I first manifested my [Will] to free myself of whatever magic I was under, then spread my wings to stabilize myself, shortly taking back control of my uncontrollable tumbling through the air and smoothly transforming it into just another normal flight.
After being unknowingly launched like that, the reasonably petty thing to do would be to go back and say to Knight Thalor that I didn't hear what she said, and that she should clarify her instructions as the commander of the relief detail.
I wasn't petty enough to actually do that, so I flew straight towards the distant horizon, swiftly making out further and further details about what turned out to be a bunch of people wearing standard Sentinel armor.
The Faith's expedition force.
Approaching them with the caution it deserved—not much, but still a bit in case I was somehow mistaken for a fairy-shaped elemental by some morons—I confirmed my [Perception] wasn't being deceived and...
I realized I was imminently going to be the first contact between the relief detail and the expedition force, nearly causing me to slow down to gather my wits.
What was I going to say? Should I ask to meet the commander? What for? Would I be asked to go meet him anyway? Her? Was it a him or a her?
Damn it, I should have read about the Sentinel leadership protocols when I had the occasion.
Or... maybe I read them but couldn't remember?
[Guided] returned me a warm sensation.
I must have read some advanced report protocols designed to transmit information from leadership to leadership in an efficient manner...
In any case, I could just wing it, leveraging my prestige as the sole fairy of the Red Sand Rift City's Faith branch and my famed youth to act as the naive healer sent forward to warn the expedition force.
Yeah. That sounded like a good option.
Fending the air at my reasonable flying velocity, it didn't take long before the Faith's expedition force turned from a jumbled gathering of hazy forms into what resembled an organized force, individuals walking in orderly rows around massive sandstriders piled high with things hidden under tight metal-thread tarps, pulling them along as they walked.
I hadn't really considered it until I saw it, but the Red Sand Realm really made it a massive hassle to transport supplies and harvests in and out of the fiery depths of its immense dune-hewn, wind-scouRed Desert.
Though, I guessed that if sandstriders worked, then relatively speaking, the Red Sand Realm was merciful.
Roads certainly couldn't be built and maintained, but at the same time, a desert of just sand was as good as a naturally-made Realm-wide road, if a poor one that only allowed load-distributed vehicles to pass unimpeded, swallowing everything else.
Earlier than I wanted, it became painfully obvious that my arrival did not go unnoticed, with some of the advance scouts waving at me in what I supposed to be both greetings and signs for me to first go through them instead of rushing straight towards the main body.
"Initiate Solaena, from the relief detail," I introduced myself according to Sentinel protocol.
"Warrior Absalom, from the expedition force."
"Is there an urgent need for a healer?"
"Not that I'm aware of, though some of us certainly wouldn't complain about some hydrated paste."
"Knight Thalor is leading the relief detail an hour or two out this way, she is already aware of your location. To whom do I need to report to coordinate the arrival?"
"Ask for Knight Suad."
"Alright." Giving Warrior Absalom a curt nod of acknowledgement, I took off again, this time towards the main body of the expedition force proper.
Of course I would be referred to the commander... who else?
I was stopped for a second time when I closed in on the vanguard, where my name was clearly mentioned by Sentinels I similarly knew the names of, making for a swift pass into the marching formation.
Then, when I approached the core of the formation, flying over sandstriders that had been transformed into makeshift mobile wards to welcome the expedition members who couldn't walk anymore, I found the figure of the commander I sighted when the expedition first left the Prime Temple.
A normal-sized giant wearing gray-white full plate armor and carrying a massive greatsword veined with ember-like filaments, standing at the core of the marching formation, pulling two sandstriders alone without looking the slightest bothered.
I couldn't see his-her eyes, but the moment I looked at the helmet visor, it felt like I was being directly stared at, prompting me to quickly approach and get on with my report.
"Initiate Solaena, from the relief detail, here to report to Knight Suad," I announced myself.
"Initiate Solaena, what a pleasant surprise," a deep, gravely voice echoed from within the suit of armor that didn't stop moving.
"And from the traces of [Aura] surrounding you, Knight Thalor mustn't be far. You must have moved quite briskly to already be here, I hadn't expected to hear anything back for another half a day. What can you tell me about the relief detail you're part of?"
Well, that was it.
What was the worst that could happen when the relief detail was just one or two hours away?
I let myself be [Guided].
"Following the arrival of forward scouts informing the Prime Temple of the expedition force circumstances approximately fifty or so hours ago, the initial escort detail was protocolly upgraded to a relief detail."
"Headed by Knight Thalor, forty people, including five healers, gathered while privileging hydrated pastes, medical supplies, and light-footedness."
"Around fifteen minutes ago, or one to two hours at the speed the relief detail travelled, in the direction of the Nexus rift, Knight Sloan made visual contact across the dunes with this expedition force and sent me, or rather threw me, to announce our arrival and coordinate our merge."
Finished with my report, I tapped my fist onto my chest, signalling I had nothing else to add and my report had ended.
"Not a bad report for an Initiate who just earned her rank a couple months back," Knight Suad admitted, then turned to slowly look at some of the closest Sentinel, who all expressly turned their heads to avoid the heavy, insistent gaze.
There was, obviously, a story there.
"That will be all, Initiate Solaena." He turned back to look at me. "How are you feeling about assuming the role of sky sentry? I would feel much relieved if we had some eyes in the sky, and from your reputation, I can only assume being sent there would be an enjoyable station."
Ah.
Right.
I earned my healer qualification in the months that followed the expedition force departure, so nobody here could possibly know I counted myself as one of the five healers part of the relief detail.
How did I forget to mention that...
[Guided], help me!
"It would be my pleasure to assume the station of sky sentry, but I just realized I forgot to mention that I counted myself as one of the healers of the relief detail, having earned my healer qualification while the expedition force was gone. I apologize, it slipped from my mind."
"Oh?" Something that resembled a sound of surprise escaped Knight Suad. "Well, in that case, that's even better. Congratulations on earning your healer qualification, Initiate Solaena. My healers and Sentinels are in dire need of some healing relief. The heavily injured cases are in those four wards."
He pointed with his thumb at the two sandstrider he was personally pulling and the two right behind.
"I will get to it immediately, Knight Suad," I said, then directly took off towards one of the two sandstriders that had been turned into mobile wards by pitching a tent on top of them.
Finding an opening easily as there were holes everywhere at the seams, I flew straight inside, and was welcomed by the sight of twenty-odd giants from a plethora of species silently staring at me, each more battered than the other.
Some were lacking their entire lower body, some had asymmetrical bandages put on their head, clearly indicating that part of their skull was gone, a couple had stitches everywhere, completely disfiguring them, and the most prominent one was only a head and half a torso.
It was a gruesome sight, and the heat along with the smell that not even the persistent draft from the air engulfing itself through every opening certainly only made it worse.
Compared to the sea of dismembered and smashed cadavers that had strewn the ruins of Volow, however...
Something of that level couldn't really get to me anymore.
If it ever could to begin with.
"Hello, I'm Solaena. The relief detail is about to arrive in an hour or two. I've been sent ahead of time to preemptively stabilize any heavily injured. And yes, I earned my healer qualification while you were gone playing the brave otherworldly adventurers."
I quickly introduced myself and gave a light report which earned me a couple of chuckles.
That's all I needed, really.
"Is there anyone unconscious?" was my first question, obviously not intended for the unconscious individuals, but for those who were convalescing next to them.
"There, Sol," a hoarse voice I barely recognized as a Warrior I often trained with called me.
Before I could ask him how this happened, though, my duty called.
"Next to me," another called.
"Two here," and yet another.
"Hordad?" someone asked.
No answer.
"Another here."
My only answer to their responses was to slowly hover in the limited internal space of the makeshift ward to assess everyone's conditions the natural way, all to find if anyone was in imminent danger of dying.
I only had the [Perception] Aspect along with my healing knowledge at my disposal, after all, nothing as remotely specialized as proper [Diagnosis], [Examination], or [Assessment] Aspects.
Perhaps that would change when I synthesized my [Perception] Aspect into [Awareness], but even if that was the case, I was pertinently aware that my priority here was to stabilize the injured until experienced healers came to tell me what was wrong.
Only then would I know what was the best way to employ my [Will] to heal them.
For now, I made do with approaching anyone who didn't answer, then let myself be [Guided] towards making an evaluation of their vitals depending on their species.
"Stable."
"Stable."
"Stable."
With every individual I checked, I reported my conclusion, hoping to assuage the worries most certainly weighing heavily on the minds of anyone who had been assigned to such a ward.
Then I found an unconscious Sorell missing her two legs, one arm, and part of her torso that I didn't even need [Guided] to tell me was an ambivalent case.
Coincidentally, I was here for exactly those ambivalent cases.
As I couldn't know whether this female Sorell had been forcibly put into her current state by another healer to stabilize her, however, I choose to simply [Will] her current state to be perfect at keeping her alive, infusing her with a fiftieth of my energy.
It was vague, it was inefficient, but it was the only thing I could do that couldn't possibly cause a backlash.
It would at least postpone any potential cardiac arrest for the next hour or so.
One other patient necessitated my intervention before I wrapped up my tour of this ward and hastily moved to the next one, where yet another gruesome spectacle awaited me, the most prominent one there being an unidentifiable individual who had been stitched together from head to toe, pus oozing everywhere.
I nearly invested a tenth of my reserve into that one, but ultimately kept to stabilizing him until more experienced healers were there to tell me what to do.
I wondered where the expedition force healers were.
Had I just been so fast that they had yet to be alerted of my presence?
"...telling me where Acolyte Solaena..."
A muffled voice suddenly reached my ears.
"...in that ward..."
Shortly followed by an answer that told me someone had been asking for my location outside the ward.
"Acolyte Solaena?" Someone pulled the tarp of the makeshift ward and called my name and Seeker rank.
"Here," I replied.
"I see you've already gotten started. Perfect." A female Elfen healer I recognized as Scribe Firenze from my many healing sessions undergone as an apprentice healer in the infirmary familiarly climbed into the ward, then nimbly made her way to where I was by stepping over bodies.
"So you passed your healer qualification examination? An excellent achievement. Though I doubt that despite your excellence, you have yet had the time to form the required Aspects to carry out your healing without supervision. I've been running on empty for weeks here, so do you mind assisting me?"
"I was waiting for that," I honestly told her, "I already made a pass at the neighboring ward where I dispensed two [Will] stabilizations, and just did another one with this patient here. Three-fiftieth of my energy reserve is gone."
"Let us use half of that first, then." Stretching her hands and cracking her fingers, her eyes left me and slid over to the one I had just stabilized.
"This, here, is Guardian Cemil, a male Kethra who heroically saved the life of his entire unit of seven Warriors by keeping them all above a strange plant's acid sac who had captured them all in one fell swoop."
"It took Knight Suad's intervention for the strange plant's acid sac membrane to be ruptured, but by then, his entire skin and most of his organs were already melted to irreversibility, and he only endured through the ordeal through sheer [Determination]."
"As you can see, his [Determination] pulled him through even that and we successfully brought him back from the brink of death by forcing his entire metabolism into near cessation, slowly stimulating his [Recovery] to fight off the body-wide infections, and regenerating whatever we could."
"What should I do first? Clear infections? Regenerate organs? Stimulate blood flow?" I asked after she finished recounting Guardian Cemil's unbelievable tale of [Bravery] and [Determination].
"Purge his body of infections, first. Start with the lungs. I only kept them at a twenty percent utilization rate for the last three weeks. You can imagine how much damage being as if continuously suffocated provoked."
"I can do more than imagine," I bragged, "I had to heal myself from repeated short-term asphyxiations more than a thousand times by that point. How much of his lungs should I recover? A hundred percent? No, that's not going to be possible, will it? Liquid content? Necrosis? What's the state of his alveoli in various parts of the lung tissue?"
"Recover as much of it as you can," she specified, pulling a pristine scalpel from her belt. "We'll do both lungs at the same time. The bottom part of both is necrotized, with a high liquid content. We'll have to purge everything up to... here for the left lung and here for the right lung. Use the opportunity to expel all unwanted liquids and infected tissues. I'll take care of the surgery."
Decisively, Scribe Firenze cut through the stitched patches of pus-covered skin that covered Guardian Cemil's torso, and I unhesitantly rushed over to help pull a gap open, exposing the abominable state of his inner organs covered by brittle-looking ribs.
We both ignored the weak bleeding and the sound of air rushing in to fill Guardian Cemil's pierced pleural cavity.
"Ready?" she called, her scalpel hovering right above a darkened part of the exposed left lung.
I readied my [Will], a recipient to collect the purged biological material, and nodded.
With one cut, a fifth of Guardian Cemil's left lung was slashed off, and his breathing instantly totally disappeared.
Scribe Firenze wasn't finished, and with agile movement, she went to slash a good quarter of the right lung too.
Not that both lungs were anywhere near their normal size as I assumed they had to be regenerated.
"Purge," she ordered.
I [Will]ed all the necrotized and infected tissues along with all the unwanted liquids like blood or lymph and the pus that had spilled into the pleural cavity to be physically purged through the opening Scribe Firenze made.
At once, both severed parts of the right and left lungs came spilling out through the incision along with a steady flow of strange liquids and mushy solids.
"Finished," she informed me when the purge was completed, telling me to wrap up the operation.
I first [Will]ed the lungs' ends to constrict on themselves to restore their integrity.
Once that was done, I [Will]ed for the pleural cavity to be sealed, pulling out the air contained inside to recreate a vacuum.
Finally, I [Will]ed Guardian Cemil's breathing to resume by forcibly making his intercostal muscles, and ensuingly his diaphragm, contract, causing his breathless body to inhale an audible breath.
"Status?" I inquired when I was done and ready to seal everything back up.
"Heart was about to stop but has stabilized. You can thank your previous [Will] stabilization for that. Breathing is sustained and stable. Oh, there is some bleeding in the esophagus and the throat that is infiltrating the trachea..."
In no time, a third of energy reserve was invested towards the betterment of Guardian Cemil, ensuring his situation wouldn't worsen, and even marginally steering him towards the path of [Recovery].
"Good." Scribe Firenze nodded after realizing a thorough [Assessment], then asked me, "Energy?"
"A third depleted. Expected to be recovered in two to three hours. Faster if I get some paste in my stomach. And much faster if I'm also allowed to sleep," I shared, my [Cycle] already hard at work improving my energy recovery by introducing nutritious elements in my bloodstream.
"Dehydrated paste?" she offered.
I assented, and was soon handed a piece of rock-hard paste the size of my hand, which I devoured without making a fuss despite its absurd dryness.
Afterwards, Scribe Firenze took me to another sandstrider ward where yet more Sentinels in critical conditions had narrowly been stabilized before they passed the threshold of death’s door and couldn't be brought back.
The next eight to sixteen days were going to be very Essence development-intensive...