Elven Roses

"I'll … be okay," Aldrec said, looking up towards his wife. His own formerly handsome face was bruised mildly beneath his left eye, and the bolt caster wound looked severe. "Skori's … in a far worse way than I am."

"We can get him fixed up, once we get to where we're going," Tescadji said, removing a diagnostic pad from his back pocket. He winked at Sedriil, who had shown considerable surprise that he would just happen be carrying such a device.

After a moment of flipping through several scanning sequences, he put it away, breathing out a long sigh. "He'll be okay," he said. "Fortunately, they missed anything vital. But we'll have to carry him along with us."

Krako, meanwhile, had knelt down beside Aldrec's wounded arm, and was feeling around the wounds. Aldrec tensed and groaned in response.

"What are you doing?" Mericlou said, trying to keep herself calm at the way the dragon was manhandling the wound. Though she discovered that it was less severe than she had at first thought, having been mostly cauterized from the blast, it still caused him great pain.

"It's all right, Tulyr," Aldrec grunted, and then cried out briefly as the dragon turned his arm in a particularly painful direction. "Krako … knows what he's doing."

And then, as if satisfied over something that Mericlou could not see, Krako set his arm down, and leaned over it. And then, he bit down hard onto his own arm. Mericlou and her family, who had recently joined her side, shrank back in shock and borderline disgust, as Krako's bood ran down his hand, and then fell to Aldrec's arm, onto the wound.

Aldrec let out a brief, piercing cry as the hot dragon blood singed the carpet, sending billows of smoke from both it and the elf's arm. Aldrec strained against what seemed to be excruciating pain, the muscles on his face and body tightening severely as the blood that poured from Krako's punctured hand seemed to burn upon his arm.

And then, he went limp, releasing a long exhale. His face seemed to become placid, and the look in his eyes grew vacant.

"Is he … dead?" Sedriil said forebodingly.

"No …" Mericlou quavered, casting a fearful gaze towards the dragon. "He's not dead, is he? He can't be …"

He is not dead, pretty one, Krako assured her after he took hold of her arm with his uninjured hand. And though his reptilian eyes gazed fiercely into her own, there still remained upon his face, a smile as childish as any she had seen from him. His body is surrendering to the magic in my blood. I am healing him. Be patient.