Chapter 29: Finishing one problem
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The two young warriors who had shown up earlier were looking in shock at the small girl who was covered in blood from what Eirlathion  assumed must be some rather horrific neck wounds. He seemed to recall  her falling from the tree and then being shot by the assassin who had  been chasing him. For some reason, she had run straight toward the  assassin after that.

He seemed to recall something  like that had happened, but he had found himself unable to think  clearly for a while now. He felt he could have been mistaken about all  of that. Now, Tiaren was standing in front of him with what were  obviously very serious injuries, and he had no idea what he could do  about it with his own body in such a state.

>Tia!  Whetever you’re going to do, do it quick! Eirlathion is somewhat stable  now, but he had a deadly injury that can still catch up with him if  he’s not healed quick!<

Ah. Asa sounded  pretty upset. Eirlathion could still not understand what she was saying,  but he did hear her yelling about her sister and also his name.  Everything had been weird about how the two girls were behaving up until  now, but now his mind felt like it was clearing up a little after the  treatment the nymph had given him and things were starting to make more  sense. Asa is probably asking him to save her sister. He really wanted  to do that too, but he could hardly move and he had no more enchanted  berries to use.

Suddenly, the blood-soaked child  ran straight over to Eirlathion. She was climbing up his chest. He felt  the wounds on his shoulder and chest, as well as the partially healed  wounds on his rear and his gut all screaming out in pain.

She  wiped that bloody mouth she had with a hand, and then she immediately  shoved that hand into the mouth of Eirlathion, causing his eyes to  spring open in shock.

>Nymph! Get the arrows!< Tia shouted.

Eirlathion  felt vines begin to move around him. They pulled the arrows from the  shoulder and calf of Eirlathion. He grunted and tried to do something  about the hand that had been shoved into his mouth. The head of  Eirlathion was leaning back against the base of the tree already. He  tasted a sickly metallic flavor on those fingers. He grabbed her arm  with both hands and tried to pull that hand out with force, but he  discovered that this child was unbelievably strong. As he pulled, she  merely gripped the shoulder of Eirlathion with the other hand and he  felt an almost crushing force from that grip that threatened to rend the  skin from his bone if he tried too hard to throw her off.

While  Eirlathion was struggling, he felt a warm sensation from all of the  wounds he had previously received. He also felt invigorated, as though  he had his spirit being filled with an incredible source of both mana  and spirit energy at the same time. It was truly like nothing he had  ever felt before.

After this had gone on for a  while, Tiaren decided to take the hand out of the mouth of Eirlathion  and then back a couple of steps away. Eirlathion looked down to see the  wounds he had received had all vanished. He still felt some pain from  the one that punctured the chest, but when the leaf and the block of  wood from the nymph were removed he saw no wound there either.

As  he was looking at this in amazement, Asaren had the nymph fully lower  her to the ground and then she went to stand in front of Eirlathion as  well.

“You are not fully healed yet.” She said,  and then held up an arrow. “There is still a piece of this arrow inside  you, it will cause damage to the lung as you breathe. It will have to be  removed. You should not do too much yet, you need to get back some  strength until you are ready to have it removed.”

Eirlathion  stared at the child with a lack of comprehension. He felt like his mind  must still be somehow unclear. Why was such a small child saying such  complicated things about how to handle a serious injury? For that  matter, how had he been healed in the first place? It seemed like the  girls knew something, and his recovery seemed to be somehow related to  something Tiaren did.

One of them was finally speaking proper Elven, but somehow it did nothing to help him understand the situation.

“Tia,  Nymph broke one of these guys’ arms. Do you think you can heal him as  well?” Asaren asked. So, the healing really was done by Tiaren?

“Ahhh…  Do you want me to use Elven?” Tiaren asked as she looked in confusion  between her sister and the people gathered around them.

“If  we don’t properly explain what is going to be done, they are not going  to be able to trust us. So, yes.” Asaren says in a very authoritative  tone.

“Umm…” Tiaren responds, she looks pretty  nervous. “Well, do I have to do it right now? I mean, I can, but I would  have to make myself throw up what’s in my stomach. I already used  everything that was in my mouth to heal Eirlathion. Are there any more  of the bad guys? I can just get more blood to use and that will be able  to heal him.”

Asaren sighed. “Well, he will not die from a broken bone. Nymph! What is going on with the enemy?”

“Ahh!  Umm…” The nymph’s projection is making the same face Tiaren was making a  moment ago. It seems the tree spirit is also very nervous about them  knowing the contents of what they are talking about, but it seems as  though they are both fairly obedient to Asaren somehow so, just like  Tiaren, the nymph continues on to speak all the same. “After they were  tripped, the villagers managed to kill the two remaining fire mages.  Now, all that is left is three of those warrior types stalking around. I  can tell Tia where they are if she wants to go after them. I don’t  think we can trip them as easily. However, they seem to go a lot closer  to the trees than the mages did.”

“Alright. Tell  Tia where the closest one is. In the mean time, you and me will finish  off the other two.” Asaren said with a definite sense of finality as she  ordered the two around as though she were a squad leader.

Eirlathion  and the two warriors could only stare at these two girls in  bewilderment as the nymph told Tiaren the exact current location of one  of the dark elf assassins, and then she immediately took off running at  an incredible speed into the night. After that, Asaren walked up and  placed her hand on the side of the nursery tree and seemed to be  focusing. A moment later, with their elven senses that were highly  attuned to the woods, heard the unmistakable sound of wood groaning. A  moment later, there was a surprised scream. A little after that, they  heard a voice shout back.

“It’s one of the dark elves! An assassin type! Someone got him with wood magic!”

“Who got this one?”

“Are there any more!? Keep an eye out!”

Eirlathion  looked down at Asaren aghast. Did this child just use wood magic from  that far away? The lowest level spell that could do that would be the  fifth tier spell ‘living grove,’ but that would be seen on a much wider  scale. No, that was small and precise scale, it was almost like she had  just used the simple bloodline ability of the green word that is  possessed by all elves. But, the amount of mana necessary for such a  thing would be so insane she might as well have actually cast living  grove, and that doesn’t even get into the incredible amount of control  and visualization she would need.

How… just what ARE these children?

***

It  seemed like the crisis for the village was over, but our own situation  was only just beginning. As Tia was perching on that lower branch, Nymph  had suddenly told us Tia saw something. Apparently, Eirlathion was  being shot with arrows and it looked like he was hit in the chest and  was going to die. A moment later, Tia had jumped down.

Things  got pretty crazy from there. I sent a quick pulse of mana through  Nymph’s tree body. I didn’t really care what that energy did, but I had a  vague idea of the attacking enemy’s feet being attacked. I knew from  experience already that these tree spirits were very good at  interpreting my intentions from there, so I didn’t really worry about  it.

After that, I had Nymph take me down there.  Eirlathion didn’t look that bad at first glance, but as soon as I heard  his breathing I knew that arrow had punctured his pleural membrane. The  hole in his chest would make it impossible for him to create a negative  pressure inside his thoracic cavity. That negative pressure was  necessary to inflate the lungs. In other words, that one little hole,  even though it probably did minimum damage to the lung itself, made it  so both his lungs could no longer function correctly. In war medicine,  this is what’s known as a “sucking chest wound.”

Under  these conditions, my previous thoughts about carefully weighing to pros  and cons before I revealed too much about our true level of maturity  had gone completely out the window. If I did not demonstrate my full  medical knowledge right now, then the man who had been helping to raise  us like a father was going to die. I didn’t even question it, I just  started barking orders.

I am not certain how much  of Tia’s activities the others could see. I had mostly lost touch with  the idea of others being unable to see in the dark by this point, but I  felt like it was probably too dark for the adults here to see very  clearly what Tia was doing. I could see it clearly though. She had  really ripped into the shoulder of the guy she had chased down. I could  clearly see the man’s charcoal-colored skin and white hair, and a puddle  of blood flowing from his neck after Tia had left him.

She  had immediately gone on to track down a second guy who was also hunting  after Eirlathion. She tackled the guy right out of a tree and dropped  him behind a bush. I didn’t see much about how she finished him off  after that. I didn’t even worry about the idea of her killing all that  much. These guys were out to kill the people of this village after all.  Rather, I was just impressed at the incredible physical abilities Tia  was displaying, running around and jumping straight up trees as though  height and distance didn’t even matter to her at all. The only thing  that bothered me was that I wished she would get back a little faster.

I  was familiar with how her power worked. I had died to it in my last  life after all, died in exchange for my granddaughter's life. Now, that  same power would be used to save Eirlathion’s life in exchange for the  life of the very people who put him in this state in the first place.

I  just hoped that she didn’t actually have to kill someone every time she  wanted to heal someone else. She’d had a valid excuse for each death so  far. In this case, it was people who were a threat that needed to be  taken out. Before, she had said she didn’t actually have to kill me in  order to revive my granddaughter. The reason for my death was because  she needed me to die in order to make proper use of my power to leave  the world. I had made a deal with her that included my death for my  granddaughter's life before she even began. So, while it’s a little  bitter still, I figure it’s fair game none the less.

Now,  having healed up Eirlathion and taken out the last of the enemy, it was  time to engage in a whole new kind of crisis. We had wound up showing  way more of our hands in these past few minutes than we ever intended  to, and we were going to have to handle the next interactions we had  with these adults very carefully. Whatever happened now, it was going to  define the entire future of our lives in this village.

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