—Orion—

  Slowly—and with a groan—I felt myself regain consciousness. I opened my eyes to see nothing, making me doubt that I'd opened my eyes at all. It reminded me of that moment when the drakes had destroyed Elio’s [Sunlight] spell.

  I tried to feel around myself and get some sort of clue as to where I was. But my body felt numb and unwieldy, like someone had strapped weights to my limbs. The only thing I could feel clearly was a sharp pain in my neck, a persistent ache that demanded my attention.

  I did my best to ignore the dire implications of the pain, and tried to reach into my jacket. It took a few tries, but I managed to pull out an old BIC lighter that’d been tucked into an inside pocket, the familiar scratched plastic and metallic head fitting in the palm of my hand comfortably.

  With a well practised motion and single click, the scratched device sparked and then emitted a single small tongue of flame. It was usually too faint to be used as a light source, but in the absence of all other light, it burned bright enough.

  I immediately saw the dagger still embedded in my stomach, but I decided to ignore it for now. My talent wouldn't let me bleed out anyway.

  Around me I could see the broken wooden remains of the chair I was sitting on, and a glance upwards revealed that I was at the bottom of a deep chasm. It rose up, far beyond what I could see, and stretched as endlessly to my right and left. The only part of the cave I could see were the two sides of it. It was only a few metres wide—from my position on the floor, I could almost touch both walls if I stretched out with my arms and legs.

  With a few awkward and thankfully numbed shuffles, I managed to move my back so it could rest against the wall. I caught my breath while sitting against the stone and thought about what to do next.

  I glanced at the old plastic casing, the metal at its top quickly becoming uncomfortably warm and hard to hold.

  “Fire makes light, warmth. Fire can cook food. Fire is man’s first and most important tool to stave off the night.” My Father whispered, his voice coming from somewhere in the darkness.

  I let out a shuddering breath, unable to stop myself from glancing around. I knew that he wasn’t here, but more importantly, I knew that hearing illusory voices meant nothing good. But no matter how much I wished they wouldn’t, the memories of Father’s lessons came back to me.

  The most important thing for my survival—right this instant—was getting a fire going. I picked up a large splinter of wood and held it above the flame, the whole situation painfully familiar to me. At least it was less wet than last time I'd been forced to improvise.

  A few seconds later the wood caught fire, and I dropped the lighter on the floor without a second thought. I burned my thumb from holding the lighter for too long, but I knew it would heal quickly. Using the ignited piece of wood as a base, I piled the remaining bits of wood within reach on top of it, creating a modest little fire.

  But by the time I’d managed to make the fire self-sustaining for a while, a sense of light-headedness and wooziness enveloped me, probably from physically and mentally exhausting myself.

  But with the fire handled for now, I returned my attention to the long blade of gold sticking out of my abdomen. I recognised the patterns on the hilt and the way my blood refused to clot, both signs that the blade in my stomach was the one that was usually wielded by Elio.

  As much as I wanted to ask myself why it ended up in the hands of a masked assassin, the more important task was making sure that I survived to ask the questions. I tore off a strip of cloth from my shirt, and wrapped it into a donut shape around the blade, nestling the makeshift bandage on the wound.

  I retracted my hands from the open gash, and noticed that most of it was coated in a dark liquid, the blood dark in the meagre light of the campfire. That wasn't good.

  My head started to spin, and I suddenly felt drowsy, my eyes aching with the weight of their lids.

  I hope… I wake… up.

  ***

  I jerked back to wakefulness with a stifled scream, pain flowing into me with a forcefulness that couldn’t be ignored. The numbness from before was gone, and I could feel everything below my neck with crystal-clear clarity.

  The whole of my body ached, but the dagger in my stomach hurt like nothing else I’ve ever felt. Breaking my leg and trying to walk on it wasn’t this bad, and getting hit in the face didn’t pierce into my psyche like a hot knife.

  I fruitlessly tried to reach for the hilt of the dagger, knowing that the button to retract it was the circular protrusion at the end of the handle. But no matter how I moved, the end of the dagger remained out of reach, taunting me like a carrot on the end of a stick.

  With a pained grunt I gave up trying to remove the dagger the easy way, and grasped the blade just above the portion in my stomach. I tried to keep my breaths even and slow as I mentally prepared myself to rip out the blade, but as I got closer to committing to the action, panic surged with the pain.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled the blade, being careful not to cut my hands on the edges. But instead of sliding out of me, the dagger stuck to my insides—like it was barbed—pulling my flesh along with it, and inflicting pain like nothing I'd ever experienced. Before I could stop myself, a horrific scream tore through my mouth, echoing off of the cave walls as I let go of the blade. I slumped against the wall, ragged breathing the only sound I was capable of making in the wake of the mind-rending pain.

  After taking an unknowable amount of time recovering from the shock of the pain, I carefully shuffled myself upright again, into a more comfortable position. To stop the involuntary idleness from turning into hopelessness too fast, I opened the Path just to busy myself.

  I silently dismissed the notification congratulating me on ‘finding’ the secret passage, and blankly stared at the screen like it might magically offer me another solution to my problems. Though it still showed the [Animal Companion] and [Soul Bond] emergences, so I assumed that meant Sally is still alive.

  Hmm, I thought my health would be lower, maybe the injury isn't as bad as it looks? A neck injury from the fall and an open stab wound should've almost killed me. The continuous bleeding also would've killed me by now if something wasn't offsetting it.

  So it’s my nature—or as described by the Path [Talent]—[Heart of Vitality], that had kept me conscious, continuously healing the injury and blood loss without being able to close the wound.

  There was no way to remove the dagger still stuck in me, and my [Talent] keeping me alive, the scenario a deadly seesaw of survival. One side of it was the healing applied by my [Talent], constantly balancing out the increasing inevitability of my impending death.

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  I let my thoughts drift away, I hid from the pain and focused on thinking about [Talent]s instead.

  The only thing that the Solis’s priests explained less than why we were summoned, was what natures were. The only thing ever described about them was their 'uniqueness'.

  Our uniquenesses in particular I suppose—only the people from earth ever got them, with each one being unique to the person—mine was just 'being healthy' as far as I was aware. It gave the skill [Self-Healing], which accelerated healing in exchange for mana. It was a life-saving skill, and this very moment proved that, but it was hard not to be jealous of others when their [Talent]s could do much more.

  Gin's [Talent]—[Mokosh's Sturdiness]—allowed her to refuse to be knocked over, solidify the ground under her feet, and gave her a skill that could nullify almost all attacks.

  I’d seen puddles of mud turn to stone, and she never had to stand on unsteady ground. I've watched animals charging at her—weighing at least hundreds of kilos—bounce off of her. It'd cost most of her mana, but I'd seen an iron sword break over her skin. She had three traits that were complimentary to her class and made her unkillable.

  Mine however, barely had the opportunity to be used most weeks. A good archer doesn't get stabbed on the daily.

  The Path did give us an explanation of why we received our personal [Talent]s in particular. But they were mostly poetic, and lacked the tangible reasons in number form it usually showed for its decisions. I could still remember the message the Path gave me when it revealed my [Talent] on reaching level five.

  The Path seemed to have a habit of tantalising you about missed opportunities. Again I was… Jealous, of the others who'd gotten the powers that I'd been taunted with. I'd almost gotten a [Talent] that would've given me good powers, abilities that would've boosted my bow and better than what I had currently.

  I didn't crave the power it described, but if I'd had the ability to fight back, I wouldn't be at the bottom of a cliff. The Path didn't make fun of the [Talent] it gave me for no reason.

  But even with a healing focused [Talent], unfortunately waiting won't work this time. As much as it was keeping me from bleeding out, the wound was being kept open by the dagger, so it was only a matter of time before my mana ran out.

  With a sigh, I simply gave up.

  Maybe something would change soon, but for now I was stuck, and slowly dying. I couldn’t reach the pommel to disengage the weapon, and I was in too much pain to move. There was no-one to help me, and I was stuck at the bottom of this cliff.

  As much as I wanted to rationalise some way to get out of my situation, I couldn’t think of anything. To make myself feel a bit less helpless, I shuffled the remaining bits of wood into my waning fire to keep it going. I used my legs to move them within reach of my hands.

  Once I secured the fire’s warmth for another few hours, I rested my head against the cold stone. I let the fatigue take me, and closed my eyes.

  ***

  My uneasy sleep was interrupted by something touching my side, and I peeled open my eyes to see a sparkling mass of silver stumbling into me. While feeling even more woozy than before, I moved jerkily to get a better look at the intruder.

  My injuries were the only thing that stopped the trained response that pushed me to attack the unknown threat that had woken me up. But all thoughts of attacking stopped as I recognised the scales sparkling in the fire-light, though the blood staining them scared me enough to fully wake me up.

  Leaned against my leg lay Sally, the silver drakeling had slumped against my shin at some point, and was absorbing the warmth of the fire. I saw deep and bloody wounds on her scales, the blackish blood oozing from her wounds making my stomach feel more upset than the dagger in it.

  A terrible feeling—almost comparable to the one in my stomach—squeezed my heart, the drake’s terrible state was another sign of my failure to properly take care of her. I couldn’t even help myself, let alone surrogate her properly.

  With a pale and shaky hand I pulled the unconscious drake closer, and then placed her on my lap, taking care to not accidentally nudge the dagger. I ripped another piece of cloth from my shirt, and dabbed at her wounds, and I realised that they couldn’t have come from the fall. The injuries had the distinctive shape of scratch and bite marks, and that meant something must've attacked her down here.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: Sally – Strange drakeling]

  [[Hunter’s Senses] upgrades the level of [Appraisal – Lvl 1] when facing a beast!]

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 2] on: Sally – Strange drakeling]

  Upon seeing the health she had left, an off-tune chuckle—it sounded more like a sigh—slipped out of my mouth. It felt like a joke—everything that's happened to both of us seemed intentional. Like we were the main characters of a play, and the only two not told that it was written by Shakespeare.

  I… I wish that I wasn’t so useless.

  I lost concentration as I suddenly felt faint—a wave of dizziness overwhelming me before I could regain control of my thoughts. But the surge of wooziness loosened my psyche enough for unusual ideas—for me—to appear. I realised that I wanted to make a commitment, one that I wouldn't ever break, especially if I survive my injury.

  I looked at the pile of silver in my lap… and decided.

  I vowed that even if I’m… a useless, pointless, person. There was still Sally.

  I didn't care that I'd ruined my own life—to the point of bleeding out, alone in a cave, with no one here or willing to help—but I could still save Sally.

  My existence had no point to it, no goal. But the infant drake will need someone to feed her, guide her, protect her. I'd ruined the life that she could’ve had, but I could still give her the gift of a new one.

  That even if I didn’t know how to properly interact with my own species, there was someone that needed me and wouldn’t throw me away, even if she was from another race.

  [Your [Guiltful remorse, tender care and generational adoration] has evolved your side of the [soul bond] with: Sally]

  [Evolution!: [Heart of Vitality] has been opened to Sally, allowing Orion to use his skill [Self-Healing] on Sally.]

  I read the floating panes of text as well as I could, and realised that the Path had yet again given me the tool I needed to save Sally. At this point I didn't have it in me to care about how the Path could be pushing me towards a certain outcome, and activated [Self-Healing]. I felt my Mana move—and with the guidance of the Path—towards a new ephemeral feeling inside my heart. It was a sensation I'd never known before, made by the evolution from [Soul Bond], but I willed the magic towards the newly-made door anyway.

  I watched Sally’s wounds scab and her health return to fullness, succeeding in healing her to the point where her life was no longer leaking out of her with her blood. But in tandem I felt weaker, my Mana slipping away along with my last remaining dregs of my awareness.

  I pushed the last of what I had left into her, and darkness swept my consciousness away.

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