“Serenity?” Blaze’s voice cut through the discussions happening at the next table. “Would you come over here for a moment?”

Daryl was still arguing with Rissa, but Serenity noticed that Gabriel had fallen silent and was watching Blaze instead. Serenity got the impression that he was more concerned about his nephew than he normally acted.

The argument about how they were going to approach the enemy could wait a few minutes. Serenity walked over to Blaze. “What do you need?”

“I found the problem,” Blaze answered, “I’d like your help fixing it; your part shouldn’t take more than a few minutes as long as you’re precise enough, and I know you can be. Pay attention to the back of his eyes; you should see it.”

Blaze wasn’t going to tell him what to look for, was he? Well, at least he’d given a place to start. Serenity turned to Daniel. “May I have a look?”

“Sure.” Daniel shrugged. “Seeing sounds magical, I’d really like to try it..”

“It won’t be that easy,” Blaze warned Daniel. “It’ll be entirely new to you and you’ll have to learn what everything means…”

Serenity ignored the rest of Blaze’s caution as he tried to focus on checking Daniel. It was still strange to use his Essence Affinity instead of the Life Affinity he no longer had, but it was slowly becoming more natural. Even more importantly, Serenity was starting to see the benefits of his much, much higher Affinity in how well he could see with it. It took him a little time to orient himself correctly on Daniel’s body and find his left eye, but once he did it was a quick task to inspect the back of the eyeball.

The eye didn’t match Serenity’s memories of what an eye should look like. It also didn’t match the diagrams Aide had pulled at some point in the past; Serenity wasn’t sure where Aide obtained an entire database of medical information, but he wasn’t going to complain about it. A quick check of the right eye showed a similar anomaly.

Serenity pulled his attention away from his scan of Daniel to talk to Blaze. “There’s a lump at the back of both eyes, near the opening for the blood vessels..”

Blaze nodded. “That’s what you’re looking for; that lump is blocking his vision. I need you to kill it, but precisely, without killing anything else around it. I can take care of cleaning it out if you don’t want to dissolve it as well.”

Serenity shook his head. “I can handle that.” In the past, he’d have done that with his Void Affinity, but he was confident that Nihility would work essentially identically for this use. He might be able to use his Essence Affinity as well, now that he thought about it, but that was something he should experiment with on something that wasn’t so delicate.

Blaze nodded. “Good, that’ll make things easier and faster. I’ll monitor so that I can see when it’s time to swap to constructive; it’ll take me a good bit to finish everything once your part is done, so don’t expect me to be available quickly.”

Serenity nodded. He’d worked with constructive healers more than once in the past, though it was a very long time ago other than a few times lately with Blaze. As for monitoring, well, that was simply good practice; a destructive healer should always have a constructive healer monitoring things. It was all too easy to damage something that needed to be fixed quickly when you worked inside someone’s body.

Blaze turned towards Daniel. The gesture was probably lost on the blind man, but Serenity knew that it was simply Blaze’s habit; he always paid attention to the patient if there was time. “Daniel? Are you ready? Once we start, you shouldn’t feel much, but we won’t be able to stop easily.”

“Yes,” Daniel confirmed. “I decided that a long time ago. I hate missing everything because I can’t see it.”

“Then make yourself comfortable. This will probably take longer than my initial look did.” Blaze pulled over a chair for himself, which made Serenity realize just how long this was likely to take; after all, Blaze hadn’t bothered to sit for the initial examination.

Serenity snagged a chair as well. He didn’t need one, but it would make Daniel more comfortable. At least, Serenity thought it would. Blaze would know and he’d sat down.

Serenity watched as Daniel settled into the chair, then reached out to touch Daniel’s forehead. Touch wasn’t entirely necessary, but the other real alternative was to work through his aura, and Serenity had already discovered that his aura was unsettling for people who didn’t know him.

He located the first lump quickly and set about killing it from the inside out. It resisted Death energy in a way that Serenity recognized. Fortunately, it wasn’t the insistent buzz and pushback of cancer. It wasn’t even the deep hum of an undirected healing-type spell; he had all too much experience with those. Poorly made but powerful healing spells, usually using the Life Affinity, were almost as dangerous as what they tried to heal.

This was the solid yet incomplete feeling of an old healed injury. It was somehow less alive than normal flesh but even more stubborn. If he read it correctly, the lump probably started with an injury, then progressed regularly, each time after another further injury.

“Blaze? Healed injury, feels like it’s reactionary; probably multiple initiations.” His words were clipped and short, designed to be understood by another healer and not pull either of them out of their trances. “Old healing traces, poorly done, but no sign of healing overgrowth.” Blaze needed to know what he’d seen to make sure it didn’t come back or interfere in the treatment.

Serenity killed the growth, then eliminated it; this time, he started at the outside surface, farthest from the optic nerve, and worked his way in. He was careful not to remove or break anything that wasn’t the growth itself, but it took some patience to clear everything out evenly and slowly enough for everything to adjust. It didn’t bleed at all, which had to be Blaze’s work; there were things Serenity could have done to stop any bleeding, but that was normally the constructive healer’s task.

Once he finished with the left eye, Serenity moved on to the right. There were some small differences in the shape of the lump, but other than that everything was the same, even the old traces of scarring that indicated old healed injuries. Serenity wasn’t impressed; a good healing should not leave a scar.

Once the right eye was done, Serenity checked over his work on first the right and then the left eye. Everything looked good; Blaze was already repairing the damaged sections and triggering growth in several others. “I’m complete,” Serenity announced. It was an implicit request to stop monitoring. He had the easier job, after all; he didn’t have to be there for the entire procedure.

“Agreed,” Blaze stated. “Well done. Fast and precise.”

It was a nice compliment to get from Blaze. He didn’t have the power of a high-Tier healer, but he had the drive and the precision. He also had more skill than Serenity expected at Tier Four, and expected similar competence from those around him.

Serenity took a moment to refocus on the outside world before he went back to the other table. Gabriel was still keeping an eye on his nephew, but other than that the table seemed to have turned into a contest of who could tell the most outlandish supposedly true story.

It was fun to listen to, but Serenity didn’t see any need to contribute his own stories. By the time he returned, it was mostly Daryl, who seemed far more awake than earlier, and Raz trading stories. Raz’s contributions seemed to be winning; apparently, nothing was more outlandish than the things Earthlings would do in a public park.

:I talked them into it,: Rissa silently informed Serenity. :I had to promise you’d open a portal for the rest of the Silver Blades and that you’d take Daryl and Gabriel with you when you look for the Guildmaster to get them to agree. It seems like a good trade to me.:

Serenity nodded. :I agree. We can have the Silver Blades wait at a central location so I can establish a single portal. I think we’ll ask Legion to work with the various groups once we find out who we’ve got; I’m pretty sure we’ll need them eventually and that will keep everyone coordinated and get Legion through the portal as well.:

The rest of the planning would have to be done once they knew the situation on the ground, but they could at least establish some contingencies for what they thought was likely and set up ways to quickly adjust when things changed. They were going to need people at some point. If everything went well, there wouldn’t be much of any fighting, but it was never wise to count on that. Even if there was no fighting at all, someone was going to have to deal with the enemies; there were a lot of questions to ask.

There were many, many things that Zanzital regretted about his past choices. Most of the time, those regrets were aimed at choices decades ago, the choices that ended with him exiled (even if they called it “stationed”) on Asihanya. The mistakes that had him serving two masters when he should have served only himself.

Those weren’t the mistakes he cursed today. He’d probably get there, he had all the time he needed, but for now it was more recent decisions that had his attention.

Why had he decided that the rebels could be infiltrated on his own? For that matter, why had he decided they were rebels without word from the Empire? Zanzital couldn’t come up with anywhere else that such strange creations could be made, but that was still the only evidence they were Imperial.

Why did he pick that particular route into the caves? More importantly, how had he not noticed that it was in frequent use - frequent enough that he’d trapped himself in this small cave if he didn’t want to be seen?

Why didn’t he remember to check the core in his cloak? If he had a functional cloak, he wouldn’t have needed to hide; even if he’d hidden, he would be able to get out easily. There weren’t any magical sensors this shallow, just people, and people were easy to fool.

Now he was going to have to depend on that arrogant boy-child to find someone from the second organization he worked for and get him help. Order’s Guild would respond to a call for help from a Knife, and he’d made certain the boy had a code that said who he was. It could be a while, since Knives were few and far between on Asihanya, but someone would come. Eventually.

As long as the boy didn’t get himself killed before then. Sometimes Daryl reminded Zanzital of himself when he was younger and dumber. The boy was powerful, but he didn’t think.

Zanzital paused his self-flagellation when he felt something change. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was; it felt familiar, but it was barely at the edge of his awareness. Time passed while he tried to figure out what it was; he kept thinking he should know what he was feeling, but it kept slipping away.

Eventually, he realized what it was. It was weak, far too weak; it was also impossible. Yes, he was inside a dungeon, but he wasn’t at a nexus and he had to actually be at a nexus to feel whether or not a dungeon was there. His range was simply that bad; any farther than that and the feel of a dungeon was washed out in the ley line. He couldn’t call what he felt anything else, though. That was a dungeon.

If the dungeon were close enough and he could gain control of it, he might be able to use it as his way out.

Lillene

Yes, Blaze could have healed Daniel without Serenity’s help. The point of having Serenity help wasn’t to help Daniel; it was to help Serenity. Not that Blaze is going to say that; it would defeat the point.