I smiled, and extended my hand to the creature. “I know you.”
The kurble jumped off the wolf’s back, soaring through the air to land on my hand. He scurried up my arm, then raced across the bed and sat on Charlie’s stomach. He sat up on his haunches, rubbing his tiny paws over his nose and furry ears.
I can hear them both speak, so I will translate,Oberi noted.They are spiritual guardians that protect your family from the Ancestral Lands. Lindsey and Miranda sent them. The wolf is here to guard the room against any dark spirits that may interfere. The little one, to help you heal.
“How did they cross the broken boundary?” I asked. The wolf began stalking near the door, raising his lip in a low growl, while the kurble let out an indigent squeak.
Your mother has a special attachment to that compass, and your family’s guides can come through it. These creatures have a connection still remaining on this Earth that other ancestors do not, allowing them to cross the boundary. The little one is very powerful, and the wolf has strength of his own, but they cannot stay for long. We must hurry,Oberi insisted.
“What must I do?” I asked the kurble. Oberi waited to hear what he had to say. The kurble gave a chitter, and whatever he’d said had even surprised Oberi, because she nearly toppled over in astonishment.
“What? What did he say?” I demanded.
Oberi peered at the kurble out of one eye, as if she wasn’t sure she was hearing things correctly, before she said,The poison is a substance they know well, one that grows in the Eternal Torment. It latches onto the host, creating tumors that feed offlife energy until the host dies a painful death.In order to heal Charlie, you will need to destroy the poison and the organs that it is attached to at the same time, thenregrownew organs in their place. I will keep him alive while you are doing this, so the organs have time to generate.
I thought about the practicality of this. Demigods could make something out of nothing. We could create our own energy, and I had the specialty of healing, so why couldn’t I make Charlie new organs, too? It was part of my demigod magic, so in theory, I had the capability.
It was similar to Charlie’s illusion magic. He didn’t just make illusions, he made them into real physical objects. He’d regrown Sprigs when he was just a dying plant, and gave him sentience. I couldn’t make a body out of nothing, but I could regrow what was already in front of him. I needed to remake him, craft his organs so they were brand-new.
Still… I didn’t know of anyone, demigod or otherwise, who had done this before. Not in history, or even myth.
“How do I do it?” If we fucked this up, Charlie was definitely not coming out of this.
You have already done it, Oberi marveled, with a shocked look at the kurble.Once before, when your father was in the hospital. You replaced his lungs. This is not a tool you can use on just anyone. This is magic that you may only perform on someone you deeply love.
Memories of my father suffering from pneumonia flooded into my mind. I was still in high school, and hadn’t even gotten my magic yet as far as I knew, but I remembered how I’d laid my hands on his chest the night before he was supposed to die, and the bright light that I’d seen just before passing out.
No wonder my father hadn’t had any breathing issues since.
Tears threatened to spill as I realized the blue eyes I’d seen that night in the hospital had been this little creature’s. He’dcome to help me heal my father then, as he had arrived tonight to help me heal my husband.
“We need to recraft everything,” I insisted. “It’s the only way to help him."
We can do it. The guardian can help us, and we can pull from Charlie’s abilities as a demigod to give us fuel. The small one will help you get past the inferichite, because as an ancestor, he has the ability to push it aside so you can do your work,Oberi stated, looking to the kurble for confirmation. The little creature nodded sharply.You must clean out everything— all the medicine, potions, and antidotes. Everything must go, and the failing organs must be destroyed with the tumors, so his body can be remade anew. Nothing can be left behind.
“Will this kill us?” I questioned. When I had healed Ez from sepsis, it had taken all my strength, and this was way worse.
You are much stronger now than you were before. Your will is more powerful than this poison, and it will not take our lives, but we must act now,Oberi insisted.His heart is failing.
The heart monitor was barely showing a pulse. It wouldn’t be five minutes before Charlie would be gone.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” I said firmly. I sprawled my hand over Charlie’s torso. Oberi laid her beak on my knuckles, and the kurble pressed his tiny paw into the back of my hand. I didn’t think I’d be able to feel him, since he was a spirit. Yet I felt his soft paw caress my skin as a light began to shine throughout the room that was brighter than any I’d ever seen before.
I started with Charlie’s heart first, because might as well. I sought the poison that was taking his heart over and was unable to move the tumor wrapped around it, even with everyone’s help. So, I commanded the organ to die. I felt Charlie’s heart wither and blacken, disintegrating into nothing at my command as the tumor died.
When the heart faded away, so did the poison, because it had nothing left to hold on to. The inferichite wasn’t able to cling to anything, and therefore, lost its power.
The sound of the heart monitor going flatline absolutely rattled me, but I felt Oberi’s magic pulsing, and I knew she was using her power to keep Charlie’s blood pumping. I ignored the noise of the machine and focused my attention instead on making a new heart.
I was skilled in healing, but I didn’t understand most systems, or how the body worked. I didn’t know the various chambers or vessels I needed to create in order to fix him.
No matter, though. When I told his body to form a new heart, itdid. A new organ magically formulated there, replacing the one that I’d destroyed. Charlie’s body knew what it needed, and knew what to do, forming a new heart at my command. When I pulled back my healing magic, I found with relief that the new heart began beating on its own, without my assistance.
When I was certain that his heart was better than new, I moved on to the blood and replaced that, too, giving him an entirely new life force that was fresh and clean of the toxin. Without the poison in his blood, it couldn’t spread to more parts of his body, which was a benefit. All we had to do now was clear out what was already there.
I moved on to Charlie’s lungs next. The ventilator breathed for him as I disintegrated his old lungs, growing new ones. His lungs materialized almost immediately, and I knew it was because I had experience replacing this particular organ from healing my father. Once that was done, I fixed his stomach and intestines, which were hoarding a massive sticky glob of poison. It took time to clear out, and sweat began to bead across my forehead as I replaced his entire digestive system, starting from scratch.
I heard the wolf give a snarl from the other side of the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the wolf jumped in mid-air, snarling and snapping his jaws as he tossed an invisible foe into the wall. A piece of stone broke off the wall, though I wasn’t sure what hit it. It looked like the wolf was battling some dark force I couldn’t see.
