Summary: Ways to wound your wizard based on damage types & conditions.

1. Acid – Nott doesn't mark her chemicals well, and Caleb drinks a vial of acid, thinking it's a healing potion.
2. Piercing – Caleb's ears are pierced when he's taken captive. The scars that remain are barely noticeable, but he can't stop touching them.
3. Necrotic – To save his friends, Caleb must crawl through a passage of bursting necrotic pustules.
4. Fear – After a traumatizing healing session, Caleb develops an aversion to Caduceus's hands.
5. Slashing – When an evisceration is healed untidily and in great haste, it leads to gristly scar tissue which reduces Caleb's mobility.
6. Thunder – Fjord intends to take Caleb along when he uses Thunder Step, but his hands slip…
7. Charmed – Molly charms Caleb to lighten him up during a night out. It's going great, until he sees a tear trailing down Caleb's cheek.
8. Force – The Traveler gets a little overzealous keeping one of Jester's followers out of harm's way.
9. Poison – Caleb gets himself into a nasty head space and does himself some harm which the Pumats and Caduceus help untangle.
10. Psychic – Psychic damage is particularly hard on Caleb, with effects that linger in sinister and disheartening ways. The Nein make it easier any way they can.

Author's Note: This anthology is an exploration of magical healing as a fallible process. Magical healing is almost always considered A Good Thing, but consider: it's just as susceptible to the dice roll as any other in-game action. Mechanically, negligible healing is caused by a bad roll, but in-universe, it's not hard to imagine mistakes happening as a result of exhaustion, distraction, being at the end of reserves, magical interference, carelessness, injury severity, or even refusal. In short, the potential downsides of magical healing are fascinating. And, wouldn't you know it, the Mighty Nein are totally up for experimentation.

WALKING WOUNDED
Swiss Army Knife

Chapter One:
Acid Damage

The thing was, Nott remembered brewing it. That was the horrible part. She remembered because the bed of the cart was swaying as it rattled over pebbles and ruts in the road, and Nott was balancing the beaker delicately between her toes while she coaxed its contents to just the right temperature. The instant it was right, she shoved her hand inside her pack for a suitable container. Claws clicked around buttons, dried meat, even a brass candle holder. Finally, with the seconds ticking down before the batch was ruined, she felt the cool, unyielding surface of glass.

It was an empty bottle, not a vial, one that had once held a ruby-red healing potion. It was dirty from tumbling around at the bottom of her bag, but the glass was thick and non-corrosive. Perfect, really. Nott hastily emptied the acid into the container and examined it closely. A bit off-color, but probably okay. She let a tiny drop fall onto the wooden bed of the cart. It sizzled. 'One, two, three,' she counted, timing it in her head. A little slow, but not so much as to call it a waste. She heaved a sigh of relief, her muscles relaxing.

From the back of the cart, Caleb's eyes crinkled with fondness. "Were you successful?"

Nott presented the acid, which sloshed against the sides of the potion bottle. "It's fine, although it was a close thing with all this bouncing around."

"This is actually a fairly smooth road," Caduceus commented from the driver's seat, and it was true they'd driven over plenty of worse roads during their travels. At the very least, the surface was hard-packed and baked under the sun. Even so, the wagon still rocked and rattled.

"Perhaps a moving cart is not the best place for working with chemicals," Caleb suggested.

It would've been better to wait for camp, of course, but Nott's brain had been buzzing with boredom. She'd done everything she could think of to do: oiled her crossbow and checked the fletching on each bolt, polished her lockpicks, counted and sorted her growing collection of buckles (she had a bet with Jester about how long it would take Fjord to grow suspicious about the number of repairs his pack and armor required), and even braided Caleb's hair while he was engrossed in his latest novel. Soon, though, even hanging off the back of the cart throwing pebbles at squirrels had stopped being entertaining, and she'd decided cooking up a new batch of acid would pass the time. Caleb was right, though. She could easily have ended up wasting materials.

Caleb's knee bumped against her back. "I meant no judgement. I just do not want you to lose a finger or suffer a burn. I should not worry, though. You are a professional."

A cozy feeling nestled in Nott's chest as it did whenever Caleb told her she was clever. It made her think of Yeza, who had also complimented her quick, dexterous fingers. 'Hold this steady for me,' he would say, or, 'This requires extra precision; only the tiniest drop. Do you mind, darling?' Yeza had made her feel smart and useful, too.

As they spoke, there was a groan from Beau, who was curled around a bedroll in the corner. She'd taken a few hard hits during a skirmish – a pair of mountain trolls with bad attitudes – and for the last few hours, Nott had mostly heard a kind of deep, nasally breathing as she slept it off. Now, though, she joined them in the land of the living. "Could you two keep it down? I'm trying to sleep here." Squinting at Caleb, she stretched out her hands and wiggled her fingers. "You, come nap with me. Somehow your boney ribcage makes a decent pillow."

Stubbornness stitched Caleb's eyebrows together. "I'm reading, Beauregard."

"Come on. I know you're still sore from being thrown against that tree."

Nott had been tucked between two rocky outcroppings when she heard a familiar, foreshortened cry, followed by Caleb slamming into an elm and collapsing into a pile of broken wood and branches. A crossbow bolt had pierced the troll's eye a half-second later. Fingers beating a rhythm against his thigh, Caleb said, "Caduceus healed my injuries."

"Just because your insides are intact doesn't mean the outsides don't hurt," Beau retorted. "Have pity, man. I'm exhausted."

Nott nudged him. "You do look tired, Caleb. There are these bruised-looking pockets under your eyes, and your left lid is twitching..."

"My eyelids do not do that," Caleb said. His protest was precursory at best, however, because he scooted over to Beau and allowed her to prod him into place like an oversized pillow. "Do not drool down my neck, Beauregard."

Arms locked around his stomach, a sharp chin digging into his shoulder. Beau muttered, "Yeah, yeah."

They dropped off almost immediately, and as the shadows lengthened and the afternoon began to cool, Nott fetched Caleb's coat and tucked it around them. Jester giggled as she leaned over the seat. "That's nice," Caduceus said. "They could use the rest. Magical healing doesn't restore reserves, at least not as well as good old-fashioned sleep."

"Plus it's sweet," Jester agreed. "You know, how they like to cuddle when they're bleeding."

Yasha, who'd been walking beside the cart, chuckled. "If by 'cuddle' you mean collapse against the same wall. Which does seem to happen a lot."

"Sure, sure," Fjord said. "It's like our enemies take one look at their tiny, armor-less bodies and just can't help themselves."

Nott challenged him. "I dare you to call Beau 'tiny' when she's awake."

"Not a for a sack of gold pieces. I like my teeth," he said, and everyone had to deliberately muffle their laughter. Afterward, it was more of the open road, the sun approaching the horizon line. Nott folded away her alchemy equipment. The bottle of acid caught the fading light, and Nott rubbed her thumb over it with satisfaction. A decent batch. She shoved it into her bag.

A fortnight passed, and Nott had mostly forgotten about the bottle of acid. The road had been quiet, so quiet she'd barely had a reason to notch her bow, much less evoke the corrosive power of deadly chemicals. That all changed when, as they sat around a fire, Caduceus's ears twitched and Frumpkin sat tall on Caleb's shoulders and gave a fretful cry. The first arrow skittered against a tree, barely missing Fjord, and then the night was filled with sound.

Their attackers were goblins. Nott hissed through her teeth, blood boiling at the sight of them. They were more grey than green, not so tall or intelligent, but they were still vicious with their crude, biting weapons and flashing claws and poison-tipped arrows. One of those arrows scraped Nott's cheek, and she felt it burn – poison. After that, she fought like a barbarian, as reckless and enraged as Yasha. Goblins did that to her. The others thought it came from self-hatred, but they didn't understand. Every time she saw them, a thousand types of suffering poured through her, humiliations and indignities, the cry of her hungry child. It was too much, and it left her desperate to drive off or kill every single goblin on the face of Exandria. When one got in her face, she put her dagger into its throat and felt no compunction, no regret at all, not even when blood misted over her face.

Nott panted. The battle was ebbing. She could see their attackers retreating, their screeching voices high with fear. The forest floor was a mess of bodies in nasty leather jerkins. She kicked one, just for good measure. Then she scanned the trees. Caleb was sitting against a rock, cursing under his breath as Beau put pressure on his leg. Yasha was picking through fallen enemies, occasionally jabbing one with her sword. The two clerics weren't in sight, but Nott could hear Caduceus's deep voice mixing with Jester's sing-songy one as they spoke to a groggy-sounding Fjord, so they were probably okay. Her shoulders drooped with relief.

Beau said, "Hey, Nott. I'm grabbing a healing potion out of your bag. Caleb's gouged pretty bad."

"It can wait," Caleb protested, his voice too strained to be convincing.

"I dropped my bag by that tree," Nott answered, distracted by the goblin beyond the length of her toes. She was trying to discern its origin by the shape of its nose, the quality of the metal and bone fixtures on its clothing, but aside from recognizing her own – ugh – she'd never been very good at discerning the differences between goblin kind. Giving it up as a bad job, she knelt by the creature's quiver to take a sniff of whatever noxious substance was on the arrow tips.

Beau, meanwhile, continued to argue with Caleb behind her back. "Stop being stubborn and drink the potion."

"If we bandage it tightly, it should be fine, Beauregard. The bleeding is already – argh, slowing."

"It's not slowing, idiot." Beau's barbed words weren't enough to hide her underlying concern. "Stop squirming or you're going to make things worse. I can't believe you pulled the arrow out. Didn't anyone ever teach you about puncture wounds? The pointy end stays inside until you're ready to plug the hole."

Caleb sounded suspiciously sullen. "I did not like the way it felt."

"Well, duh. What did you expect, satin rose petals?"

"Caduceus will be done with Fjord in a moment. Healing potions are expensive, and I don't want –"

Beau's teeth could almost be heard grinding together. "Caleb. I'm going to say this once, so shut up and listen. Your scrawny wizard ass is worth more to us than a handful of gold pieces. You not sitting on the forest floor, grimacing in pain is worth more than a handful of gold pieces. So quit acting like a moron and drink the damn potion."

Her appeal was apparently enough to break through Caleb's reluctance. "Very well, Beauregard."

"Let me help. With the way your hands are shaking, you're going to drop it, and that really would be a waste."

Nott had found an unused arrow and was debating whether to lick it when a trickle of awareness made it through the fading adrenaline. A chilling thought seeped into her brain, as sudden and clear as a cry in the dark: 'I don't have a healing potion.' Her hair lashed against her neck as she whipped around, just in time to see the glass edge of the bottle touch Caleb's lips. Her hand jerked out. "Beau, don't!"

It was too late. Caleb's throat was already bobbing.

There was a paralytic pause in which nothing happened, and then his whole body jackknifed. By the time Nott reached him, he was convulsing. She knew what was happening. The acid sizzling away at the tender lining of his mouth and throat. Getting lower, into his digestive tract, tearing him up, breaking down soft membranes where corrosive elements were never meant to go. Blood foamed on his teeth.

Nott screamed for help as he bucked in her arms, his pulse rabbiting under her fingers. A high, hoarse wail poured out of him, even though the blood, and it was like no sound Nott had ever heard, worse than pig slaughtering in the fall, worse than the scream a rat made before you snapped its neck. It was agony, crawling its way out of her boy's blistered throat, past the heat of cooking flesh, twisting into the air to meet her ears and wrench them with the suffering she'd caused.

She was barely aware when Caduceus arrived, pushing them out of the way and placing his hand on Caleb's sweat-soaked forehead. "What happened?"

"I don't know!" Beau shouted. Her hands were shaking with emotion. "I just gave him a healing potion!"

Nott's voice stuck, able to articulate only one word: "Acid."

"Shit, shit, shit!" Beau wailed. "I didn't know!"

Jester was praying frantically, hands clasped before her. Caduceus had pulled Caleb's stiff, resisting body onto his lap, one of his huge hands pressed firmly to his abdomen, the other over his neck. They were glowing, but Caleb's eyes were sealed shut, his breathing mere compulsive gasps that came farther and farther apart as Nott ticked down the seconds, just as she had that day on the back of the cart, timing the acid's effectiveness.

"Oh, Wildmother," Caduceus whispered. "Help me."

The wagon creaked down the road, swaying from side to side. At the back, Nott sat with her legs dangling. It had rained recently, and sometimes the wheels stuck. When they came free, bits of mud flecked the bottoms of her feet. She didn't care. She wanted to lie down in that mud and let it smother her. She flexed claw-tipped fingers. Traitor hands, dexterous and clever, which had made the acid Caleb swallowed. Careless hands, which had not bothered to mark the potion bottle. She didn't deserve to be called an alchemist. Yeza had been wrong.

Behind her, on a makeshift pallet made of every blanket and bedroll they possessed, laid Caleb. His hair was a matted mess despite Jester's care to clean him up, and there were none of the little twitching movements Nott was accustomed to seeing. He might have been a corpse were it not for the wispy breaths he was taking, each one edged with a wheezing note that set Nott's hair on end.

'I've done what I can,' Caduceus told them. His voice had been strained, his fur damp with sweat from the exertion of drawing Caleb back from the brink. One only had to look at him to know how close it had been. 'But I don't know how deep the damage was before I reached him, and regenerating parts of the body isn't something I can do. He'll need time and probably more healing once Jester and I have a chance to rest. In the meantime, the best we can do is get him somewhere safe and look after him.'

Beau was curled beside the pallet in a twisted parody of the nap she and Caleb had taken on the day Nott brewed that hateful concoction. This time, the only contact she allowed herself was her hand, which was clenched around Caleb's shirt. Nott wondered if she was monitored his heart, beating uncertainly beneath her knuckles.

When they reached town, they got directions to the nearest inn, and Caduceus whispered a few words about visiting an apothecary. He turned the reins over to Jester, who took them with reluctance. It was probably Fjord who secured them a room. It was definitely Yasha who came around the back of the cart and spoke in that quiet way which carried so much weight. "Has he moved at all?"

Beau laid still, fixated on Caleb. "No."

"Caduceus said he isn't likely to wake tonight. We'll have to watch for fever. Something about infection if the acid got far enough into his intestines."

Nott's stomach revolted. She jumped down from the cart.

Beau jerked upright. "Hey, where are you going?"

Nott felt insubstantial, the lights of the town moving before her like a minor illusion. Her fingers itched. "I have to – to go. Look after him."

"Nott, you can't just –"

But by the time Beau's voice registered, Nott had already disappeared around the corner, slipping into the gathering shadows.

There was only one moon above the horizon by the time Nott returned to the inn. The coals lay cooling in a banked and abandoned hearth as Nott slipped into their room. With clumsiness born of exhaustion, she crawled onto the bed. Caleb had been placed on his side, and Nott resisted the urge to push his bangs from his eyes, to draw the blanket closer around his shoulders, which always looked so much narrower without his layers of protective covering, his harness of books.

Instead of touching him, Nott laid out her offerings on the pillow, making a halo around his head. A brass bell, tiny sewing scissors shaped like a bird, a spool of crimson thread, fresh-smelling cloves, two sticks of beeswax, a toy soldier, and a gold ring. It had taken her hours to gather them all, and her last mark nearly caught her. She'd felt the crownsguard shift as she thrust his ring into her pocket, but she'd slipped away even as suspicion bloomed on his face. Stupid. Stupid of her. There was no magic in trinkets, no penance in gifts. But what else could she do?

"Is that where you've been? Scratching an itch?"

Nott's shoulders stiffened. She glanced backward, and there in the corner of the room was Beau. She had her arms draped over her knees, and her eyes had the heavy, hollow look of one who needed sleep but could find no rest. When Nott said nothing, she wandered over. They sat there together.

Beau asked, "Are you angry with me?"

"Yes," Nott said, because it was true. Her hands ached to scratch and claw at Beau because she was the one who'd put that poison down Caleb's throat. "But not angrier than I am with myself. Are you angry with me?"

"Yeah. I want to just – why was that damn stuff in the potion bottle, Nott?"

"I'd broken all my vials. It was...convenient."

Beau snorted, but it wasn't the kind of snort that followed a joke. It was all bitterness, and when Nott glanced in her direction, she could see Beau's eyes shining in the moonlight. She scrubbed the back of her hand across her face. "I want to go back in time and punch myself before I pour that stuff down his throat."

The image took hold like wildfire, lighting up Nott's brain. "I want you to go back and punch me before I put that bottle in my bag."

Only after a long moment of contemplation did Beau bite back another humorless laugh, her lips twisting. "You know who we sound like."

Nott gave up and let her instincts win over, tenderly stroking Caleb's bangs. "No, there's no one like him."

The universe apparently had an ounce of mercy, because Caleb was able to sit up the next day, albeit with glassy, haunted eyes, and listen to what had happened to him. The task had been allotted to Caduceus, who leaned in and warmed Caleb's limp hands in an attempt to mitigate the shock. Caleb's expression didn't change during the telling, and at the end he merely nodded. Nott felt a surge of terror that this apparent mental retreat was the one he wouldn't come back from. Then Beau moved, displacing Caduceus with a shove.

"Caleb," she said.

Her Caleb, who did so poorly with people, who was so easily overwhelmed by the intensity of other people's emotions, looked at Beau – her heavy breathing, her pale complexion – and reached out to take her hand. "Beauregard."

She clutched him like a lifeline. "I'm sorry."

He swallowed. It seemed difficult, like his tongue was swollen, or his mouth was filled with sores. Caduceus had healed everything, but maybe Caleb still felt them. One way or another, his words seemed slow-pulled, like taffy. However, the apparent effort only made them that much weightier. "Beauregard, you are an accident waiting to happen…ah, I mean, 'accidents happen'."

Beau bowed over. This was absolution, and it was as though she couldn't decide whether to laugh or sob. Caleb patted her face with his free hand. It was awkward. So awkward that Beau let out a strangled giggle and punched him very gently on the arm. "Just stop. I don't think either of us can handle any terrible hugs right now. You're too brittle, and I feel like I haven't slept in a week."

"It's been two days," Caduceus said, helpful as always. "You really ought to lie down."

"I can sleep when I'm dead."

Caleb shook his head. He weakly flapped the blankets beside him. "Nap?"

An unusually vulnerable expression appeared on Beau's face. Uncertain, she made a fist, tapped it against her palm. But she couldn't long resist what she truly wanted. She crawled onto the bed and collapsed onto the mattress, eyes already closed. "Just because you're an invalid doesn't mean you get to hog the pillow."

Nott was watching from the foot of the bed, so she saw Caleb's expression. He wasn't one to smile with his mouth, like most people did. For Caleb, it was all in the eyes. The way they scrunched and softened, or sparked with good humor. He glanced her way and started to do that almost-smile again, and her tears welled. His expression faded to alarm. "Nott?"

It was too much. She pivoted, angling for the door, but before she could dart through it and escape, a steely hand closed around her wrist. Beau glared at her. "Don't," she said.

Nott quivered. She bore her teeth into her lip, drawing blood.

"Nott," Caleb said again.

She slipped out into the corridor and fled.

Nott and Caleb didn't talk about the acid. Caleb was wearing the ring she'd stolen when Nott came back. It sat on his middle finger, gleaming in the candlelight, and this time when he opened his arms to her, she went to them. He grunted when she constricted her arms around his waist, but held tight when she flinched and started to pull away. "Just a little tender," he said in a voice that was raspier than she remembered. She wondered if that was permeant or if it would fade in time.

She hoped it would fade.

Within a few days, he was out of bed, moving without much pain. The Nein were already talking about their next stop. It was a conversation that continued after dinner as a round of drinks went around. Nott and Caleb left them to their own devices. Upstairs, they shut the door behind them, built a warm fire, and got out Nott's alchemy kit. This time, Nott laid out the equipment carefully; the beaker, the pot, the components. Caleb also took his time, cutting narrow strips of paper with a knife he usually used to neaten his quills. They worked mostly in silence while the bones cooked down and the glue simmered.

Every once in a while, Nott would nudge Caleb's hand toward a cup of broth. Caleb gazed at the mug with distrust. All the muscles in his mouth and throat were tight and sensitive. It made simple things like eating a chore, and Caleb had not been one to relish his vittles in the first place. Which made his recovery Nott's responsibility. He would not waste away on her watch.

After an hour or so, Caleb finished the final label, then handed it to her so she could coat the back and lay it aside to dry. She nodded with satisfaction. "I made it so if we wet it, it will go sticky again. I could lick it, maybe, then press it straight onto the bottle."

"It's a useful invention. You are very clever, my friend," Caleb said.

Nott wanted to tell him that if she'd really been clever, she wouldn't have kept unmarked bottles in her bag in the first place. In the end, though, she didn't. It wouldn't help anything. Least of all Caleb. Instead, she picked up his hand, rubbing her thumb over the ring on his finger. Wearing it was his way of telling her he knew she was sorry, that he forgave her. She pattered the back of his hand.

'Never again,' she thought, and picked up another label.

Author's Note: When Beau and Caleb huddle together during one of their post-battle short rests, it is unbelievably precious. Allow me to tarnish it forever with trauma. This is basically what you can expect from this series, by the way: gratuitous injury and hurt/comfort, soused with a generous helping of platonic team-bonding and angst. Because that's how I do. :D