Shaking her head, she smiled in exhaustion. “I’ll explain later, when we have more time. We need to hurry.”
One of the guards spoke softly. “We can’t. We’ve been marked. Anywhere we go, they’ll be able to track us down.” Jade stared blankly at him. How had she forgotten that the mesmer had been pumping them full of taint? If she took them back to the underground base, it would be leading the mesmer straight to it. Right now, they were in one of the few safe spots in the middle of a blazing inferno.
She nodded absently. “Right. We’ll have to get rid of that before we go.”
“Get rid of it?” One of the other guards asked curiously, and she realized that not everyone had heard of what she’d done, what she was capable of.
Nodding again, she said quietly, “Yes, I can get rid of the taint.” She was about to say more when she felt her danger sense act up. Glancing around, she spotted the three mesmer she’d knocked out earlier. Apparently, she hadn’t hit one of them as hard as she thought, because it was stirring, though it tried to hide it. As soon as it noticed that she’d caught it waking, it stopped trying to be subtle and jumped to its feet, lunging towards her.
It only made it a single foot before her wind blade sliced its head off. She hadn’t even thought about it, she’d simply reacted instinctively to the look on its face. The others were backing away, horrified at the sudden violence, or maybe it was the fact that one of the mesmer that they likely assumed were dead had woken up to attack again.
Looking at the two mesmer that were left, she winced. She didn’t want to kill any more, but she didn’t have enough time to subdue both of them. Steeling herself, she cut off a second mesmer’s head with a wind blade. That left the unconscious Tevon, or rather, the thing that had once been called Tevon. She hesitated, then sprinkled seeds over him, which sprang to life at the touch of her magic to bind him. Metal cuffs were created from supplies in her ring and shaped around his hands and ankles. The last thing she did was take a length of cloth and create a metal and cloth gag around his head so that he wouldn’t be able to hypnotize anyone.
Once that was done, she sighed, quickly popping more meat into her mouth as she glanced at the nine people staring at her, and finally she asked quietly, “Wait, where’s Frank?” Several of them exchanged glances, while Tisha looked at the ground in defeat.
“He’s…” One of the guards started to speak, his voice trailing off, but he glanced to the corner, where they’d been laying around a body…
“NO!” Jade pushed past them, running to the boy lying lifelessly on the ground. She dropped to her knees next to him, her magic sending a healing surge through him. He wasn’t dead, not yet, but it was a close thing. He was covered in tiny white scars, his skin had begun to stretch over his muscles, and his nails had started to grow out. She could feel the mesmer taint pervading his body, but his heart was still beating, his lungs still breathing.
She drew the taint from his brain, cleansing it and lowering the swelling and inflammation she saw there. She felt Tisha beside her, her quiet voice asking softly, “What can I do?”
Jade spared her a tiny smile, before pulling her smoothie mix out of her ring. “Get him to drink this.” She handed her both a spoon and a straw before she went back to pulling the taint out of his body. The sickly bile seeped from his multiple wounds as she went, trying to pull it out with the least amount of blood possible, since he didn’t have much left to lose. Tisha was spooning smoothie into him, and he finally woke up.
His eyes were uncomprehending as he stared at her and Tisha, so she took a small break to pop more meat into her mouth and hand some to Tisha as well. “Frank, you’re awake. Try to eat.”
“Jade? You’re...here? But they…” His voice was little more than a whisper of a croak.
She smiled down at him, sweat beading her forehead. “Shhhhh. Don’t worry about that. Just focus on eating so I can make you better.” He didn’t have much of a choice, because Tisha was quite literally putting food in his mouth every time he opened it to say something. She noticed he wasn’t having as hard a time with the meat as she would have expected, but didn’t say anything because she realized his teeth had changed too, becoming slightly more pointed. How close had it been?
He wasn’t clean when she got to the bottom, because she couldn’t do everything at once. She merely got the worst of it out of his system. “Why aren’t the mesmer coming here?” One of the guards nervously asked another as he stared up into the dark hole they’d come down.
Glancing over at them, Jade answered honestly, “I basically turned their nest into an inferno. They’re probably trying to put out the fires right now. It’s not exactly easy to get here at the moment, considering it’s surrounded by flames.” She paused, looking up at the darkness. Her enhanced vision could still see tiny flickers of red up there. “We’ve probably still got some time before they get it under control and start looking for us.”
“You lit the forest on fire?” The equal parts of horror and awe in the guard’s voice were easily evident.
Jade shrugged. “I needed to escape their encirclement and buy time to get you guys.” Handing a bunch of meat to Frank, she instructed, “Keep eating. You’re not totally taint-free yet, but you need to get the energy in you before I go again. The rest of you, keep eating too.” She put more out on a platter, then turned and grabbed Tisha’s arm.
“I’m fine, heal the others…” Tisha started to object, but went quiet under Jade’s glare. She seemed to relax slightly as Jade sent a healing surge through her. Having only been there for one, maybe two feedings by Jade’s conjecture, her wounds were much less severe. Jade pushed the taint out through each laceration, the scabs coming off and flaking to the floor. She did a second sweep, just to be sure she’d eradicated the taint.
When she was finally satisfied, she nodded and let go of Tisha, smiling at her. “Okay, you should be good now.” Before anyone could suggest an order, she grabbed onto Hunter. The guards might suggest they go last as it was, and although she didn’t think their lives were any less important…those she knew personally were going to get healed first. It was a stark realization that if she had to choose who to save, she knew who it would be. She hoped she wouldn’t have to choose.
One after another, she healed them all, the orb of goopy tainted blood growing steadily next to her. She even managed to get Frank completely healed up, though he still looked like death warmed over. That would be something he’d have to recover from gradually. She’d taken the time to figure out what weapons they used as she healed them, handing them out from her reserves as she went.
She was a little unnerved that the meat she’d taken was now more than half gone. She’d been pretty constantly chowing down on it, but with the addition of ten bodies to feed and help recover, it was fast disappearing. “How do we get out of here?” One of the guards asked her tentatively as he supported Frank. He might be free of the taint, but he was still so weak that it required two of the guards to hold him upright.
Putting the orb of taint away in her ring, she motioned them towards her as she stood to the left of the center below the pit hole. “Gather behind me.” She didn’t want them circling her for one reason: she needed to interact with the outside world, and she couldn’t do that if she couldn’t reach it.