Page 68 of Alchemised

She started reaching for the clasp on his cloak, trying to see the extent of the wound.

He shoved her away, recoiling. “What are you doing?” No pride now, he moved like a stray expecting to be beaten, the whites of his eyes glaring.

Her fingers where she’d touched him were wet with blood. “You’re hurt.”

He slumped, looking down slowly. “Be fine—” His words slurred. “Jsst—need a minute …”

He slumped against the wall. Blood was trickling in a constant stream from his left sleeve, forming a pool on the floor. Just the sight of it threatened to send Helena into a frenzy.

Blood loss was dangerous. The Resistance lost more people from exsanguination than anything else. Staunching a bleed was something everyone was expected to know how to do properly and efficiently. Too much blood loss and even plasma expanders and saline wouldn’t be enough.

How much blood could Ferron lose? Immortal or not, surely it couldn’t be infinite.

She held her hands apart, palms showing, her voice placating. “I’m a—medic, Ferron. Let me help.”

He stared at her, dazed, as if he needed time to process the information.

“What happened?” she asked, risking a step closer.

Blood was still flowing at an impossible rate.

Finally, he shook his head. “Just lost my arm.”

As if to prove it, he unclasped his cloak. Both it and his grey coat fell off, revealing that there was nothing but scraps of burned fabric beneath, and a haemorrhage of blood where his left arm should have been.

He swayed, his eyes losing focus. “It’ll grow back. But it’s—taking a while.”

Helena had never seen the Undying regenerate in person. Combatants described it as nightmarish and rapid, bones shooting out, muscles and tendons wrapping around, and then pale skin emerging from the raw tissue like mould.

All her time in the hospital testing the bounds of regenerated tissue, it was hard for her to believe that anyone could regrow an entire limb.

She’d tried growing back fingers once, but the amount of spontaneous regeneration it required was simply too much. Healing had hard limits. The Undying seemingly did not.

Ferron’s arm looked as if it had been torn off. She stepped towards him, but he tensed again. She halted, mind spinning. Maybe she’d try talking again first. He seemed responsive to questions.

“I thought regeneration happened right away.”

“Sometimes—takes longer,” he said through gritted teeth, walking over and dropping into a chair. His head lolled back. “Lot of damage …”

“There was more?”

His face, tight with pain, pulled into a taut smile as he looked at her. “I have command of a new district …”

His voice trailed off. He straightened as if trying to rouse himself, blinking several times.

“Previous commander—rather attached to it.” He gave a lopsided shrug.

“Insulted his mother—few times. Insinuated some unfavourable things about his wife and a certain horse.” His head lolled back again.

“Didn’t like that. Duelled to the death.

Well—close as we can get. I won, so now I get his command posts. ”

The last words were garbled. He was mostly talking inside his mouth.

He gave a barking laugh so abrupt that Helena jumped.

“He was a pyromancer, though. The arm’s nothing compared with the burns. They were—worse. Gone now. Usually I can—” He gestured at himself. “But I’m—”

Whatever he was, his voice trailed off before he could specify.

She never would have thought that pain and chronic blood loss would be the trick for making Ferron talkative, but that was far more words in succession than she’d heard from him in weeks.

His eyes went out of focus. His breathing had grown shallow, almost stopping. He was going into shock.

“Why are you here? You didn’t have to come.” She stepped tentatively closer, prepared to be shoved away again.

He blinked slowly, staring up at her. His pupils had dilated so much, the black nearly swallowed the irises.

“Marino …” He sighed, as if it were obvious.

He was still talking inside his mouth, lips barely moving.

“Once I’m done here, I intend to drink so much I won’t remember my own name for the next three days.

I have a map—somewhere.” He patted awkwardly at himself with his remaining arm and only then seemed to realise that his clothes were ashen scraps. “Fuck …”

Helena steeled herself and stepped closer.

“Ferron,” she said gently but firmly, “I have medical experience. I’m going to check you and see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, and didn’t resist as she pressed fingers against his neck under the pretence of taking his pulse, cautiously using her resonance to find out what was wrong with him.

However unnatural he had felt the first time she’d used her resonance on him, it was a thousand times stranger this time. He was losing so much blood, he should be dead, but somewhere in his chest, a power source like a beacon was radiating out, regenerating him faster than he could die.

The lumithium talisman. That must be it. The source of the Undying’s power.

Nonetheless, his body was trying very hard to die anyway.

Helena could recognise newly regenerated tissue, and he was covered in it. Most of his torso and face had been regenerated all the way down to the bones. Several of his organs seemed new as well.

However, it was the nonstop blood loss that was the problem.

The body was not made to produce blood at even a fraction of the rate he was losing it.

It was stripping him of resources to pull blood out of nowhere, all so that he could dump it out on the floor.

A nonstop destructive loop. His body was so preoccupied with making more blood, it couldn’t expend the resources necessary to regrow his arm and thereby end the blood loss.

Apparently somewhere in his anomalous regenerative abilities, the concept of blood clotting had been lost.

Helena drew a careful breath and spoke with as much assurance as she could manage.

“Admittedly, you’re the first immortal person that I’ve treated, but you really need to stop bleeding this much.” She pulled at the remaining tatters of his shirt. It crumbled away.

She didn’t think that staunching the blood loss would cause regeneration issues.

“Let’s get you onto the table,” she said, pulling his existent arm over her shoulder and dragging him to his feet. It was fortunate that he was all limbs, because he was a deadweight to get up and onto his back. His eyes had fluttered closed, and he was nonresponsive, his chest barely rising.

She doubted he was conscious, but she maintained the charade of being a medic just to be sure. Using the heels of both hands, she pressed down on his shoulder to conceal her resonance as she constricted the veins and arteries in his arm.

It was remarkable how quickly that alone stabilised him.

Once he was no longer bleeding to death, his arm immediately started regenerating. She watched, mesmerised, as the bone burst out, expanding, muscles wrapping around it, regenerating his biceps, the elbow, the radius, and the ulna.

She couldn’t help but release her resonance a bit more as she watched, trying to get a feel for—whatever he was. Wanting to understand how it worked. His body had already stopped feeling like it was on the verge of death.

The bones in his hand unfurled, and the veins and muscle tissue wove around them, and by the time it was done, she would never have known he’d lost the arm.

She eased the pressure of her hands off his shoulder as she reopened the arteries and veins, letting the blood rush through all the new tissue. The muscles in Ferron’s arm rapidly evolved into established tissue.

She’d never considered regenerating more than new tissue, but as she felt Ferron’s body reverting itself to its former state, she wondered if she could. There was no reason she had to stop there at basic regeneration.

The power radiating from inside Ferron’s chest faded until it was barely discernible. A vague knot of energy and lumithium. It felt tiny for something with so much power.

She didn’t dare push deeper, but she didn’t pull her hands away.

Of all the contexts in which she’d imagined Ferron half naked in her presence, healing or medical care had not crossed her mind, although it was infinitely preferable to kissing him.

She was comfortable with this kind of physical contact.

She studied him as his heartbeat finally dropped to a steady rhythm, colour slowly leaching back into his body as the blood loss faded away.

He was—even in the most generous terms—gangly. There was hardly a trace of body fat on him. She could see his ribs, the jut of his sternum, bony shoulders. He had long limbs and knobby elbows. Stripped down, he looked so young.

It was no wonder Ferron wore a good three layers of uniform in an effort not to look so overtly juvenile.

Her fingers traced absently across his now unmarred skin.

She couldn’t imagine being trapped in the body of a sixteen-year-old for eternity.

“Do you leer at and fondle all your unconscious patients, or am I special?” Ferron’s voice was as unexpected as a bucket of ice water.

Helena started, her heart slamming into her throat as she snatched her hands away, her face scorching hot.

“I was not,” she said, her voice tight and rising, even though she had no excuse for touching him that way. “I was just wondering about your body fat ratio.”

“Of course you were,” he said, sitting up with a suggestive smirk.

She could probably heat the entire tenement with the amount she was blushing.

“I wasn’t leering at you,” she said forcefully. “You look scarcely grown. I don’t fancy boys.”

The smirk vanished. He stared at her for a painfully long moment and stood up. “As I recall,” he finally said, his voice clipped, “I never asked you to look at all.”

He went over and picked up his cloak, which was the only part of his clothing that wasn’t nearly burned to ashes, and pulled it on. It smeared him all over with blood.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”