LIGHTNOVELONLINE Arc 1 | Chapter 26: Don’t Kick the Medic
{Rancid Lies} snapped through the air in front of her, brushing against the blade of her sword, raised in what most certainly would have been a vain attempt to stop the echo. The creature screamed as Olivier’s skill made contact with it, sending it flying straight through the wall behind it.
Her gaze snapped to Olivier, walking slowly towards them. He was still in his pyjamas, ridiculously luxurious looking even if they were covered in lollibobs, their long ears shiny with glitter. It was a shockingly funny contrast to the absolutely pissed look on his face. She’d only seen him wear that expression a few times. Usually, she’d caused it—or her ex, which was tangentially related to her.
“Are those the pyjamas I got you?” she had to ask as he stopped beside them. It was silly to ask—they most certainly were the pair she had gotten him as a joke after he’d joined the military. It had been a spur of the moment decision for him. His parents were going to be pissed. He had brought nothing with him and had always had people to do the shopping for him. So had Emilia, but she hadn’t been afraid to go shopping like he was. She’d returned with a few dozen essentially for him, including the adorable pyjamas. He had gotten different ones the next day, and she had assumed he’d thrown her gift out.
Evidently not.
Olivier didn’t deign to answer her, instead turning and staring into the depths of the hole the echo had disappeared into. “Tariq.”
“Master Olivier,” Tariq said, sparking into existence beside him. He had barely changed over the last decade. Even then, when he had stood vigil beside Olivier’s hospital bed and not known whether to thank her for saving his master’s life, or blame her for him even being on the field in the first place, he had looked just as old and grumpy as the first time they had met, the same day she had met Olivier himself.
“Get them out of here.”
“Yes, Master Olivier,” the old man replied, already kneeling beside Emilia and Payton. He pressed a wrinkled hand to her classmate’s forehead, eyes assessing, before he forced aether into him and Payton gasped back into consciousness.
[Tariq has requested [Spark Shot] access]
“Accept,” Emilia told Payton as she granted the old man access. Her classmate nodded groggily, before grabbing their ride’s shirt and pulling him close. Their foreheads pressed together briefly—a physical transference of knowledge because Payton was still too weak to send it completely via the aethernet.
“Understood,” Tariq said, grabbing hold of Emilia and Payton and hauling them unceremoniously to their feet—not that she could blame him. He’d been one of Olivier’s primary bodyguards since he was a child, and she’d spent a year torturing both of them, been the main reason they had joined the military decades later. To have to abandon his master in order to get her ass out of here must have been killing him.
It was an order from his master, however, so he would do it. He had always been good about that—about letting Olivier live his life, even when he didn’t agree. Even when he must have known he would be getting shit from Olivier’s parents as a result.
“Be careful,” Emilia said, wobbling on her feet as her willbrand shuddered back into its normal, necklace form.
Olivier didn’t even glance back at her before he sparked through the hole and the sound of his own willbrand filled the air, and then Tariq was sparking them away as well.
The world became light and shadows, the barest images of cities and forests flying past them. Time bent nauseatingly, before they exploded back into the real, solid world. It wasn’t that the aethernet wasn’t real, it was just that the world you were born into felt like the real one, as far as Emilia was concerned. Her stomach rolled slightly, her knees threatening to give way, only Tariq’s arms around her keeping her upright.
“Is this the correct location?” he asked Payton as Emilia looked blearily around.
She had no idea where they were, and even when her Censor informed them that they were somewhere called Yunalis, she had no idea where that was. Somewhere in the northern boonies, it seemed. Not quite into the far north, but north of the Turneus mountain range, where the world turned all but barren—where most of the bigger cities had been flattened during the war and not nearly enough people had returned to rebuild them.
Yunalis didn’t seem to be the remains of a big city, however. Her Censor spitting out facts as Payton wobbled and told Tariq it was the place he had apparently requested they be taken.
[Population: 50-200]
[Primary Economy: Unknown]
[Mayor: None]
That was less than useful, and Emilia forced her Censor to stop giving her questionable information. That said, the fact that the information about the area for so unknown was interesting.
Payton glanced towards the door of the house they had arrived at, surrounded by a dark, ominous looking woods. His aether tried and failed to reach out, presumably to whoever lived there. Not that it was needed, when a moment later, a young woman pushed the door open and nearly open fired on them. Aether shuddered around her, aiming for them before she had likely even fully taken them in. Awesome times.
“Seflora,” Payton called out, breaking into a stream of hacking coughs.
Then, the woman was there, hands searching over Payton’s face and body for injuries. “Payton! What in the— Why is your aether control so— Who are these people?” Seflora glared between Tariq and Emilia, her eyes immediately catching on Emilia’s own injuries. She blinked, then nodded. “Echo?”
Emilia nodded back, wondering how she had known. True, serious injuries weren’t particularly common, but to so decisively know her injuries were the result of an echo?
“I must return,” Tariq said, handing Payton over to the woman and letting Emilia unceremoniously drop to the ground before he sparked away.
Well, she couldn’t exactly say she didn’t deserve to be treated like that.
“Rude,” the woman said, although Emilia could already feel the aethernet shaking as she activated a strength augmentation skill. “I’ll be back for you.” Then she was gone, not quite sparking through the world, but moving so fast that Emilia wasn’t sure if she had used some other skill or if her own grasp on the world was fading as the echo’s blood twisted through her system.
A moment later, Seflora was back, hoisting Emilia up, and then they were moving, and she was being dropped beside Payton. The woman, older than Emilia had originally assumed in the dark night, glowered down at them with stern, dark-blue eyes, and she could feel the telltale signs of a medic skill searching over her for injuries.
“You first,” she said, pointing to her. Her finger shifted to Payton, “You, rest. You will be fine. You just overexerted yourself.”
Payton nodded, letting himself slouch down on the couch they’d been dumped on before passing right out. Emilia blinked at him. He really had overexerted himself, if he could fall asleep just like that, even after receiving an aether transfer from Tariq.
“Leg,” the woman said, already kneeling in front of Emilia.
Seflora gathered her long blonde hair back into a perfect bun before reaching towards the slice across Emilia’s thigh. She bit her lip, trying to not cry out as the woman healed her. It had been a long time since she had needed anything more than the most basic of medical treatment. Scuffs and scratches from raids—not to mention from fighting her boyfriend, back when they had been enemies, set on destroying one another. She had forgotten the burn of medic skills. Fast and fierce, leaving scars in their wake as they stitched up injuries from monsters, sucking out venom that could become toxic with a single thought from any of its kind.
The cut was deep enough that pulling out those toxins made Emilia want to die. Her entire body ached, the woman removing her blood to purify it before forcing it back into her body. Blood wasn’t meant to move this fast—wasn’t meant to be violently moved through her. This was fast and messy. This was not what you’d get anywhere in the world but at the hands of someone who had been a medic during the war and never practised again—never learned the newer, gentler techniques that had been devised since.
When the woman finally stopped, Emilia’s fingers digging into the fabric beneath her as she kept from screaming or kicking the poor woman—it wasn’t her fault she’d been burnt out by a war that had destroyed nearly every life that touched it, nor that Emilia had gone and fucked up. Injured herself. Nearly gotten herself and Payton killed. Not to mention that she had no idea how Olivier was handling himself. Yes, the echo had been wholly different from the whole break and enter thing. Someone would have had to deal with it anyways. It wasn’t exactly their fault they had run into it—that she had needed to call for help.
Emilia still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong about the timing, however. It seemed like too much of a coincidence.
“Well,” the woman sighed, leaning back and breathing out heavily, “been a while since I’ve had to do that. Never seen a blood injury quite like this was one, either.”
Emilia didn’t really think she was looking for an answer as to why the injury was so strange—most people never got a chance to see {Blood Rain} in action, and the few people who could use it generally weren’t in the business of using it to injure other humans—not in the last few hundred years, anyways. It was meant to kill. It had killed that echo, even if her own lack of control had led to it injuring her as well. She was just glad that Payton hadn’t been directly harmed by it.
She glanced towards her classmate, sleeping soundly beside her. His mouth was ajar, arms slack beside him.
“It’s a war medic skill,” Seflora said, mischief dancing in her eyes when Emilia looked back to her. “Not a skill skill. Just an acquired gift, for people who are always on call.”
“Ah…” Emilia breathed out, diligently letting the woman strip her so she could poke and prod at her other injuries. Bruises disappeared, blood forced out of the broken blood vessels and back into her system. Her ribs pulled back together, the sensation making her want to itch and earning her a smack on the hand when she tried.
“Do not touch,” the war medic said sternly, and Emilia smiled slightly. “What?”
“You remind me of someone—our unit’s medic.” She didn’t really see the point of hiding that she was a vet from this woman. She knew enough to guess that Seflora was like her, hiding in the middle of nowhere from a war she couldn’t quite escape.
“Who’s that? Maybe I know them.”
“Knew,” Emilia didn’t say. Their unit’s medic—the main one, who they had all grown to love and cherish—had died, long before the final days of the war. She hesitated, unsure of whether to give that much information about herself. Naomi had been famous, even before she had joined their division. She had become even more famous after joining, being one of the few people from their unit who were officially known to be members—they had always kept their membership list private, and for good reason. Sometimes, people had been able to guess. Usually, people guessing had never ended well.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, it depended on your point of view—a loud knock interrupted their conversation.
[Olivier: It’s me.]
Emilia sighed, telling the war medic it was the person who had taken over the fight for them. The woman raised an eyebrow at the fact that there had been two echos, but said nothing, simply tossing Emilia a blanket as she pushed herself off the couch and made her way to the door. She pushed the door open, breathing a small sign of relief when both her ex-lawyer and his silly pyjamas seemed to have been untouched by the fight.
“'vier,” she said softly, trying to hold his gaze before she realized she couldn’t. He was just so upset, so disappointed in her. She’d seen him disappointed in her before—more times than she could probably count, in fact—but this time… this time, it felt different. Deeper and more cutting.
More deserving.
She could feel his eyes on her—feel his aether and then his Censor reaching out to prod at her. Unlike the first time, when she had brushed off his attempts to dig into her Censor, she let him in this time. She really didn’t think he would be letting her leave without letting him check. He dug through her, which honestly, wasn’t as bad as it could have been. More a surface dusting until he seemed to have found what he was looking for: the state of her knots. The sequences she kept stored inside her because she had long since stopped going to official clinics for knot therapy.
Most knot therapists wouldn’t reduce your D-Levels without a good reason, after all, and there were almost no good reasons.
He turned, walking out into the dark night, expecting her to follow. She glanced behind her before she did. Seflora’s hands were pressed to Payton, a slow stream of aether slipping out of her and into him. Her face was screwed up in concentration, a thin sheen of sweat already forming over her from the effort needed to bring his aether levels back up to something more acceptable—or at least up to a point where aether would more easily flow into him naturally. Aether attracted aether.
The woman didn’t even glance up as Emilia followed Olivier into the darkness.
