18. Chapter 18 The Splits #3
"You were on your back getting clawed up and you turned the thing into ash with your bare hands." Her blue eyes hadn't left mine. "That's the most attractive thing I've ever seen."
"You said that about the Vaughn Strom story too."
"I'm upgrading."
Bjorna came over and checked my robe, pulling the torn fabric apart to see the skin underneath. Her fingers were careful, the claws on her fingertips light against my side.
"He's healed," she said. She held my eyes and something passed across her face that she didn't put into words. "Daniel. What you just did with the shield. You covered all of us."
"That's what Bubble does."
"I know what it does. I'm telling you what it meant." She let the torn fabric fall back against my side. "We need to talk about your role in this party when we get out of here. You're not just a healer anymore."
Nott was studying the ash where the first salamander had been. She crouched down and touched it, rubbing it between her fingers. "The disintegration is complete. There's no organic residue. Smite doesn't kill the creature. It unmakes it."
"Thanks, Nott. That's comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be comforting. It was meant to be accurate." She looked up at me with her dark eyes, steady and analytical. "You're carrying a skill that most Healers in recorded history never unlocked. I'd like to study the interaction mechanics when we have time."
"Buy me dinner first."
Sif's laugh bounced off the stone walls. Even Nott's mouth twitched.
“Sounds like an amazing time, Nott. Maybe he will show you the clinic after hours,” Sif replied.
“Beautiful yet painful memories,” Liv mused.
"Loot and move," Bjorna said. "We're not done."
***
[The Splits. Depth: 4.]
The corridor opened into something that stopped all five of us.
The floor ended. Below it, lava. Not the dull orange glow of heated stone, actual liquid rock, glowing bright orange and red, the heat rising from it in visible waves that warped the air.
The chamber was enormous, a hundred feet wide and at least that long, and the lava filled it floor to ceiling except for the stone pillars.
Dozens of pillars rose from the lava, flat-topped, ranging from three feet across to eight, spaced unevenly across the chamber.
Some sat within stepping distance. Others had gaps of six or eight feet.
The far side of the chamber held the descent point to the next depth, visible as a dark opening in the wall.
No creatures. The dungeon itself was the challenge.
"We cross," Bjorna said. She studied the pillar layout. "One at a time. Test each one before you commit your weight."
Sif went first. She made it look easy. The boots carried her from pillar to pillar with fluid ease, each step precise, each landing silent on the flat stone tops. She could have been crossing a room.
"Show-off." Liv started across.
Liv was lighter and smaller, and she managed the jumps well, but the heat was harder on her.
By the fourth pillar she was breathing through her mouth and her ears had drooped against her head from the rising temperature.
I followed her and managed without grace but without falling.
The heat coming off the lava pressed against my face and my arms and I could smell my own hair getting dry.
Nott crossed carefully, each step measured, her dark cloak pulled tight around her. She didn't rush and she didn't slip.
Bjorna went last. She was eight feet tall and the heaviest person in the party by a wide margin, wearing a breastplate, carrying a blackstone shield.
The pillars weren't made for someone her size.
She moved slowly, testing each one, and some of them shifted under her weight.
The sounds they made over the lava were not comforting.
We were three-quarters across when it happened.
A vent in the lava erupted, not where anyone was standing, but near Liv's pillar. The burst of heat and glowing gas came up between pillars and caught her on the near side. She stumbled, throwing her arm across her face, and her footing slipped.
Bjorna moved faster than I'd ever seen her move.
She stepped onto Liv's pillar, which groaned under the combined weight, and put her body between Liv and the vent.
The blackstone shield came up and caught the second wave of heat.
The burst washed over the shield and around Bjorna's body, and a sound came through her clenched teeth that she would never have let out if she'd had a second to prepare.
The heat got past the shield. It burned across her right arm from shoulder to elbow, the breastplate protecting her torso but leaving her arm exposed where the pauldron met the vambrace. The skin underneath went red and then white and then something worse.
"Go," Bjorna said. Her voice was controlled but tight. "Everyone across. Now."
We crossed the last pillars fast. Sif helped Liv onto the far ledge. Nott stepped off the last pillar and turned to watch Bjorna come across. I was already moving to meet her.
She made it to the ledge and I had my hands on her arm before she'd set her shield down.
[Mend.]
Burns are different from cuts and breaks.
Cuts have clean edges. Burns have depth.
The gold had to work through layers, the damaged skin first, then the tissue underneath where the heat had cooked through the muscle, then the deeper structures where the nerve endings had been seared.
Bjorna's arm had taken a full blast of superheated gas through a gap in her armor and the damage went deep.
I held my hands on her arm and let the gold work.
It took longer than any battlefield heal I'd done that day.
The burn was serious. Under my palms I could feel the gold rebuilding what the heat had destroyed, layer by layer, the angry red fading to pink, then to the brown of her natural skin, the soft fur on her forearm growing back where it had been singed away.
Bjorna sat on the stone ledge with her shield on the ground beside her and her jaw set and she didn't make a sound. When the gold finished, she flexed her fingers. She opened and closed her hand. She rolled her shoulder.
"That's better," she said. Her voice was quiet, almost private.
I checked her arm. Clean skin, the fur growing back soft and even, no trace of the burn underneath.
"You put yourself between Liv and the vent," I said.
"She was exposed."
"You took a third-degree burn to your arm to cover her."
"Daniel." Her dark eyes held mine, her face calm and steady, the lava's glow throwing shadows across the breastplate. "I would have done the same for you or the other members of the party."