Hot, ow, hot! Obviously, running into a building on fire was not going to be comfortable. But with her increased tolerance the pain was manageable, at least for a short time, and Cyn found the health drain was not immediately overwhelming. She had no intention of lingering, however. The smoke and fire made it nearly impossible for her to see with her eyes, but she was able to follow her sense of the person’s health to find their location quickly.

  Kneeling at the spot she felt them and reaching around herself, Cyn found a large, soft mass she had to assume was the injured person. Awkwardly, since she was too short to pick them up fully, Cyn grabbed onto what she could and quickly dragged them out of the flames and a short distance from the blazing hut. A little bit on fire herself after escaping the inferno, Cyn stopped, dropped, and rolled once they were both out of the danger zone. She was a little lower on health points now than was ideal in such an uncontrolled situation, and Cyn overall felt... crispy... but instead of healing herself she turned her attention to the woman on the ground beside her.

  Remarkably, the unconscious and still-dying woman barely appeared touched by the fire she had just been rescued from. Even her clothes, made of nondescript leather and paired with a blue cloak that matched Cyn’s own, were only lightly covered in soot and her skin was bereft of burns. The source of her health loss was plainly obvious, however, due to the massive rend in her dark brown flesh that spanned from her collarbone nearly down to her hips. Working quickly, Cyn started pumping an Overloaded Restoration into her, hoping the wound would close quickly so the woman’s life would stop trickling away. She wasn’t able to heal for long, though, before being interrupted.

  “Get away from her!” A furious bellow was all the warning Cyn received as she was kneeling down beside the dying young woman, and she scrambled sideways in time to barely avoid losing her arm to a downward slash from a polearm. She had felt him approach, but was so focused on the woman that she did not consider the fact that she could be seen as a threat. The weapon’s wielder, a brown-skinned boy in a red cloak who couldn’t be out of his teens, planted himself protectively in front of the woman as Cyn created more distance between them.

  Still on her knees, she raised her hands palm out to appear as non-threatening as possible. “She’s still very hurt. Please, let me help her.” Cyn intended to help anyway, she just did not have enough health to safely use Siphon after running into the flames. Especially since she had separated herself from her party in order to find the dying woman, and this boy was acting hostile. Hoping the young woman would be able to hold on long enough with what healing she had already done, Cyn quickly used Inspect on the boy.

  Human - Level 14

  Another low level Human. He also needed healing, a myriad of injuries visible on his body through slashes in his clothes, but not nearly as urgently as the woman he was trying to protect. The boy quickly shook his head in response to her request, clearly not trusting Cyn, and continued to hold his weapon out threateningly. A shiver of goosebumps spread down her arms before he called out, “Del! Come quickly!” The fury in the boy’s voice had faded, replaced with fear. He clearly knew time was short, or he was afraid of Cyn since she was a higher level than any of the Vampires, but much to her frustration still did not want her help. Feeling another of the strangers approaching, she turned her head to look.

  A pale man in an equally pale robe came running at the boy’s plea. He was elderly, though Cyn guessed not as old as Scott was. It was hard to tell. The blue cloak he wore, appearing identical to the dying woman’s and Cyn’s own, flapped behind as he continued to run towards them. He had only hesitated a fraction of a second when seeing Cyn, but seemed to decide the woman on the ground was of higher importance then the threat Cyn could pose. Falling to his knees beside her, Cyn watched as he placed his fingers against the woman’s neck while worriedly looking over the still-gaping wound in her torso.

  She had not even considered until this point how anyone else might have to figure out if their friends were still alive. She had become so accustomed to being able to feel her ally’s health, it was a slightly horrifying realization that that might not be universal to the mage class. The kneeling man cursed softly, moving his hands to put pressure on the wound in the woman’s chest, - a useless gesture with the size of the injury - and looked up at the boy while shaking his head. “I don’t have any mana left, Mountain.” Mountain? An odd name.

  As the boy let out a strangled cry, Cyn spoke up. “I was healing her before you arrived. If you would let me close again, I can continue. She’ll be alright.”

  Del looked at her again, hesitating another moment before nodding. “Please. Back up, boy. We had new arrivals come midway through the attack, and I believe this woman is one of them.” The boy did not look totally convinced, but slowly lowered his weapon so Cyn could approach again. Scrambling forward, she quickly placed her hands back on the woman and continued where she left off.

  Mountain took place standing guard over them, nervously swapping between scanning the area and glancing down at the still body. The woman’s brown flesh knitted back together seamlessly, if slowly, as Del continued to monitor her pulse. It wasn’t long until she was healed enough for her chest to start visibly rising and falling again, Del letting out an audible sigh of relief as he pulled his hands away. Fire still raged all around them, though it was clearly starting to die down as it ran out of fuel. The wooden huts had burned down to nothing but blackened, crumbling timbers and ash.

  “Don’t attack the frog.” Spam had wandered off after Cyn dove into the fire, presumably to find a safer spot to bunker down, and she could feel it approaching her again. The last thing she wanted was for the nervous boy to take her familiar as a possible threat too.

  As she felt the dense, bubblegum-pink creature start climbing into her lap, she heard the boy mutter. “Frogs aren’t supposed to be that color...” Cyn chuckled at his indignant tone, but found herself thankful Mountain appeared to have calmed down.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  While she finished bringing the woman’s health back into a safe zone, Cyn had also started to hear yelling in the distance, sounding different than the sounds of battle that had been ringing around her since arriving on this floor, and in the direction she could feel most of her party. They were close to the limit of her ability to sense them, but she was pretty sure they were still close to full health. Her other, unknown allies were all various degrees of injured, but at least no one seemed to be actively dying anymore. She could sense less people now, though, and Cyn was not sure if that was due to distance or because some of them had died in the interim. She could not feel Hex at all, and had to presume he had moved too far away from her. Knowing the Seeker was more than capable of taking care of himself did not stop a sliver of worry from seeping into her mind, but the yelling was more concerning.

  Removing her hands from the still-unconscious woman, Cyn stood up, grabbing Spam with both hands and depositing it in her tabard pouch as she did. “Sounds like something is happening over there, and I need to check on it. I don’t know when she will wake up, but she should be alright healing at her own pace now.”

  Del nodded quickly, giving Cyn a strained smile. “Thank you. We have already lost so many... I am glad not to have to add Fish to that list tonight.” Fish? First Mountain, now Fish? Mountain was already leaning down to pick up the woman, his polearm slung across his back. Hoping they would be able to take care of themselves from there, Cyn ran towards the yelling. All of her resources were hovering around half, and between the mental strain of now feeling so many people, Spam’s still-simmering discontentment, and the annoyance stemming from her new allies that appeared to have separated themselves - forcing her to run between them - Cyn was ready for this to be over.

  As she got closer to the source of the yelling, Scott’s power-infused voice scraped over her eardrums. “Wet the buildings not burning yet. Quickly, before they catch! Dana, girl, do you see anything?” Cyn did not hear the Tactician’s response, and combined with the actual words Scott was saying he was probably using that skill or ability just to make his voice carry further. Despite how uncomfortable it was to listen to the Standard-Bearer speak like that, she found herself relieved that they did not seem to be in any trouble.

  Coming around one of the burning huts she got a better view of what was going on. When the party had arrived on this floor, it had been onto what Cyn thought was a hillside overlooking the village. Now that she was looking at it from a distance away, it was more akin to a mound, more uniform in shape than she would have expected from a natural hill. At the top was a small tree, its trunk and twisted branches lined with softly glowing green veins. The leaves too almost seemed to glow, an emerald glitter peeking through the smoke clogging the air.

  Around halfway up the rise was Dana, and just a short distance below her Scott stood clutching his flag and directing the half dozen or so people attempting to control the blaze that was eating through the huts using buckets. She couldn’t tell where the water was coming from, nor did she see Sam. Cyn could feel the Berserker’s health nearby, though, and he felt fine. There was only one of the strangers not helping, and he was sitting near the foot of the mound. The man’s health was not concerningly low, but as Cyn came closer she could see his leg had been severed at the knee, and was wrapped in bandages.

  “Are you alright, sweetheart? Ya look a bit... burnt.” Cyn was making a beeline for the injured man as the Standard-Bearer spoke, flinching since his voice sounded even worse now that she was closer. “Stay still, boy. She’ll get you fixed up.”

  “I’m fine, Scott. There was a woman in one of the burning buildings.” The young man on the ground was eyeing her warily, his paper-white skin coated in a sheen of sweat and drops of blood. Cyn wasn’t sure how much of his skin tone was due to the injury, but between that and his nearly white hair he almost looked like a younger version of Del in the low light. Wonder if they are related... “There’s two small groups out there I helped, and two or three stragglers fighting on their own. I only passed by one of them, the other two didn’t seem to be struggling from what I could feel.”

  “And Hex?”

  “Chasing after some Vampires last I saw him.”

  Scott sighed, turning himself to speak to Dana in a normal voice while Cyn knelt down to start unwrapping the injured man’s leg. “Do you...”

  The Tactician cut him off, listing her observations tersely. “Four Humans coming in from the same direction Cyn came from. One being carried. Fire seems contained to the man-made structures, and is burning out. I can see movement near the tree line, but I can’t tell if it’s Human or not. There’s also an archer that keeps shooting at my drone, but I can’t seem to locate the asshole.”

  Del, Mountain, and Fish must have met up with someone else before following her, Cyn guessed. Perhaps the guardian she had passed by. Before she could get the tightly wrapped bandages undone, the man grabbed her wrist and spoke, his voice sounding hoarse, “Don’t waste your time... Even if I won’t die from infection losing a leg is a death sentence out here.”

  Cyn only had so much patience for bedside manners, and that had all been used up by her previous interaction with the strangers. She rolled her eyes and yanked her hand back before finishing unwrapping him. “You’ll be fine. If I could regrow our archer’s whole hand, like, five levels ago there is no reason I can’t do it for your leg now. It’ll just take some time and mana.” He would also probably regenerate the limb on his own, but since she did not have any solid proof of that Cyn chose not to mention it. It was something she wanted to test, but the morality of testing that on someone else was extremely questionable. Do I need all my toes? Maybe I can try that first...

  At any rate, the bandages were likely just inhibiting his healing even if the man could now regrow the limb. Cyn understood why they might still feel compelled to wrap up wounds, but from what she had seen so far that kind of treatment wasn’t strictly needed unless you were trying to stop someone from bleeding out their last few health points, and you had no other way to improve the situation. The injured man did not look convinced of her claims, but she did not care. Cyn was going to heal him anyway, and she had no desire to hear more doom and gloom about the state this dungeon floor was in. Whatever was happening, she found it unlikely that it could not be overcome or at least survived.

  The man remained silent - other than giving his name, Irrab, when she asked - as Cyn channeled Restoration into him. Scott came down from the mound after the initial panic seemed to have passed, and began helping with the fires directly as stragglers slowly made their way from the burnt-out village and into the clearing around the mound. It wasn’t until hours later, when the fires were finally out and the rising sun was staining the dark sky pink, that the parties began to make more official introductions.