Divinity Rescue Corps
85- Darkest Days

Likability Check: You do not have the associated skill for this check.* This check is an opposed one. Since this is a Deceit check, it will be made without the target’s knowledge. Bear in mind that some classes have a way of detecting Deceit checks made against them. Would you like to spend 3 Tokens to lower your target’s Deceit and Ingenuity by 1 for the purposes of this check? You may not spend a Token to retry this check.

Total Tokens: 5 Likability and 7 Free Tokens.

*Note: Fierce II has given you a temporary Deceit skill of 7. You have gained a temporary Physicality Token and a temporary Durability Token.

Wow. First, I was simply astonished that I hadn’t been forced to make a single Deceit check thus far. This world was so pure and wonderful and awe-inspiring that I hadn’t been put in a position where I had to lie to save my skin or do my job. That fact alone made me like this world all the more, present circumstances aside.

Second, it amazed me that this opposed check system was made like this. I’d only done maybe two opposed checks… and one had been against Cinzy when she tried to make me abandon the eggs in Slinktrickle. I wanted to go back into the UI system message logs and see what that had looked like, but didn’t have time… because now I was on the opposite end and time was running thin on the little Yes/No spend Tokens timer.

Third, I had sort of forgotten about the Fierce ability, since there had been almost no need for it in weeks and weeks. Which, again, was a good thing.

The check succeeded without me spending 3 Likability Tokens. I likely needed them, and since I got a temporary Durability Token, I needed Boss here to strike me again regardless. Or for Blake to do it. Since I was just over two thirds of my hit points left, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having Blake do it.

“I have a special ability,” I told the Wizard. “It requires me to breathe on the wound, and you will regain some hit points. If there is poison, it will reduce the effect.”

“Nnn…” the Wizard said.

“No poison?”

“Shut. Up. Enough talk.” Boss was done playing around. Gods, how was it that people lived like this, with a constant waterfall of shit raining on their face, obscuring their view of a decent and fulfilling life?

The Wizard shook his head slightly, just the tiniest negative. It made sense that a Geodile wouldn’t have any poison, seeing as how it was made of rock and gems. Then again, magic.

I bent and breathed out onto the Wizard’s ragged leg. The Affinity check for Healer’s Breath hadn’t failed me yet, and I was pleased with that. I had no wish to spend Affinity Tokens, just like I had no wish to spend Likability Tokens. In all honesty, I had no will to spend Tokens of any kind on this… whatever this way. Press-ganging.

The wounds began closing up immediately, though I didn’t get through all of them. The Wizard relaxed and let out a shaky sigh.

“I’ll see if I can’t rustle up some ingredients to make you a salve,” I told him. “Just get some rest and don’t put weight on it.”

The Wizard reached out a hand and clutched my knee. “Thank you.”

“I got you, fam,” I told him stoically, and he wheezed out a rasping chuckle.

That did it. I found myself dragged out of the tent and then kicked in the ribs.

“You. Don’t. Listen. Do you?” Boss snarled. I watched my own HP drop to about half, and I faithfully applied my temporary Durability Token to Healer’s Resistance to boost my physical damage resistance even further.

I would’ve said nice, but it felt like I bruised a rib.

After this, I was told to apply the healing to three more Wizards. One looked to have been stung a good twenty times by things that left large welts. Healer’s Breath. Then antagonizing.

“You and Blake are pretty fracking terrible at your jobs, aren’t you?” I chuckled, even though this hurt like the dickens. “Jeez, how many Guardians does it take to change a lightbulb? Or keep a guy from getting chewed up by—”

This earned me a Taunt check, which was again boosted by Fierce II, and again gave me Durability and Physicality Tokens. My Taunt skill was suddenly 7, and my Likability was 5, I somehow scored 5 successes. Even though he tried using his Durability to counter it.

He failed. I could hear him breathing now, and in my periphery could see him clenching and unclenching his fists over and over.

“This is probably going to contain some kind of poison. I’ll need the creature itself, or the poison, to begin synthesis on an antidote.”

“He’ll get over it,” Boss growled.

“One of us sure is a hulking brutish Guardian who knows frack-all about how healing goes, isn’t he?” I said, this time unable to help myself. But I sure did score another Taunt success, another punch to the kidneys this time, and another Physicality and Durability Token. So I put the Durability Token into Healer’s Resistance for the fourth time in under an hour, got more physical damage resistance, gritted my teeth against the abuse, and started using Physicality Tokens.

I had to spend 2 of them to get back up on my feet. I stared him down, hoping for an Intimidation check, but he definitely had that skill. In either event, for some reason the system didn’t want to give me one. Maybe it was the visual appearance of the two Physicality Tokens going ‘cla-cling!’ into existence one after another and disappearing into my body. The red-orange magic suffused my battered self and let me get up, but I was smiling.

Boss was like an evil version of Ivy: ropy muscle, shaved head, tattoos. He wore more armor than she did. He wasn’t a hulking colossus like Blake, but looked like he had a lot of speed, plus a whole lot more power than it first appeared. I really was messing with this guy at my own risk.

“The human body wasn’t meant to exist in this magic-saturated world. It also wasn’t designed to ‘just get over’ the poisons and diseases of this world. That’s why there aren’t many Healers.”

Maybe his single Ingenuity point scored a success by now, because he grudgingly harrumphed and didn’t bother arguing my point.

“Look, my only job is to heal people. If you send Drat to gather up stuff from my lab and bring it back—“

“Nope. No. Not a chance. You ordered him to report to your team,” he said.

“I did that as an xp penalty,” I admitted. “I don’t know why he’s here and I don’t really care, but it’s a punishment. As you can see,” I gesture off toward the cook fire, where Drat was sitting in a ring with Blake, Timmy, and the other Guardians, “he’s presently ignoring my orders just fine.”

Boss appeared to think this over, before nodding towards another tent. “Next patient is over this way.”

This is Christopher limping for the first time in months.

***

You know, I would’ve thought that, given the disposition of Boss, Blake, and Blake’s people, that it would’ve been easier to get the snot kicked out of me over and over again. That’s not the case, however. After that first day, I resolved not to push anyone else’s buttons, and just get down to business healing up these poor Wizards. The next few weren’t in nearly as bad shape as the first two, but there was evidence of old injuries that were in the process of healing, either badly or just fine. The rest of the day was spent using Healer’s Breath over and over again, in lieu of having a single plant, herb, hunk of beeswax, or vial of oil.

And the special ability did me a world of good, I’m pleased to say. I only failed the initial check once, got the free retry from Hard at Work, and passed on the next attempt without having to spend Tokens. 3-18 hit points healed was enough to cause many of these minor injuries to heal completely. The bite wound to the thigh of the first guy needed a second breath the next day. Then, aside from the bee venom victim—big assumption here on my part—I wouldn’t have to concoct any special salves, potions, and elixirs.

The remainder of the Wizards didn’t try to communicate with me other than intense eye contact. I knew what that meant: do something about the Blake situation. Yeah buddy, I would if I could…

One of them had a burn healing up pretty nicely, though he would end up with a scar over a good chunk of his shoulder and neck. One of the things Diagnosis (Physical) told me was that if he’d gotten a burn all the way around an affected limb—or the neck—it could mean amputation. All the way around the neck I didn’t even know.

The burn reminded me of the Scorchomp, that big ass lava dragon thing, and flameingoes, along with their Kindlets. It also reminded me of Larelle casually handing me her Magmamander, not thinking I was going to burn half to death.

I healed them, slept badly that night out under the stars, and once that happened, The Boys (and the gigantic Guardian female) left me alone. I mean they still prevented me from leaving, and had somebody watching me at all times, but I was allowed to walk around the camp, sit where I wanted, and look at what I pleased.

Whether Boss felt he’d gotten his point across, they’d gotten bored of it, or Blake had ordered his people not to attack me any longer, the beatings did not commence again. I was disappointed to find I couldn’t needle these people into hitting me again, even though I wasn’t ready to lose more HP.

My plan had been absurdly simple: heal up over the course of several days, get The Boys Plus One to kick the crap out of me, collect the physical damage resistance in permanent form using the Durability Tokens received by taunting them into violence. After some few days of doing this, I’d be all but immune to physical damage, and able to get away. I’d use the Glamor ability I’d gotten from Vellenia to hypnotize my guard and slip out, back to the town.

Never mind that I didn’t know the direction the town was in, since they’d put a hood over my head. I’d… figure things out. Use Beast Talker hopefully and get some information out of the nearby Nakamamon.

Now, the Cinzy situation had taken a completely different turn than I expected, but didn’t move forward at all that night. I’d barely seen her at all that day. Instead, it was heal, heal and heal some more, then get tied to a tree to sleep out one of the worst nights of my life.

Now, I ended up staying at camp the next day, still tied to the tree. Fierce gave me the ability to talk my way out of my bonds, but I couldn’t use Persuasion to get them to let me go. Their fear of the monster Blake had become was worse than the well-reasoned arguments I was putting together. Untie me? Difficult. Let me go back to my camp? Nigh Impossible.

Blake and several of the Guardians left that morning with two of the Wizards and stomped off for several straight hours, only to bring back a Wizard in far worse shape than he had been.

They’d left with two Wizards.

I had used the time to gain a Token back through Meditation, which leveled up to 3, but sadly it was only an Affinity Token and not one of my Durability Tokens, which I needed. Since time didn’t mean much when I was meditating, I could only say it was just after breakfast when I went in, and sometime after lunch when I came out again. I was ravenous, since no one had offered any food.

The Wizard’s robes were soaked and torn, and dripping blood. He was draped over the woman Guardian’s shoulder, and she placed him down on the ground before me.

“He’s untied?” Boss screamed. “Which of you idiots untied him?”

“He couldn’t have gotten anywhere,” one of the other Boys said. “We would’ve gotten experience anyway, I think.”

Several of the others nodded, which added a piece to the puzzle of what was going on here, though I didn’t quite understand it. Why would they gain experience for capturing me? And why was that important.

Boss surged forward and grabbed the Guardian who’d talked back by the shirt, easily lifting him into the air and sneering at him.

“It’s fine,” Blake said. “He might be right anyway.”

And I noted, right before Blake turned my way, that Cinzy was behind him, behind all of them, giving the whole scene a sour look. She clearly wasn’t getting whatever she wanted out of Blake’s team.

“Heal him,” Blake ordered.

“What did you do to him?” I asked.

A brief flash of absolute fury came over his face. The expression vanished quickly, but I could tell he had been on the verge of blasting me a good one. And honestly, if a bop upside my head could do about ten percent of my health, I shudder to think about what a full on punch could do.

“Just make sure he doesn’t die. He’s lost some blood.”

After using Healer’s Breath on him, and performing Diagnosis (Physical) using just my hands, I could tell he was still at a fraction of his total health.

Not a large fraction, like 15/16 either, like under a tenth.

“He needs more than just this one ability,” I told Boss.

“Shut up.”

“He might have internal injuries I can’t suss out without tools, and that means he might die tonight.”

“Just dose him again,” Blake called over his shoulder.

“It’s one a day,” I said. I was already feeling tired of this, and it hadn’t been two days. “Now, here’s what I suggest—”

Boss was in my face a second later, close enough for me to smell the onions and garlic on his breath. “I don’t need any suggestions from you, squishy. If you want to keep the gag off, you shut your mouth.”

“You mean to say, my only options are to not talk, or have a gag in my mouth that prevents me from speaking?”

“That’s right,” he said, completely missing my point.

I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t make the rules of my class. You can ask Timmy about the lab back in the castle. I need stuff to heal people. A lot of stuff.”

I noted a conference later, between Boss and Timmy, while Cinzy continued to regard the whole situation with a look like she was thirsty and had just tried to drink water, but found it was low quality tequila instead.

Today I tried Drat, and activated my Psyspeech. Since it was a new day, it was easy enough to pass the first check. You need to listen to me really well, Drat, I told him, and watched his head snap up. You are going to free me, tonight, and help me sneak out of here. We’re going back to the camp at Glumpdumpkin, and that is a fucking order.

His head swiveled towards me and his eyes locked onto me. I nodded, and watched all the calculations begin to run through his mind. Even though he might have some inkling of the sex shenanigans I got up to, there was no way he could know that I had sextra powers from doing it. I’d kept that a close secret. Not even Cinzy knew about these, because I hadn’t ‘brought her into the fold’ using Tokens. And I definitely wasn’t regretting that choice right now.

This is Christopher blowing someone’s mind.