Letting out a huff, Ismund tried to brush the quickly forming ice off of himself. He got some of it.

  ‘Looking’ up at me, he looked like he wanted to say something. He moved his hand to cup his chin but brought it back sharply soon as it touched. He squinted his eyes then seemed to get an idea: he opened his hand and pretended to write on it, then looked up at my general direction.

  How’s he gonna write if he can’t see?

  I voiced as much.

  He didn’t budge, waving the concern away, irritated.

  Okay, maybe it’ll be fine.

  I pulled it out of my bag and placed it in his hands, along with some charcoal. Ismund hunched over it and began writing.

  Once I got it back, I leaned in and tried to make out the handwriting. It wasn’t bad, quite good actually, better than mine, but it drifted up and down and the spacing between letters was wrong, overlapping sometimes. I couldn’t read some of it, but I was able to figure out enough.

  “You’re not able to fi… right now. There’s lot’s of thin..round. You… gather all the wood, …, metal and ba…, I can use them or sell…”

  “I can read most of it,” I said, Ismund raised his brows, “and…okay I can do it. But you want it stored in the y’know, " I winked at him, “right?”

  He squinted his eyes at me.

  “The B—” He cut me short with a nod.

  “So… should I bring it here and drop it off in front of you or…?”

  Ismund shook his head, lightly mind you, and stood up.

  He’s going to run into all the chairs.

  I looked at him, he wasn’t even facing my direction at the moment, but he didn’t seem concerned.

  Whelp.

  “Okay, lets go!”

  Abs grunted in surprise, “Where? Are you afraid—sorry that should’ve been obvious, Ismund’s afraid. Hmmm, well, I could—”

  “It’s not that!” I said, trying to be cheery, “We’re going to go grab the trash and see if we can use it for something.”

  “But… ah, well…” Absinth said clutching his chin and looking this way and that, “You don’t look strong enough to lift Ismund up. Although, I suppose Stats can be deceiving.”

  “Well, I was thinking more along the lines of cups and cans.” I said, trying to ignore his dig.

  “Oh yeah, you could lift that up but, you have me curious now. Can you carry him? He was pretty light last I checked and— Oh! There he goes.”

  Ismund had grabbed one of the many ropes that were ‘round the arena and slipped under it, landing on ground.

  “Talk later!” I shouted back at Abs.

  Me and Ismund went around collecting things, well, mostly me. Ismund would just be around me somewhere, standing still, then I’d give him a few arm-fulls of what I’d found before we would go somewhere else so I didn’t have to walk much. Ismund also wanted to do something by the looks of it, but there wasn’t much he could do at the moment.

  At some point I had thought about how he seemed to like whittling or something, but he’d probably cut himself at the moment.

  I kept collecting more trash for a while.

  * * *

  Once me and Ismund had figured we’d grabbed enough, and I thought he looked a little more collected, we headed back over to the fire.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Once we were sitting around the camp again Absinth turned to us, he had been picking the plaque off of his teeth with his finger.

  “This is going to take forever.” He flicked a gnarly glob of plaque into the fire, “You’re not going to wait until all of Ismund’s dainty little teeth are fixed up without so much as a fleck of pain left, are you?”

  Ismund shook his head before Abs could get ahead of himself. I wanted to object, but I left it. I wouldn’t win that fight, even if they were being… foolhardy.

  A little later, I took a nap so I could out wait the timer on my bandana. By the time I had woken up the fire was long gone and Abs was carefully tending to his flask: scrubbing, shining, and staring really hard at it. It was empty and blackened, but not really damaged. Ismund had gone in his tent. Maybe to nap too? I wasn’t sure.

  I stretched and tugged the crust away from my eyes before ‘knocking’ on Ismund’s tent. After a bit, he came out, he looked a little flushed, but other than that the same as usual.

  “I’m going to tune you out Abs!” I was about to change the settings on my bandana before he said something back.

  “I want to get out of here fasssst. It’s boaring. Make a parthy with each other, I dunno what your plan isss for Issssmund, Drifa, but tha' should make ith eassssier.”

  He nodded to himself then inspected the bottle in his hands.

  I forgot about that.

  [Party Invite sent to user Ismund Theodore! Awaiting response…]

  I looked at Ismund gauging his reaction.

  [Invite accepted! Time to be a party animal, eh?]

  My eyes widened.

  Oh! I didn’t expect that.

  Just taking a cursory glance was interesting, not that I could do more than that. I wasn’t able to see the details of anything just name, race, gender, path, stats and physical condition.

  Still interesting. He’s younger than I thought, only twenty, I thought he’d be in his mid twenties or something.

  He didn’t look old per se, but he didn’t have any real energy about him.

  I didn’t know what he was thinking, but Ismund looked puzzled himself making me smile a little.

  His soul is way worse than I thought it was though, it’s only E tier. I’m sure it wasn’t like this before but he’s really unbalanced right now; none of his stats are in the same tier, C-, D, E+.

  I frowned.

  We really need to fix that parasite. It looks like it’ll give him a good boost to his soul stat once its gone, so that’s good. Still, we can get some decent improvement in the meanwhile, its so low right now it should be easy.

  After I skimmed through his health thingies, I could tell that it was basically all of what I had figured out earlier, just more precise in terms of location and whatnot. I hadn’t noticed the concussion before, I didn’t think anyway, that was a bit worrying.

  I let out a breath.

  Okay, time to get to work.

  I scooted closer to Ismund who seemed to be lost in his own world at the moment.

  Remembering what Abs had said earlier, I asked the System a question.

  Can you keep tabs on Ismund BAC so I don’t accidentally make him super drunk or something, assuming I’m that successful.

  [Affirmative. Current BAC: 0.01]

  Okay. May as well start with the jaw.

  Reaching out with my own energy I ‘looked’ around where the break was in his jaw bone. There were two spots an the break wasn’t clean, but it was at least one piece and it was almost in place as it should be.

  Good enough. It’ll match up as I heal it.

  I made the energy stretch so it was a short line with a small blob on either end. Leaving the energy there to sit in front of me for a moment I listened to the sort of energy coming from the bone I wanted to fix. It was all fairly simple, but if you moved so much as a millimetre then it would sound completely different.

  I think, at least for now, I’ll just heal the outside of the bone and let natural healing do its magic for now. I’m not good enough to really do anything else.

  Listening to the sound coming from the part of the bone I was going to heal, I made my own energy match it. That done, I attached it to the bones and made it pull them together, not by much, but a little bit was needed.

  Hopefully it didn’t hurt.

  I gnawed on the inside of my cheek.

  After pulling it together I tried to ‘feed’ some of the extra energy to the bone nearby so it’d seal up, integrating it. It was a little bit more experimental than I liked, but its what I had.

  Releasing my grip on the energy I watched what happened: it stayed stable for a while but eventually it all dissolved. All the intent that was mine was eventually overrode by all of Ismund’s, but his own song wasn’t incredibly overpowering, his soul stat was so low. The bone was still where it was supposed to be when it released, but it wasn’t being held close with a ‘staple’ anymore.

  Well, it didn’t backfire.

  I tried again, this time I tried making the energy ‘denser’ so it’d last longer before escaping like last time. When I released that staple, it seemed to last, and so long as I fed it a bit of extra energy and intent a while later, it would stabilize again instead of merging with whatever else was around it.

  Things are so much easier when I can use my own energy.

  I spent the next… I wasn’t sure how long, piecing staples all along the edge of one side of the break, there was still another crack to deal with.

  [BAC: 0.02]

  Should be fine still…

  I focused back on what was around me.

  It was hard to see it below all of the burns, but Ismund’s light flush had become a bit darker, but not concerning. His face seemed to be vaguely turning between different emotions I hadn’t really seen on him before. But it was hardly noticeable: a quirk of the mouth, relaxed shoulders, eyebrows going up or down a bit. All very minor. He just never really showed much emotion for anything ever, unless he was unhappy with someone. He wasn't exactly an open book.

  He’s fine.

  I kept working.