Please remember that this is a veryveryfirst draft and is entirely liable to change and (hopefully) refinement over the course of the writing and editing process. Enjoy! Xxox
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They
arrived at the doors of the operating room and Miranda paused to catch Renatus
as the gurney went on without them. His tight, worried eyes widened as he
realised he was to be parted from his apprentice, even briefly.
“No,
Miranda-”
“Renatus,
you need to get it together,” she told him, calmly but firmly. Aristea
disappeared inside the theatre with the other medical staff. For just a moment,
Miranda and Renatus were relatively alone – they mightn’t get another such
chance. “Tell me what happened to her. Lisandro?”
“I
need to-”
“Renatus,”
Miranda snapped, trying to focus him. His attention was beyond her, following
the girl he could no longer see. “You aren’t going inside my sterile operating environment looking
like that.” She pointedly glanced
over him, and he seemed to notice the blood on his own hands for the first
time. If possible, he paled further, and she worried he might faint. She waved
quickly in his face to recapture his attention. “You can see her again in a
moment. You’ll scrub in, like everybody else. Tell me what we’re dealing with.
How did this happen to her? Was it Lisandro?”
He
was so lost, but he nodded quickly, trying to gather to himself the words she
needed from him.
“She
saw him before I did, and she ran… She wouldn’t stop, she wouldn’t let me stop
her,” he explained hurriedly, “I tried. We couldn’t Displace. Otherwise I… He
hit her with…” He gestured after her helplessly with his bloody hand. “I don’t
know what it was. We’re wasting time.”
“Where
were her wards?” Emmanuelle asked with a frown, arriving after having deflected
the nurse. Renatus turned to her with blank, empty eyes.
“She
let them down,” he murmured miserably. Aristea’s Wards instructor stared at
him.
“She
what? You let her into that situation without wards?! Why–”
“I
told her, I swear.” Renatus looked like he didn’t know what else to say. “She
was shielded – she shielded everyone – and then, I don’t know, she dropped
them. This is all my fault,” he concluded aloud, pulling away and stalking a
few paces down the hall, pressing his sticky hand to his face in distress and
leaving a feral smear of blood before he could realise what he was doing.
He
was right, they were wasting time. Miranda grabbed his arm as he paced back
past her, staring with dread at his hands.
“Can
you help us heal her?”
The
look on his face was nothing short of broken. She gathered there was a huge
story there she’d never heard, but now wasn’t the time.
“Renatus,
you’re no good to anyone like this,” she said flatly, not caring if she sounded
insensitive. What was the point of a superpower like Renatus if he was shedding
magic everywhere indiscriminately instead of concentrating it on a task as
significant as this one? “Get a hold on yourself. There’s raw magic in your
apprentice’s flesh. We,” she indicated Emmanuelle with a nod of her head, “can close
up those wounds but you need to pull
that spell out.”
He was so white. He swallowed.
Visibly pulled himself together. “Whatever you need.”
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