[i]”…No.”[/i]

That word should have put her in more of a panic, but all it did was calm her, slowing her heart rate and clearing her vision. This was a medical emergency. She could deal with it. Finally a situation she had expertise in.

The girl dropped to her knees next to Ahmal and gently pulled his hands away from the wound. Internally she cringed away as she saw how terribly deep and wide the wound was, how bad it was bleeding, but she forced herself to at the least appear calm.

She didn’t have anything to stop bleeding in her backpack… there were precious few of those herbs that grew in the winter. She really didn’t have anything useful in this situation… except for her magic. [i]Lady of Mercy, give me strength… Don’t let me fail this time.[/i]

[color=7bcdc8]“Lie back and don’t struggle. Let your mind go blank; don’t think about what I’m doing. Don’t be nervous. This might hurt, but you have to trust me.”[/color] She prayed that at least some of the message would get through Ahmal’s pain-induced fog; otherwise he’d panic when he felt the magic on him and then he’d die for sure.

Lyriia scrubbed her hands off on her tunic as best as she could to get the blood off of her. Hardly ideal but the best she could do at this point. She wished she had water or some way to rinse out the wound, but there wasn’t any close by and she didn’t want to leave Ahmal. [i]Besides[/i], she told herself, [i]he’s bleeding so much that the blood would have washed the wound clean.[/i]

She gently put her hands on either side of the wound, leaning down so that her eyes were right over the wound, so that she could better see what she was doing. A tugging feeling right behind her heart, almost painful, and then a tingling down her arms and hands, and a faint blue glow spread over the wound. She squinted, and her vision shifted, so that it was almost like she was inside the wound, watching the muscle fibers knit themselves back together, from the bottom of the wound up so that the repair would be the strongest. She despaired as she realized that the main artery in Ahmal’s leg was severed… she could fix the muscles but the blood vessel…

She knew she was crazy for trying to fix it. She wasn’t nearly good enough with her magic to mend a blood vessel; it was too much of a delicate process… if the repair wasn’t perfect the vessel could tear again, or it could collapse, or the scar tissue could block it—

No. She forced the thoughts out of her mind. Ahmal would die if she didn’t try… He might still die if she messed up, but there was a chance he could live.

She focused on the severed vessel, just [i]willing[/i] it to heal. Slowly, so slowly, the delicate tissue started weaving itself back together. She frowned, directing all her energy into it, and was rewarded by a burst of white-hot pain all through her body.

No, gods curse it, she was NOT going to burn out yet. She had to help Ahmal. He’d saved her life, after all… time to repay the favor.

Gritting her teeth she fought back against her own body’s warning, forcing herself to work through the pain. The edges of her vision went fuzzy but she kept working, forcing the membranes to knit back together.

All of a sudden she pushed through the fog, her mind suddenly clear again, and studied her progress. The artery had knit itself back together (though she couldn’t be so sure of how well the repair would hold), and the muscle was mostly reconnected, and the skin was in the process of resealing itself.

The fairy girl blinked sleepily, her eyes heavy. She tried to stay focused, see the healing all the way through to the end… but… the crisis was averted, it seemed, and all she wanted to do was sleep… Besides, there was just a few layers of skin to knit together now… that would heal on its own in a few days… and she was so sleepy.

Lyriia broke contact with Ahmal’s skin, then tried to say something to him, something like [color=7bcdc8]“When we get back to Silent Rise I’ll rinse that and get you an herb salve and a bandage, and a tea to drink to keep off any infection.”[/color] But it probably came out as more of a mumble. And then the girl’s eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out, falling limp on the ground close to Ahmal's side. Subconsciously, as her vision went dark, her wing curled forwards, covering herself and Ahmal like a light blanket.