Shiina looked around the camp as Yagi led Delilah to a makeshift medical tent. There were seven people on cots, six looking pale with partially healed wounds, and one man in robes unconscious. Probably their healer. There was another magician standing watch over the men, and he looked up with a sigh of relief. "Thank the gods. I kept them from getting worse, but I'm terrible at healing."

  With the problem in front of her Delilah had become all business. "It's good you held back. Improperly healing people with poison damage can be dangerous. Have they been triaged?" She reached into Shiina 'backpack' and after a moment the mimic handed over the puca leaves.

  "Not since Baldy first started healing them. Don't know who's the worst off honestly," the man replied.

  "Right. Keep an eye on the ones I'm not treating and tell me if their condition worsens." Delilah moved to the first one, a man who had a puncture in his shoulder. "Duty grant me Sight." The woman looked him over critically. "Still has minor internal bleeding. Shouldn't take too much mana to fix. Targeted Heal." Shiina watched as her friend cast a healing spell before taping a Puca leaf over the wound.

  As the spell finished she moved on to the next. Shiina was surprised to see the man relax almost immediately. Magical healing was really impressive it seemed! Though she didn't have any of those internal organs, or even blood, so she didn't have a good frame of reference towards normal healing. Mali had said it took a while though.

  Delilah grimaced as she scanned the next man. Shiina wondered why since he only had a slight wound on his chest. "The poison hit him harder, so my healing probably won't work." She looked over to the man who'd been standing watch. "I'll move on to the others. Grind this into a powder and I'll finish brewing the cure when that's done."

  "Good idea." The man took some leaves and walked over to an alembic to begin work.

  Shiina considered that. What was the difference between that man and the first one? Injury location? That might be it. Most had taken hits to the arms or shoulders, but there was a man whose hand was torn up and another who's taken a shot to the stomach.

  The paleness also might matter. The guy with the stomach wound was similar in color to the others, but one of the men whose wound was barely closed looked a lot paler. Worse than the one that Delilah said had internal bleeding. He was also fifth in the row, so Delilah wouldn't get to him soon.

  She sighed internally. Well there went the big surprise. Still better to have fun now then try to liven up a funeral. So once Delilah finished up her spell, she popped out. "You should probably check that guy. He looks bad."

  At least the reactions were worth it. The man grinding herbs spun around too far and nearly tripped himself. Their guide Yagi drew his sword before sitting there standing in confusion, and even Delilah gave a yelp of shock.

  "Is... is that a mimic?" Yagi managed to spit out.

  "Yep! Shiina's, the name. I worked for the guild until recently." She tapped Delilah on the shoulder to force the conversation back to the important stuff. "Like I said that guy there seems the most hurt. Figure you should check him."

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  "Okay." Delilah hurried over and frowned as the scan went off. "You're right. He still had some poison in the system when he was healed, so he's taken a lot of internal damage. This is going to take a lot of work."

  "That's- this-" Yagi shook his head to recover. "Later. Save his life first. We'll worry about curing the rest after."

  Delilah nodded. "Okay." She started a longer spell. "I invoke you, all paths and roads. By my will be Targeted, I need you for Rescue..."

  Shiina turned her attention to Yagi who looked to be something of a sourpuss given the look he was giving her. "Heya. I'm just a tagalong. Don't worry about me asking for more cash. Just wanna keep an eye on my friend here."

  He swallowed his frown and nodded. "Not a fan of unexpected surprises, but that's fine. And you might have saved Davies so I'll leave it there." His brow furrowed. "How'd you notice the color difference though? None of the rest of us noticed."

  "That's..." Shiina considered it. "I might be better at seeing colors than you? At least when the objects are far apart. You need to be able to blend perfectly with the walls or people will catch you instantly just because the shade doesn't match up right. Your eyes are too good at pattern recognition."

  "Good to know."

  Delilah finished her spell and sagged as the strain hit her. Shiina politely slipped off her shoulders and helped her stay up. "You okay?"

  "Yes. I just used a lot of mana." She took a deep breath. "I should be fine, though I'll probably be out when I finish healing the others."

  "Then you can rest here before heading back."

  Everyone turned to see a tough looking man in well worn plate mail come into the tent. He was clean shaven, and his eyes were calculating, but not judging. Yagi and the other soldier started to salute, but the man waved them off. "No ranks in the healers tent. Well not officially anyway. My name is Graves, I'm the leader of this team. I want to thank you for helping us out on such short notice."

  Delilah gave a polite nod. "It was a fair contract so no trouble." She looked at the man who'd been grinding leaves. "Are you done with those? I'll want to finish the infusions soon if I can."

  "Ah, just a second more," he turned back to work.

  Graves rubbed his chin. "You're pretty on top of things for a fresh copper tag. And you there, mimic girl, I heard you offed that necromancer that caused the ruckus in town yesterday. I'll let you get back to your work, but after you've rested drop by my tent. Apparently we need an assistant healer, and a scout's always useful."

  Shiina and Deliliah looked at each other happily. It seemed things might be looking up!

  I feel kinda weird writing about mimics. Like I know me, but I don't know what humans find interesting about me. There's the obvious stuff like how we can copy items almost perfectly. Copying humanoids is a lot harder. They've got all these hidden bits we can't see, and so many little moving parts.

  The biggest thing I can think of is the stuff Mali told me about. Intelligent monsters are rare, and ones that aren't totally hostile to humanoids are rarer. Even I had an urge to attack humans when I was newly formed. That's how a lot of mimics die. People don't negotiate when you bite the rogue's face.

  Still a number of mimics do manage to meet up with reasonable adventurers, so I'm not the only mimic who works with people. Though running a training dungeon is fairly unusual. Most mimics work with wizards or rich people as treasure guards.

  It does sound kinda cool guarding a library all day and getting to read all the books I want. But it'd be hard to get my scares in. That's the other thing. We need to surprise people. Mali said if I killed the people I surprised I wouldn't need to do it as much. But that's not really nice.