Sorry it took so long! I've been on vacation for a the last week and a half. So anyways, read and review.

Sophie's body was wracked with pain, her head felt like it was splitting down the middle and her entire left side felt like it had been torn clean off. She could feel furtive hands cutting away her shirt as someone barked orders. Something came down over her mouth and for a moment she couldn't breathe until clean, fresh oxygen pumped down her throat and nose. Her eyes cracked open for a moment and a painfully bright light made them tear up, but she caught a glimpse of a pale face and a few red curls. Then she fell back into her pain-filled dreams.

Billy was stuck in the hallway, pacing back and forth over the worn carpet. His hands were shaking and he couldn't stand still for more than a few seconds. Sophie's quiet sobs floated to him through the door and he barely restrained himself from throwing the door open. But it was useless, the door was locked tight and his dining room was essentially a quarantined-off area. The moment Cerrid showed up she'd checked Sophie's restraints, set up the oxygen equipment and set up a barrier with her aura, which was parchment colored and smelled like paper and books. The she'd shooed him out of the apartment.

More than anything he wanted something to do. In his natural life, if he got bored he'd go rob something, which wasn't all that interesting since it wasn't exactly hard to do. His mother always thought he was lazy, and good-for-nothing, just like his father. His step-father was a miner, but after his mother died he abandoned Billy at a hell-hole boarding house. By the end of the first week he wasn't stealing out of boredom, he was stealing out of survival. He wasn't even fifteen the first time they locked him up, and prison was even worse than the house. But Billy was smart, and security was laughable. He could force himself to climb up a soot-covered chimney, almost choking to death halfway up, but even he couldn't get past Cerrid's defenses.

Cerrid took a deep breath as she started the incision on Sophie's hip. She grimaced as a foul-smelling black ooze slowly ran from the wound and quickly got to work cutting the rest of it open. Her years of research and mentoring of some of the best doctors in human history had prepared her for just about any injury or illness. But the recent outbreak was wearing away at her abilities. The surgeries were extremely tiring, both physically and mentally, even her aura was starting to weaken, and the survival rate for patients was devastatingly low. Sophie's one saving grace was her incredibly strong aura that had weakened the poison as it made its way up to her brain.

The black ooze was slowing down and she sopped it into a jar she kept in her bag. She moved up to Sophie's throat and made a smaller incision, careful not to cut into the main artery. As the poison slowly made its way out of the body, Cerrid ran her hands over Sophie's side while her aura slowly spread over the wound and slid into it. She could feel it slowly healing the damage done by the poison, but she could tell there would be lasting damage, especially in the muscles in her leg. It was likely that Sophie would walk with a limp for the rest of her life.

Finally Cerrid came to the damage in her brain, the poison hadn't done too much damage, but brain cells were awful to regrow. "Better consider yourself lucky," she muttered. Then she rested her hands on either side of Sophie's head and steadied her feet. It came on slowly, a dull throb at the base of her tailbone, then it shot up her spine and exploded in a flash of pure agony in her brain. Finally it collected near her left ear and the pain subsided. She couldn't feel it, but she knew the cells in her temporal lobe were reproducing at an impossible rate. The offspring shot down to collect in her palm and a small bump appeared beneath her skin. Cerrid took a deep breath, took out a scalpel and made a small incision in her palm and pressed the cut against the one in Sophie's neck. The cells moved a bit sluggishly but finally made their way up to the girl's temporal lobe.

She quickly wrapped her hand and her aura to heal the cuts on Sophie's throat and side. She mopped up what was left of the black ooze and dumped it into the jar, then checked Sophie's body, especially her vital organs, for any kind of residual effects. Other than her leg muscles, she was completely clear. She searched the room for any airborne bits of poison and obliterated them, and finally let down her wards.

Billy's head shot up as the door opened and Cerrid walked out, slightly unsteady on her feet. Her aura hung over her like a blanket, the parchment color slightly grayer than usual. Her eyes were darker, the pupils dilated so far that they almost covered her irises.

"She's fine, she'll need to sleep for several hours. Consider yourselves lucky, Billy, she could've easily died."

He nodded solemnly, but his heart sped up at the news that Sophie was going to pull through. Cerrid patted him on the shoulder with a shaking, bandaged hand and made her way unsteadily down the hallway.

"Wait!" he called and she glanced over her shoulder.

"Yes?" she asked tiredly.

"There's something I can't figure out. Your cousin told me that your services never come without an extremely high price, but you haven't even mentioned one."

Cerrid took a tired breath and leaned against the wall. "I specialize in more than just healing, for millennia I've been building Shadowrealms. When Hel started to lose her sanity Odin asked me to build a prison for her, and in her deteriorated state she wanted a dark, wet place where she wouldn't be harmed. I built a Shadowrealm with underground hot springs that kept the area warm for her and several swamps for her to live. At some point a chemical reaction took place, I still don't know exactly how, that poisoned not only Hel, but also the rest of her Shadowrealm. But it somehow ate away at the illness in her brain, and her sanity returned to find herself in a dark, unearthly place filled with death. Her body was corrupted by the very poison that awoke her, you saw what she looked like. When the Yggdrasil collapsed the poison was released into several other Shadowrealms, and ravaged them almost as quickly as it did Hel's. Entire civilizations collapsed and species died out within a matter of weeks, and there was nothing I could do. So I tracked down the very few survivors and helped them to the best of my abilities, but even then only a handful survived. I have to track down what's left of the poison and contain it, it's the least I can do to atone for what I created."

"It's affecting you the same way it affected Hel, isn't it?"

Cerrid gave a sad nod. "It'll corrupt me too one day. In a few months I'll be barely lucid and a carrier for the poison itself. I have a Shadowrealm set aside, with only one entrance. When I've finished my work I'll go there, destroy the gateway and hopefully waste away completely along with the rest of the poison."

Then the red-haired Elder turned and left, her ravaged and slowly dying body somehow keeping her up despite her severe ordeal.

I feel very evil for that...R&R!