Chương 48: Warmer

Jonny was no medical expert, but he had seen enough movies to know what an infected wound looked like. He was also pretty sure that this didn't just suddenly happen. That wasn't the level of infection that just appeared one night. She had been dealing with this for a while. No wonder she was so sure she was gonna die… Igrette stirred, groaning slightly, and while her eyes fluttered as she regained consciousness, Jonny got back to his feet with his hands on his hips.

When Igrette fully woke up, she blinked at him a few times, then looked down at her side, where the bandages were still visible. She was still a little out of it, but she understood enough.

"You should just leave me," she said.

"No," said Jonny.

"You should just stop saying that."

"I'm dead weight."

"If you keep talking like that, even if you become literal dead weight, I will still keep dragging you along. I will drag your body all the way across the mountain range if I have to. I'm not leaving you behind. So either give me something more practical to do, or be quiet and let me handle it."

"Leaving me would be the most practical thing…" she muttered, ignoring Jonny's glare.

"But if that's not an option…" She looked down at the wound at her side again, then over at her injured arm, then down at her sword. Without a word, she started untying the sling from her neck, letting the arm fall to her side. She undid the tie on the front of her coat, then slid her bad arm out, exposing the skin and bandages underneath. Her arm did not look any better than her side. If anything, it looked worse, swollen and purple, and with the same black veins sticking out from beneath the bandages.

Jonny was shocked when he saw her flex her fingers on that arm. It had been severed, and broken, and then reattached, and now infected, and somehow, it was still working, at least a little bit. She then drew her sword, and only then did Jonny finally realize what she was about to do. He made no move to stop her, though, frozen in horror and disgust at what he was seeing. Igrette raised her bad arm, holding it out to the side.

She clenched her hand into a weak fist for one last time, and then, in one clean motion, she drew her sword and severed the arm at the shoulder. The wound barely bled, but that almost made the whole thing worse for Jonny. It was uncanny, and it made him want to vomit, but he kept watching anyway as Igrette closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. She seemed to be holding back the blood through sheer force of will, somehow, and as he watched she concentrated her mana on her arm, and the wound began to scab over.

A minute later, it was done, and she was pale and breathing heavily.

"Trying to keep my arm was costing me too much," she said, panting.

"I will be able to fight off the infection better now."

"How much better?"

"…I still need more mana."

"So we need a mana well still."

"I can keep it at bay for a few days, but then it will start getting worse again."

"How many days?"

"Four?" She leaned back, still breathing heavily.

"Maybe five. After that, only God can save me."

"Four days to get to a mana well…" Jonny rubbed his chin. Their situation had never been good, but now, for the first time, they had a hard time limit. If they didn't make the time limit, Igrette was dead. He could try going back the way they came. If they didn't stop to rest, he could probably make it there around nightfall. But it would still have been three days since they abandoned it. That was plenty of time for whatever injured the wolverine to move in.

It would be a wasted trip, and he knew for a fact that there were mana wells closer. They had specifically gone around multiple of them in the past two days. The one they had just been at had the highest chance of being unoccupied, but if it was occupied, it was almost definitely occupied by a powerful predator. Meanwhile the ones nearby were total mysteries, but they were much closer.

Going back would spend at least one of their precious days for no guarantee, while checking the ones in the immediate vicinity could be done much more quickly. We'll save the old spot as a last resort.

"Igrette, where did you say the nearest mana wells were?"

"You want to scout them?"

"Yeah." Igrette shifted her weight and winced, letting out a hiss of pain before responding by pointing her finger in three directions, one after another. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"There, there, and there," she said.

"And one a bit further directly behind me." Jonny mentally noted down where she had pointed and nodded.

"I'll be back soon. Rest up." Igrette practically fell to the side as she tried to lay down, and Jonny had to step forward to help her get down safely. She was still feverish, and had been short of breath ever since she amputated her arm, but Jonny didn't know what else he could do for her. Not with nothing available to him. The only thing he could do was find a place where they could safely rest, something he wasn't sure existed in a place like this.

"I'll be back," he said again, then ducked out of their makeshift snowbank shelter and into the cool morning air. Once outside, he took a few seconds to regain his bearings, remembering the directions Igrette had pointed and making a mental map of where it was. They had been traveling along a ridgeline before they stepped off for shelter, but the ridgeline still served as a good landmark.

Each side of the ridge had one mana well, there was along the same line as the ridge, back the way they came, and the last one, the furthest one, was also somewhat along the ridge. The ridge curved to the side, so while Igrette had indicated more of a direct line, so it wasn't exactly along the ridge, but he could still use it as a good reference.

He wasn't sure which of the other three was the closest, but since they were already on one side of the ridge—the east side—he figured it would be best to go to that side first. At least this way, he wouldn't have to go quite as far uphill. Jonny marched through the snow, down into a narrow valley, and up another ridge, and then again to a second valley before he finally began to sense the mana well himself. He slowed his pace, getting down into a crouch as he did his best to sneak forward.

Mana wells meant an almost certain chance of magic beasts, and he would be a pretty terrible scout if they noticed him first. He stayed at the top of the ridge for a little while, poking his head out from behind a tree, and trying to look in the direction the mana was densest. He didn't see anything, nor did he hear anything beyond the usual sounds of morning. There were birds in the trees, and every once in a while, he spotted a more mundane magic beast, like a squirrel, scurrying up a tree.

The fact that such creatures lived here was a somewhat good sign. It meant that whatever lived here couldn't be too territorial. Igrette had said that some magic beasts were so aggressive around mana wells that even the birds too small to make a good meal didn't dare stay too close. He waited for a quarter of an hour, and when nothing of significance happen, only then did he start creeping his way down into the valley and toward the mana well.

Nothing disturbed his quiet hike, and he soon made it to the bottom of the valley, moving ever-slower as he neared the other side. The mana was noticeably denser here, to the point that it was already beyond the level of the orphanage's mana well. And he could tell it only got denser further in. The problem was that "further in" seemed to mean underground. He had reached the bottom of the valley, but his mana sense was pointing him directly into the ground for the point where the denser mana originated.

He spent another quarter of an hour silently searching for any sort of cave entrance that might lead further down. He had no luck, but when he climbed to the top of the ridge on that side of the valley, and down the other, he finally spotted it. It was a crevice between two large boulders, and while he did not dare enter, he got close enough to be right on top of the boulder. A chill ran down his spine as he realized that even here, the mana was almost as dense as it had been at the previous mana well.

And he could tell that it only got denser still further underground. If anything lived here, it was powerful. To hold such a strong mana well, it would need to be strong enough to fight off everything else that would want a piece of it. And yet… What if the cave is too narrow? While size did not always correlate with strength, when it came to simpler beasts, it usually did. With more magical ones, that was not necessarily the case, but this mountain range was not home to too many more magical species.

The greatest dangers tended to be the bears and the wolves, neither of which would fit in this cave if it was too narrow. The issue was that the mouth of the cave was more than enough for even the enormous bear that Igrette had slain to fit through, and betting that it narrowed deeper in was not safe… But given Igrette's state, did he have a choice? He contemplated from his position above the cave entrance for a few minutes. If there was something powerful in there, and he disturbed it, he was dead.

But if there wasn't, and he walked away, he could be passing up the ideal chance to save Igrette. If the cave was too narrow for the greater magic beasts, but not too narrow for two relatively thin humans, there was no better place to be. Ultimately, he decided to go in and check anyway. As he stood in front of the mouth of the cave, he felt the powerful mana of the mana well flowing out, now stronger than any ambient mana he had ever felt.

And as he peered down into the darkness, it didn't look like the cave got any narrower. I have to check, he thought, steeling himself to go in deeper. For the first time in a while, he was grateful for his small size. It made it much easier for him to step softly and not make a sound. He walked into the darkness, pausing every few seconds to listen and make sure nothing was coming, either from inside or out. Nothing did, but the further he went, the more he realized that it would be best to turn around.

The cave was not narrowing, and if it was still this big this far in… He still took a few more steps, pulled by a desperate hope that this would be the answer, and then he heard it. He froze in his tracks and his heart skipped a beat. Something was in the cave ahead of him. Something huge. He could hear it breathing, and he could tell just from the sound that he didn't want to mess with it. A bear? he thought. No, wait… While he was stopped, he also noticed that it was somehow oddly warm in the cave.

Much warmer than anywhere that wasn't heated by fire. Why? How? He didn't want to find out. Just as quietly as he had entered, he left, tiptoeing out, back up the ridge, and only when he felt certain that whatever was in there wasn't going to come after him, he broke into a run, heading back to the starting ridge where Igrette was still resting. Not that one, then, he thought. One down, three more to go.