A Better Heal [Training/Plot/Merrze]

Ariella had been coming into the warehouse to check on the magicians that had joined their efforts, wanting to help in any way she could. She began offering her services as a healer, her Life Magic a valuable tool even if she were avoiding the battle field. There were no shortage of injuries to heal, the numerous battles with Kou leaving their own forces spread thin with rebels taking heavy injury. She stopped beside the cot of a Fanalis that had taken a sword across their arm, the wound deep but not irreparable, even for her limited healing ability. With a murmur to the rukh, she directed it to encourage it to heal the woman, watching in fascination as the wound began to stitch itself together, the flow of blood slowing and then stopping before first the muscles and then the skin closed itself.

The process was not painless and she considered how she could alter the spell to at least help with the pain associated with healing but now was not the time to worry about it. She moved to the next person and then the next healing major cuts and fractured bones, one after the other. One of the other Life magicians from Magnostadt came and set a hand on her shoulder, dismissing her with a kind smile. She had been so busy, she had not realized that she was exhausting herself. She gave the other magician a thankful smile before moving to an empty cot to get some rest, her eyes drifting shut.

She felt like they were only closed for a moment when she was being shaken awaken. They had need of her spot for a man groaning in extreme pain, a quick glance showing that he had lost an arm. It was beyond the healing capabilities of the magicians there, all they could do was close off the wound and heal it, he would need to see a specialist if he ever hoped to regain his arm. With a frown, Ariella dismissed herself, pulling her cloak over her face before hurrying to her father’s inn. Perhaps he would have some way of guiding her to a better healing spell.

---

Adamus frowned as Ariella explained what she was wanting to learn, humming softly in thought.

“You can regrow limbs, your mother had done it on the odd occasion. I do know it is extremely difficult, though. She was always much drained when she finished something like that. The problem isn’t that you aren’t giving it enough power, though. The problem is that you don’t know how to direct the rukh.”

He grabbed some parchment and a quill, scribbling out the basic runes for a healing spell as he explained.

“These runes are the ones you usually use to heal someone, correct?” He waited for Ella to nod before continuing. “These are telling them to fix or mend an injury. So they simply repair the damage. What you are wanting to do is not just repair an injury, you are wanting to have the rukh create a new body part from scratch. So it is not just mend or heal that you need to use.” He scribbled another rune, pointing to it. “You also need to add in this one, which is grow. But, in order to use this, you need to know what you are telling it to grow. Not just something basic like ‘limb’ but the actual structure of it. The bones, the muscles, the tendons, and the skin. If the limb is still there, you have a better idea of what to work with, but if the limb is gone completely and you have no knowledge of what makes it work, then you may cause more damage than good.”

Ariella nodded in understanding. So she needed to add in a command and have a better idea of the anatomy she was dealing with. That made sense, she supposed. Giving her father a hug, she went to leave the room when he spoke again.

“Ella… your mother would be proud of you. I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but she would be very proud of you, using your magic to heal instead of harm. It was one of our greatest conflicts, heat hurts. It can slightly help, by cauterizing wounds, but to actually heal? That is something left to Life Magic, alone. Knowing that you are using it in the purest form, to heal and help people regain their lives… she would be proud.”

Ari gave a sad smile, nodding to him before ducking out of the room. It actually meant a lot to her that her mother would be proud, it was all she had ever wanted growing up. But now was not the time to worry about such things, she had people to heal. She rushed back to the warehouse.

---

Ariella had been working with more severe cases, learning the anatomy of the limbs suffering extreme injury so that she could improve her understanding. Kaila, one of the Life mages, had insisted that she rest some more and Ariella had agreed, taking a few moments to catch her breath in a quiet corner. Suddenly, the door was slammed open, Sly carrying a woman in and resting her carefully on the table. The woman looked vaguely familiar and she thought she remembered seeing her hanging around Ayero. Her attention was drawn to the woman’s leg, the limb barely attached, burn marks covering the massive wound in her thigh where her bone was exposed and shattered. Ariella wasted no time in moving over to her, her face full of concern.

“What happened? I can help, but I need to know what caused the injury, so I know how to heal it!”

[958/1500 training word count]

Merrze's leg was in extreme pain and she had only recently gained consciousness. She could hear all the other injured people groaning in pain. SHe was doing her best to hold in her pain and she had no idea how well she was doing, when Sly laid her down she said "Thanks for carrying me here." When she noticed a beautiful woman who seemed o be a mage walk over to her, she asked Merrze what had caused her wound. Merrze then said in a carefree tone while holding in her pain. "Oh this simple flesh wound, while I was in battle I got hit in the leg with an explosive arrow, that's what happens when you do something careless I guess." She didn't want to be grim so she was keeping a carefree expression, but in reality the battle was still dwelling on her, and so was her mistake.

Ari arched a brow at the carefree tone, shaking her head with a chuckle as she waved over Kaila to ask for some help in at least numbing the wound before she worked on it. She talked to the woman as she prepared herself.

“Kaila is going to help with the pain. I can heal it, but this is going to hurt. A lot, unfortunately. So, an explosive arrow to the leg? That sounds… not so fun, honestly.”

When the girl mentioned being careless, Ari arched a brow.

“Careless? Well, it happens, I suppose. Perhaps this will be a good warning against that Fanalis nature I have seen so much of in here. Now, bear with me here, I am going to start.”

Ari waited until Kaila had nodded to let her know she had blocked as much sensation to the leg as she could before she raised her wand and murmured to the rukh. She could at least see all of the damage done to the limb, so it would be easier to direct the rukh on how to repair the damage. As she cast Regenerate, she first focused on the shattered bone, watching as the flutter of rukh responded, drawing the pieces of bone back together, knitting them together and encouraging bone growth for whatever had been blasted away. Next, she focused on the tendons, the rukh working to reattach and repair the ligaments to the bone before encouraging the muscles to grow back over the wound.

Once the muscles had grown back over and knitted together, the skin slowly worked to cover the wound. Ari was in awe, most of her healing spells took much longer to repair the damage, the rukh working slowly to heal. This was moving quickly, but she could only imagine what the pain must be like, to feel your bones mending and muscles growing. She was thankful that Kaila would have managed to block at least some of the pain, but she was not sure how much. Once the skin was healed over, Ari checked where the wound had been. There was a scar across the woman’s thigh where the skin had come together, but it was not deep or obvious, looking more like it had come as a result of a scratch, not nearly losing a limb. She looked up to Merrze’s face with a look of wonder and happiness.

“I did it! It worked! Erm, I mean… this was my first time trying to heal something so damaged, so I am just really excited. But, you should be fine. You will be a little tired and the muscles might need some time to rest. They are repaired, but they are new, so you might have to work out or something to build them back up to what they were, but you have a fully functional leg again, I think!”

She ran her hand over where the wound was, poking it gently and focusing on the woman’s face, looking for signs of pain or tenderness. Kaila had withdrawn the spell numbing the leg and Ariella hoped there would not be much pain associated with the limb now. She had never broken anything but her tail, but it didn’t have much feeling, anyways, so she did not know if there was pain associated with healed bones.

With the healing done, she looked at Merrze with a nervous look, wanting to know how the battles were going. She had been so focused on healing people that she had not gotten many updates.

“So, how is it out there? I wanted to help fight, but my skills are better used here, I think. Plus, I can only imagine how Azix or Ayero would react if they heard I was out trying to fight. It isn’t my strongest point.”

[1592/1500 training for Regenerate]

Ability trained:

Even though there was a spell to limit how much pain Merrze felt from the healing spell, it didn't help much. She felt excruciating pain as it started to be repaired basically. She looked at the process with awe and was surprised when she was looking at her leg. She had heard magic could do such things but this was almost unimaginable to see. It was as wondrous as it was weird. Soon after it was finished she felt as if she had never lost her leg but when it was done she had been delivered a sudden shot of pain.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh, that feels good" she said trying to mask her pain, then continued "That feels so much better, and if this was your first time doing such a thing I gotta say you did pretty great at it. I mean it doesn't even as if I had my leg exploded by well explosives." After she finished she moved her leg around to try and get a better feel for it, when she was asked about the battle her face went sort of dark. Sure thing weren't going terrible but that didn't make things feel better about all of the death and such.

She said to the girl. "Well I think the fighting is going pretty well in my opinion, I'd say we've been doing very good so far but there still has been a good amount of loss, the Kou are definitely not making things easy for us in my opinion. They've got better fire power then us but we've been able to hold them off pretty well. That last battle was gruesome though, the battle at Capua had been way to long, if we didn't drag things out it would have been more successful in my opinion, but in battle some many things can change the tides so you never know what to expect really."

After she finished what she had to say she tried standing up and would move her muscles around, she couldn't stay lazy for too long since the war was still going on. Continuing about the battle she said "No matter how dark things might get though I can't give up fighting, if I stop so much could be lost, I know I'm not the strongest but I do that every soldier is important in a war and you never know when you could save the day." With a smile on her face she then said. "By the way, my name is Merrze, I hope we can be friends." She extended her hand for a handshake, hoping to come across as friendly. She seemed like a good person and telling her about all of that made her feel a little bit better, talking about the battle felt like a weight had been lifted of her chest and she had no idea why. She thought she seemed nervous about the war and hoped what she had told her would make her feel better, she didn't tell her the best of news but she hoped that it helped.

Ariella listened to the woman describe the battle, frowning in worry as she watched the Fanalis test out her healed leg. She was concerned about the troops out there, cursing herself for not managing to get more volunteers from Magnostadt. Maybe if she joined the fighting… no, she would not give Azix more cause to worry about her, she was better off here, healing the injured. She gave Merrze a smile when the woman introduced herself, dipping her head in a nod.

“Hi there, Merrze. My name is Ariella. I would be glad to be your friend. Just, please be more careful on the battlefield. I don’t like having to heal my friends. I have been on the dying end before, it is not pleasant.”

She absently rubbed her chest where the hammer had come down on her, smashing through her ribs and bursting her heart. She would never forget the pain of the weapon crashing into her, nor would she forget the shock of coming back from the pain to see Azix’s worried face as he clutched her to his chest. It had been the first time she had seen him as more than just someone she worked with. Shaking the thoughts from her head, she looked back to Merrze with a grimace.

“Yeah, death is no fun. Don’t get yourself killed, okay? Otherwise, I won’t be able to take you out for some cake!”

"Well I haven't been on the dying end yet and I don't plan on it honestly and I don't wanna be rude but that sounds kinda tough, I won't try and make you relive any of it though. And of course I hope you would heal me if I need you to but let's hope that doesn't happen, I mean it wouldn't be good if my leg exploded again."

She could tell that it must have been a traumatic experience, and of course it would. What normal person could come back from the death like it was nothing. You would have to be some sort of weird monster to come back from the dead and not be terrified by it. She couldn't imagine how she'd react if that had happened to her, she might freak out and go into to shock. She didn't know how long ago it happened but she had to give her props for being able to be calm right now remembering it.

"Well of course I won't get my self killed, I would miss out on some many fun things and I would miss my adopted child. BUt I will still battle I mean if I don- wait did you just say you'd take me out for cake."

She had never actually had cake before, she had heard good things about it so she was intrigued. She enjoyed food so if she was being serious she would enjoy that a lot. She would keep her composure because she was talking about somewhere in the future since she was probably going to be busy helping people for awhile

Ari chuckled at the rambling woman, noting what she said about her adopted child. Being around the Grumptoes so often, she supposed she had several adopted kids of her own, in all honesty. At Merrze’s reaction to her offer of cake she laughed softly and nodded.

“Once all of this craziness is over, I would be more than happy to take you and your child out for cake. I will bring Nilexa, my pet, she is always fun, perhaps your child will like her. Just remember your promise not to go around dying. The next time you rush into battle, don’t just think about what you are protecting. Think about what you have to come home for. What would happen to your child if you died? Or that creature that I believe may be yours…”

She pointed to the doorway where Fluffy had pounced in, panting as though he had ran the entire way back from Capua to get back to his mistress.

When she saw Fluffy run in she was happy. Fluffy ran up to her and put his head into her lap and he started to pet her. She was happy to see him once again and was of course happy to see that he had made it back in one peace instead of taking a bunch of damage. She loved Fluffy and gave him a few pets to show that she was happy to see him again. She then went back to Ari and continued their conversation.

"I guess you're right, but I'm not used to it honestly. I'm not used to having people who care for me, I've been alone for most of my life until recently. When ever I got close to someone something happened to them, my first real friend was kidnapped along with me, she was sold and I got saved. I wanna go home to the ones I care for but I worry that I'm not strong enough. My goal is to become strong so I can help as many people as I can. You see I want to have my own kingdom one day, sure it seems impossible but if I can then I can make a place where people don't have to live the type of lonely life I had as a child. Of course that's completely impossible to make everyone happy but it doesn't take away my enthusiasm,"

For some reason Merre felt a tear run down her face, she seemed to be crying and she had no idea why. She hadn't cried in a long time. She clenched her fist, she was frustrated at her failure and was.sad. But she liked Ari's advice, she had o be more cautious so she could come home to Ku at the end of the day, but she was worried that she was to weak, what if this happened again but next time she lost more than her leg in battle. She didn't want to die but she had to keep fighting, she wasn't going to let hundreds of people die because she was afraid. She just had to get stronger, but she was starting to realize that she couldn't do it all by herself, she would need to rely on others and work with people instead if doing her own thing like she did in Capua.

Ari gave Merrze a gentle smile, reaching up to wipe the tear away.

“Sometimes being strong doesn’t mean being physically strong. It means being strong enough to make the right decisions for the future. I am not strong enough to be in the middle of battle, but I am strong enough to support those around me. You have big goals, and that is not a bad thing, but it means taking risks when necessary… and NOT taking them, when necessary, too. I am pretty sure if my friends found me on the battlefield, they would worry too much about me to be safe while fighting. That is why I stay here. They handle that fighting, I stay here and I help without being put in danger. But this way, they know they always have something to come home to.”

She gave Merrze a hug, smiling brightly before crouching in front of Fluffy. The dog had quite a few scratches and scrapes, so she pulled out her wand, using Major Heal to mend his injuries. The creature licked her face in appreciation and Ari giggled at the odd picture of such a vicious looking animal being so friendly.

“See, this guy thinks you are plenty strong. He will protect you too. So just be careful out there, I know things are about to get even worse.”

Her mind flicked to the news about Lilly and shook her head before turning a serious look up to Merrze.

“And if you see a little girl on the field… run. I promise you, you will thank me for that advice. Just turn and run, run far, run fast. She is more than a little frightening.”

Ability Used:

She finished her crying and was somewhat happy about what she had said. Her words were very helpful to her and she was going to trust her. She felt as if all of the weight had been lifted of her shoulder, she was so glad that she had let all of that out.

"Thanks, I'll follow your advice, it feels so great to let all of that out you know. I've made a few friends but I haven't been able to let it all out and it built up so much that it finally exploded out of me and it feels so great. Even though you were doing your job thanks for healing me and patching up Fluffy. I think I would have started to break down piece by piece if I didn't get to discuss it."

After she finished what she was saying she gave Ari a bright and kind smile. She was glad to have made her as a friend but her face went from happy to grim as she mentioned the dangerous little girl. If she was talking about the girl who showed up at Savona then she knew all to well about the monster that she was talking about. Her face then started to fill with anger, but it wasn't her normal anger. It was a calm serious type of anger

"If you're talking about the child that can control blood I've already encountered that monster. SHe killed so many people with ease including her fellow soldiers, it was a terrible sight to see. Just thinking about ti I feel so angry, I won't try to fight her I know I would be killed quickly. But if I ever get strong enough and have the chance to kill her I will not hesitate most likely unless I had to."

Ari's eyes widened at the knowledge of exactly what power Lilly had been given. Of all the horrors, it had to be Blood Magic? A magic so taboo, it was forbidden in Magnostadt. Nothing was as horrifying as the power to manipulate the life force of another person like that.

"Merrze, she is more dangerous than you could ever know. I met her before she got... that power. She killed my mother, two councilors and countless others, and that was with just a dagger. She and her father were a terrifying team. The kidnapped me and tortured me for weeks. Just... please, be careful if you see her and run. I don't want to lose someone else to her psychotic ways."

She took a deep breath, she needed to calm down before she upset anyone. Kneeling, she pet Fluffy some more, chuckling when the odd creature licked her fingers.

"I really like this little guy. He is adorable, in a weird way. I hate to cut this short, but I think I should probably go back to healing the others. But we will definitely meet up sometime! I will be around, I promise!"

Giving Fluffy another pat on the head, she gave Merrze a wave before returning to helping Kaila with the injured soldiers.

She gave Fluffy a couple of pets and was glad that Ari had liked him. She, had calmed herself down and was going to take Ari's advice. She wouldn't try to fight the girl even though she didn't plan on it so it worked out anyways.

"I'll trust your words Ari, I'll try to avoid her at all costs. But if I had to save people I won't even hesitate. That's only if I can, I won't sacrifice myself unless I know that I could save people in the process. So you shouldn't have anything to worry about specifically. As I said before I won't do anything stupid next time that could get me hurt or cause my leg to explode."

She was kinda said that she had to leave but Merrze had her own things to get too. She had to get home and see how Ku was doing after all, she had no idea if she was worried sick about her but she would keep that fact that her leg had blown up from her and act as if nothing bad was going on. She didn't want to make her worry about things that didn't really involve her.

"Well I have to head on my way home too. I hope you have a nice day and that we can see eachother soon. I need to make sure I get home quick so that my daughter doesn't start to worry about me. She wants to be by my side like all the time so she might've started worrying the moment that I left. And I know Fluffy is adorable, that's why I gave him such a name. I also gave him the name cause I thought it was Ironic since he has the spikes and all you know."

She then headed on her way home with Fluffy. She was hoping that she could see Ari soon since she liked her so far.