“What do you think we’ve been waiting on?”
Within the next minute, the door opened and Cvareh appeared. Sure enough, he sat down on a small stool next to her. Florence looked on in shock.
“You’re giving me your blood?” She wished she could find more eloquent words, but all else failed her.
“Technically, I’ve been doing that for some time already.”
“But that was necessary.”
“As is this.” He leaned against the wall. “I’m the one who brought you here, who took you from your home. I feel responsible for the fact that you’re in that chair.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I do.”
“Well you shouldn’t—” Her reason was interrupted by the needle that pierced the flesh of her forearm. A second punctured her bicep a little further up and the machine at her side began to whir.
“You’re going to start feeling sleepy,” Derek informed her. “But I need you to stay awake as long as possible.”
Florence watched in fascination as a tank of blood began to fill in the machine. The Alchemist walked around the room, puncturing Cvareh’s offered arm. Sure enough, her eyelids grew heavy, her head thick.
“Florence, stay with us,” Derek demanded.
“Right, right…” she mumbled. Compliance was becoming awfully difficult. Her vision blurred and her thoughts became sluggish. She wanted to talk, but she had reached a point at which she was no longer certain she could say anything at all.
That’s when the pain hit her.
A different set of gears was now whirring on the machine. It was pumping blood from Cvareh’s veins into hers. Just as Derek said, the sensation was excruciating. Florence tried to avoid screaming, but eventually failed.
“Hang in there, Flor.” A large hand closed around hers. “I’m here… It’ll be over soon.”
“Well, actually—” Derek started unhelpfully but was stopped short.
“It’ll be over soon,” Cvareh insisted.
She tried to pry open her eyes. She tried to make sense of what was happening. But it felt like knives were being stabbed into her muscles straight to her bones, only to shear the meat from her skeleton.
Florence breathed heavily. She tried to think of anything else, but the pain was blinding andeverywhere. It flowed from her arm but soon it was behind her eyes, under her heels, in her chest; there wasn’t a place it didn’t touch.
“Florence.” A stern voice cut through the noises of her agony. “Florence, look at me.”
She pried open her eyes and her attention drifted from Cvareh to the new voice that had joined them. Arianna’s mouth was set in a grim, determined line. The woman’s hand was curled around Florence’s fingers alongside Cvareh’s.
“I made it through this, and you are stronger than me,” Arianna declared.
Florence mentally disagreed, but the thought escaped only as a whimper, as if her body wanted to prove her point for her.
“Hang in there, Flor, a little longer.”
They both spoke words of encouragement—more like sweet lies—as she suffered for what seemed like a whole week. But, sure enough, it slowly began to pass and the light at the end of her tunnel vision began to sharpen and grow. Her chest heaved. She couldn’t get enough air.
Her body transitioned from utter pain to feeling stronger than it ever had. She couldfeelthe fatigue leaving her muscles. The strain of tensing constantly while she’d been in agony was smoothed away magically. Despite the excruciating suffering, Florence wondered why she hadn’t made the transition sooner.It felt that good.
“Looks like she’s out of it,” Derek noted. “We’ll run this for a bit longer, until her blood runs nearly gold.”
“I thought my blood would be black?” she rasped. Her vocal chords had yet to knit from all the screaming.
“It will be,” the Alchemist affirmed. “But we want as much Dragon blood in you as we can get. And since we have a willing donor, well, let’s be a little selfish, no?”
