Chapter Four: Aroma Therapy
"I've had enough of arguing," said Bane, annoyed.
"Funny, you don't look dead yet," Luff countered.
The Djinn emerged from the tunnel in the northwest corner of Lunpa, and after spending a moment blinking in the sunlight, moved as one elemental into the shrubbery of the nearest house, from which they did a quick reconnaissance of the village.
"Lot of guards," a hedge commented.
"Never mind the guards, check out that castle," said the marigolds.
"Is foxglove poisonous?" asked a patch of the bell-shaped flowers.
"The villagers look scared," observed a fern.
"I guess they're not in on whatever's happening in the fortress, then," said the hedge, with a difference voice.
"I wouldn't normally ask, but I'm starting to understand why the Adepts don't enjoy hunger," the foxglove cluster went on.
"What are we doing now that we're all nicely organised into groups?" asked a sarcastic holly bush.
"The holly has a point," admitted yet another part of the hedge.
"Well, we've got to find the Adepts," said some thistles. "And get far, far away from these plants."
"Stop whining, Wheeze. You're going to end up like Luff someday."
"Ow! Why on Weyard do these things need to be so -ow- pointy?!"
"I really hope none of these are those carnivorous plants."
None of the Djinn said anything for a while.
"Another group has to find out what's happened to our Psynergy, because I need to burn whoever suggested that," the fern went on.
"And we need to find out who's behind all this," said Gasp.
"Find the treasury. Every good castle has a treasury."
"I bet we could rally these villagers, with a bit of effort. They'd probably be happy to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. Everyone loves doing that. Especially the hangings afterwards," said Lull.
"You continue to freak me out," Vine stated.
"And you really expect to get away with all of this?" asked Eddy, eternal skeptic.
"Ed's got a point."
"Eddy!"
"Whatever," said Shine, ignoring him. "We'll need a dose of chaos, too."
"Wahoo!"
"And already we have a volunteer. Thank you, Fever. Sit down and don't set anything on fire. Distractions have to be properly timed, and this'll be a big one," Shine went on.
"Wait, that puts me in the chaos-sowing group," Tinder pointed out.
"Well, if anyone gets hurt, and that's a dangerous group, they'll need you," said Shade.
"I wasn't complaining," Tinder replied after a moment. "It's about time I got to wreak a little havoc."
"Does anyone know why the defensive Djinn are the most warlike ones?" asked Blitz as the Djinn carefully moved out and divided into their groups, while the elder Djinn chose tasks. "I feel like I'm not living up to the standard."
"What could cause him to stop breathing?" asked Isaac, who might have been capable of healing Psynergy but was no master of the art.
"Lots of things, none good," said Mia, who started to lean over Garet and then stopped. She glanced back at Isaac for only a second, blushing in the dim light, and then looked at Jenna. "Remember what I taught you about breathing problems, Jenna?"
"I hope so. Never tried, though," said the Mars Adept, coming over to them.
"It's not that hard. One induced respiration, please, and no tongue."
"You call that bedside manner?" asked Ivan.
"Do you see a bed? This is dungeon-floor-side manner. That means I patch him up and then we find out whether or not he felt safe and serene."
Jenna began the chest-pumping and breathing techniques she had learned during the few last weeks of their Lighthouse quest, when she had apparently hallucinated that she had all the natural qualities of a good healer and was ready to be taught the ways of the most sacred art.
It hadn't taken long to decide that Psynergy was about as far as she wanted to go with healing and would stick to creating work for healers the rest of the time. But there were a few things she had picked up, and even if she broke occasionally to try to make his lungs start again and was trying to force air into him and he was unconscious… well, a kiss was a kiss. And if she didn't get this right, it would be the last, so there was an incentive to remember everything in perfect detail.
Meanwhile, Mia opened Garet's shirt and pressed her ear to his side, listening to the rhythm of life inside. She didn't have Psynergy, she shouldn't be able to do much with this… but some things, even if they start from another place, can go deeper than the conscious mind. Mia could hear the slow -and growing ever slower- beat of Garet's heart, feel the blood as it flowed through his veins to the lungs…
See the wickedly twisted shape of the metal, a tiny fragment that had cut its way through from behind until it reached the lung, where it caused a system shock and shut him down.
Mia floated back up from the near-trance she had put herself into, in time to hear the last few words of a comment from Isaac. "What?" she asked, distractedly.
"I said I should try not breathing once in a while. Is it common practice to disrobe patients?"
"Actually, I have very little," she replied, still distracted. Isaac was still puzzling this one over when Jenna had some luck.
"Come on, come on Garet…" she murmured, and was rewarded by a sort of weak, wheezing sound. "He's breathing!" she announced with relief.
"Good," said Mia, and she had slipped into her unstoppable healer voice, the kind of thing usually associated with demigods. "Isaac, help me turn him over. Let's get that thing out."
"What thing?" asked Isaac, but he had the sense to ask once he had already started flipping his friend onto his front. Once this was done, though, the answer was clear enough. Just underneath his left shoulderblade his brown tunic was ripped in four places, and the skin underneath each tear was marred by dry blood and recently sealed wounds. "That's disgusting."
"I don't really notice any more," said Mia, vaguely, and rolled back her sleeves. "Now, one of these is the one causing trouble…" She sighed. "I wish we had some kind of tool to work with." Silently, Sheba's hand appeared beside her, holding a herb pouch and a stiletto.
"How did you get those in here?" asked Mia, taking both items thankfully.
"What kind of guard searches a little girl's boots for healing plants and a small deadly weapon?" asked Sheba rhetorically.
"No way," said Jenna, backing off. "I am not using that."
"Look, I know this is makeshift, but you're going to have to get over the idea of sharp objects coming in contact with Garet if-" Isaac started.
"No, I mean I've had it with daggers as surgical tools. Remember Sol Lighthouse?"
"I wasn't there for that part, but if Picard's having a nightmare right now, I bet that's it," said Ivan, gesturing at the prone Lemurian.
Mia had ignored the conversation entirely, instead carefully reopening the correct injury and reaching in with the long knife, trying not to cut any more than had already happened. After what felt like a day at least, Mia felt the tip contact something that was harder than muscle and too small to be a bone. Also, any bones that have opened a lung are almost definitely in the wrong place anyway.
Mia closed her eyes against the sweat beading on her brow- she didn't need to see to do this anyway -and slowly drew the intruder out, keeping it from snagging whenever possible, but twice forced to make extra incisions to keep it moving.
At last an immensely satisfying clink rang through the cell, which was silent except for the sound of Mia's deep, calming breaths. Isaac gingerly picked up the little killer, examining it closely. A vicious hook-shaped projectile, a flechette, probably fired from some kind of blowgun in the midst of the chaos.
The job was only half done, of course, and Mia carefully chewed up a pinch of the herbs, doing her best to make a kind of salve. She carefully coated the broad side of the blade with this and it sunk into Garet's back again, this time only the means for spreading the herbal paste.
Mia moved quickly but carefully; now any mistakes would undo whatever she had just finished. Satisfied that anything more would be riskier than it would be helpful, the blade withdrew again, and Mia packed a few more leaves against the surface of Garet's skin, applying pressure and waiting for the deep wound to heal.
"Good work, Mia," said Jenna, breathing out as much anxiety as possible when she saw the Mercury Adept finish her work.
"How could a blowgun drive anything that far into anyone?" asked Isaac, quietly, and wished he hadn't.
Bane stood, in his smallest form -the Djinn could take on a few sizes, and the smallest was only two inches high- in a nook at the top of a broken wall and watched the wandering patrols, as well as trying to keep both eyes on all the people in the area simultaneously. This is a very long way of saying that he was getting a severe headache.
"See anything yet?" asked a voice beside him. Bane turned to see Flash squeezed against the fractured stone of the nook, staring intently at the massive gates to Lunpa Fortress.
"Flash?" asked Bane, who was still recovering from his less-than-clever attempt at mass covert observation. "Who's that?"
Flash looked to his left, which was apparently where Bane saw another Mars Djinni. "There's just me here," he replied, carefully, and after a moment added "sir."
"Well, I've got my eye on you two," said Bane, falling back to his autopilot, which disapproved of everything that existed and many things that didn't.
"What are we waiting for?" asked Gust, frowning. "Ivan needs our help! And all the others, of course. Them more so." He had hopped up onto the top of the wall, in full view of anyone, and so was tackled down into a gap by Balm, who had more sense (though this was not hard).
"We're waiting for a chance to get in without being spotted, which is hard enough when we're just hiding, with you tagging along," the Mercury Djinni replied, and grabbed his crest with her tail to keep him from going anywhere.
"What are you talking about? No guards are looking this way," Crystal pointed out.
"And the other dozens of people?" asked Bane, sarcastically.
"Look at them, Bane. They're battered, cowed. They're not on the thieves' side. They wouldn't speak a word if they saw us, and with herded attitudes like those, I don't think we'd need to worry even if they were all Dodonpa's disciples."
"Go!" called Flash, quietly, even before Crystal had stopped speaking, and she was left standing there for a second before following.
They leapt off the wall, a tiny brigade of a dozen Djinn, and set off toward the imposing gates. They were in a rush, of course, not knowing how long they had before a guard happened to look their way, but the Djinn weren't used to their own unusual powers, so when Zephyr decided a mass speed-boost would be helpful, eleven Djinn rocketed into the base of the wall.
Aroma was shaking mortar dust off her head and trying to get both eyes to look in the same direction when Zephyr caught up at a safer and more controlled speed. "Y'know, Bane looked like that a moment ago. You've got to learn from –urk!" The 'urk', of course, was the little-known cry of the Jupiter Djinn Suddenly Finding Her Breathing Restricted By A Mars Djinni.
"Okay, we need a warning system," said Kindle. He looked down at Zephyr. "Is that your neck? Sorry. Didn't notice. My nerves have been stunned by a sudden rush of information, by which I mean the devastating pain of smashing into a wall."
"Stop it," said Balm. "Enough of this. No fighting of any kind. None. I mean it."
"How exactly are you going to back that up?" asked Scorch, a little rebelliously.
"Yeah," Gust seconded, still too dazed to think of anything better. They found their gazes returned by the mountain-bending glare of Petra. "On the other hand, teamwork is central to success."
"Quite agreed. How about a peer-bonding shoulder massage, buddy?"
"We don't have shoulders."
"What? Blast."
"All right, so we've made it to the wall," said Gel. "How do we get to the other side?"
"I think I ground to a halt two-thirds of the way through, let's start there," said Flash, checking to see if his tail was broken.
"There's got to be a way in that doesn't require chewing through a foot of granite," Fog said. "We need to think about it."
"Start looking, then," Bane ordered them, always feeling at home with commands. The other Djinn spread out, searching along the wall for a gap, secret tunnel, or lever with 'unlock main gate and prison cell doors' carved into the wall behind it. All except Aroma, who sat quietly underneath a large leaf and thought about the village.
It was still a normal village, even if it did have a tremendous stronghold of evil built onto the northern side. There was a blacksmith's shop, and a small produce market, and even a dairy at one point. And what were dark fortresses like on the inside? There was always a kitchen, of course, but what did it have? Big ovens and stoves, the sort of thing used for big feasts with an entire ox over a roaring fire.
Never a bakery. Bakeries were too happy for a castle of doom. But guards were so refreshingly open about food, especially when on boring duty, and by the look of the sun behind the thin clouds it was past lunchtime by now…
Bane whirled around when the smell struck him full-force, but managed not to drool. It was an incredible smell, it had personality. It had hopes and dreams and fears and most of all, it smelled like the moment an oven containing the ultimate loaf of bread was opened.
"Baker's here!" shouted a voice on the other side of the massive gates. Locks were unlocked, bars were unbarred, and the door opened just enough for the man on the other side of the gate to look into his superior officer's face and know that he was in trouble.
"Baker?" questioned the captain. "First, no, second, shut up and get back to your post."
The door shut. It didn't matter. The Djinn were through before the captain reached 'first'.
[Author's Notes] Not much to say, except thanks for reviews, go review more, and any fans of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance might want to keep their eyes open for something of a saga starting soon…