Location: The Goblet, a newly purchased home
Nihka approached the house, one hand resting on her satchel as tiny jars full of alchemic medicines clanked together.  The cub, Sehki, toddled along behind her and looked at all the houses and fresh planted flowers with the wonder that only a two-year-old can muster. X’orri stood guard near the door, and balked at the sight of the child.
Nihka thought for a moment, and realized that it wouldn’t be X’orri any longer, but simply Orri. They had left the falling stars, and were their own tribe now: a tribe of cliptails, a tribe of ex slaves, the disgraced and abused. The whole concept made Nihka feel sick; she had to push down the revulsion and smile instead. It was over, they were safe: Arblis had even gotten them a home of their own in the Goblet... Somehow...
Though Orri seemed hesitant around Sehki, the cub was anything but. She was  more than willing to show giddy kindness to Orri, waving and singing a greeting with her little tail wriggling excitedly. Nihka explained that Sehki was her daughter, and she wanted everyone in the fledgling tribe to meet her family. She wanted them to trust her, and so she chose to show that she trusted them.
The idea was alien to Orri.
Inside the house the cliptails were everywhere. Some were lounging about resting, others tending to the tasks that came with a new home, and a few were talking to a representative from the weaver’s guild. Calling in every favor she had and then some, Nihka had arranged for each crafting guild to send at least one representative, scouting for possible talent and offering hope for apprenticeship to members of the refugee tribe. It was Nihka’s hope that this be a chance at a new life for the broken miqo’te, that this be the first step towards mending the emotional scars every cliptail bore...
She needed something new to call them, cliptail was wrong. It needed to be something proud and strong, that wouldn’t carry too many ties to the pain and suffering they endured. In her mind she resolved to think of them not as cliptails, but as the Bright Ones.If she could show these broken people kindness, that the world wasn’t the broken place they had been living... then maybe they would shine brightly again, maybe they would become strong and kind. She wanted to kindle their hearts, ease the dying embers back into a roaring blaze.
Before the heart could even begin to heal, though, before they could be as bright as Nihka knew some day they would shine, they needed a warm, safe place to live and the physical health that had been denied to them by their own people.
Nihka went amongst them, offering kind words and medicine. They healed fast, and so all but the most seriously injured were largely healthy now. The only lasting damage were the bones; too many of them had had bones broken and forced to heal wrong to keep them from rising up. Some had lived with these injuries so long it was nigh impossible to fix. Nihka had to beg them to let her break their bones again. She had to watch their eyes fill with pain and fear.
The hardest part...
The hardest part was accepting when one of them rejected her offer, but Nihka knew that just being able to say no was more important than anything else, and so she never pushed. She only asked that if they changed their mind to not hesitate to tell her, knowing that many of them never would.
When she finished treating those she could, Nihka returned to Orri and made the same offer to her. Orri was the proudest of them all, having only recently been clipped and only recently been maimed. Of all of them, she had the greatest chance to recover fully. Nihka expected Orri to question her motives, but found that convincing Orri to undergo such a painful and risky surgery was easier than expected.
Many of the Bright Ones had come to terms with their crippled states, but Orri still had the raw desperation to feel whole again, to walk and run and feel the pride of being a huntress. It was a desperation that Nihka was intimately familiar with.
Nihka took Orri to a plain, comfortable bed and asked her to relax and lay down. Orri complied, and rested with her broken leg exposed so Nihka could work. Fixing broken bones like this, though, tested Nihka’s healing skills to the limit, and Orri’s was particularly bad. She would have to pull out all the stops, mix her medicine and magical skills with the alchemical genius that many of her friends had come to know her for.
She started with a plain-looking white lacquered board, gently placed beneath Orri’s leg. In just the right light, the board seemed to glitter and shine. In truth, she had created it by dissolving unaspected crystals in the viscous secretions of Shroud slugs and formic acid. Adding chalk neutralized the acid and gave substance for the crystalline structures to cling to, keeping them evenly distributed through the solution and giving it that white color.
Once she had dried the substance on the board, it created a blank, neutral aetheric matrix. In theory...
Orri watched curiously as Nihka painted on the board from a jar of thick black ink. Made with gold dust and spoken blood, it was a common recipe used in the creation of arcanist tomes for its aetheric conductivity. She painted out the complex geometries of arcanima, and at each major vertex placed a single goobbue fang. Alchemy was often used to create medicines and poisons, but many people overlooked why the concoctions worked. A string of goobbue teeth held the residual energies of the creature, lending their innate toughness. It’s why they were used in vitality potions. The toughness of these creatures would now be used to enhance the power of her healing.
With a touch and just a hint of her own aether, Nihka ignited the spell. Magic cycled through the geometries, pulled by the gold dust and guided by Nihka’s will. The black ink began to glow faintly, and fear touched Orri’s eyes. Nihka gave her a reassuring smile, and began to explain each step before she took it. It made the process take three times as long, with how Nihka spoke and stuttered, but she didn’t want to scare the patient; the process slowly became a lesson on anatomy, alchemy, and arcanima.
The spell would act as an aether battery, aspected towards the vitality and endurance of a hardy plant. Geometric switchbacks would collect the power and hold it within the matrix as the resonance built up. Aether was life, and nearly every potion she had drew upon and affected the aether of the patient in some way.
The first, a dark red liquid made with a base of distilled morbol spit, was technically a poison. It would draw the strength from Orri’s bones to make them easier to break. She cautioned the girl to be careful for the next few days while the effects wore off, but in order to fix her leg she would have to rebreak the bones. It was going to hurt.
Orri almost scoffed at the idea of pain and drank the potion without hesitation.
Next was a pale cream which she spread on Orri’s leg. It was a mild paralytic, made from scalekin blood and snake venom run through landtrap leaves steeped in a weak acid to make them pliable and porous. In a weak dose such as this, it acted as a vasoconstrictor and would reduce blood loss when Nihka had to cut into Orri’s leg. Orri noted that a great deal of Nihka’s medicines were made using poisons. Nihka couldn’t argue.
What was she doing, going on these adventurers, risking her life? She had made a promise that healing was her goal, her devotion. This was more appropriate, this surgery, than rushing out to the desert and fighting beast tribes. She could almost hear her mentor speaking to her, walking her through the task. Why was she registering with the pugilist guild now? Why was she rushing off to the desert to hunt down Anstarra’s family? She should be staying home, staying safe, and tending to the wounded when they come back from their adventurers.
But there was something inside of her that refused to be kept like that, an anxiety and a need to travel and move that refused to let her stay a housecat. The urge to fix the problems, to be proactive, to not wait for Zarann to come to her. She couldn’t explain it, that feeling.
She couldn’t wait at home to heal the injured. If she could heal the hearts of those who threatened them, then no one would end up hurt to begin with. The world would be a safer place. For her, for her daughter, for her fiancé, for the family she had collected.
She cut between the muscles, careful not to tear. Small trickles of blood dripped down onto the board, and sizzled with the power of the magic it had collected, the matrix approaching saturation. It required tools, gripping and twisting with a hard jerk, to break the weak joints where the bones had improperly healed.
Orri didn’t even cry out.
The next was a hardening agent, applied with a narrow syringe deep into the wound. Nihka explained as she applied it. It would be catalyzed by the blood in Orri’s own body, causing it to harden and create a rigid lattice. It was designed to break down slowly over time and provide nutrients that would promote bone recovery.
Finally, it was time to release the aether that had been building up. She drew a single line onto the board, linking two vertices of the spell and reversing the polarity of its flow.  Light flashed as the magic released. The neutral matrix was completely ruined, crystallizing into strange shapes as the aether warped the woman’s body, suffusing with healing energy that would help to bind the bone together. It would still be weeks before everything was fully intact.... but her kin all healed remarkably fast. Perhaps it wouldn’t even be that long.
Nihka slumped back in the chair and surveyed the scene. Goobbue teeth burnt beyond recognition, the prototype aether matrix similarly destroyed as the spell she’d drawn on it etched into the physical structure of the crystals.
Orri would need to stay off the leg as best she could for the rest of the day. It would take time to heal, even for her. But it was easy to see what An often spoke of, the aetheric mutability inherent in the falling star blood. Even her weak healing magics and alchemy were able to affect significant change on the patient.
Now it was just a matter of waiting and recovery and hope.
Nihka approached the house, one hand resting on her satchel as tiny jars full of alchemic medicines clanked together.  The cub, Sehki, toddled along behind her and looked at all the houses and fresh planted flowers with the wonder that only a two-year-old can muster. X’orri stood guard near the door, and balked at the sight of the child.
Nihka thought for a moment, and realized that it wouldn’t be X’orri any longer, but simply Orri. They had left the falling stars, and were their own tribe now: a tribe of cliptails, a tribe of ex slaves, the disgraced and abused. The whole concept made Nihka feel sick; she had to push down the revulsion and smile instead. It was over, they were safe: Arblis had even gotten them a home of their own in the Goblet... Somehow...
Though Orri seemed hesitant around Sehki, the cub was anything but. She was  more than willing to show giddy kindness to Orri, waving and singing a greeting with her little tail wriggling excitedly. Nihka explained that Sehki was her daughter, and she wanted everyone in the fledgling tribe to meet her family. She wanted them to trust her, and so she chose to show that she trusted them.
The idea was alien to Orri.
Inside the house the cliptails were everywhere. Some were lounging about resting, others tending to the tasks that came with a new home, and a few were talking to a representative from the weaver’s guild. Calling in every favor she had and then some, Nihka had arranged for each crafting guild to send at least one representative, scouting for possible talent and offering hope for apprenticeship to members of the refugee tribe. It was Nihka’s hope that this be a chance at a new life for the broken miqo’te, that this be the first step towards mending the emotional scars every cliptail bore...
She needed something new to call them, cliptail was wrong. It needed to be something proud and strong, that wouldn’t carry too many ties to the pain and suffering they endured. In her mind she resolved to think of them not as cliptails, but as the Bright Ones.If she could show these broken people kindness, that the world wasn’t the broken place they had been living... then maybe they would shine brightly again, maybe they would become strong and kind. She wanted to kindle their hearts, ease the dying embers back into a roaring blaze.
Before the heart could even begin to heal, though, before they could be as bright as Nihka knew some day they would shine, they needed a warm, safe place to live and the physical health that had been denied to them by their own people.
Nihka went amongst them, offering kind words and medicine. They healed fast, and so all but the most seriously injured were largely healthy now. The only lasting damage were the bones; too many of them had had bones broken and forced to heal wrong to keep them from rising up. Some had lived with these injuries so long it was nigh impossible to fix. Nihka had to beg them to let her break their bones again. She had to watch their eyes fill with pain and fear.
The hardest part...
The hardest part was accepting when one of them rejected her offer, but Nihka knew that just being able to say no was more important than anything else, and so she never pushed. She only asked that if they changed their mind to not hesitate to tell her, knowing that many of them never would.
When she finished treating those she could, Nihka returned to Orri and made the same offer to her. Orri was the proudest of them all, having only recently been clipped and only recently been maimed. Of all of them, she had the greatest chance to recover fully. Nihka expected Orri to question her motives, but found that convincing Orri to undergo such a painful and risky surgery was easier than expected.
Many of the Bright Ones had come to terms with their crippled states, but Orri still had the raw desperation to feel whole again, to walk and run and feel the pride of being a huntress. It was a desperation that Nihka was intimately familiar with.
Nihka took Orri to a plain, comfortable bed and asked her to relax and lay down. Orri complied, and rested with her broken leg exposed so Nihka could work. Fixing broken bones like this, though, tested Nihka’s healing skills to the limit, and Orri’s was particularly bad. She would have to pull out all the stops, mix her medicine and magical skills with the alchemical genius that many of her friends had come to know her for.
She started with a plain-looking white lacquered board, gently placed beneath Orri’s leg. In just the right light, the board seemed to glitter and shine. In truth, she had created it by dissolving unaspected crystals in the viscous secretions of Shroud slugs and formic acid. Adding chalk neutralized the acid and gave substance for the crystalline structures to cling to, keeping them evenly distributed through the solution and giving it that white color.
Once she had dried the substance on the board, it created a blank, neutral aetheric matrix. In theory...
Orri watched curiously as Nihka painted on the board from a jar of thick black ink. Made with gold dust and spoken blood, it was a common recipe used in the creation of arcanist tomes for its aetheric conductivity. She painted out the complex geometries of arcanima, and at each major vertex placed a single goobbue fang. Alchemy was often used to create medicines and poisons, but many people overlooked why the concoctions worked. A string of goobbue teeth held the residual energies of the creature, lending their innate toughness. It’s why they were used in vitality potions. The toughness of these creatures would now be used to enhance the power of her healing.
With a touch and just a hint of her own aether, Nihka ignited the spell. Magic cycled through the geometries, pulled by the gold dust and guided by Nihka’s will. The black ink began to glow faintly, and fear touched Orri’s eyes. Nihka gave her a reassuring smile, and began to explain each step before she took it. It made the process take three times as long, with how Nihka spoke and stuttered, but she didn’t want to scare the patient; the process slowly became a lesson on anatomy, alchemy, and arcanima.
The spell would act as an aether battery, aspected towards the vitality and endurance of a hardy plant. Geometric switchbacks would collect the power and hold it within the matrix as the resonance built up. Aether was life, and nearly every potion she had drew upon and affected the aether of the patient in some way.
The first, a dark red liquid made with a base of distilled morbol spit, was technically a poison. It would draw the strength from Orri’s bones to make them easier to break. She cautioned the girl to be careful for the next few days while the effects wore off, but in order to fix her leg she would have to rebreak the bones. It was going to hurt.
Orri almost scoffed at the idea of pain and drank the potion without hesitation.
Next was a pale cream which she spread on Orri’s leg. It was a mild paralytic, made from scalekin blood and snake venom run through landtrap leaves steeped in a weak acid to make them pliable and porous. In a weak dose such as this, it acted as a vasoconstrictor and would reduce blood loss when Nihka had to cut into Orri’s leg. Orri noted that a great deal of Nihka’s medicines were made using poisons. Nihka couldn’t argue.
What was she doing, going on these adventurers, risking her life? She had made a promise that healing was her goal, her devotion. This was more appropriate, this surgery, than rushing out to the desert and fighting beast tribes. She could almost hear her mentor speaking to her, walking her through the task. Why was she registering with the pugilist guild now? Why was she rushing off to the desert to hunt down Anstarra’s family? She should be staying home, staying safe, and tending to the wounded when they come back from their adventurers.
But there was something inside of her that refused to be kept like that, an anxiety and a need to travel and move that refused to let her stay a housecat. The urge to fix the problems, to be proactive, to not wait for Zarann to come to her. She couldn’t explain it, that feeling.
She couldn’t wait at home to heal the injured. If she could heal the hearts of those who threatened them, then no one would end up hurt to begin with. The world would be a safer place. For her, for her daughter, for her fiancé, for the family she had collected.
She cut between the muscles, careful not to tear. Small trickles of blood dripped down onto the board, and sizzled with the power of the magic it had collected, the matrix approaching saturation. It required tools, gripping and twisting with a hard jerk, to break the weak joints where the bones had improperly healed.
Orri didn’t even cry out.
The next was a hardening agent, applied with a narrow syringe deep into the wound. Nihka explained as she applied it. It would be catalyzed by the blood in Orri’s own body, causing it to harden and create a rigid lattice. It was designed to break down slowly over time and provide nutrients that would promote bone recovery.
Finally, it was time to release the aether that had been building up. She drew a single line onto the board, linking two vertices of the spell and reversing the polarity of its flow.  Light flashed as the magic released. The neutral matrix was completely ruined, crystallizing into strange shapes as the aether warped the woman’s body, suffusing with healing energy that would help to bind the bone together. It would still be weeks before everything was fully intact.... but her kin all healed remarkably fast. Perhaps it wouldn’t even be that long.
Nihka slumped back in the chair and surveyed the scene. Goobbue teeth burnt beyond recognition, the prototype aether matrix similarly destroyed as the spell she’d drawn on it etched into the physical structure of the crystals.
Orri would need to stay off the leg as best she could for the rest of the day. It would take time to heal, even for her. But it was easy to see what An often spoke of, the aetheric mutability inherent in the falling star blood. Even her weak healing magics and alchemy were able to affect significant change on the patient.
Now it was just a matter of waiting and recovery and hope.
