Draven read the book with frantic speed.
“Mending unravels the memories of blood to restore the body to a condition before injury, which is why the treatment of old wounds is impossible. When the body has accepted its injured state as its natural form, mending will yield no results.”
Old wounds are impossible to heal. That’s an important piece of information.
“It is believed this state change only occurs after three months, but the period varies from person to person. Mending organs and lost limbs, though possible, are rare and solely dependent on the individual prowess of the Mender.” It was reassuring to know he was not entirely clueless.
“Injuries of this degree can only hope to be restored by Menders of the highest affinity to the Blood Path and corresponding high rank, an action that becomes progressively harder if not treated with expedience.”
Dammit! Realizing he had gotten sidetracked, he flipped through the pages once again, skimming through the lines of text to find what he needed.
“The Empyrean must exert their will externally, through their hexion, into the body of the patient to force their body to revert to its prior condition. This action must be consensual or the clashes of wills between Mender and patient can risk dangerous side effects.” Irritation permeated his voice.
All these technical terms, but the book skipped the most important part: how to do it.
“It’s do or die,” he gave out a trembling sigh.
Myra’s touch was warm, gentle, and subtle. He had to remember the feeling; it was the only way he knew to replicate the Art of Mending. He touched Nerovian’s chest and felt his heartbeat. Strong. Two beats each second, the normal for everyone else.
Draven willed his hexion outside of his body in a thin strand. His eyes widened as the red liquid pierced through his flesh, as if intent on taking his life. No, dammit! Warm. Gentle. Subtle! The hexion’s ravaging of his body subsided to an uncomfortably feverish warmth, but it would have to do. He urged it into Nerovian’s blood vessels, begging the hexion not to kill him, willing it to be gentle.
Mend, don’t break.
His hexion and will flooded the unconscious young man until his entire body felt like a part of Draven’s own. He sensed Nerovian’s pain, like looking at a mirror—Dyad Vessel’s courtesy. He felt the headache of one too many drinks and the wrongness of a broken bone grinding against muscle.
He felt everything, but did not know what to do. Revert the body to its prior condition. Could somebody be more vague if they tried?
There were answers in this library—Draven was sure of that—but the time it would take to find them was bound to solidify his dire fate. It was dangerous, unpredictable, unexplored ground, but he had to figure out how to mend by himself.
With a firm hold on his hexion, he willed it to revert Nerovian’s body to when he had not beaten the shit out of him. Nothing happened. The hexion sang a confused tune, for it did not know what to do without instructions. Something was missing. It was crucial, the key to mending.
It had to be.
“Everything alright, Lord Nerovian, Primus?” one guard said.
Dammit, he was just outside the door.
“Did one of us require your intrusion?” Draven snapped at him with genuine irritation. “Know your place!”
He expected the door to burst open at any moment and the guards to come rushing in after not hearing confirmation from their lord, but nothing happened. The sound of footsteps faded as the guard returned to his post. Maybe the anger in Draven’s voice had taken him off guard, yet how long would it take for him to realize Nerovian never said a word?
His life was ticking away.
Mending. Mending. How do I fucking do it? Nobody had ever taught him. The times it had happened to him, he had not even paid proper attention. He froze, his eyes widening as he remembered something.
Nobody taught me? Not true.
There was someone, something, that knew more about the Blood Path than Myra or he combined, and it beat three times each cycle. His heart, the core of a Hemomorph. To know how to mend, to learn it, he just needed to observe what his heart did instinctively.
The flow of mending hexion, suppressed by Draven’s will and the fear of discovery, resumed with a flicker of his intent. Mend me! He increased the drainage until the effects were clear for his observing inner eye. The hexion mended broken parts of his body, including those beyond his awareness.
It was simple, instinctive, as if the hexion knew what it was supposed to do without his instructions. But the crimson liquid that seeped out from his astra did not have a mind of its own. If it understood what to do, that only meant someone else—something—was providing orders to it.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Draven spread his will to every inch of his body, to every hidden corner, but found nothing. All the tendrils of his influence constricted, their searching narrowed to the one place that was foreign to him—his heart. A flicker of something brushed against his will, fast, gone in the blink of an eye.
It was faint, but he found the fading traces of another will. Its influence spread throughout his body, subtle like spiderwebs hidden in shadows, concealed beneath the veil of anonymity, but it was present. Some of it was connected to his own will.
It was part of him. It was not a part of him. It knew him better than he knew himself, yet Draven knew nothing of it.
He let his hexion flow into Nerovian’s body once more, for he now knew the error of his previous approach. His will touched the slumbering lord without resistance, and in a split second, he understood what to do.
Mend!
His thoughts carried his will, but it was Nerovian’s unconscious authority that vetted and allowed the healing to occur. His split sealed in seconds. The black spot in his swollen eye gained a healthy shade of pink and returned to normal. The crack in his rib stole a noticeable portion of Draven's hexion, but it quickly mended without a trace. Hexion pulled his bones together, and this time, a lot of his reserves vanished.
Draven’s hands fell to the side, away from Nerovian. The last thing he wanted to do was wake the lordling up. He slept comfortably, the effects of one too many drinks unchanged by the Art of Mending.
Good. Draven had work to do.
A few minutes later, he left the room with a blood-stained white bedsheet. The guards stopped him then, one of them hurrying back to the room to make sure he was not a murderer walking away from one of his victims, but he soon returned with a relieved face.
“What can I say, eventful night,” Draven said, dismissing the smirks from the guards and walking away.
As he walked back to his room, the books hidden inside his clothes filled him with excitement—manuals of The Blood Path and The Dreams Path, though their covers told a different story. It had been time-consuming to swap their contents, but easy considering no one had been watching.
He took them out in the lightless corridor and read them without difficulty. A Guide to Harvesting Poisonous Herbs, The Soul and the Body: A Theory of Origin. No plan survived reality, but Abyss take him if this one did not work just as well.
***
Another day, same routine. Well, not quite.
Draven’s old wounds were fresh again after unleashing Dyad Vessel on himself to cover up the fact that he had healed himself and Nerovian. Ignoring them had become easier than he ever thought possible, but a broken arm sure got in the way.
Draven Von AstraisDyad Vessel: Refinement [Lesser]Blood Path: Reverence [Lesser]
No changes. Though Draven had not tried to expand his astra, he at least expected progress with Dyad Vessel. But he found the road ahead longer than expected.
The training yard did not bustle with grunts or the sound of clashing metal. It was silent, eerie. Nerovian stood beside Altavir with a grave expression on his unsullied face—no black eye and his arm seemed to cause him no pain.
Good.
“Draven,” Nerovian said before he had the chance to get a word in. “When I heard the news about what truly happened yesterday, I was surprised, to say the least.”
Abyss below, he knows! Hexion burned inside of Draven, ready to materialize with a thought. He should have read the damn book yesterday, but he had spent the entire night trying to find a place to burn the damn bloodstained bedsheet.
“I can explain—”
“There is no need.” Nerovian interrupted. Altavir walked beside him as they both approached him. “Master Altavir.” He looked at the Mender and nodded.
Nerovian was delusional if he thought Draven would go down without a fight. He inscribed his will into the hexion. Blood spheres! Five. Pain be damned. I’ll take both these bastards to the Abyss.
“Mend my Primus,” Nerovian uttered. “I cannot have him injured for tonight’s event. Besides, what manner of man would I be if I rewarded his gift yesterday with more punishment? There is no honor in that.”
What? Oh, right.
The hexion settled down in Draven’s astra in a hurry. Nerovian fell for it. Draven left no traces of his impulsive attack in his bedroom.
“As you wish, Lord Nerovian,” Altavir said with a great deal of resignation, grabbing him by the arm, and letting the pain flow like a river.
Draven gritted his teeth as Dyad Vessel eagerly devoured the torture. When it was over, sweat drenched Altavir’s forehead. His breath was heavy, and he looked slightly pale.
Was it this draining to mend someone?
Myra herself, with her poor affinity, could not emit a lot of hexion at once—mending big injuries had either required her to link with other Empyreans or put her out of commission for the entire day.
Altavir was stronger, an Eminence if Draven was right. But as strong as he might seem, he was not exempt from the working of hexion.
“That’s what I call a waste of hexion.” He turned and left.
“Do not take his words to heart, Draven.” Nerovian slapped him on the shoulder. “But I have to say, it must have been hard to wrench those spirits from Theodore.”
“He was not very… receptive.” Draven shrugged.
“He only listens to my father, that man. But forget about him—we have important matters to prepare for. The Amethyst Palace will hold a banquet tonight, and all the Houses of Anaverith will be present.” He sighed, and Draven saw the nervousness hiding under his confident smile. “You, as my Primus, will accompany me.”
“Lord Nerovian, I don’t even know what I am supposed to do.” He needed to use the opportunity to find his family—that was clear in his mind. Always.
“Do not worry yourself over the details. Keep your head down. Do not talk, follow me, and stay out of trouble. That is the gist of it.” Nerovian pinched the bridge of his nose. “After that, however, we need to work on your education. There are things a Primus should know, and Low Blood or not, you are not exempt.”
The bottomless pit of the station called Primus kept drawing Draven in. No matter how much he struggled or yearned for anonymity, he realized that was no longer possible.