Divinity Rescue Corps
75- Isabelle, Isabelle, Isabelle

I felt the warmth of Healer’s Endurance keeping me alight during the hours that followed. It was naught but stirring, trickling mana into the cure, and the bubbling of the whole thing from the Magmamander radiating the heat from the below.

Assistants came and went. Alan, Trent, Ivy, Isabelle, Larelle. Regina was out helping to replenish the stores of materials I would need, but she popped her face in before heading off to sleep, smiling encouragingly.

Hours came and went. I entered a meditative state with the help of the Meditation skill, and that helped quite a lot to while the hours away without me losing focus and making a mistake. With Meditation, the outer world fell away. Emotion receded. Anxieties disappeared. Nothing remained save for the here and now, and the task at hand.

So when the Develop Cure check finally came, it didn’t phase me as it had with the God of Footfalls.

Develop Cure (Medium/Unique) Check: This check is Nigh Impossible difficulty. Although the difficulty is 16, presently 12 Tokens* will suffice to automatically succeed at the check. Since the difficulty of this check is higher than your current combined skill and attribute level, a penalty of 4 Tokens has been imposed. Would you like to spend these Tokens to succeed?

Total Tokens: 6 Affinity and 7 Free Tokens.

*Hard At Work: Your Tokens are worth double given you are engaged in your class duties.

“Holy…” I muttered, and made a quick note of the circle that appeared next to the prompt, ticking down the time. I had only a few seconds to decide whether to dump all of my Affinity Tokens plus all of the Free ones. Obviously I had no chance of success without spending Tokens. With 1 level of Medium, 7 levels of Unique, and 6 levels of Afffinity, I had 4 successes I could count on, and maybe 6 if I was lucky, but even if I succeeded with every single available skill and attribute level it wouldn’t be enough.

I gave my mental assent, and vowed in the future to have Trent or Alan on hand to help by spending their Affinity Tokens. Tara had helped back with the God of Footfalls by spending 3 of her Affinity Tokens and lowering the difficulty by 2, and that meant I could count on the Sorcerer or the Wizard to supply me with at least double that, possibly triple. That much of an expenditure probably wouldn’t be necessary, and I didn’t want to strain their resources, but this was critical. If I could lower the difficulty to be even with my skill level, it would save me 4 Tokens going forward.

Success! You have crafted a magical cure for a unique creature.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and slumped back against the nearest workbench. Ivy watched in interest, and slung my arm around her shoulders.

“You okay, killer?” she asked.

The accumulated stress and sleeplessness hadn’t fully hit me; they would. For now, I gave her a smile tinged with not quite my full level of exhaustion.

“Yeah… I’m good.”

It was still another hour before Regina came to relieve Ivy. She found the tattooed Guardian cuddling with me in my tent.

“Heyyyyyy,” Regina said, ducking in.

Ivy sprang to her feet. Regina chuckled. “It’s all right. I know you were just making sure he was okay after that ridiculous potion making situation.”

“Yeah,” Ivy said. “Yeah, exactly. Where’s Izzy?”

Regina grinned and shrugged, and Ivy hustled out.

“Didn’t find you in the lab. I thought you might be taking a nap. You okay?”

I smiled tiredly. The sun was going to be making its way up in another hour or so. “I’ve been worse. It was a lot of Tokens, but we did it.”

You’ve never seen a girl smile like Regina smiled at me. Okay you probably have. You just need to save her beloved pet’s life, or fundamentally alter her life for the better.

I still had to Administer the cure with another skill check.

“When do you want to administer the cure?” she asked.

The sooner the better, as it turned out. We were about out of tincture, and people were getting used to having their underwear on again. Nobody wanted to go back to being fully exposed on the regular.

Regina grinned. “Just let me know, okay?”

The potion I’d slaved over for two days would require me to administer it within two more days. I wouldn’t have time to try meditating and grab more Tokens back. Also, I was over Slinktrickle. It was cozy and quaint, but there were other people out there that needed me. The scouting missions that helped me raise Identify had shown me there was a lot more of the world yet to see, and the Scorchomp reinforced that. It was so awesome and cool and mind boggling that I needed to see more of them. I wanted to see a real, super awesome dragon, and that wasn’t about to happen in this marsh village. I wouldn’t rest until I’d added more and more draconic aspect Nakamamon.

“Let’s do it,” I told her.

Something had happened while I was out, and I felt it immediately the moment I turned toward the laboratory to go fill the syringe and administer the cure.

There was a force of nature trying to push me away. It was visible when I exited the tent, a wavering to the air without color. The heat haze shimmer didn’t rise up like it would if it made pavement look like water in the far distance, but instead radiated outward from the lab.

“What the…”

I had to force my way into the building that had been the hatchery, the simple square building with the shutters instead of window glass, the workbenches and the area over to the side where the formerly dead god lay in its clothes.

The UI informed me that I would be making a Durability check, and added the Divine Resistance skill. I pumped a skill point into it immediately, and with the 8 total levels, scored 2 successes. It was enough to force my way through the space and into the lab.

Ingenuity and the Develop Cure (Unique) skill coupled with the Develop Cure (Medium) skill explained just what in the heck was happening: the god had begun to discorporate again. The divine cure all the people of the village had performed had come to an end, and the god was once again coming undone.

I surged forward like I was walking against gale force winds. The moment I laid my hand on the syringe, the system message appeared.

Administer Cure check:This check has fallen under the Durability attribute due to the circumstances. This check is Extreme. Would you like to spend 6* Tokens for an Automatic success?

Total Tokens: 6 Durability, 1 Free Tokens

*Hard At Work: Your Tokens are worth double given you are engaged in your class duties.

Yes, yes I would. I didn’t care if the next 5 levels of my classes were 10 years away, I wanted to end this thing’s suffering. Paying the toll for the check helped immediately, making me resistant to the waves of divinity now pouring out of the body.

Squinting against the pressure, I got the huge horse syringe and filled it with the cure I had crafted. Then, with immeasurably slow steps, I forced my way across the lab and right up to the body.

Here, so close, I could now see the divinity more clearly. The body of the god was pulsing with whitish, yellowish light, throwing off that light in a way that distorted the whole room. I pressed onward, and pulled myself along using a workbench to help me.

“Fletcher!” Someone yelled.

My lab equipment was being pushed away from the god, sliding across the workbench surfaces pulse by pulse. As the god discorporated further, the pulses got stronger. It came with a deep basso thrumming sound, a whum… whum… whum…

“Grab my gear!” I shouted. “Don’t let anything break!”

Whum… whum… whum…

Reality started changing. I’m not sure how to qualify and quantify that statement, but that’s what was happening. It was like the hatchery building was less real. Like the boards beneath my feet were going to become quicksand. I felt insignificant, like I wasn’t even a speck of dust.

Whum… whum… whum…

Finally I fell to my knees and crawled the remaining few feet. With a surge, I shot forward and jabbed the needle into the god’s arm, and pushed the plunger down at the same moment.

Everything. Stopped.

It was like all of time froze for a moment. The thrumming pulse of divinity vanished on the spot, and I nearly shot forward and collided with the being. Its spine arched like it had just been zapped by a bolt of lightning. Its eyes shot open and they were searchlights, beaming sunlight directly across the room and into the ceiling. That light was hot enough to scorch everything it touched, including the four by four joists and beams.

A sort of bronze skin was creeping over the creature to form an outer layer over the roiling cloud stuff that was its body, the way frost spreads over surfaces at night. That stuff spread over the clothes it had on as well. It wasn’t quite enough to cover the whole thing, and stopped in a number of places before it could connect into a bronze whole.

It took another injection of the cure to get the bronze to fill out over the whole body of the being. Only then did I receive the notification that the god had been cured.

Only then did all my clothes suddenly appear on my body.

“Man oh man,” I said, realizing I’d been about to say ‘holy cow.’

The god stood and acknowledged me, no longer radiating enough light from its eyes to laser me in half. I was quite thankful. As it regarded me, the clothing on its body seemed to be all the different types of clothing at once: a bikini, a full burka covering everything but the eyes and the hands, a puffy winter coat, a strip of cloth like a tube top around the upper torso. Miniskirt, sun dress, dungarees, chambray work shirt, tuxedo, stockings and garter. Some of them it wore at the same time in bizarre configurations that made my brain laugh, like the snorkel and cowboy hat and polka dot blouse and board shorts, with elbow length gloves, knee length soccer socks, and flip flops. It had a stocky and stout female body, and it had a lithe and lanky male body, it had a sinuous and big-hipped female body, and it had a bodybuilder’s male body. It was fat, and it was thin, and tall and short, long hair, short hair, wild curly hair, and all of these things were true at the same time.

You have been damaged, the god told me in my mind.

I peered down at myself to find blisters on my hands and forearms, then shrugged. “That’s nothing. I have remedies for burns. Though… I appreciate the concern.”

As you will, then.

The god vanished, as though it had never been there at all.

[God of Apparel] appreciates your efforts in saving it. You have been gifted [Prismatic Apparel]. [God of Apparel] understood resilience and tenacity could be found in the humans, and marveled at the cooperation of humans and natives to this world. [God of Apparel] has seen your effort and the difficulties you went through in crafting the cure, and has bestowed upon you +1 Durability. You gain 1 Durability token.

It sounded a lot like the item from God of Footfalls. And another attribute point was of course a thousand percent welcome.

I took a look at Prismatic Apparel.

Prismatic Apparel

Item, Wondrous, Legendary

This set of clothing is able to be shaped in any way the wearer wishes. Merely turn the articles inside out to alter their form. The color of the new form will be randomized.

This item has the following properties: godsbane, unbreakable, soulbound, returning.

Godsbane: While wearing this clothing you are assumed to have +5 Divine Resistance.

Unbreakable: This item never takes damage and can never be destroyed except by divine power.

Soulbound: this item belongs solely to you. You may gift this item to another, but the item may never be taken from you.

Returning: this item returns to your possession at a thought.

Everything about this item seemed better and better. Now that I had an outfit to go with the shoes, it seemed like any of these god-given items would be unbreakable, soulbound and return to me if I ever leant them out just by thinking about it. The new property was puzzling, to be sure, but wonderful nonetheless. It made sense, of course, with the God of Apparel dealing me a wound just by being in its blast radius.

The wounds themselves were golden blisters that wept iridescent and color-shifting liquid when I lanced them. They ran over the fingers and backs of my hands, over my wrists, and halfway up my forearms. Once I lanced them with what looked like the lovechild of a scalpel and a pushpin, beneath glowed faintly golden in color, though there was a hint of oily iridescent color from the residue of whatever the liquid had been… holy pus?

Also they… didn’t hurt? That was almost as odd as the words ‘holy’ and ‘pus’ together in the same sentence.

“Hey Fletcher, is it safe to come in?”

I didn’t know the answer to that question, so I told them that for the tie being, no it wasn’t safe. Isabelle came in a few minutes later, blue magic shield blazing and held out defensively. One look at me had her gaping, and not in the lewd post-sex way.

“What the hecky Becky happened to you?”

“I haven’t seen a mirror… is it bad?”

“You look like an oil slick.” She stared in morbid fascination, like I was a dissection experiment in science class. Then she winced. “I probably shouldn’t have said that. Come on, Isabelle, have some tact!”

My Diagnosis skill informed me this was a spiritual injury (not an illness, which was important), which came from the waves of divinity coming off the God of Apparel. It looked physical, but it turned out not to be. Luckily the same type of plants were listed in the manual as the ones I could use in a salve.

So, an injury I could just handle with the Treatment skill. Develop and Administer Cure skills wouldn’t be necessary. Working quickly, an infusion of golden halos, sacred lotus, and the radiant primroses all mixed with the oil and beeswax to use as the paste. With my trusty Magmamander on loan from Larelle, I had the one temperature shift handled without difficulty, and the three different flowers were infused into the salve.

I passed the Difficult check by failing to get the 4 successes the first time, then getting my free retry with Hard at Work. With Isabelle helping on the second try, using 3 Durability Tokens to lower the difficulty by one, I was able to get it on the second attempt just by chancing it. The second time, I scored 5 successes. Her Tokens hadn’t been necessary after all.

I would need to investigate the chance of success and failure a little bit closer. Sometimes I could get over forty percent of my skill levels to succeed, other times barely over a quarter.

Best to consider it later. For now, I smeared the cooled salve onto my hands and forearms with Isabelle’s help. She kept a tightly controlled expression now and refused to say anything, even when I prodded her.

“I took a bath in pure divinity,” I told her, while she wrapped my hands in bandages. This wasn’t really necessary.

No response. I chuckled anyway.

“Do you want to check inside my clothes?”

Her eyes flickered up to mine, and the vague frown deepened.

“Okay, I’m kidding. Unless you want to check inside my clothes.”

Isabelle scowled, pulled my boxers open, and peered down.

“Nope, your gigantic dick is still there and seems to be totally healthy and ready to wreck some poor girl’s innards.” She rolled her eyes and let the waistband snap back.

“You know what my mom used to say?” She asked me.

“I have no idea what your mom used to say.” Frowning at herself, she got the metal thing that looked like a tongue depressor, and started smearing the salve all over my face.

“She said if I didn’t close my mouth once in a while I was going to swallow a whole swarm of insects.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t overshare every time you say something. Or, you know, bring up traumatic childhood memories that don’t need to be shared at all.”

I grinned at her, but tried to make that smile one of commiseration. I wasn’t sure what to say otherwise.

“Isabelle, Isabelle, Isabelle,” she told herself, “you’ve got to keep your big mouth shut, or else you’re going to embarrass yourself for the rest of your forking life.”

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