man who would be haunted for the rest of his life by the experiences of the last several minutes. And though I didn't actually experience any of it, he must've seen the same in me because he just gave me a nod, this time sticking the pin through his tongue where it hopefully wouldn't be gotten to as easy.
I placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You are going to get us through this, and I'm going to bring you back," I said before heading back down the corridor, flanked on both sides by Isabella and Liza. To the two of them, I said, "We'll do it the same way we did it the last time, and we might be able to make it out of this mess."
I felt a hand on my shoulder, stopping me in place. "One change," said Isabella, "Let us help. If there's some place you need us to focus our attacks to give you time to heal Falko, tell us. We're not letting him die out there." Without turning around, I just nodded and walked back to my spot.
"You know, after this is all done, Falko is going to beat you to death for this," said Liza.
I couldn't help but smile. "I guess I better not let either of us die." I lay back down in roughly the same position as Falko had. Then I closed my eyes. I didn't want to watch the approach this time. Once again, the pain started small, just hands gripping and teeth biting. Then, of course, it intensified as those same hands forced their way through soft flesh, and teeth began ripping out chunks of meat. The thing about pain that they don't teach is that even after a hundred broken bones, thousands of bites, tens of thousands of bruises, one more is never a boring experience. Every injury hurt just as much as the last which hurts as much as the very first. At least this time I didn't need to concentrate on suppressing Falko's connection to his flames as he already understood his role in the Gambit.
This time though I had teammates that fully understood the plan. They
trusted me and I trusted them. "Left leg," I said through clenched
teeth, "I need time to repair the artery or Falko could bleed out." I
felt a numbing cold sweep the areas as Isabella focused her powers,
which also helped to slow the blood flow.
The pain was everywhere and I was running out of time. I numbed any pain from the fingers and toes, forcing clean amputations if they were compromised so that they could break without bleeding being an issue. I kept my focus moving in a continuous circle around the body, healing whatever I could as quick as possible before moving on to the next location. If I put too much focus into one area, it would compromise the rest. Head, neck, chest, midsection, groin, and then back around, keeping my attention consistently on the move.
Finally, the new injuries stopped, leaving behind pain and my screams. "Henry," said Liza, shaking me, "There haven't been any new zombies for a couple minutes. I think we got them all." I opened my eyes to see Liza standing over me, a nervous smile on her face. Just passed her, Isabella was starting to take steps forward, worried about Falko.
"Wait," I shouted, and though it came out raspy and barely audible, Isabella stopped where she stood. "Trust me, you don't want to go over there just yet." Though the injuries might've stopped, I could still feel all the pain racking his body. From the phantom injuries I felt, I knew Falko must look like something out of a horror movie. With whatever magic his body could spare, I spent the next several minutes patching him up as best I could: stopping any bleeding, reconnecting the hand and other extremities I'd severed earlier, resetting any broken bones. Falko must be a real powerhouse when it came to magical reserves though, just seeing how much I had available to work with.
"Okay," I said, slowly getting to my feet as if the pain actually happened to me. "That's as good as it's going to get with the magic we've got left." Isabella and Liza practically flew to Falko's side. I still crept behind slowly, my staff held defensively, not against Falko's possible wrath but in case more zombies straggled down the corridor.
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