“Whatever the poison is, it’s made with inferichite. My healing abilities aren’t driving it out,” I raged. “All I can do is survey the effect it’s having on him.”
“Let’s try to clear it together,” Marcus suggested. “Fuse our demigod powers with your healing magic. The poison has to leave, then.”
My heart started in hope, because that was the only thing that I figured would work. Marcus moved forward, along with Kallie. They reached up to put their hands on top of my own as I rested them against Charlie’s torso. I could feel their abilities mending with mine as I used simultension to join our powers together, and drive the poison away.
I felt my windpipe closing off from air as I realized that wasn’t working, either. The inferichite was stubborn. It had latched on to Charlie’s demigod magic, and was using it to resist our own. The poison drained him whenever I tried to remove it, sucking energy from his organs and weakening him further than he already was. We couldn’t destroy the inferichite in his system without killing him, but at the same time, we couldn’t heal him at all if there was still inferichite in his body, either.
“Stop,” I demanded, and my friends drew back. “His body can’t handle it. If we keep going, it’ll make everything shut down.”
“But…” Marcus had gone paler than a ghost. “If we can’t use simultension, then how are we gonna make him better?”
I didn’t have an answer, and that made me nearly go insane.
Let’s get him in a bed,Oberi offered.Then we can evaluate further.
She sounded very worried, which concerned me even more. If Oberi didn’t understand what was going on or how to fix it, with all her experience and wisdom, then who would?
We hurried inside the hospital, where a variety of doctors and nurses walked around the wing’s lobby. When they turned and saw Charlie, many of the Elves started screaming.
“What is wrong with the prince?!” a doctor demanded. Charlie threw up again, and more blood splattered out from his mouth and onto the floor.
I nearly passed out. That was a lot of blood to lose, and he didn’t have much more left to give. Marcus pulled Charlie off of Oberi and laid him on the floor, turning him on his side so he didn’t choke.
I didn’t have to ask for a wheelchair, because Kallie had already brought one. She helped me off Oberi, and the second I was in my chair I was wheeling toward Charlie. I tried to heal him again, and again, but the inferichite pushed my magic back and refused to allow me to chase the poison out.
Two nurses wheeled out a gurney, but I screamed, “Leave him alone! No one can heal him like I can!”
I didn’t trust doctors, not after my spinal injury. They’d fuck him up more than he already was.
Ava, we need help with this,Oberi demanded.What we’re doing isn’t working!
I knew we did, but it was equivalent to sawing my torso in half to allow anyone to touch Charlie when he was in this dire of a state.
Elves placed Charlie upon a gurney as he continued to gurgle up blood. He wasn’t conscious, but his face was ashen, and his body wracked with tremors. The poison was getting worse by the moment.
“He’s been poisoned. I need a private room. Someone fetch my brother and my mother immediately,” I barked.
“I—” the doctor stuttered.
“I am the princess of Ilamanthe! You will do as I say!” I screeched.
Not a damn soul dared to ask me any more questions. They wheeled Charlie into a large room filled with surgical equipment, potion vials, herbs, and everything else we could use to treat this.Charlie was moved from the gurney to a bed, which could be prepped for surgical purposes if we needed it. A nurse drew his blood to test it.
“I need to know what properties are in that poison. I want a full report the minute you get the results back,” I ordered.
“Yes, princess,” a nurse replied, and she ran off to the lab with a tube of Charlie’s blood.
The doctors and nurses rushed to get Charlie hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor. Doctors cut off his bloody clothes and threw them away, until he was covered only by a thin sheet. He shivered, and as I touched his skin again, my fingers grazed his ice-cold arm. He shook underneath my touch. Even though he was out of it, his body was still reacting to the effects of the poison.
Oberi changed into a phoenix. She flew to the bed, landing at Charlie’s side. She fluttered her wings and skimmed her beak over Charlie’s chest, using her healing magic to observe him.
My heart withered and turned cold in my chest as Oberi said,I do not have the power to heal this. It is beyond my ability. Charlie’s body cannot work against the inferichite, so any magic I may use to heal him is useless, because his system will not respond.
“That’s impossible! You brought me back from death!” I demanded. “You can cure this!”
I cannot do that again,Oberi argued.What I did for you, I was only able to accomplish once, and was a different kind of magic. It was a gift given to me by the gods to save one of you if death came, and death has already happened. My healing magic is strong. But I cannot heal what I do not know, and this poison is strange to me. I have never met it, not in all my eons of existence. I have never encountered a poison that prevents me from healing the body, as this substance turns the system's ownorgans against the host, and fights us off besides. Anything we can do will be countered by the poison.
“There must be something,” I insisted.
