Chapter 4: Celia Tells All
"So what happened to your fellow recruit?" asked Amber as they crashed through the forest.
"I don't know, really," Bryn answered. "She just screamed. It looked like she had a leg wound, and it looked like it was infected really bad. There were these purple veins running up her leg."
"Sounds like a corruption infection," said Amber. "I guess I'll see when we get there."
"Then you'll see now," said Bryn, straightening up. Amber toppled off her back with a squeak.
She got up, dusting herself off. "What was that for?!"
"We're here," said Bryn, gesturing to the Archers' Guild. Monavelle waved to Bryn from across the courtyard. A few other recruits were holding the corners of the sheet, and on the sheet lay Celia.
Monavelle signaled the other recruits, Nella, Piper, and Correl, and said, "Let's get her inside." Each recruit pulled the corners of the sheet taut, and carried Celia into the guild. With an experienced hand, Amber rolled the unconscious Celia off the sheet and onto a nearby bed in the medical ward. Then she examined her leg wound with a critical eye. The wound was nauseating to look upon; the purple substance had crawled up and down Celia's leg and webbed her calf and thigh with sickly indigo.
Amber turned to Bryn. "How long has this been around?"
"About half an hour," said Bryn, checking her watch.
Amber peered over the wound. "It has to be corruption," she said softly. "When corruption gets past a break in the skin, it's usually terminal. Celia's incredibly lucky you got me here in time. Such wounds are treatable if they're at most an hour old."
"What do you need to treat it?" asked Nella anxiously as she twisted her blouse around her finger.
"Treatment is simple," said Amber. "I just need a couple of handfuls of sand from the hallows, and some crushed fireblossoms."
"You're in luck; we just harvested a whole bunch, and we have lots of sand you can use," said Monavelle, sighing with relief.
The ingredients were quickly gathered. Then Amber mixed the hallowed sand with water and poured the resulting blue liquid over Celia's wound. It spread over her leg and congealed, creating a kind of gel sheath, and started miraculously sucking up the purple stuff. Once it had absorbed every mote of corruption, Amber used one of Correl's arrowheads to scrape it off and threw the purple mass away. She smeared foul-smelling ointment on the wound, stitched it shut, and wrapped it in linen bandages. Finally she took the mass of crushed fireblossoms and forced it into Celia's mouth.
Every recruit held their breath as Celia's jaw muscles moved, agonizingly, then slightly faster until she was chewing on the herbs. Then, Celia's eyes shot open, she sat up bolt upright in bed, and spat out the fireblossoms, leaving Amber's face covered with half-chewed red vegetable matter.
Celia coughed. "Those were terrible! What was that for?"
"Fireblossoms," said Amber. "They were to get your motor kickstarted. Wonderful for the sinuses, am I right?"
"Pthhhh! Yuk! Ptak!" Celia choked, spraying more slobbery fireblossoms in Amber's face.
Amber grimaced under the mass of soggy herbs, then squared her shoulders and wiped her face clean. "Okay, here's the deal. I'd like to know what's up with that leg wound, preferably with a minimum amount of half-eaten fireblossoms."
"Well... I was out gathering some dayblooms for the herb stores, when I tripped over a root and fell on a sharp rock, which made the wound. So I started making my way back to the Archers' Guild and found this purple stuff in my path. I don't even know what it was, but I'm certain that it... it followed me back. Then, when I got back, it caught up to me and some of it got into the wound. I don't know what it was, but it was cold, very cold. And it hurt... and then Bryn heard me scream."
"Cthulhu's beard," Amber cursed under her breath. "There's something incredibly wrong going on here... and I don't know the source of it."
"I've got a nasty feeling that there's a quest in this," Bryn replied.
"You may be right," Amber grumbled. "Woo hoo."
Foreshadowing?! Don't worry, there will be a few nice, long, juicy chapters coming soon!