Chương 37: Chapter 32 — Giving Max a Hand

It was lunch when they arrived. Nibbles had requested a salad and a carrot, with a glass of raspberry juice. He had just sat down and taken his first bite when the knock came. He set down his fork, wiped his mouth, and crossed to the door. The smell hit him before he fully opened the door. Fenwick's Flower Scent spell covered the surface well enough. It did not cover what was underneath.

The rot of a separated hand at close range was specific and insistent, and whatever appetite Nibbles had built up over a morning of correspondence dissipated in the time it took him to register what he was looking at. He looked at Max's wrist. He looked at the acorn bag in Fenwick's robe pocket. He looked back at Max's wrist.

"Brother Fenwick," he said.

"It's in the bag," said Fenwick.

"With a preservation cantrip. We have probably twelve hours before that becomes a concern." Nibbles covered his nose as discreetly as he could and breathed through his mouth.

"Sister Marvella," he said to the acolyte in the doorway.

"Find Brother Corwin and ask him to prepare the healing room. Tell him we have a reattachment. Fenwick, cast your spell again to cover the scent. I won't have the whole order smelling of death again." The acolyte looked at Max. At the wrist. At the acorn bag.

"Yes, High Priest," she said, and went.

"Yes, High Priest," echoed Fenwick, who had just realized he should have cast it after it happened, but with everything going on, he had been a bit flustered. Fenwick cast. ⟨ [Spell Cast] ⟩ Flower Scent. Small blooms materialized in the air around Max — lavender, roses, a sprig of mint — drifting inward and pressing gently against his skin before fading into it, the spell anchoring itself to the surface. A level one slot. One full slot, every day, for a smell.

Today two, because the wrist needed its own casting, the rot of the separation was sharper and more insistent than the general ambient. The flowers gathered thicker around the stump, pressing in, settling. The study smelled considerably better.

"The procedure is straightforward," said Nibbles, immediately breathing a little easier.

"Brother Corwin is our most capable healer. It will take most of the day. The hand will be functional by morning." He paused.

"Sit down, Brother Fenwick. I think you have something else to tell me." Fenwick set the folded cloak on Nibbles' desk.

"We found this on the chieftain. There's an enchantment on it — I felt the aura but couldn't identify it fully. I thought Sister Petra might want to look." Nibbles looked at the cloak. He called Sister Petra in, handed it to her without ceremony, and sent her off with instructions to report back before they moved to the healing room. Fenwick sat. He told him about the hunger bar. Nibbles was quiet for a long time after Fenwick finished.

"Two," he said.

"Two out of ten," said Fenwick.

"The injury dropped it three notches immediately. Then the extended fight took it lower."

"And at zero."

"We don't know." Nibbles looked at the screen. Sindy's words appeared before he could ask. I have no framework for it. The system doesn't describe what happens at zero. The ghoul classification doesn't address it. It may never have been reached before — or if it has, the record didn't survive.

"Speculation," said Nibbles. Total hunger depletion in an undead creature with developing intelligence. The body would prioritize survival above everything else. Whatever control he has built — the words, the distinctions, the rules about what is and isn't food — those are the newest parts of him. They would be the first to go. The study was quiet.

"He would attack whatever was nearest," said Nibbles. I don't know. I think so. I don't know. Nibbles looked at Max, who was sitting on a stool in the corner of the study, examining a small decorative tile he had found on the shelf. He had been turning it over with his remaining hand since he sat down.

"This happens in every fight," said Nibbles, returning to the matter at hand.

"Every fight that goes badly enough. He doesn't have a health bar; he didn't have one as a zombie, just the endurance, which relates to how fast he gets up. I think the hunger bar is the equivalent to the health bar for the Ghoul," said Fenwick.

"A normal encounter — in and out, combat creatures, hunger managed — the bar barely moves. The injury was the problem. Three notches at once." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"And if he takes a similar injury in a future fight."

"Yes," said Fenwick. Nibbles sat with that. Nibbles looked at Max for a moment. The ghoul was still turning the tile, examining the glaze on the back with the same methodical attention he brought to everything. He had been in the room for the entirety of that conversation and had understood none of it and all of it at the same time. Nibbles had been High Priest for thirty years. He had sat with difficult things before. He was sitting with several of them now and finding the chair less comfortable than usual.

He refilled his water glass. He did not go back to the salad. Fenwick looked at his notes. He had been taking them during the conversation out of habit, the shorthand he used for Order business, the kind of notation that assumed someone would read it later. He looked at what he had written. Hunger 2/10. Feinted. Unknown which. Three words that contained everything and explained nothing. He closed the notebook.

"What you haven't told me," said Nibbles carefully, "is what he did at hunger two." Fenwick looked at him.

"He was fighting a cknoll chieftain," said Fenwick.

"One-handed. Hunger at two. He went down twice and got up twice. Then he pretended to fall to bait the chieftain's charge and gutted it on the way up." Nibbles was quiet for a moment.

"He feinted," said Nibbles.

"He feinted," said Fenwick. Another silence.

"The hero of prophecy," said Nibbles, "feinted a charging chieftain at a hunger level we do not understand and killed it."

"Yes," said Fenwick. He paused.

"Or he wanted it close enough to gut it quickly. We don't know which." Nibbles looked at him.

"We don't know which," Nibbles repeated.

"No," said Fenwick.

"At hunger two, it may have been a strategy. It may have been instinct. It may have been something between them that doesn't have a name yet." The screen was still for a moment. Then: I don't know either. Nibbles looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then back down.

"We need to talk about the hunger bar seriously. Not today — today we deal with the hand. But this cannot remain unknown. We need to understand it before a fight forces us to find out." Agreed.

"Agreed," said Fenwick. Max put the decorative tile in his pocket. Sister Petra returned. The cloak was cknoll-made. Crude technique, she said, but effective. The enchantment wove the wearer's outline into the immediate background, a passive effect that required no activation. At close range, it would fool nobody. At a distance and in low light, it would substantially reduce visibility.

"+2 to stealth was the closest system approximation," she said. With that, Sindy was able to create the item status box. It flickered up on the screen briefly. — New Item — Cloak of Concealment +2 Stealth Created by dark ritual magic and given to the chieftain after he proved himself. Attuned to: CHIEFTAIN — PENDING REATTUNEMENT Re-attuning it would take the rest of the day. The previous attunement on the chieftain was stubborn.

"It recognized him for a long time," said Sister Petra, with the nasally uptick tone she used when she found something professionally interesting and personally unsettling.

"Whatever was wearing this cloak wore it for years." Fenwick looked at the cloak and nodded. Nibbles rose.

"Go see Brother Corwin." With a sigh, he dumped his salad and carrot into the trash. Fenwick went first. Lunch meant the main corridor would be busy — the dining hall let out onto it, and the junior acolytes ate in shifts that overlapped badly. He took them the long way, through the eastern passage that ran behind the storage rooms, quiet at this hour and smelling of old paper and dried herbs. Max followed without being asked.

He had learned, somewhere in the last few weeks, that Fenwick's routing decisions were not arbitrary. They passed one person — a senior healer coming out of the supply closet with an armful of linen. Lost in thought until she saw the large grey thing missing a hand following Fenwick. A short half scream escaped her lips before she looked at Fenwick again. Fenwick gave her the look that meant Order business, file it later.

She stifled the rest of the screams in the linen and hoped whoever used them next wouldn't notice the bite marks. Brother Corwin was a vole — small, precise, that carried the calm of a healer who had spent forty years making difficult things look routine. He looked at the hand in the acorn bag. He looked at the wrist. He asked Fenwick two technical questions about the preservation cantrip and nodded at both answers.

"Straightforward," he said. He looked at Max.

"This will take several hours," he said.

"You'll need to stay still." Max looked at him.

"Still," said Max.

"Yes." Brother Corwin blinked once. Then he began. While Corwin worked, Sister Petra sat with Max and began walking him through the attunement. It was a simple enough process, she explained, when the wearer was cooperative, and the enchantment wasn't fighting too hard. She draped the cloak across his shoulders and talked him through focusing on the feel of it, the weight, the way it settled. Max sat with his arm carefully held for Corwin and his eyes on Sister Petra. His jaw was tight.

Every few minutes, Corwin would say "still", and Max would stop whatever small movement had crept in, reset, and hold again. Petra kept talking him through the attunement in a low, steady voice.

"It's working," said Sister Petra, after a while. The cloak shifted slightly around Max's shoulders — not dramatically, just a subtle adjustment as the enchantment began to recognise its new wearer.

"Good," said Max. Fenwick sat on the bench in the courtyard with his notes open to a blank page. He had a great deal to write down. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ [Sindy — Private Log — Day 64] The hand is reattached. The hunger bar question remains open. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ He has his first magic item. ▌ He sat still for four hours while two people worked on him at once and didn't complain once. ▌ The cloak knows him now.