“You’re letting her die!” he snapped back at Jian, before switching to gaze pleadingly at us as we examined the woman strapped down on the table. “Please! She’s my granddaughter!”
I waved a hand at him absently to be quiet, as I continued to examine her, speaking only to Oracle.
“Do you think we can put the skin back and heal it?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not; we can make it regrow, so…”
“But what if it regrows the skin fully? Then she’d end up with the flap of skin; it’d hang off her…”
“Cut it away, maybe? No, if we could smooth it back into place, it might heal properly, and it’d use a lot less mana…”
“Why isn’t she moving?” I asked suddenly, crouching down, and brushing her hair away from her face. She hung there, completely limp, but her eyes glared forward, staring at the ground fixedly. I waved a hand in front of her eyes, but there was no reaction, just a slow run of tears down her cheeks.
I checked my mana; it was sitting at seven points, far too low to heal her, and not even high enough to enable me to use my ‘Examine’ spell.
“Maybe she’s been poisoned? Or paralyzed?” Oracle guessed, and I straightened up, moving over to the cage to look into the eyes of the grey-haired man.
“I’ll make this quick, as seconds could count here. I don’t have the mana to heal her, or even to examine her properly. What happened to her?”
“One of the two with the spider legs on their back bit her. That’s what they did to all of us. It makes you stop resisting, you can’t move or speak. When it wore off, we were all in here, and they’d take us out one by one, skinning us.”
“How long until it wears off?” I asked and he shook his head.
“I don’t know. They did it to all of us, then we woke up here. Each time they take someone to skin, they kill them after, so nobody ever wakes up…”
“Great. Okay…” I said, looking around the room for inspiration. My eyes alighted on a box full of silks, and I spun back to him. “Healing potions!” I snapped, gesturing to the stacked boxes. “Did you have any?”
“We had a few, but… I don’t know what happened to them! We didn’t have a lot to sell anyway, it was just the couple we always took in case we needed them. For all I know, someone used them.”
“Fuck.” I muttered looking around and wracking my brain for another solution. “What about herbs? Alchemy ingredients?”
“There were a few, but I don’t know…”
“Everyone!” I called out, smacking my hands together hard, getting the attention of the entire cavern. “I need this place searched. we’re looking for healing or mana potions, any herbs or plants, bandages, or anything else we can find. Get looking!”
“Ummm, we were already looking to use them on you and the others, Jax.” Lydia whispered, and I grimaced, shaking my head.
“Well, keep looking, I guess.” I said, and I turned back to the people in the cage. There were four of them, three men and a woman, all naked, filthy, and starving. I looked them over and wished I had the mana for a fountain for them, but I needed all I could get. “Okay, I need my people searching the cavern, not watching over you, so for now, until it’s safe and sorted, you’re staying in there. Sorry,” I said, and I turned away, walking over to the remnants of the fire. The meat they’d had there was pretty messed up, having been hit by my spell, but maybe…
“The meat’s human,” the older man called out, and I looked at him. “The meat, the stuff that they had roasting…apart from that spider they found, all the meat they ate was…us.”
I swallowed hard and backed away from the meat I’d been reaching for, my plan of giving it to the prisoners well and truly derailed.
“Okay, thanks for the heads up,” I muttered and turned to the Drow bodies nearby. I started searching them quickly, as did Bane and Barrett, but as Lydia warned us, they didn’t have any potions, and while they had a handful of likely magical rings and gear, I’d need to ‘Examine’ it to work out what it was, so they were out.
Instead we moved on to more bodies and the rest of the cavern, the only one of us to find a potion was Miren, and that was a glowing ruby red, drawing a relieved sigh from us all.
The cavern went quiet as she handed it over to me, my obvious wounds, combined with those of my teams, made the girls grandfather speak up quickly, unaware I was communicating with Oracle already.
“It should help her, if we can smooth the skin back into place and it’s not died yet…I’m sorry, Jax; I just don’t know if it’ll work…”
“We can give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll have to cut the skin free again, then heal her up…wait, will she be able to swallow the potion, though?”
“No, as heavily paralyzed as she is, it could drown her…we’d need to wait for her to come around first…”
“Please! Look, I don’t know who you are, but she’s half-skinned, for fuck’s sake…please, she’d my granddaughter, I’ll do anything!” he begged, interrupting my conversation, and I frowned at him before deliberately smoothing away the obvious irritation on my face.
“She’s paralyzed, so she can’t drink it. It’d drown her if we tried…”
“I’ll buy it from you!” he said quickly, cutting me off.
“For…what the hell are you going to pay for it with? You’re in a fucking cage, and you’re naked…anything you managed to keep back is in the ‘prison wallet’, so I don’t fucking want it, pal.” I shook my head, and as I started to
