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Lucían spends the next few mornings copying out everything he remembers from the grimoire, occasional bits of spells, partially recalled runes, descriptions of what one could call up with the unholy powers contained within. There’s nothing terribly useful that he internalized, like, for example, how to destroy the undead or break the necromancer’s thrall over the abominations, but every piece of information is something they didn’t have before. He brings Mother Geraldine, Sister Evelyn and Sister Abigail over to the Guildhouse so they can examine the corpse, as well, and all three prove as insightful as he’d hoped.
“This looks like it was magically transformed,” Sister Abigail says, face closer to the undead bear’s distorted skull than Lucían would want to get. She taps her scalpel against the jawbone, then tugs the flesh further away from where the jaw connects to the skull with gloved fingers. “I wondered at first if it had been assembled piecemeal, but look, it’s the same number of teeth you get in a bear, and mostly the same shape, they’re just enlarged.”
“You’re right,” Mother Geraldine says, peering over the younger woman’s shoulder. Her upper lip glistens with the eucalyptus and mint salve that Sister Evelyn thoughtfully brought with her. They’ve all dabbed it under their nostrils, and it makes being in a room with a huge, half-decomposed, twice-dead corpse rather more bearable. Every once in a while Lucían pulls the heat out of the thing to keep it, if not fresh, at least less rotten than it would otherwise be. “I wonder...” Mother Geraldine muses, almost to herself, and pulls a glove off one hand so she can cautiously press a finger to the bone. She closes her eyes and Lucían feels the push of her magic, different than what he’d expected, and when the Mother takes her hand away she looks pleased.
“It feels like the bone was broken, healed, and re-broken over and over,” she says to Sister Abigail. “That would be consistent with a magical transformation, I think.” She steps back and wipes her bare hand on a cloth that Lucían helpfully holds out. “I hope it happened after this bear was already dead, because it seems excruciatingly painful.”
“Wait, you can tell that?” Lucían asks. “How?” Sister Abigail and Sister Evelyn crowd in, too, faces alight with curiosity. Mother Geraldine frowns slightly, eyes unfocusing as she tries to find the words.
“When you cast a healing spell, you can feel where the damage is, yes?” she starts after a moment, and the three others nod. “And you know when a bone heals, the healed spot is stronger than the bone around it? When I healed that woman’s broken arm the other day, I could feel that stronger spot where the break had been. It was like the magic was more attracted to where it had already done work. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, it’s like—” Sister Evelyn sketches vaguely in the air with her hands “—practicing magic makes it easier because your body remembers the path it needs to take. Maybe that applies to healing, as well? Maybe the magic flows down the same channels, like water.”
“Huh,” Lucían says, as they all stare into the middle distance for a bit. “That’s a good theory. Here, test it on me.” He takes a glove off and holds out his bare hand. “Everyone take a turn and then we’ll see if your impressions match up.”
It’s interesting, being on the receiving end of a magical... investigation, Lucían figures he should call it. He’s had others heal him in the past. Any time you accidentally cut yourself in the kitchen back at the monastery you’d have any number of Brothers clamoring to help you out, but this is different. He’s not actually in pain, for one thing, so he has the energy and focus to pay attention to how it feels when Mother Geraldine touches his hand and sends a gentle wash of power into him. It’s controlled, careful, a steady pressure that feels like someone squeezing his hand reassuringly, but in his whole body. It’s incredibly comforting, and he misses it a little when Mother Geraldine pulls her power back into herself and steps away. She says nothing and nods at Sister Abigail to go next.
Lucían thinks he’s prepared for Abigail’s magic, but as soon as she touches his hand he realizes her power is nothing like Mother Geraldine’s. Sister Abigail’s magic marches through him in a quick wave, efficient and direct, and while it doesn’t hurt, it’s definitely more noticeable. It also takes less time, the deep push of it rolling from her touch all the way out to his fingertips, his toes, and the top of his head, and then rolling back in like water rushing to fill the depression left by a thrown rock. He staggers just a little as she releases his hand, not because she did anything wrong but because of the strength of the sensation. Sister Abigail narrows her eyes at him and steps back, gesturing for Sister Evelyn to take her turn.
Evelyn’s magic is, again, very different. It buzzes into him like a hummingbird, a fizzing ball skittering through his body, bouncing from place to place as it moves. Lucían forces himself to stay perfectly still, which is difficult because it tickles a bit, and being tickled from within one’s own bone marrow is an extremely strange feeling. Sister Evelyn frowns at him very firmly as she releases his hand and steps back, and he realizes this might have been the wrong way for a good friend to (potentially) learn about that time he got stabbed in the gut pretty hard.
“Okay,” he says, “point to what you found?”
Lucían’s practically not even done speaking before three fingers point directly at the hidden scar that curls across his stomach, and Sister Evelyn blurts, “When the fuck did you get stabbed that badly?” She slaps her bare hand over her mouth and turns to Mother Geraldine, eyes wide. “Sorry, Holy Mother, that was rude of me.”
“It’s a fair question, though,” Mother Geraldine says, eyeing Lucían speculatively.
He blushes (which is ridiculous, he shouldn’t be embarrassed about being stabbed, he was fighting for his life and did pretty well, thank you very much) and says, “The important thing is that we’ve just learned how to do a thing no one at the monastery ever thought of, and that we know a little bit more about how these creatures are being created.” Something occurs to him, and he turns back to the corpse with a frown. “Holy Mother,” he asks, “You didn’t have any trouble using your magic on this? Even though it’s cursed?”
“I didn’t,” she confirms, and then raises her eyebrows. “You’re right, that’s strange, since you weren’t able to heal the wounds without dispelling first. Huh.” The older woman turns to the used-to-be-a-bear and narrows her eyes at it. “Is it because it’s dead?”
“Maybe it’s because it’s not actually a healing spell,” Sister Abigail offers.
“Or because there’s nothing to heal because it’s already dead?” Evelyn throws out. “I wish we had a live one so we could experiment properly.”
Lucían, Abigail, and Geraldine turn in unison and raise three eyebrows at her in absolute silence. Sister Evelyn blushes hotly and protests, “Not a big one! And you know we’d learn more if we could do real science on an active specimen!”
“You’re not wrong,” Sister Abigail allows, turning her dark gaze back to the corpse. “I’m going to try to heal it,” she announces, and sets her bare hand on a less-rotten section of the creature’s flank. Lucían feels the push of her magic, and also feels it have about as much effect as throwing a cupful of water onto a bonfire. Sister Abigail takes her hand away and examines the area where it sat. “Well, that didn’t do much of anything,” she says, stepping away to wipe her hands on a cloth. “Someone else have a go.”
“I wonder...” Sister Evelyn says with a tilt of her head as she steps forward to lay her bare hand on the beast. She closes her eyes, and Lucían feels the push of her spell, differently flavored than the one Abigail had cast, and a great puff of steam rises up from around her hand and directly into her face. Evelyn staggers back, coughing violently, and when they’ve fetched her a drink of water and no one is in danger of choking on the fumes, Lucían examines the location of her spell. The flesh looks... less cursed, to say it frankly.
“What did you do?” he asks, prodding it with his fingers and finding it no longer carries the malicious buzz of cursed energy.
“I blessed it,” Sister Evelyn says proudly. “That’s what the holy water is doing, right? I decided to see if I could take out the middleman.” She’s flushed with accomplishment, making the freckles on the bridge of her nose stand out, and Sister Abigail squeezes her shoulder in a congratulatory way and hands her a cloth to wipe her hands.
“Huh,” Lucían says, which seems to be the word of the day, and he presses a finger to the exposed jaw bone and pushes his magic into it, just to see, not to heal. The skittering lights of his power dance up and down the distended bone and yes, he can feel what Mother Geraldine was talking about. His magic wants to catch in dozens of places where the aftereffects of whatever dark powers created this creature have left their mark. Interesting. The monastery never used magic for diagnosis like this, and he makes a note to do more experimenting with the use later. Lucían calls the magic back to himself, moves his hand to near where Evelyn did her blessing, and repeats the process. Oh, that’s very interesting, he can feel the buzz of the malignant curse growing stronger in one direction, and the inert dead flesh of what is mostly a regular bear in the other. He stays like that for a few minutes, vaguely aware of the nuns discussing further theories behind him, but the curse doesn’t grow, making no movements toward re-infecting the purified area. Lucían nods, satisfied, and just for his own curiosity pushes a blessing into the double-dead bear, as though he was creating holy water. Just as with Sister Evelyn, the curse dispels in a puff of sour-smelling steam. Unlike with Sister Evelyn, Lucían leans out of the way so it doesn’t engulf his whole head.
“Well,” he says as the foul cloud disappears, “if we run into anyone else with cursed wounds, it looks like we may be able to avoid needing holy water.”
“Still good to have it on hand, though,” Sister Abigail says thoughtfully. “We can start supplying the merchant caravans with it, so if they get attacked they can start treatment immediately.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Mother Geraldine says, looking up from her examination of an unnaturally elongated foreleg. “Is Octavia still with the Merchant’s Guild? We could start with her.”
The nuns discuss logistics as they finish up their investigation for the morning. Lucían lags behind to chill the corpse again, and as he exits, blinking, into the fresh air and late spring sunshine outside, it’s to a shouted “Kid!” and a dark blur thudding into him before his eyes have a chance to adjust.
“Knife!” he squeaks out as she attempts to crush his ribs with a hug. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Lucían drops his arms around her shoulders, feels some of the tension leak out of him because he has friends, now, and they’re going to help him fix this mess. Not all of the tension leaves him, though, mostly because it physically can’t with how tight her arms are and he has to tap her between the shoulder blades and wheeze, “Can’t breathe,” before she releases him.
“Hola! How the fuck are you?” the Knife asks in Lengua, stepping back so she can look him over. She moves one hand to his bicep and squeezes experimentally. “You haven’t been training enough,” she accuses, eyes narrowed, and Lucían blushes and waves his hands vaguely to fend her off.
“I’ve been busy,” he protests in the same language, and the Knife snorts and smacks at him, slower than usual so he has a chance to block it.
“What’s more important than training enough to keep your own ass alive?” she asks, grabbing his wrist and pulling him into an arm lock.
“Teaching magic to a hospital full of nuns so we can fight the undead?” Lucían offers, escaping the hold, then dropping low and pushing his body forward against her, one leg tucked behind her calf. The Knife lets him take her over backward, just enough to make him feel victorious, and then grabs him and yanks him down after her, flipping them so he ends up flat on his back and she’s pinned his shoulders down with her knees.
“That’s a pretty good reason,” she allows, producing a knife from somewhere on her person and using it to check her reflection. Not a single hair has escaped her tight, neat braids, but she pats her free hand over them anyway before she tucks the knife back away. “We’re still starting your training up again come mañana. If we’re going up against the undead then like hell am I gonna let you go and die on the She-Wolf because you didn’t have time to practice.”
“That’s fair,” Lucían says, squinting up at her, silhouetted against the blue sky. “You’ve changed your braids.” Her dark, kinky hair is twisted in a different way since the last time he saw her, and there are silver beads worked in here and there. “It looks bonita,” he tells her honestly, and the Knife snorts.
“Compliments won’t get you out of training, niño,” she snaps, but then she bounces back to her feet and leans down to give him a hand up, so he knows she’s not actually mad. “How’ve you been finding Granite Falls?” she asks as they wander toward the dining hall. “Get stabbed again yet?”
“Granite Falls is beautiful, no I haven’t been stabbed,” Lucían answers in a monotone. “Actually, we got back both the books located here. The nuns had one, and I scared some smugglers into giving the other one back.”
“Fuck, verdad?” the Knife asks, eyeballing him from head to toes. “How’d you manage that?”
Lucían looks her dead in the eye and lights one of his hands on fire. She stops in mid-step and stares at him with one eyebrow raised for a good long moment. “Si,” the Knife says with a slow nod. “Si, I can see how that would work.” With a wave of his hand Lucían dismisses the flame, and they continue on toward lunch in companionable silence for a bit before she says, “I see things have been going well with the She-Wolf.”
Lucían glances at her, eyebrows raised, and she reaches out a dark brown hand and taps him on the neck, right where, oh hells, Glory likes to bite him. He thought it was covered by the collar on this tunic, damn it, and he feels his face heat up immediately. “Things have been bueno, we’re very much in love, how obvious is this bruise?” The last he hisses at her under his breath, because shit, has he been carrying around these—these sex bruises in front of the nuns this whole time?
“Relax, Lucían,” the Knife says, gentler than usual but still rolling her eyes. “I spotted it when I hugged you, and I—” she coughs, almost primly “—know what to expect from the She-Wolf, if you take my meaning.” She leans over and ruffles his hair with a grin. “I’m just giving you shit. I’m very happy for you both, don’t tell anyone I said so.”
“If you don’t tell anyone about this—” Lucían waves at his neck “—then acuerdo.” The Knife snorts a laugh as they cross into the dining hall. Whatever she might have said is drowned out by a booming, “Lucían!” and when he looks at the source, he has just enough time to prepare himself before the Black Bear sweeps him off his feet into a huge hug. The enormous man fully tosses him into the air and catches him, and Lucían wonders, not for the first time, how this became his life.
“How are you? She-Wolf tells me you’re a teacher now?” Black Bear says as he sets Lucían back on the ground. He drops a heavy, muscled arm around Lucían’s much-smaller shoulders and steers them both over to a table where Glory, the Wall, and a couple other warriors Lucían recognizes from Knightsrest sit.
“Yes, I’m training the nuns at the hospital in healing magic,” Lucían says, switching back to the common pidgen. “It’s very rewarding. How are you? Is Apollo well?”
“We got a puppy!” Black Bear says with a huge grin. “Apollo’s as happy as I’ve ever seen him. Little Cheddar is probably going to be fully grown by the time I get back, but it’s nice to know they have each other while I’m away.”
“Sorry to take you away from your family,” Lucían says, guilty again at the fallout from what he’d thought was a simple book commission.
They’re close enough to the table now to be overheard, apparently, because the Wall laughs and says, “Please, when the Black Bear heard it he might get to fight the undead he was the first to volunteer.”
“Oh, don’t tell me that you’re not excited to get to go up against an undead bear monster,” the Black Bear says as he drops into his chair.
“I’d never lie like that,” the Wall says. “I’m gonna get a tooth and make it into a necklace.”
“I want a claw,” says one of the people Lucían hasn’t been introduced to yet, a warrior of average size and not-immediately-apparent gender whose long brown hair is pulled back into a braid. Lucían slides his eyes to Glory and raises his eyebrows in a silent question.
“This is the Badger,” Glory says immediately. “They’re a demolitions expert and dabble in architecture.”
“Mostly because knowing how buildings work makes it easier to blow them up when needed,” the Badger says with a grin, their deep blue eyes amused. They have gold rings in their nose, ears, and eyebrows, glinting brightly against their brown skin, and when they reach across the table to shake Lucían’s hand their grip is firm. “Nice to meet you properly, mage.”
“I’m not really a mage—” Lucían starts, and both Glory and the Knife snort loudly enough to cut off whatever else he was about to say.
“He’s very modest,” the Knife says with an eyeroll, leaning over Lucían to grab a pastry and a slice of fruit from the platters piled high in the center of the table.
“You can do magic and none of the rest of us can,” says the final person at the table, a tall thin woman with straight black hair and brown, rounded eyes. “I’d say that makes you enough of a mage for our purposes.” She reaches across the table to shake his hand. “I’m the Kestrel. Archery.”
“So,” the Knife says, licking some crumbs off her fingers, “when do we go second-kill these undead fucks?”
“That’s up to the Hammer,” Glory says, working her way through a full platter without bothering with a plate. “Also, we all already agreed to just call it killing them, anything else will be too confusing.” Lucían makes eye contact with the Knife so he can shake his head infinitesimally, and her teeth flash bright in her dark face for a split second.
“Right. I will definitely honor that agreement I wasn’t here for, and not make jokes about killing things that have technically already died.” The Knife raises one hand like she’s making a solemn vow, and Glory snorts and says, “No, you won’t.”
“Nah, I won’t,” the Knife agrees, popping another pastry into her mouth, and Lucían smothers a smile as the table around him settles into conversation. He has friends, and they’re here, and they’re going to help. They’re going to fix this together, they really are. A hard knot of worry under his ribcage finally releases, and he exhales and reaches for a pastry.