Serenity ate the massive amount of Death-attuned mana Zany emitted at the end of the fight. He pulled it towards each of the three sets of armor he was being to help Blaze, Daryl, and Gabriel masquerade as Imperial soldiers, but he was careful to stop it all before it reached them. It was significant but somehow hollow; at a guess, Zany had a very high Affinity but only a middling Concept at best. He definitely didn’t have an Aspect.

Serenity wasn’t certain exactly what set off the paranoid old man, but whatever it was made him completely unwilling to listen to any of them. Serenity didn’t think he’d even noticed that two of the people who came in were his own proteges. At least it was over now.

Serenity was glad he’d gone ahead and acted as armor for all three of the people heading in to retrieve Guildmaster Zany. He wasn’t confident he’d have been able to completely protect everyone if he were here as himself; the fact that he was extremely close to Blaze, Daryl, and Gabriel made a huge difference. He’d have been able to save their lives, probably, but they’d definitely have needed healing afterwards. Since he’d been close enough to each of them, they were all fine. The fact that he didn’t have to move himself and could concentrate solely on defense, Eat Death, and controlling the way the Death-attuned mana was also extremely helpful.

Well, Blaze did have to handle that odd water spell. It’d almost fallen apart when it hit, as if it were missing pieces of itself; Serenity wondered if he’d really pulled some Death-attuned mana out of it or if that was his imagination and it was simply a Water-based spell with an odd structure. Whichever it was, Serenity knew Blaze had needed to be careful when he countered the watery residue; as it was, he’d slightly scorched Serenity, even with his Heat Resistance. Blaze’s Fire Affinity was impressive.

The downside of being present only as armor was also obvious. Serenity wanted to check on Zany as quickly as possible, but all he could do was clear out the remaining Death-attuned mana and wait until Blaze decided to move forward. Blaze waited until most of the Death-attuned mana was out of the air; when he finally moved forward, Serenity pushed the remainder towards his other two forms. That way, he could handle it through the passive use of Eat Death and pay attention to Zany.

He spared a moment’s thought to be grateful he’d remembered to include cameras as well as audio pickups in the “armor”. If he hadn’t, he’d be far more confused about what was happening. The perspective took some getting used to, but it was still far better than nothing.

Zany was definitely undead. No healthy living person looked like skin stretched over bone; he reminded Serenity of the pictures of unwrapped mummies he’d seen back on Earth, though unlike them his skin was intact and seemed to be a sickly gray-brown, as if he’d been decently tanned or perhaps swarthy before he died.

Zany’s appearance didn’t tell Serenity anything about his health. What did tell him something was the feeling of Death mana swirling around the Guildmaster; he still lived, at least for values of “lived” that included undead. His Vital Affinity was weak but present; it was clearly Death.

Serenity let Blaze handle the healing. Right now, he wanted to find out if Zany was the familiar influence he’d felt. It seemed likely, since it came from this room. He allowed his aura to extend over Zany’s still form, but was careful not to allow it to spread from the armor on Daryl and Gabriel. Leaking aura would make it far too obvious that his secondary forms weren’t just temporary armor constructs.

Zany was definitely the man who bound the Layered Dungeon. He was also definitely the presence Serenity felt from the rituals. Serenity was fairly confident he could use his Link Core ability, even though Zany didn’t have a core; it would piggyback on whatever Skill Zany used to connect to and bind dungeon cores. He could probably even reverse the Skill’s direction.

Serenity wasn’t going to do that. It stank of mind control or worse, even though it wasn’t. He’d rather kill someone than control them that way. The Layed Dungeon hadn’t liked it; Serenity doubted Zany would be any happier. Restricting someone’s behavior with social norms or consequences for bad behavior was one thing, controlling their ability to think was another. He might change his mind in the future as he learned more about the ability, but for now he wouldn’t use the ability unless the other option was to kill a dungeon.

Blaze checked Zany, but to Serenity’s surprise he didn’t perform any actual healing. He picked up the gaunt man and slung him over his shoulder; it was obvious that he hadn’t neglected his Might even though he was distinctly magically oriented. “Is there anything you two need to get out of here? I’d like to get back to the camp and get out of this armor before I wake up your Guildmaster.”

Serenity turned his focus to the ritual in front of his main form; it was focused on the corridor outside the Guildmaster’s cubbyhole. “There’s someone in the hallway,” Serenity warned the three men. They weren’t used to that sort of instantaneous communication when they started out this morning, but they’d adapted quickly and were no longer surprised when he spoke.

“It’ll take me time to melt the ice wall anyway,” Blaze noted before he turned to Gabriel. “Did you have to make it so think?”

Gabriel shrugged. “It had to stop the Guildmaster.”

It took more than an hour to get everyone out of the cave system without being seen as anything more than a glimpse at the end of a hallway. There was no way it would have been so clean without Serenity’s real-time detection and overwatch.

Once they were finally back, Serenity ended the ritual. He had to wait for the others to strip out of the armor before he could dissolve them and return them to his normal armor and hilt forms. Once he did, he was far more comfortable. He felt positively exposed without his armor-self; worse, he had to pay attention to keep the disguise armor’s appearance showing runeclam reinforcement instead of dragonscale.

Blaze deposited Zany in Serenity’s tent, the safest place to work since it didn’t require any additional effort to hide from possible biplanes, then waited for Serenity before he started to heal Zany. “”Are you certain you don’t want to handle the healing? I know you know more about undead than I do.”

Serenity shook his head. “I’m no healer. I’d just let him wake up on his own; it’ll be another few hours, but he’ll probably be fine. All I saw was Skill backlash.”

Blaze chuckled. “You’re better than half the healers I’ve worked with, then. Skill backlash is hard to diagnose.”

Serenity stared at Blaze in disbelief. “We saw him use the Skill. He has no secondary damage that would explain unconsciousness in either his brain or anything leading to his brain, simply swelling at the fracture points on a Skill path, combined with tensionary damage typical of mana overdraw. That’s definitely Skill backlash.”

Blaze chuckled. “Definitely better than half, possibly three-quarters. You checked for alternate explanations.”

Serenity shook his head. He didn’t want to think about how bad the healers Blaze had worked with were if they didn’t always do a routine diagnostic check before starting non-emergency healing.

Another moment’s thought brought the realization that perhaps he was asking too much of low-Tier healers. He wouldn’t expect Rissa to perform a full diagnostic before healing a battle injury; why should she? She wasn’t a full healer, simply someone with a healing Skill. Healers who were primarily delvers often didn’t worry too much about diagnosing anything that didn’t come from a dungeon monster; if you needed that sort of healing, you’d take it to someone in a city.

The fact that all of Serenity’s training was as a destructive healer might have misled him again. Destructive healing wasn’t used the same way as constructive healing. More importantly, there was no clean template for a destructive healer to allow a Skill to follow; you had to direct it yourself. “Different specialties, Blaze. I can’t heal Skill backlash, so I’d better know what it is so I don’t make anything worse.”

Blaze chuckled. “You’ve got the right Affinity for him. Are you sure you don’t want to try? I can guide you through it.”

Serenity looked down at Zany. Blaze was correct; since Zany’s Vital Affinity was Death, Death Affinity magic could be used to heal him. Serenity was fairly confident that Essence Affinity would also work. There was only one problem. “I’m not a healer, Blaze. I’d be more likely to hurt him than help him.”

Blaze sighed and shook his head, but at least he stopped pushing. “Maybe another time, then. Would you at least watch as I take care of the backlash?”

That seemed reasonable to Serenity; he liked watching skilled people work. If that would get Blaze to not bother him more, it was an easy price to pay. It wouldn’t even really feel like a price. “Sure.”

Blaze knelt over Zany and pushed a small amount of attuned Mana into the undead’s body, focusing on his mana channels. Serenity didn’t have that particular Affinity, but he already knew it was Healing Affinity, just like what Rissa had. Unlike Rissa, however, Blaze didn’t allow a Skill to guide his magic; he guided it himself to exactly the places it was needed.

Blaze started by soothing the undead mage’s extremities. This was almost exactly the opposite of what Serenity expected; he’d expected Blaze to start with the central damage. This wasn’t what kept the mage unconscious.

Perhaps that was why he started there? The healing session would probably end when Zany woke up. With that in mind, it made sense for Blaze to start with the lesser damage.

Blaze didn’t fill in the damage so much as encourage Zany’s body and Vital Affinity to do so. He guided rather than commanded. It was beautiful to watch. In a way, it reminded Serenity of scribing runescripts, except that this was no predefined pattern. Blaze had to read it as he went and work near the damage, not simply lay down a known pattern.

At first, it was slow. The farther along Blaze got, the faster it went; it was like his prior success set up a pattern that encouraged future success. Serenity examined the already-healed channels in more detail; near where Blaze was working, they were swollen but back where he’d started, they’d returned to normal and were actually dispersing Blaze’s healing mana into the smallest of cracks, the ones Blaze either wasn’t able to heal or didn’t bother to heal. Serenity was confident that Blaze knew this would happen.

There were reasons Serenity thought of Blaze as the best healer he knew. The man seemed to know a little about everything; no matter what the problem was, he could at least attempt a solution without any fear of making it worse. He’d originally thought Blaze wasn’t a destructive healer, but he now knew that Blaze could manage destructive healing; he simply chose not to when Serenity was around. In a way, that was a huge compliment.

The damaged Skill pathways converged on Zany’s heart and brain. Blaze reached a point close to the heart before he shifted and healed the ones that led to the brain before doubling back to soothe and initiate healing on the ones near Zany’s heart. He seemed rushed for the last bit of healing and moved faster and less carefully than he had for the rest. It wouldn’t hurt Zany, but it was a small waste of mana.

Moments after Blaze lifted his hand, Zany blinked his eyes open. It took a moment for him to focus, but once he did he seemed to try to push his back into the soft flooring of Serenity’s tent.

Lillene

Blaze will wear Serenity down someday, surely?