Chapter Twenty-nine
Mia moved stiffly in extreme pain. She could not believe the carnage in the room. There was blood everywhere. She suspected a great deal of it was hers. She pushed it away and knelt down beside Raphael. He was valiantly holding his brother’s insides in.
“I ordered three elemental hearts. I had to call in some favors,” he said.
Mia put her hands on Michael and opened herself up to the healing mages.
Raphael watched the small woman summon powers from constellations far from theirs. She lifted her hand up and grabbed something Raphael could not see. She stretched the material over the open abdomen. “It’s like cling film,” Mia told him, but it’s made by spiders.” She laid her head on Michael’s chest and listened. “Not good. I hear wind where there should be liquid and liquid where there should be air. Is this normal?”
“Our bodies are very similar to yours. It’s where our father got your design from.”
“I know it sounds wrong, but we’ve closed up his abdomen, but I need to open up his chest. I need to get my hands inside him. But I fear he’s lost too much blood.”
“What if you could do that without opening him up?”
“I’m game,” Mia said.
“Give me your hands,” Raphael said.
Mia did.
“God made us up of stardust; he made you of dust. I’m going to change this temporarily.”
Mia felt a warming, and her skin became luminous. Her eyes could see through Michael’s skin. She laid her hands on his chest gently and watched as they sunk through the skin. She saw the problem. A blade had broken off and was joining half the angel’s heart with his lung. Mia pulled it very slowly out healing the cells as the blade was pulled from them. Soon the blade had been extracted.
“I need my dust back,” Mia said.
Raphael obliged.
Mia closed her eyes and let the words only she could hear guide her.
Michael coughed. He expelled the blood that had flowed into his injured lung. His heart pumped new blood through his body.
“Don’t move,” she cooed.
There was a commotion outside, and two mammoth helmet-wearing winged men walked into the room with the elemental hearts. Mia reached out and took a dagger from one of them. She sliced the heart so it was thin and wide. She laid the heart over the exposed abdomen. It took two hearts to cover the space. She put her hand on Michael. “Stand back and open that window,” she said, holding out the dagger.
A blast of energy shot out of the heavens and hit the knife and flowed through Mia into Michael’s body. Mia held on as long as she could and then broke the connection.
She stood up and asked, “Where is the other one?”
“Here, Mia,” Sariel called.
Mia walked over to where Sariel was trying to stay conscious. He had a spear thrust through his shoulder diagonally, and it pinned him into the wood of the floor through his thigh. Someone had fashioned him a seat to keep in this position.
“Oh my Google, what happened?” Mia asked. “Why didn’t someone take it… Oh, I see,” she said, looking at the femoral artery in his leg. The shaft of the spear was dangerously close to severing it.
“I can tell you, if I move or it moves, then it’s all over,” Sariel said weakly. “I told them to wait until you were here.”
Mia nodded and looked around for something to use as a tourniquet. She called over to one of the two dragon hunters. “You there, give me your belt.”
The angel walked over to challenge her request but saw the seriousness of her face and untied it.
“You’re a strong fella, I need you to stay here and help me,” Mia ordered, not looking at him. She was busy winding the belt around Sariel’s thigh.
“Mia…” Sariel started to say.
“Don’t talk, save your strength.” She motioned for the angel to come closer. “I need you to hold this on either side. It’s important it doesn’t move. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” the angel answered curtly.
“Good. Does anyone here have the power of fire?”
“I do.”
“Well that was handy. Concentrate a tiny ring of fire here. We need to break the shaft without moving it. I can’t saw through it because we’ll lose his leg.”
“I understand.”
“When it breaks, be prepared to catch him. I’ll keep the leg still.”
“I understand.”
Mia took a deep breath and said, “Now.”
The wood burned quickly, and the shaft broke. Sariel, no longer having the spear to brace him, crumpled, but the angel caught him and eased him to the ground. He kneeled behind him to keep the upper portion of the spear from doing more damage while Mia pulled the spearhead out of the wood floor.
Mia was pleased with her helper. She worked quickly, taking the spearhead again in her hands and pulling it away from the artery as she slipped it out of Sariel’s thigh. She cut part of the ventricle out of the last elemental heart, sliced it on one side, and wrapped it around the damaged area of the artery. She then closed her eyes as she held it in place. She spoke old words she had learned from the healing mages, and her hand glowed as the dragon became one with the archangel. She pulled her hand away and released the tourniquet. She saw that the blood moved again through the artery without leaking. She closed the wound, paying special attention to knitting his damaged muscle tissue together.
“Sariel, move your toes,” she ordered.
He did so. Mia was so happy, she hugged her helper before concentrating on Sariel’s shoulder. She worked quickly but meticulously. Soon, Sariel could be laid back on
