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[The Centipede]

"Poor girl. I'm sure she'll be fine soon." Dixie glances at the bear for a bit before focusing on walking again. "You kinda have a thick accent. Haven't heard that kind for a long while."

They reach the tavern, and Dixie peeks at the door. "Luce!"

[A5G_Reaper]

"You've got the bear? Good, we could start. William, I'm borrowing the stables for a moment."

Lucy walked out, nodding slightly to the irate Jack.

"Good man, you left a bit too quickly! We were just discussing the... infection, that plagued this part. It was up to me to heal the cattles, I'm sure we'll get your friend here to top shape before long."

[wierd]

Jack had a moment of panic, as the grey haired old goat led Mama away from him, and the other villagers moved to block him following.

"Best you not watch." was all they would tell him.


He gave them the heaviest tongue thrashing he knew how to provide, until he ran out of breath, then sat down nervously, tapping his heel on the ground, while rubbing his beard.  He hoped they knew what they were doing...

Damn did he hope....

His thoughts wandered while he waited.  Sensible girl had said he had a thick accent, and the way the inn was built was different from what he was used to.  He could see why they did it that way, but it was not how he had grown up seeing it done. Different style, and the joisting was done differently.  He wondered how far it was he had traveled over the years.

Enough time for them to burn my damn house 3 times. he thought wryly to himself.  It never failed:  He'd settle in an area that was somewhat on one leg, but still surviving, spend a few hard years tending to it and getting it properly green again, and then some [expletive deleted] "Lord" would decide that it should be his "new hunting ground", because of how "bountiful" it was.  It made Jack sick.  Human governments were the worst blood sucking vampiric parasites of them all.  Never once did they think to consider WHY a bit of land that was near to dying suddenly turned lush again. NOT ONCE.  First thing those [expletives deleted] did?  Try to hunt him down, and kick him out.


He waited...   And Waited....

[A5G_Reaper]

It was unclear what method Lucy employed, but the bear followed him almost in a daze as he led it into one of the empty stall. He closed the windows and placed a bucket on the floor and a toolbox - he wasn't carrying anything a moment ago - on nearby bench, opening it to reveal a collection of silver scalpels with some other equally shiny tools.

"Here, wear this."

He passed a pair of round glasses to Dixie, gesturing at her to close the door behind her. Then, after donning his slick black gloves, picked up a thin needle about a foot long.

"We'll need to sedate it, first of all. I'm using magic for it, but a more mundane approach is usable. On lighter - relatively - wounds sometimes we just have the patient chug enough alcohol to stop feeling anything and strap them down."

Tapping the bear at the back of its neck, thin wave of mana flowed out of his fingertips into the flesh. It was quickly apparent that the glasses allowed one to see those flow, penetrating down to the spine of the bear.

The needle floated afterward, piercing into the hide with surprisingly little resistance. The bear itself didn't seemed to feel anything as it went deeper, stopping right as it touched the bone. Another wave flowed through it, way quicker now that it had a conductor, and the bear groggily curled down. Fast asleep.

Placing the needle on the toolbox's tray, Lucy poked the bear at several places before pulling its eyelids open. Satisfied that there's no response, he cracked his fingers and started the surgery.

"Sometimes you'll need physical assistance." He said, gesturing at the box. "Usually for mages, their mana naturally reject ours. Either we had to drain them, or they need to consciously rein it in. If none are an option, well, that's where the scalpels come to play."

He didn't take any of the knives. Instead fine tendrils of mana extended from his fingertips, rapidly multiplying until there were impossible to count. Thousands. Tens of thousands, perhaps. Each of them undulating slightly, yet not two intersect with one another.

Some went to work and took physical solidity, first slicing through the hide. Others pulled at the furs to keep them out of the way, as well as levitating it once the cut was made. A small amount stopped the nervous system from sending signals. Finally the bulk of it went into the blood and various other bodily fluid, keeping them flowing from the severed veins into the other end.

A macabre tapestry formed as most of the bear's scalp levitated off its head, thousands of little blood rivulets running through invisible veins from the smooth cut. The dismantling continued, edges thinner than hair precisely cutting through the skull. Lucy frowned slightly at the resulting green geyser as the bone layer popped, though he remained unfazed.

"Worse than I thought. How did it even remain docile?"

Green beads of liquid split from the stream, the tendrils carrying them into the bucket. The brain was basically bathed in the stuff, and on the center was a strange plant that was all vine and roots spreading into the gyrus. Digging to the brain.

First order was to drain the liquid. The mana tendrils multiplied tenfold, scooping the stuff in large amount and dumping it to the bucket. Then the plant itself was extracted, a highly precise process where every single root was pulled back out exactly the way they came in to avoid damaging the surrounding. This process took the longest, fifteen minutes passed by before the entire thing floated off. So precise that not a single root broke off, some of them grew so long that they started invading the eyes and ears.

"Observe. Now I'm healing the damage, though something this bad would leave some permanent change."

Some tendrils changed color, from barely translucent into bright white. These burrowed down the holes made by the roots, forcing them to recover but it wasn't replacing what have been lost - only growing new, healthy tissue in the gaping void. Still, miled better than natural recovery.

"The liquid will be spread pretty far through the nervous system. I'll show you something advanced. For starters, it's recommended to take one section only since you're limited by the tendrils you can control. But if the injured area is too pervasive, this is doable with finer control."

As the head slowly reassembled, the white tendrils healing the cut seamlessly, the green goo still trickled off the spinal cord. Lucy disassembled the neck even as the head finished, keeping the latter free of green goo even as he cleaned the neck. Then it continued to the next segment, repairing the cervical and moving on to thoracal spine, pausing there to dismantle the upper limbs before continuing further. In the process fixing what health issues he came across, because why not.

By the end, it took the better part of an hour to basically take apart the whole bear. There's an addition of a small fire at one side of the stall where Lucy burned whatever worms and parasites he came across, fueled by mana. The bear itself looked no different than before, and if not for the bucket of green goo and a surprisingly sizeable plant in a petri dish the entire process might have been a ghastly dream.

"We're done here. Dixie? Are you alright?"

[The Centipede]

Dixie nodded. "Mm-hmm. I mentally prepared myself for fairly grotesque stuff, but it just seemed so clean anyway. Well, except for the worms, I find them repulsive for a different reason."

She sighed, then tried to move a leg, but sharp pain emerged instead, lasting for about ten seconds. "Agh-- How long have I been standing here... Ow..." She chuckled, wincing as she sat down the hay-scattered floor. "The... the sheer amount of focus and steadiness required for that is... is... I honestly don't see myself doing any close to that unless I'm at your age. Must've taken you months... Years. Decades?"

Blinking several times to readjust as she took it off, she gave the hyper-accurate mana glasses back to Lucy. "Thank you... for... letting me see. I'm," another chuckle, "not sure if it's something I could devote my life to, but" her smile faded, a bit of seriousness as she looked at the calm, sleeping bear, "more ways to save people's lives would be..."

Trailing off from her fifth(?) unfinished sentence, she took a glance at the petri-dish at the corner. "So, what will you do with that?"

[A5G_Reaper]

"Decades. With a lot of opportunity to practice. And I'm afraid I'm not even half as good as the people who taught me." He waved a hand through a bunch of tendrils. Even without the glasses it's quite apparent that the entire bunch broke off and dispersed. "Imagine having both the raw power and fine control to just, throw someone up into air and dismantle them in alphabetical order before they hit ground."

Lucy chuckled at the reminiscence, but quickly switched topic.

"Your friend might want to take a look at it, the one with white coat. Then I'll send it to Xanios, I suppose. He's the expert in magic around here. But first of all, we've kept the bear's friend waiting. Let's break the news."

[The Centipede]

"Let's."

Dixie slowly stood up and dusted her rear and legs. "Ahh, I'd sure like to burn the floramancer that dared practise this." Her eyes glowed orange for a short while, as they walked out of the barn.

[A5G_Reaper]

"It's done, the bear is as healthy as she could get."

That' the first thing Lucy said at the old hobo sitting outside the stable, who immediately rushed inside. Chuckling, he followed as he reiterated the treatment's result.

"The primary problem, the thing growing in the head, have been successfully extracted. It's in the dish over there. Also drained the green ooze that permeated its nervous system, as well as taking care of minor issues like dental and parasite problems. Expect physical weakening since the liquid also served as painkiller, and some readaptation since the brain had some minor damage from invasive roots."

Was the hobo listening? Probably. Hopefully. Lucy just packed up his tools, those used earlier levitated and torched in magical flame until it's searing red and unquestionably sterile before storing it into the box. Treating your tools right was mandatory, after all.

[wierd]

Jack looked at the invasive plant-like material floating luridly in the small glass dish. It was massive for something the size of the inside of a bear's head; the thought of it, coiled around in there, made him fume.  It looked like no plant he had ever seen growing naturally in any forest he had ever lived in, and much to his eternal displeasure, that had been quite a few now.

More, the thought of nearly every living creature out in the woods outside, having one burrowing inside them, slowly driving them mad--- 

He started to see sparkles his face was so red with silent anger.  He looked at Mama, sprawled out and drooling on the stable floor.  It smelled of horses, which wasnt his thing--  but he didn't care too much.  He knelt down, and curled up beside her, and snuggled her face into his chest, and put one of her heavy arms around, and over one of his sides.  He just laid there, next to her, feeling her breathing.

Was it really over? Would she really get better?  ..Would she remember him?

He stroked her pretty, brown head, and held it close. -- he hoped so, even though he also feared the outcome of that.  He had promised to stay with her until she was better-- and if just like that, she was...

He was a tangled knot of complex emotions.  On the one hand, he was so happy he thought he would die.  On the other, he was so worried, he was afraid to know...  and still more, he knew she needed to move on, and be free, but he longed for her to stay. He felt silly, admitting to himself that he had become quite smitten by the old she-bear. 

He reconciled himself, asserting that whatever she wanted, he would abide by.

Her head and ears wiggled, and her breating changed. He adjusted his posture to look into her face, as life slowly sparkled back behind her eyes.  It was like instinct-- and then he felt her all around him.

The horrible, throbbing pain was gone.  Just some confusion, grogginess and mild nausea. Then curiosity-- an abstract recognition of a funny smell, then joy, at realizing he was there-- Contentment.

He didn't want to ruin it.  He just held her head close, stroking it gently, gazing into those big brown eyes.  As she came around, she began to become curious about the strange feelings he was holding away.  Reluctantly, he brought them out, and did his best to explain each one, and why it was there.  She had not really been so good at understanding them, and had been a bit irritable, so he had been keeping things very simple, but pleasant for her-- at least as much as possible.  The sudden interest was not unwelcome, but it was surprising.  He wanted to know what she would do now, now that the cause of her pain had been removed.

The answer caught him off guard;  It was somewhat complicated for something SHE had come up with on her own-- The best he could interpret it was "Not done with you yet" combined with "I will stay", "I like you (a lot)" and "mine"-- Just before she slurped his face, and broke the connection.

Laying there on the floor next to her, in the stinky stable, he could feel embarassement creeping all over his face.  He wasnt used to such directness, and intensity.  But he liked it all the same.  And... He was relieved.

He stayed there with her for some time, Just enjoying being there beside her.  It really was nice....

Eventually, He helped her up, and they left through the large stable door, out into the sunlight.

[A5G_Reaper]

"Now that we're finally gathered again, when do you plan to venture forth? The situation's worsening by the day, we'd appreciate a timely solution to be found."

Lucy returned to the gathering, thankful that nobody left yet. The petri dish and bucket was placed on the table, for the next topic.

[The Centipede]

"You too, huh? Seems like everyone remotely attuned to magic is capable of conjuring fire." Dixie commented, having observed Lucy torch his stuff.

Observing Jack and his friend bear, a tear fell on her cheek, which she nonchalantly wiped off, lest someone see.

As the bear and her Jack got out of the barn, she turned to Lucy. "I think that's everyone ready. Let's find that floramancer... or some other... cause... How are you in combat?"


"Maybeee... right now? Anyone else? How's bear doing, by the way? She good?"

[wierd]

Jack was still very flustered.  He didn't have words then, for anything. His face just colored more at "Sensible girl's" question. He struggled for several seconds trying to find an answer, all the while impulsively scratching behind his head, and looking away.  He could feel the color burning on his cheeks.


Yeah... he stammered.  She's good.

"O-oh. Good to hear." said the sensible girl.

He thought his face would melt.

[King Zultan]

Burt continued to sit in the corner of the room scribbling away in his book, until he heard that old man say something again which to him seemed like a good time to hide his book on his person so no government spies could look at it.

"I'm ready to go do this thing whenever, its not like I have anything I need to be doing."

[Slyph]

Linea attended the meeting, intentionally trying to not stands out too much. She already had her agenda, and that was apparently in line with their plan. She just hoped the hermit and his bear would have some result with tracking the smell.

[invul_nerable]

"Now that we're finally gathered again, when do you plan to venture forth? The situation's worsening by the day, we'd appreciate a timely solution to be found."

Lucy returned to the gathering, thankful that nobody left yet. The petri dish and bucket was placed on the table, for the next topic.

"Is there somekind of a cave or burrow around here?" The Ironclad slayer asked. "God, I'm itching to kill greenskins right now."