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Athal is free of burrowing terrors; I felt reasonably safe.

And, even though I knew that I’d improved my scales and armor since then (which someone had taken me out of), to my emotions, my instincts, being on my BACK, with my vulnerable belly upward? It was worse than the fact that someone had stripped me naked except for a linen hospital gown.

I felt awful. Cold, yet still sweating.

[Infection: Sheep Flu], my System informed me. And it resisted the normal treatment of expending my Disease mana to fight the disease and then tapping the infection site for Disease mana.

I did, however, have enough energy to get up, stumble to the center of my tent, and take a ladle of water.

[You have been exposed to Consumption, and have an 18% chance of becoming infected.]

I shook my head, returned to my bunk. I could, normally, have used my Lifeshaper powers at that range.

.....

Normally.

[You have -1/80 Health. You have 12/40 Sanity. You have 26/30 Serenity.]

Ugh. At least all of my parts were attached.

I spent the time passing out and waking back up, at least waking up on my front. Just in my medical tent of eight cots, there were samples of Consumption, Sheep Flu, Foot Rot, Blacktop (also a fungal infection), Tapeworm, and Ringworm and not a single one of us was in condition to just ignore any of those.

It wasn’t really the medic’s fault, unless it was. I found it more likely that they were just as overworked as the rest of us. Heck, maybe they were wandering around in emotional turmoil or insane; it certainly wouldn’t be the first wartime hospital where that had happened.

It was worse; our nurse, when she arrived, had Sheep Flu. I saw her sneeze into the broth we were being served. I mean, nutrients and biomass, I couldn’t turn it down.

“Miss nurse?” I asked, “Are you sick?”

She nodded. “We are all of us sick. Fools that we were, to trust that the admiral was on the right side of this. Heaven wouldn’t strike us down like this without reason.”

“Truly? I find it more likely that lack of proper food is to blame.”

“No. If it were just one disease, it might be so. But something like this? No, only divine judgement or filth bring this many diseases to one area.”

“Are the diseases new? Since that panic a few days back? When we got word about the fall of the Dusk Gate?”

“Ay-ya. You think it is because we panicked, tried to get our patients to safety before the healthy soldiers?”

“No, I think someone used the chaos to deliberately sabotage your food and water stores.”

She grabbed my shoulders, helped me to sit upon my bed. “Young sir needs to sit down. Clearly, you are also feverish, and it is affecting your thought process.”

I tried telling her that I wasn’t THAT feverish, but she had no problems overpowering me and pushing me prone onto my mattress.

I meant to just close my eyes long enough to gather my thoughts, but I awake to the sounds of multiple explosions. I lost two points each of sanity and serenity on realizing these noises were real. I rushed to the front of the tent, only then realizing I had neither armor nor weapons.

Well, scales and claws, but no METAL weapons.

BOOM!

The sky lit up, yellow and orange.

Another explosion, and a streak of blue was crossing the sky below it.

The fever, I thought at first. There were two explosions, hurling green sparks in all directions.

“Move aside.” Said one of my tent-mates, shoving me into the mud and other things that were between the tents and in the roads. “I want to see the fireworks, too.”

“Fireworks?”

“Fireworks. We may be doomed to the hell where your skin festers and peels off of you, but we’ve survived to Hearth Week.”

“Hearth?” I blinked, standing there in my bare feet.

“Hearth Week.”

“Not Harvest Week?”

“Nope. Next season.”

My head throbbed with every single colored explosion overhead, but it must have been at least an hour before I could pull myself away from the sight. From the other side of the wall, there were also sounds and explosions, indicating similar activities in their camp.

Actually, I didn’t pull myself away. I needed to use the water closet, after which I brushed both my bottom and my feet. (In that order. Nasty as the bottom gets, the feet get exposed to more nasty stuff.)

The activity and the cleanup left me feeling spent. I had enough energy left to get back to my bunk, confirm by scent it was mine, and then collapse unconscious into it.

The next day, I didn’t even have the energy to leave my bed. Zero health, so better than the day before, but my System didn’t start trying to eat the organisms that caused Sheep Flu until the afternoon. At least my fever broke.

I absorbed Death Mana from the bunks of two who had been removed while I slept. Using my Lifeshaper senses, I targeted and slew the Tapeworm. It wasn’t a noble fight, that poor thing was down to under half health, ravaged by the same diseases that were sickening its host.

I wanted to stay; the ringworms would have been my next targets.

But even that one day’s healing took me up to twelve health points. Since I was no longer deemed critical, they moved me to a lower priority tent. The water was tepid and stagnant, but safe.

One of my tentmates had something called Goat Hoof Fungus growing in his armpits, but a quick treatment took care of both of them.

And then I heard something I just had to get from an official source.

“Ugh! Little Monitor, you stink!” the sergeant of the ground floor told me. “Go bathe somewhere, and only then come back.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere!” he insisted. “Somewhere that is not here!”

To be fair, I wasn’t starving. I just wasn’t getting enough nutrition to work at peak form. The additional penalty to all tasks applied to social tests as well, it seemed. Any residual chance I had was negated by the fact that I did, indeed, smell.

I eventually (I think it was the third ask, but memory may be playing me false on this) was able to get permission to use someone’s second-hand wash water, which cleaned me up enough to get assigned back to a medical tent for the night.

Fortune smiled on me; the next day I met Tang Ning and Meng Wa, who had reservations for an entire squad at the bath-house. (And the entire squad plus four new soldiers I didn’t recognize.) “Sure.” Tang Ning said, “You need the bath. Besides, I’m told you saved my life.”

“Tang Ning?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“We may be sharing a bath soon, but isn’t your face a bit close to mine?”

“Show me the scar.” She said.

“Which one?” I asked, trying to sound incredulous.

She bent my head upward, looking straight into my right nostril. “Ah-ah, I had heard, but did not believe. Is it true the same arrow that struck me that night is the one that did this?”

“It does sound highly unlikely.”

“I don’t care how likely it sounds. Tell me the truth, was it the same arrow?”

“It was.” I admitted

“Did you salvage it? Do you still have it? I’d like to honor the arrow that could have killed me, but didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.” I said. “That arrow was broken at the Rice Gate by Xinyi Shi.”

“That asshole again.” Meng Wa sighed. “No offense, but a quicker headman’s axe would have saved us a lot of wasted time and effort.”

“None taken.” I said.

“Oh, come on.” Tang Ning said. “You must have taken a little bit of offense.”

“Nope. Xinyi Shi is perhaps the third, fourth... he’s definitely up there in power, on the list of powerful mortal people I could count on the fingers of both my hands.”

She chuckled. “Meng Wa! Sergeant! Take a look at this. He’s got just the tip of a baby finger growing out of this stump on his left hand.”

“I’ll thank you to stop playing with that.”

“Oh, is it fragile?”

“Worse. It’s ticklish.”

“Oh, ticklish, icklish?”

“Ahhhh! No, please stop, I beg of you! Just let go!”

But it had been too long, and the merciless Meng Wa decided that everyone taking a turn tickling my fresh new finger was going to be a bonding exercise of some kind.

As tortures go, it was actually rather mild. Certainly nothing when compared to the torture that had taken that finger down to its current size.

And, by the gods, the feeling of clean when we were done? I’d have PAID for that feeling.

“So, with Xinyi Shi down,” Tang Ning asked, “Is there any chance you’re returning to the wall?”

“We could use you there.” Nui Ping said. (One of the new soldiers.)

“I’ve also heard rumors.” I said, “But I won’t know until I can get well enough for duty again.”

.....