Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Subject: [MI][KQ] Healers To The Rescue!
Message-ID: <1992Dec8.024349.20092@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca>
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1992 02:43:49 GMT

Delmara and Elstree followed Agoust through the Low City, Little Rat trailing
behind.  Agoust filled them in.  "Drew and them are going into the Shunned
Center.  I don't know why--maybe they think they can help Kron and the others.
But the way the Press burst out like that for a moment, we can use a fair bit
of first aid anyway."

"Hey, what's dis stuff?" Little Rat said.  Elstree looked up.  It was snowing.
She smiled and caught some on her tongue.

"It's called snow, Rat.  Is it winter already, Delmara?"

Delmara's brow was furrowed.  "No, not really.  And here, winter is more of a
rainy season anyway.  I don't recall snow for a long time, and then it wasn't
this early in the year."  She didn't speak the thought that came to all of
them--that the snow wasn't natural.

Elstree stopped catching snow on her tongue, but Little Rat continued.  It felt
kind of neat, but she started to get cold.

Finally they were there, in the Buff'.  A kid named Zlee met them when they
came.  "Hiya!  Come wit' me."  He led them into a nearby house, where they
met Agoust's sister Jacinthe, and Nirvan.

"Most of the first aid cases are in the nearby houses," Jacinthe said.
"There's one more serious one--an older man who had a stroke--and a few who
cut themselves badly."

"Elstree can handle those," Delmara decided.  "I'll go in and see if I can do
anything for the ones who come out of the Center."

Elstree was unable to do anything about the stroke--such things were beyond her
limited powers, or even Delmara's.  "If he could afford it, the priests of
Ilmater might be able to help," she whispered to Jacinthe.  "But I can do
nothing."  The cut wounds she could heal, and she did, to smiles and thanks.
Then they attended to the minor wounds.

Delmara went to the edge of the Shunned Center and waited.  She could see
nothing at first, and inadvertently stepped in past the boundary of the Center
to see if she could catch a glimpse of the Shunrunners.  But she felt nothing
of the Press she had heard about.  Funny...she took another step, and another.
But then she turned and went back.  She wouldn't do anyone any good if she got
lost in there.

Wait, there was someone.  They were nearer than she would have expected--they
came around a corner barely twenty feet away.  The first two were a black man
being carried by a white one, and even at first glance Delmara could tell that
the black man was far too pale and had a nasty gash on his leg.  She ran
forward to assist the other man, and he smiled in thanks.  As she did, she saw
a woman whose body was covered with blue tattoos, and little else, come around
the corner with the Shunrunners.

"Delmara," she said.  "I'm a healer.  Are you friends of Kron?"

The white man nodded.  "I'm Captain, and this is Maleiu.  He's hurt pretty
bad, but we're all a bit under the weather.  That's Azzar back there--she's in
the middle of recovering from a slave-trance right now, but other than that
she's okay."

"What--what about the others?"  Were they all dead?  It was then that she 
noticed the rumbling under her feet, and saw the rising cloud of dust inward
in the Center.

"They made it out some other way--some magic gate, or something," Captain
said.  They passed out of the Center, and not far behind them they heard a
crash of collapsing stone.  Maleiu collapsed too, and Delmara and Captain were
barely able to lower him to the ground without mishap.

Just then there was a sort of shimmering in the air, and then a pop! and about
half a dozen people--and something else--materialized in the small open space
at the edge of the Center.  "Dudes!" 'Raelf said.

Captain looked at the comrades assembled.  'Raelf, Marcel, Colin, Rhoan, and
Kron.  And two others--from the Wasters, perhaps.  They were warily apart from
the others, and one of them looked more insect than man, or something.  Or
maybe a scorpion--Scorpion, of course, but changed somehow.  But there were a
couple of significant absences.

"Where's Thk?  And ...sage?"

Meanwhile, Maleiu was taken into Jacinthe's house by three strong Buffers, and
Delmara started to attend to his wounds.  An ugly gash on the leg, already
badly infected, but not beyond saving.  Excessive blood loss and exhaustion
compounded by shock.  That he made it out at all was a miracle.  She set to
work.

--
---Alfvaen(Looking for "October's Baby")
"After this, let no one ever say that anyone who is silly can never become a
 person of importance."  ---Grimm
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