Rip had woken up just before I got stabbed, so Doom brained by a bedframe. I should be glad he woke up at all, Wrisly dosed him hard. …It’d have been better if he moved before I got stabbed. I glanced sadly at the bedframe that gave its life to take down a lich. Well, she might be able to hammer out the dent.

                Honestly, I was mostly glad to have my weapon back. Unlike a certain woman’s personal weapon, Noxious did not drink blood, so I was losing some as it flowed into the bed underneath me.

                “Can we do a transfusion?” Dr. Wrisly asked, already starting to get the equipment ready since he didn’t want to start cutting. They’d already stuffed gauze into the hole to staunch the bleeding.

                “Test the lich, he might work. I try to keep blood bags as back ups, so I often make changes when refining corpses.” It’s been a while, so I couldn’t remember if I did that with him or not. Plus, since he was able to stab me, some of the adjustments might have come a bit loose…

                “Might?” The doctor grumbled, already holding the equipment needed and handing some of it to Rip before flopping over.

                “You try to remember details on a project from a thousand years ago.” Grumbled, a mistake since the chest movement pulled at the wound. “…or was it 2,000 years ago?”

                “Wait, were you the necromancer who made this?” He stabbed Doom and quickly got the test running. For a young doctor, he was efficient. “I thought they couldn’t hurt their creators. I thought he was just an old student or something.”

                “Yeah, so did I.” I grumbled again and regretted it immediately. Again. Like I normally let people with a motive to kill me be in stabbing distance.

                That’s when I saw her. I didn’t know how long she’d been there, standing quietly. She wasn’t smiling, or frowning. I didn’t see worry, concern; I didn’t see any kind of expression on her face. All I could see was her eyes, devoid of fire and light.

                I couldn’t move, when they set me on the bed Noxious’ blade impaled the mattress. Aena just watched, even when I reached out to her. Standing, waiting.

                When people drown, they fight. They struggle for the surface, for air. Even if they start calm, even if they’d chose to end it. But they get to a point, just before blacking out, when everything goes grey. When the light is gone, when they’d run out of air and hope.

                “Aena.” I broke off a decorative tooth from Noxious’ handle and launched it at her forehead. She reflexively dodged. Slowly, she moved over, finally grabbing the hand I’d been stretching out. Her head bowed for a prayer, holding my knuckles to her forehead.

                “don’t leave me.” I almost missed her soft plead. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. My throat wouldn’t move, and moving my other hand to hold her would widen the wound.

                “Aena, you know who I am.” My voice broke as it came out. “Something like this won’t kill me. Besides,” I joked, “Even if I do die, I’ve set up a back up to revive myself as a lich.” Prototype #47 was currently tied to the floor to prove it worked. Even the memories and agency were intact, which wasn’t supposed to happen but still good to know.

                The peanut gallery, Wrisly and Rip, found their motivation to rush the test again and stopped watching the show.

                She looked up, her face finally cracking a little smile. “Now we can’t have that. I want to aim for 15 this time.” Lowering her face towards mine, she rested her head next to mine on the pillow.

                The mental image of 15 copies of her overrode my previous worst nightmare. Plus, there was that little problem…

                “Two is fine.” I countered.

                “At least three. It’s not like those old fools were really omnipotent.” She casually blasphemed.

                …Well, it’s not like I wasn’t curious too. “Yes, dear.” I chuckled.

                “Yep, looks like this will work.” Wrisly cleared his throat. In the time they were waiting for the results, he’s prepped a few bags and was ready to go. “Ma’am, you might want to step back.”

                “Let me help.” She got up, and the three of them got ready to cut me through.

                Wrisly paused, “Do you want to get knocked out for this?”

                “No.” First, I wanted to make sure he didn’t take or mess up anything. Second, thanks to my experiments, there wasn’t a drug in existence (that I know) that could put me out long enough for the operation.

                A few hours later I was sewed back up and a few pounds lighter. We found a few things I thought I’d lost.

                “My fruit knife!” I cradled the little curved blade that was part of my kitchen set. “Now I remember, it was fruit pie Wednesday and we got ambushed, but I didn’t want it to get lost in the mess of one of my spaces.” I started organizing things after that.

                “What was this?” Aena held up a bloody, misshapen rock.

                “I’m not sure.” It wasn’t load bearing, so I had them keep it out. “It might be an egg I tried incubating.”

                Aena set it down.

                “Is this a ruby?” Rip asked, excitedly waving a dark red gem.

                “No, it’s a dragon’s blood clot I thought was a fun color, normally they’re black.” I explained fondly. He set that down too.

                Wrisly had wormed most of his body back to his tank and was slumped headfirst into the water. His tail wasn’t built for bearing weight, so, the last half was Rip holding him up with his one good arm around the doctor’s waist. Aena seemed to find that funnier than she should’ve.

                Rip rolled his shoulder and looked back and forth between us. After a moment of us both staring at him, he grabbed his toad, “I think I’ll go check ‘n the pack…” and ran away.