Chapter Twelve - The Severed Anchor

The Medica building was really just a small apothecary building set in the heart of Acadia Village. In the front of the building was the ‘shop’, where witches and wizards from all walks of life could purchase potions and herbs of all sorts. In the back was an area where Healers cared for those who were injured in a more confidential setting. Dark wood counters lined the walls of the front store, the shelves cluttered with jars of untamed roots, drying sage, and scattered parchment.

Nate Caeden stood behind the main counter wearing the purple Healer robe, feeling slightly out of place as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. The Medica staff had already been struggling to keep up with the injuries and magical anomalies occurring with more and more frequency in the village, and they had asked all wardens with healing abilities to step in and take shifts when they were able. So instead of doing his usual patrols between the covens, which he would have preferred in all honesty, he sat behind the wooden table acting as the reception area to both the shop and the clinic behind.

When the heavy oak doors opened wide with a sort of dramatic flair, Nate looked up to see a rogue witch named Lorelei Laurent walking inside followed by Milo, an eager scribe working for The Chronicle, the local newspaper, scribbling down notes in a leatherbound book.

“Tell me Camilla is in, Nate,” Lorelei leaned gracefully against the counter. “I have a rather pesky little souvenir from a local skirmish that I desperately need dealt with.”

Nate glanced warily at the scribe who was hovering over Lorelei’s shoulder, the quill scratching loudly against the paper as he recorded her every word. “Camilla isn’t here, but I can take a look at it for you if you like? But the kid stays out here,” he pointed at Milo. “Conclave privacy laws. If I see that quill twitch while we’re in the back, I will snap it in half.”

Loreliei rolled her eyes playfully, waving a dismissive hand back at Milo. “Oh relax, Warden. He is not clearing the actual extraction anyway… He’s just become my trusty shadow lately.” She looked at the young scribe and said, “Stay here, little scribe. I will return momentarily,” she promised, and then turned back to Nate. “You can actually fix it, right?”

“You haven’t exactly told me what ‘it’ is…” Nate eyed her as he led the way to the back clinic. “Was this skirmish of the canine nature or…?”

Lorelei sighed heavily as he closed the door when they were inside, bolting the lock shut. “It was a vampire, Nate.”

He wished he was more surprised than he felt. “Then it depends on how deep the venom went.” He walked over to the metal tray, selecting a set of leather-wrapped ritual tools and a silver athame. Lorelei sighed, and carefully slid her outer tunic and jeans down just far enough to expose her upper right hip before laying face down on the examination table.

Nate stepped up to the table, adjusting a hanging copper candle-fixture to illuminate the skin. Instead of a clean scar, the wound was a jagged, deep puncture mark - the unmistakable residual trauma of a supernatural bite. The edges were bruised, neurotic purple, pulsing faintly with a cold, unnatural gray light. Nate gently pressed his fingers against the margins of the wound. Lorelei didn’t even flinch.

“Bloody hell, woman… How the…”

“One of Hadrian’s inner circle got sloppy during a border dispute a few weeks back,” Lorelei turned her head to the side so she could talk to him while lying face-down. “I can’t feel anything around it. It’s just… cold. Like part of me belongs to the nest now.”

“That's because the necrotic venom severed the spiritual anchor to the tissue. If we leave it, the rot will keep spreading inward. A simple surface dispel or mortal medicine won't touch this.”

Lorelei sighed heavily. “So, what's the verdict, doctor? Am I going to start craving blood, or can you fix it?”

“I can fix it, but it's going to hurt. I have to use my kinetic arcana to physically bind and draw the residual venom out of the tissue before I can cleanly excise the corrupted flesh and suture it back together.”

A knock on the door interrupted them and Nate looked at Lorelei apologetically. “One moment,” he said, and opened the door a small crack so that whoever was on the other side of it couldn’t see anything incriminating. Camilla stood there, in her Healer robe, looking irritated.

“Camilla. I didn’t expect to see you already. I thought you were at the Conclave meeting,” Nate told her.

“Is that Camilla? She can come in!” Lorelei said eagerly from the table she lay on.

Nate opened the door wider for Camilla to enter and her eyes zeroed in on Lorelei’s hip. She looked at the bruised, pulsing purple puncture marks and the cold, gray light radiating from the tissue. “Good thing I came back. Nate, your kinetic extraction is precise, but Hadrian's inner circle uses a coagulating shadow-venom. If you slice into that blindly, the curse will liquefy and flood her bloodstream before you can suture the margins.”

Lorelei looked up, concerned. “That sounds… bad.”

“Not if we anchor it first, dear. Lie still,” Camilla suggested softly, putting a steady, comforting hand on Lorelei’s shoulder. She looked across at Nate, her demeanor turning into an instructor guiding an advanced student, since that was technically what Nate still was. “We need a dual-cast approach. I will use a stasis charm to isolate the necrotic core and freeze the venom in place. The moment the gray light turns to frost, that is your window. You'll have exactly ninety seconds to use your kinetic arcana to lift the dead tissue and make the elliptical cut. Can you do it?”

Nate looked down from Camilla’s steady gaze to the pulsing wound. He adjusted his grip on the silver athame, his jaw tightening as his kinetic sparks flared brightly around the handle. “Ninety seconds is plenty. Freeze it.”

Camilla nodded, raising her hands to weave a deep, icy blue stasis charm over the wound that instantly froze the pulsing shadow-venom into a brittle, frosted white. Working against the tight ninety-second window, Nate channeled his kinetic arcana into the silver athame, slicing a precise elliptical line around the puncture marks and lifting the corrupted tissue cleanly away from the healthy flesh. After dropping the necrotic mass onto the tray, his fingers flew with practiced efficiency to secure the margins with tight, enchanted sutures just as the frost melted away and natural, warm blood safely returned to the area.

Lorelei let out a long, ragged exhale of relief as Nate wiped his blade, confirming the dark anchor was officially severed and her hip was finally her own again… though the sudden, muffled thud of Milo's ear slipping against the corridor door quickly reminded them that keeping the procedure a Conclave secret was going to require snapping a few more quills.