I nodded weakly, still focusing on cleansing my mind of the sleep effect. It wasn’t as easy as when we’d practiced, presumably because I wasn’t ready for it. Also, potentially because Sheridan’s spell was more powerful than the ones we’d used in training.
That…seemed odd, though. “How’d you do a sleep spell? Aren’t you a necromancer? That doesn’t sound like a sleep magic type.”
“Obviously that wasn’t my first attunement, darling, just like Arbiter wasn’t your own first attunement. Restricted attunements are almost never given to people without a previous attunement.” Sheridan flipped Sera over again, then pressed a hand against Sera’s neck and closed their eyes. “I’m going to need you to come up here and hold Sera still.”
I stood, stumbled, and steadied myself. “Okay.”
“Sit behind her.”
Sheridan sat Sera up with surprising ease. I pulled my hand out of Sera’s grip, which was harder than it sounded, and then sat behind her. “What do I do?”
“You need to make sure her head is facing downward, but support her neck so that it doesn’t have too much stress.”
“Shouldn’t we just lie her facing down?”
“I need to be able to access the entire front of her neck.”
I nodded, taking the position behind Sera. I essentially was using myself as the back of a chair, which led to another question. “Shouldn’t we just use a chair, then?”
“She’d just fall out of one. Hold her still.”
I held her still, at least as well as I could. My mind was definitely clearing up, even though I was too focused on Sera now to actively try to convert my own mana and fight the effects.
“Now we begin.” Sheridan tapped Sera’s neck and their fingers began to glow.
Sera’s body jerked, and she almost fell off the table immediately. I held her as steady as I could, but she continued to tremble.
Sheridan backed off after a few moments, the glow fading from their finger.
Sera coughed, and that cough produced more blood than I was comfortable with.
“What—”
“Relax, Corin. The blood is supposed to be there. Let her cough.”
There was a surprising surge of anger while Sera continued to cough messily onto the floor. She didn’t wake up in the process, which seemed miraculous, but that sleep spell must have been stronger than I’d expected.
“We’re moving her to a chair now,” Sheridan explained.
Of course we are.
I helped Sheridan move Sera to the closest chair. It was, as I’d expected, much easier to hold her in place that way. “You sure you’ve done this before?”
“Of course. I’ve just never done it outside of a hospital.”
I…didn’t know how to respond to that, but there was definitely some anger involved.
Derek presumably knew.
Sera might have known as well.
But operating on someone outside of a hospital without any prior experience sounded like a terrible risk to me.
Maybe that was why they didn’t tell me.
Once Sera was secure in the chair and her coughing had died down, Sheridan reached forward and touched Sera’s neck again. The glowing reappeared around Sheridan’s fingers, but Sera didn’t spasm this time.
Not until Sheridan’s fingers began to move further down her neck.
I held Sera as steady as I could, grinding my jaw in a mixture of fear and frustration.
Minutes passed. Apparently, the damage went all the way down Sera’s esophagus, which was why she was having such difficulty with speaking.
More time passed. More coughing from Sera. More blood.
I’d expected that removing the physical scar tissue would be some sort of surgical process; it wasn’t. At least, not in this case.
Sheridan was transforming it. Partially liquefying it, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Thus the coughing, the blood, and everything else she was coughing up.
This was feeling more and more awful the more I thought about it.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make Derek clean it up.” Sheridan gave me a knowing look.
That was not what I was worrying about at all.
Sheridan began tracing their fingers back upward, the glow shifting in color to a bright green. Healing, I realized.
I wished I had trained with life mana more. If I had, maybe I would have been able to sense what Sheridan was doing a little better, or even helped. As it was, I had only the barest comprehension of how healing magic worked, and I certainly wasn’t ready to attempt it. That was the kind of thing to practice on scratches, not on internal injuries.
I’d definitely start studying it soon, though. My attunement wasn’t strictly made for healing, but just having life mana meant I could do a bit of it, even if I wasn’t ever going to be an expert.
It only took another minute before Sheridan finished the process of moving up Sera’s body, then back down without any visible glow on their hand, presumably to double check the work.
“Throat and esophagus are done to the best of my ability. Even with my healing, however, the recovery time will be significant — and she may never regain the full use of her voice. There was simply too much damage. She should be able to whisper almost immediately, but she shouldn’t. Tell her to restrain herself from trying.”
“For how long?”
“At least a few days.”
I nodded. “Would it be safe to give her a regeneration item to speed up the healing, or would that make more scarring?”
“Regeneration items should be fine, but it’s not going to help that much. I’ve already healed most of what can be fixed with healing — her body needs to acclimate to the change. But no, it wouldn’t hurt to give her an item if you have one. And she still shouldn’t be trying to talk.”
That was all good to know. “Even being able to whisper in a few days would be a huge improvement. When do you expect her to be able to talk at normal volume, if at all? And what about her attunement?”
“Months, probably, if she recovers that much at all. As for the attunement, I’ll need to use a different technique for that. Mana scars aren’t quite the same as traditional scar tissue. They’re more like clusters…she’s waking up.” Sheridan snapped her fingers, and Sera slumped down again.
I didn’t feel the effects this time, so presumably Sheridan was a bit more careful.
“Now, then. The mana scars are different. I can’t extract them entirely; I need to change them back down into a usable form. Given how severe her scars are, this will likely take several treatments, but we can do the first one today. Let’s lay her back down on the table.”
We did so, placing her face down. Sheridan put their fingers on Sera’s attunement again, then closed their own eyes. “Don’t say anything. Be silent and still.”
I complied.
Sheridan’s fingers began to glow again, but not with a solid color. This time, I could see tiny runes — the size of handwriting, maybe smaller - tracing across Sheridan’s fingers and wrist. I’d never seen anything quite like it.
Then the tiny runes flowed off their hand, into the attunement mark.
Sera twitched once, then let out a sound like a hiss. Then she settled again.
“Done.” Sheridan pronounced. “At least for now. This is not a complete fix — in fact, it may not do anything at all on its own. Make sure to tell her what I told you, and also, tell her not to even try to use her attunement for a few days.”
“You don’t want to explain yourself?”
“Obviously not. Talking to people is awful, and I’ve done more than my tolerance for the day. She’ll wake up in a half hour or so. I’ll be long gone by then.”