“Brunhilda!! NO!!”

I looked up from tending to my raw bare shoulder, fingers covered in burn paste. Across the room the mimic paused from where it was noisily chewing the dead chimera’s ribcage. The damage to its bronze exterior had already faded away.

Another, larger chimera stood in the very back of the cathedral-like room, half-hidden in shadow.

“You bitch!!” It screamed as it ran forward. “What have you done to her!? I’ll kill you —  I’LL KILL YOU!!”

Oh. The chimera had a mate. Oh. Oh Shit.

It —  she reared, just like her mate had, screaming a wordless cry of fury. Lightning crackled out from her wyvern’s head, her powerful plated tail thrashing behind her, her lion’s body bunching as she coiled and jumped.

She sailed high in the air, leathery wings beating for sustained lift. Both the mimic and I tracked her progress, frozen in our spots, as she crossed the room in seconds and slammed down on top of me.

Then, there was pain.

I know she got me across the chest with one of her lion’s paws. It hurt. I felt my sternum crack, my rib cage caving in partially under the force.

After that, it got hard to breathe. My heart didn’t feel like it was quite pumping properly. Breathing in was… bad. It felt like I was trapped under a boulder.

The reptilian screams and sounds of fighting echoed from a great distance. Everything hurt so bad. So, so bad.

Except —  It didn’t? I felt dizzy, dreamy, my head spinning and swimming. My hearing went strange, a sloshing in my ears that seemed to come from inside my skull, a gentle waaah — waaah — waaah that reverberated and grew and crossed until it was a mess of sound timed like waves on a beach.

A huge thud shook me. I came back to myself a little, opening my heavy eyes.

My chest was pulp.

Most of my suede tunic had been torn away. It was hard to tell with how woozy I was, but… I was pretty sure the white sticking out of the red ruin of my right side was bone. I had a hell of a difficult time focusing on anything past the damage to my body, but I was pretty sure the crumpled form a few feet away from me was the other chimera.

I wasn’t really in a place to make objective observations, but she looked pretty dead. One wing had been torn off completely and was disappearing into the mimic’s mouth as it thumped closer, approached me.

I grit my teeth, trying for breaths as the pain poured through me and the dizzy darkness clawed at the edges of my vision.

It thumped over, so close I could feel the force of its footsteps as it came within inches of me. So, I thought. Looks like it’s gonna eat me after all. I closed my eyes and waited, hoping it would let me die first. Or maybe finish me off itself… slowly suffocating wasn’t going to be a pleasant way to go.

Heh, I wasn’t even that mad. I mean, it’s not like I was going anywh—

It started to hack and cough, its lid inches from my face. After a moment, something smacked me right in the boob, just above where my chest started to cave in. Clattering sounds rang out as it hit the ground. A… glass bottle?

Noises came from in front of me. I wheezed, laboriously trying to breathe, my head starting to pound. The waaahs were coming back with force. My eyes fluttered open long enough to get a glimpse.

The mimic had sprouted its long muscled arms again, this time without the foot-long nightmare-blades on the end. It reached towards me with one three-digit hand, curling around the back of my neck and holding my head upright. I heard a wet pop and something cool and solid pressed against my mouth.

I felt… liquid? The fingers of the hand cradling my skull started stroking rhythmically down the side of my throat.

I slitted my eyes open —  not an easy feat. All I wanted to do was sink into oblivion. Hell, I hurt so much. What—

There was an open potion shoved against my face. I opened my mouth and drank clumsily, spilling a little down my chin.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the head by a God. My body stiffened on its own, spasms wracking me from the collarbone down. I would have screamed, but I still didn’t really have much air in my lungs. I’m pretty sure what came out was more like a pathetic gurgling. Then my ribs wrenched themselves back into place and unfurled like tendrils on a fern, and I was gasping, blinking down at my blood-covered whole chest, raising a trembling hand to the dribbles of pearlescent wetness mixed with the drying fluids and viscera.

I’d never seen it before, but every adventurer worth their salt knew the tavern stories. The potion was legendary, so rare it would take several of this side’s kingdom’s coffers to possibly afford, assuming you could even find the brew.

A Supreme Elixir of Healing. Able to cure anything short of instant brain death or decapitation.

I sat up woozily, reveling in the heady feeling. A giggle bubbled out of me. I looked around, dazed, transfixed by the pretty colors of the lava in the floor channels several feet away, watching the heat distort and ripple the air above it. So beautiful.

A part of my brain less affected by the high dimly noted that the stories had undersold the euphoria from usage. This felt amazing. I felt like I could take on a dragon and come out unscathed.

I looked over at the mimic wonderingly. It had backed up away from me, patiently sitting on its chonky feet, idling about six feet back. Its full attention was on me.

Waiting.