Saving the Savior

The fog of unconsciousness lifted itself from Lyra very slowly. The numbness receding to the pain in her leg, which was demanding her immediate attention. Lyra had a hard time opening her eyes, but eventually she managed to see where she was. Her body was on the ground near one of the pillars in the room where she had fought the spider, her limbs splayed haphazardly at weird angles. The arm with the glow bracer was trapped underneath her torso, the tingling sensation of a sleeping limb teasing her nervous system. The light from the bracer was dimmed as it was running out of the power she had stored in it.

The bracer had an internal power storage capability, which let her precharge it with her chi. All she would need to do is activate it and it would light up her surroundings without actively drawing from her core reserves. She realized that she had to have been asleep for at least an hour if the bracer was almost out of energy, as she had taken to charging it between each room to keep it full. It took her a few moments of focused effort to sit up against the pillar without upsetting her leg.

The pain their was a mixture of sharp and dull at the same time, and a part of her couldn't help but think that something was broken. She had not had the time to think about it, as everything had happened too fast, but her shin had a deep dark bruise on it that heavily discolored her skin. As the memories of the fight caught up with her though, she stopped inspecting her leg to look around the room.

She had barely even glanced before her heart seemed to catch in her throat. Just a few feet away was the man who had saved her, light from the bracer now highlighting his slumped form. A dark fog obstructed some of the light, and she immediately recognized that it was demonic chi that was collecting around him. The more she looked at him, the more something felt off though. Flashes of remembrance brought her back to his style of fighting, and her stomach squirmed at her worries.

As she analyzed his unconscious form, the parts of him that weren't obscured by the fog displayed healing cuts. The more she looked, the more of them she saw, letting her know that he had fought hard to protect her. She wasn't sure why he had done so much, but she wouldn't kick her savior to the curb. Quickly she grabbed one of the belt pouches that stored her supplies, fishing for some medical creme and bandages. Each pouch was dedicated to a specific tool, so it didn't take her long to get the right things she would need to patch someone up.

She quickly inspected herself for any grievous wounds, but aside from her leg and 5 deep cuts on her arm she was mostly fine. While the cuts on her arm were deep, they hadn't bled much as far as she could tell. Just to be safe, she ripped at her shirt sleeve so she could do a quick patch job. As she saw the wounds in the light, a look of concern washed over her. Dark black veins were spreading from the puncture marks like a creeping vine across her arm. When she payed attention to what she was feeling in that area, the distinct numbness of demonic chi was present. It was why she hadn't noticed it right away, as the wound lay hidden behind the dark energy.

Recognizing that the best thing she could do in this situation was get out of the dungeon and seek medical help, she applied the healing creme to her wounds and wrapped it tightly. It was uncanny to be touching and interacting with something that should have been highly painful, but she barely felt her fingers work across her damaged skin. After she had ensured her own health, she slowly got to her feet and hobbled over to the hunched form of her savior. She had to activate what she had left of her chi just to fight off the invasion of the cloud of demonic essence, but she was able to get closer to check his wounds.

With a tentative hand, she reached out and lifted the man's horned head to get a better look at his face. She needed to confirm what her heart was telling her, she was unable to stop that deep need to know the truth. With light on one arm, and his head in the other, she finally got a solid look at the facial features of the demonic looking man who had saved her.

Dread filled her entire being, her mind unable to process what she saw. "How is this possible?" She wracked her brain to try and comprehend it, but she could not understand why this demon man looked like her best friend. As much as she wanted to believe her eyes were deceiving her, she knew that there weren't any demons in this dungeon that could shape shift or take over a person's body. Her father and teachers had drilled her all her life on the different types of demons, and while demons like that existed, they did not exist here.

A common phrase passed through her mind, and she latched onto it in desperation to piece it all together. If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, then its likely a duck. It was a silly phrase, but the meaning behind it was what she needed. While different to a degree, the man in front of her looked like her best friend. He fought like her best friend. He had saved her life from the spider, and then fought it bitterly to the death in order to keep her safe. As she looked at him further, she saw that his clothing matched what she had seen Kantan wearing the day before. He hated changing his clothes after training, quoting a distaste for doing laundry as his excuse. She had never minded because he didn't care if she changed or not.

As she scanned the clothes though, she saw a dark black splotch on his side with a pool of dark black blood below it. Next to him was a severed spider leg covered in that black blood, and she was quick to put two and two together. With only a moment of hesitation, she began to work on patching up the wound on his side. It was obvious that even if this wasn't her best friend anymore, he had still protected her. Somehow, impossibly, he had been changed by demonic chi. Typically if a spirit beast was infected by demonic chi, it would lose its mind and kill indiscriminately.

If that were the case with Kantan, he wouldn't have protected her like he did. When she remembered his eyes before she passed out, she remembered the clarity to them. They were different, but they were not wild like the spider had been. It took her about 5 minutes to dress his wounds, in the process she had needed to remove the last vestiges of his shirt. After wrapping around his mid section, she checked his upper back and saw the final nail in the coffin that confirmed his identity. A small birthmark in the shape of a crown on his spine, something that was normally hidden by the collar of his shirt.

He had shown it to her, and she had seen it multiple times throughout their lives up until this point. It was apparently a genetic thing, as his mother and grandfather possess similar birthmarks as well.

Once she had done all that she could to patch him up, she leaned back against the wall next to him and took a break. It was hard to move without agitating her injured leg, and crouching over an injured body only made that harder. A sense of emptiness was beginning to creep up on her mind though, and she could tell that her chi reserves were almost entirely empty. With some effort, she fished out the essence conversion artifact and used the last of her chi to activate it. A few moments later a small stream of pure chi began to float out of the artifacts center. At the same time, the dark cloud of chi that was collecting around Kantan began to taint and corrupt the pure essence.

Moving swiftly to prevent too much of it from being corrupted, Lyra pulled the remaining pure essence into her channels and began to cultivate.