Faerieland: Part 24

Samita rifled through her pouch, moving things with both hands, and finally coming up with an ACE bandage roll. She turned toward Haley and Haley stared at the roll.

“Are you going to have to set the bone, or will the bandage set it magically?”

Unrolling the bandage, Samita said, “The bandage will do it.”

Haley’s eyes darted down toward where the bone stuck out. “Good. I hope that means it won’t hurt.”

Samita began to wrap the bandage around the wound. “It shouldn’t hurt, but I can’t promise that it won’t feel a little strange.”

Haley blinked as Samita wrapped the second layer of bandage around her arm. She took a deep breath and said. “You weren’t kidding. I felt it go back in.”

“You’re feeling okay now?” I asked. Samita touched the outside end of the bandage, and it stayed in place, despite having no visible reason to do so.

Haley moved her arm. “I can’t tell any difference from normal.”

I looked at the bandage again, and then turned toward Samita. “I thought you said it couldn’t heal anything. Didn’t it keep the damage basically the same?”

Samita shrugged. “If it’s possible to put people back together, it will move pieces back into position. It’s not really healing though. That still takes time.”

“Great,” I looked around the room. “I guess we’ve got to figure out what we do next.”

“Seems pretty obvious,” Sean said. “We find Earthmover and Adam, and we take Adam down and break the spell on Earthmover. Problem solved.”

I looked over at him. He’d put down Cindy even though the ball bearings were still out and in a pile on the floor. “Both you and Haley are hurt. What do you do if the bandages come off?”

“Don’t know.” Sean put his hands in his pockets. “I guess we put them back on again.”

Samita looked up from putting the ACE bandage roll back in the pouch. “That’s not how it works. If it comes off, I have to put it on again, but with a new bandage. I’ve only got enough to replace it once for each of you. After that, I can’t do anything if anyone else gets hurt.”

Sean pointed at Amy. “Didn’t she say she could heal too?”

“I did.” Amy eyed him while giving her spear a twirl in one hand. “I also said that you’d like Samita’s better. Her option leaves you feeling like yourself. My magic keeps you together while the spell feeds off your blood. It works great for me because I steal other people’s energy while I fight, but you’ll feel more drained the longer you go on unless I give you an energy transfusion. And I’m sure that at least one person around here wouldn’t like that.”

Samita faced Amy. “I wouldn’t.”

Amy grinned. “See? She’s standing up on your behalf to save you from addiction to evil magic.”

Vaughn cocked his head to look over at her. “It’s addictive?”

Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it on anybody else, but some of the earlier Bloodmaidens acted like they were addicted to battle. Draining people is a rush, and passing it on can’t be much different.”

All in all, it sounded like a good argument for keeping Haley and Sean out of fights.

Haley wasn’t going to like that much.

Cindy broke in. “Paula’s going to be okay, right? It doesn’t look like she’s healing.”

She stood next to where Calvin slept on the floor, seemingly unsure of where to put her hands. At first she’d put them in the pockets of her uniform. Then she crossed her arms over her chest, but as she asked her question, she dropped them, eventually holding them together in front of herself.

Amy’s lips twitched. “Sorry. She’ll be healing a little slower than usual until she gets better. It’ll probably be later today. I haven’t seen very many people who can heal like you all can.”

Cindy nodded, and her eyes settled on Haley. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I only know that I was angry and needed to get away from all of those metal things. I think that Hunter must have been lying. Those things he had us put on our necks. They could control us.”

“See,” Sean said. “That’s what we’ve got to do. We take out Earthmover, Adam and Hunter.”

Samita held her finger to her lips, and said, “Shhh.”

Then she walked up to Cindy and put a hand on her shoulder. “How did it happen that someone sent you down here?”

Cindy nodded. A tear ran down her cheek, and I wondered if she might be about to cry.

I hoped not.

“Was it Earthmover?” I asked.

“I don’t know about Earthmover,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since he left the cafeteria after dinner, but Earthmover told everyone to listen to Adam and Hunter over the intercom. Adam called us to his room and told us we needed to come down here. He said that things that looked like you and Haley were trying to get into the compound. He said that Hunter had come up with a way for us to communicate, and we should put those things on our necks.”

I nodded. “Did you see any fairies?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What fairies?”

14 thoughts on “Faerieland: Part 24”

  1. Hey everybody, take a listen to the most recent Pen and Cape Society podcast. For me personally, this one would be worth doing even if I never got to do another episode. I got to interview Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, the creators of Villains and Vigilantes, one of the earliest superhero roleplaying games.

    It’s the system where the first version of Nick came into being among other things. Anyway, here’s the link:

    http://penandcapesociety.com/podcast/episode-5-rpgs-villains-vigilantes-jeff-dee-jack-herman-red-shirt-army/

    Also, if you want to promote Legion of Nothing at Top Web Fiction, I’d be grateful.
    http://topwebfiction.com/vote.php?for=the-legion-of-nothing

  2. Cool chapter. Can’t wait to see what they do next.

    umm… spelling mistake
    “Haley wasn’t going to liek that much”
    liek -> like

  3. A couple things Jim.

    **

    These two sentences are awfully repetitive, and lack a closing quote.

    “I thought you said it couldn’t heal anything. I thought it was more about preservation.

    **

    some of the earlier Bloodmaidens acted like they were addicted to battle. Draining people isn’t a rush, and passing it on can’t be much different.

    I believe you meant that draining people IS a rush?

    **

    Haley wasn’t going to liek that much.

    Kick your spellchecker.

    **

    A good chapter, solid recovery scene.

  4. This is beginning to look like a serious conspiracy… And, we don’t know who’s manipulating who…

    Excellent! [grin]

    Typo(s):

    “Haley wasn’t going to liek that much.” – should be ‘like’.

    “Then she pulled them out and crossed her chest” – this doesn’t sound right, but I’m unsure if that’s me; missing word ‘them’?

  5. Not sure if you meant this but:

    I nodded. “Did you see any fairies?”
    She raised an eyebrow. “What faeries?”

    has two different spellings of faeries.

  6. In the line:
    I looked at the bandage again, and then turned toward Samita. “I thought you said it couldn’t heal anything. Didn’t it kept the damage basically the same?”

    Did you mean “keep” instead of “kept?”

    Thanks for posting these. I do enjoy them.

  7. I’m a little surprised no one turned that question back on Nick. In the vein of “What do you mean ‘what do we do next?’ Is Dr. Nation coming to save us or what?” Though I suppose Sean could have spoken before anyone got the chance. By extrapolation, I guess Nick doesn’t think he can restore an external connection any other way?

    Then again, what about an internal connection? Honestly, I think maybe their next step should be to see if anyone else in the Heroes League is nearby – Nick was able to locate Haley earlier simply with her phone, and having more people seems like it would be a good plan (Nick has been bemoaning the lack of Daniel). Heck, for all they know, Rod and Jaclyn (dressed like a fairy!) have infiltrated Adam’s inner circle and have crucial information! Or perhaps it merely amuses me to picture someone dressed like a fairy.

    Random confusion: “How did it happen that someone sent you down here?” was answered with a nod, but that’s not exactly a yes-no question. “Did someone send you down here” would be a yes-no question. Granted, Cindy’s distraught.

    As far as the podcast goes, I had a listen — the role-play side of things is interesting, particularly since half the characters in my “Epsilon Project” side serial were characters made for old campaigns that I wanted to revive. I would say I was writing before I did role-play though.I don’t know V&V though (well, now I know more), probably the closest I got was characters for “Gamma World”, which is more mutations than superheroes.

    Keep on keeping on!

    1. Mathtans: people will get to the “who’s coming to help?” question soon. As for Cindy’s response–yes. I was thinking that she wasn’t all there.

      Also, Gamma World? It’s been a long time since I thought about that game. I found it weird but amusing. Of course that was back when everyone assumed a nuclear apocalypse was coming eventually.

  8. Interesting you talking about V&V… Some called it a ‘psychologically dangerous game’, because it encouraged people to play super hero versions of themselves, which it can be argued blurs the distinction between the character and the player. Others just created any character they wanted, and wrote backgrounds for them.

    I’ve played a lot of ‘Champions!’, which spawned the ‘Hero System’ rules, which we’ve used for everything from fantasy to space opera. For really early supers games look at 1977’s:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhero:_2044
    which had such a crude set of rules that you created the super powers by using the game mechanics from the super gadgets! I’d suggest ignoring the rules for playing super hero characters under D&D (1st Edition). [grin]

    Please keep up your excellent writing!

    1. Dreamer: my bet is that anyone complaining about V&V would be complaining about any RPG. There was a period in which people were highly suspicious of any RPG’s, connecting them to demons, suicides or anything that seemed scary. V&V came out around that period. So it’s not a surprise.

      I played Champions too. I liked it a lot, and hope to get someone connected to it on the podcast.

      I never played Superworld, but I think a friend had a copy.

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