Kaia the Argent Wing

I rushed over to the firefighter and knelt beside him. The female firefighter, Chelsea, was attempting to stem the flow of blood but the hole was too big and there was too much wrong inside him. He was dying.

“Move!” The voice startled me, and I looked up to see Chloe pulling a bone, some flower petals and a big broad leaf out of a pouch at her waist.

I frowned. “What is that for?”

“I can’t do much but this will help stabilise him until we can get him back to the school, now get the fuck out of the way,” she growled, trying to shove me aside. I didn’t budge, and instead pushed her hand away and turned back to the guy on the ground.

I never had to use my healing spell during the fight, so it was full and ready to use. He had internal damage, though, and I didn’t know if it would heal the inside or just the outside. To cut that potential out of the equation, I shoved my hand inside his guts and activated my spell.

“What the fuck!” Chloe cried, attempting to yank my arm out of him. I didn’t move and I felt his insides begin to move and squirm as they realigned.. Good, good…

A knife was pressed to my throat and the surprise caused me to falter in my spellwork. Fear rushed up to fill my stomach with ice, and I grabbed the hand holding the knife and turned. God fucking damn it, I didn’t have time to explain the reasons for everything about what I was doing! This man was dying!

“I’m trying to heal him!” I yelled, and kicked her away from me. She flew several feet away and hit the body of the car golem monster.

Turning back to the man, I gritted my teeth and waited for my mana to regenerate. I hadn’t used all the magic in it, but I couldn’t actually activate it until it was full again.

“Waiting for my cooldown,” I told the nervous Chelsea, who was glancing between me, the wounded man, and Chloe with wide eyes. Looking up at the squad leader, I told him, “Keep that idiot off me until I’m done.”

Putting my hand gently back into the man’s stomach, I began to heal again. Pretty soon, his insides were at least back together and I ran out of mana.

I flopped backwards and groaned. “His insides are back together. I don’t have enough to close the wound, though.”

Chloe, who was apparently back on her feet, approached with her ingredients again. “I— I can do that.”

“Good,” I said curtly, and pushed myself to my feet. “I’m going to find some water and start loading the carts.”

As soon as I was through the door, I placed a hand down on a random countertop and tried to control the shaking in my limbs. It was the hand with the blood, and I shuddered. I needed… there, a rag. I rushed over and began to wipe my hand down vigorously.

What the fuck did Chloe think I was doing? Like yeah, I didn’t explain anything, but what else would I have been doing? God, she almost killed that guy with her bullshit! Oh, and she put a fucking knife to my throat!

Taking a deep breath, I walked over to the anvils and the bricks, and began to lift them onto one of the trolleys. I finished with them by the time the others came in. The wounded guy gave me a weak smile, still holding his stomach, covering the massive rip where the wound used to be. It looked like it was still red and painful.

Chloe avoided even looking in my direction, so I turned my attention towards the squad leader. “Can you and the others load as much of the metal stock as you can get onto that trolley by the car? There’s a third and a fourth trolley behind that lathe over there. We’ll use those to bring food back from the grocery store between here and the school.”

I didn’t wait for him to agree, I didn’t really care what they had to say right then. I was too shaken up. I just mechanically turned and began to pick up tools I thought would be useful. Then I remembered the welding torch and grabbed that too from where it was sitting against a wall. It and the bottled gases it needed were on a separate cart. I moved it next to the trolley with the bricks and began to pile more bottles onto it. It was probably extremely heavy by now, but I was strong enough to push it no problem.

“We’ve loaded up the metal stock, Silver,” the squad leader said, snapping me out of my fugue. “Chloe has something to say, too.”

Raising an eyebrow, I turned my attention and waited.

Still scowling, she muttered, “Sorry for putting a knife to your throat. Thanks for helping save him.”

“Yeah, thanks for saving me,” Xavier, the guy I healed said with a wry smile. “Healing my guts first was smart, I gotta hand it to you.”

I shrugged and returned the smile. “I have like three orbs in intelligence so, you know…”

They all stared at me in confusion, and I suddenly felt jittery again. “What?”

“You put all of your orbs into intelligence?” Xavier asked.

Ah, that’s what they were confused about. “No, I put two in Intelligence and one into Precision. My class gets plus one into each stat and I found that orb earlier on the corpse of a redcap, remember? I put that one into toughness.”

"Fuck, you're lucky. That class is just straight up better than everyone else's. How does getting another orb work, though?" Chloe asked, her usual abrasive demeanour replaced with one of contrition.

"So after I fought that pile of redcaps this morning, Cynath told me that if I listened to the system a little more I could sense when and where something dropped as loot," I explained. I was still far from being chill with her, but I could at least give out basic system information to her. "One of them spawned an orb beside it when it died. Don't know why, and honestly it raised some bizarre questions about the nature of the universe now."

"Everything that's happened does," she replied. God, why was it always so hard to read her? Half the time I couldn't tell if she was angry, upset, frustrated, or just bored.

Thunder boomed again outside, shaking the rafters in a way that reminded me of how far away we were from the school.

"Let's get moving," I said, turning to the trolley with the bricks, anvils, forging hammers and everything else.

We pushed the trolleys out through the front door, but then I stopped when a thought hit me. That car hulk was like a mini-boss, so what was the bet it dropped some loot?

"Shit, I'll be right back!" I blurted, and dashed around the side of the shop.

The corpse was still slumped forward, unmoving. As I approached, I concentrated on the sensations directed to me by the system and was immediately rewarded with multiple pings.

Dropping to my haunches, I followed the pings to a little pile of four attribute orbs, plus two orbs that were about thirty percent larger. Interesting… oh! Wow, these two bigger orbs were crazy good! I could sense what they were for, and… dayum. So this was a thing, huh?

I heard the crunch of gravel behind me and looked up to see the firefighter squad had followed me. Flashing them an excited smile, I turned and closed the gap. The squad leader opened his mouth to speak, but I plucked an attribute orb from my left hand and offered it to him.

"Huh?" He blinked, taking it.

I turned to Finn and gave him an orb, then Chelsea, then Xavier, until I was standing in front of Chloe. "There were four attribute orbs."

Her expression instantly darkened into a scowl, which I'd expected. I was screwing with her because I was still pissed… but one of the two orbs in my palm would synergize very well with her magic.

"So… why are you standing here if you've already divvied up the loot to the people you actually like, hmm?" She asked.

My smile grew wider, and I leaned in closer while dropping my voice to a low murmur. "Because Chloe, there's two more orbs in my hand. One of them suits you quite well, I think.

Her eyes widened when I leaned in, and she was too stunned to actually take the offered orb when I held it out. Finally, she stopped staring into my eyes and glanced down at it. "What does it do?"

"It's some sort of ability orb. This one specifically gives you the ability to guide a projectile to a target with your mind, and at much greater distances than you could normally throw something. Something like, say, a little packet of spell components…" I said, taking her hand and forcing the orb into it.

She stared down at our hands as raw confusion warred with her previous anger. "I… uh… what about the other one?"

"It lets someone keep metal hot for much longer than normal," I shrugged. "Not useful to anyone here, but April back at the school could probably make good use out of it."

"Right…"

"Anyway," I said, pocketing the orb and turning to Mr Squad Leader. "We should mark the hulk's corpse down in a note or something. I'll bet that we— I mean the crafters—could make all sorts of shit out of it."

He nodded slowly, glancing around at the metallic corpse and the orb in his hand. "What about you? Did you get an orb?"

I shook my head. "I got one earlier today, remember? Plus, I'm hoping that April can make me a sweet axe later, maybe out of this thing's body."

"Right, right," he nodded, finally coming back to his full mental acuity again. Why were people so damned baffled by generosity these days? "Alright, let's get this stuff back to the school. We have those extra wagon things, so I think Silver's plan to hit the grocery store is a good one. Use your orbs and let's get moving."