"Argh!" A buzzing sound fills the room as Apricot vents her frustration. "Dammit Sorrel, why'd you have to add a tilt function?" She starts another game as soon as her ball disappears.

"To stop cheaters like you from cheating." I look up from working on the Warlords Rune game to laugh at the game obsessed pixie. "Seriously, I'm glad I added a durability enchantment to that thing."

"But, I saw you hitting it." She wines as her ball rolls right between the flippers. "Argh, every damned time."

"I was nudging it, gently. You're smacking it like it owes you money." My laughs come out all the harder as she fouls again.

"I'll smack you like you owe me money." She draws back the plunger again.

"Sorry, already got one violent wife, don't need two of them." My giggling making it impossible to work on the enchantment.

"I heard that." Amelia shouts from another room, she got tired of all the lights and sounds pretty quickly.

"Love you baby, please don't hit me." I laugh again as Apricot snorts and flubs a save.

"Dammit Sorrel, I had that one."

"Sorry to interrupt." Kyle interrupts. "But, I just got a call from Count Valli's secretary."

"That was fast." I exclaim. "Bartlett just took that batch to the courier a couple hours ago."

"Yes, they are very interested in setting up a meeting. The secretary kept mentioning Smith Street for some reason." He explains

"Ahh." I sigh in understanding, and quote Jonas Salk again. "The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more, and I think I'm beginning to hate that saying now. Let me guess, the Count has some old injury?"

"Not, that I'm aware of." He pauses to think about something. "But his son hasn't been seen for some time, and there are rumors that he had a bad hunting accident in the spring."

"Go ahead and setup the meeting, their place is fine if he can't be moved, but try to let them know that I can only do so much. My healing spell pulls from my own vitality, and it like everything else, has limits. And maybe compile a list of other influential people with health problems that might pester me, if you get the chance."

"Yes, Sir." He seems impressed that I can heal. "I'll get right on it."

"Those books on healing magic had a few useful tricks, but that's all they were, just tricks. If I combine them with my current spell, I should be able to make them fairly effective. But, if this keeps happening I'm really going to have to re-invent the damned things." I grump and turn back to my enchanting.

"I take it we're going to have dinner plans." Amelia says after entering the room and hugging me from behind.

"Tonight, and probably every night for the foreseeable future. Ugh, we're probably going to have to throw another party. " I take her hand and kiss her wedding ring. "I know we have to do this stuff, but just seems so... tedious."

"You always get this way when you know a change is coming, but once it gets here you're fine." She rests her chin on top of my head. "And, I'm sure it won't be all tedious, we may even make some new friends."

"That or lifelong enemies when I run up against something I can't fix. Oh, damn! I just jinxed myself, didn't I?" I face palm.

"It's going to be fine." She walks around in front of me, and pulls my hand down to stare me in the eyes. "Have you ever backed down from a challenge? Even if there's nothing you can do for them, I'm sure you'll find a way to let them down easy."

"I just hope there's nothing wrong with his head, can't do anything about the mind." I sigh.

"But, you saved me?" Amelia says in a questioning tone.

"I was lucky enough to get there in time, and I don't really know how badly you were hurt." I pull her down to kiss the top of her head. "Think of the mind like a diary; yours may have gotten splashed with some water, but I was there to dry it off before the ink could run. But if those pages had been burned, or torn out. Then, even if I put new ones back in they'd just be blank."

"I see what you mean now." She hugs me tight.

"Sorrel." Kyle clears his throat from the doorway. "I called back and the Count answered directly, he's invited you to dinner, but asks that you come over as soon as you can. Apparently his son has taken a turn for the worse recently."

"Okay, we'll head over now." I look over at my little pinhead pixie and say. "You coming Apricot, or do you plan to stay here and lose at pinball all night?"

***

"I still don't see why we couldn't have brought it along." Our orange haired lover whines.

"Don't you think it would have been a little disrespectful?" Amelia chides her. "Just play Blockout for now, you still haven't beaten my high score." The pixie huffs and pulls out her Gameboy.

"We're almost there." I speak up. "Oof, poor guy is a mess, he must have been trampled by his horse or something. He's awake and alert though, it seems that aside from a broken arm most of the damage was to his abdomen and legs. But, I'll need to be closer to tell more."

Pulling into the courtyard, a portly man of around forty, dressed in fine clothes comes rushing forward as soon as the car stops.

"Marquis Rumex, Ladies. Thank you so much for coming on such short notice." His bald pate shines in the sun as a light of hope shines in his eyes.

"Sorrel, please." I endure as he pumps my hand effusively.

"Then you must call me Olson." He smiles. "So sorry for calling you over like this, but I had just received word about the events on Smith street when the courier arrived with your wonderful new Runes. I knew that it just had to be a message from the gods that you could help Marcus."

"I'll certainly do what I can, but there are limits to what I can do." I try to bring his hopes down to a more reasonable level as he practically pulls me up the steps into his manor. "Even if I can heal him completely, it may take several sessions. I can sense from here that he was pretty banged up, mind telling me what happened?"

"He was out riding, on a trail that both he and I have been on hundreds of times." He face flashes with a hint of anger for a split second. "When his horse got its hoof stuck in a hole, he flew off and landed safely only to have the beast topple over onto him."

"From your look it seems that this was not just happenstance." I prompt.

"The hole was dug by an animal, or at least cleverly made to look like it was, but it was also covered over with leaf litter in a way that didn't bear up to close scrutiny." His face scowls.

"Dad. I told you that you are seeing enemies where there are none." A young man says from his bed, his twisted legs covered by a thick blanket. "I saw the fox that dug that hole, and knew to keep an eye out for that spot. I just got distracted chasing the deer that I missed."

"Hello Marcus, I'm Sorrel." I walk up to shake his hand. "Your father asked me here to have a look at you."

"Oh, I may be stuck in this bed. But, I've still heard about the new Marquis of 'Arcadia', was it?" He smiles cheerfully before a grimace of pain flashes across his face. "Sorry, just when I was finally starting to get better, this pain started up in my side."

"Yeah, I'm going to need you to drink something for me." I conjure a large glass and fill it with Healing Sap. "You've got a bone shard that's worked its way around and is scraping against your kidney. There's been blood in your urine yes?" He nods meekly.

"Why didn't you tell me? No, the real question is why didn't your nurses tell me?" His father's face turns ruddy.

"I didn't want to worry you, Dad." The young man lowers his head. "I begged them not to."

"Boy..." Olson takes a deep breath, holding it for a second before letting the air escape his lungs all at once. "How am I supposed to help if you don't tell me what's wrong?"

Marcus flings his blanket aside, revealing his ruined lower half. "You can't help with this Dad. No offense Sorrel, I'm sure you mean well, but just look."

"Yeah you're a mess alright." I nod. "Now shut up and drink so I can get started. Unless of course you want all this jostling about to make that bone shard cut the artery it's next to and put you out of your misery. Slowly and painfully."

"..." He just looks stunned at my dismissive attitude.

I project a transparent view of his abdomen so he can see exactly what's going on. "Oh, babe." I look back at Amelia. "Remind me to make a Rune to do this. I can't help everyone personally, but if others can see exactly what's wrong it'll help their treatments."

"Do what he says Marcus, please." The Count begs his son.

The young man doesn't say anything else, choosing to instead to down the large glass in one go. I dissolve the bone shard and guide the magic to restore his kidney and remove a few minor scars from his other organs.

"Well, that was the easy part." I smile ruefully as his face clearly shows his relief from pain. "Now I've got to pretty much rebuild your lower skeleton from scratch." I change the hologram to show his shattered spine, crushed pelvis, and mangled legs. "The Earth Mage you hired to fuse his bones back together did his best, but this... This is going to take a while."

"Can you really fix my legs?" He seems fearful of letting himself feel hope.

"The bones and muscles yes, I can even get rid of those scars." I nod. "But your spinal cord? Enh, maybe, probably, I don't want you to get your hopes up though. But, hey. With it like that, at least you can't feel what I'm doing right now." I say cheerfully.

Starting with his feet and slowly working my way upwards, I use the Sap as a conduit for my other Magic to get in there and fix his breaks one by one. His legs slowly straighten over the course of several minutes.

"Care for a snack?" I say and produce a box of donuts, after I reshape his pelvis. "You're looking a little pale there." He actually would have passed out from the shock by now if I wasn't keeping his blood pressure stable.

"What?, How?" His face flushes

"Chocolate frosting, and Magic." I tease, and slap Apricot's hand away from the box. "These are for the patient. here raid the junk food crate if you can't wait for dinner." I plop in down next to the bed.

"I'm serious. How are you able to do this? Oh, gods that's good." Marcus finally takes a bite of the donut I was floating in front of his face.

"I must admit, I'm curious myself." His father adds. "When I spoke with Master Devlin about this, he said that a person's body naturally destabilizes outside mana making minute adjustments impossible. That's why all he was able to do was pull together the broken bones and lightly fuse them."

"It does." I nod. "And only a skilled enough Mage can overcome that... with great effort. Fortunately my spell works a bit differently, and bypasses the destabilization by sharing my own vitality with the patient." I snag a donut for myself, giving Apricot a smug look as I do.

"Normally, I just focus that vitality in one area to restore damage, like I did to the kidney. But, right now I'm using it as a conduit for other healing magics. Nature to promote overall health, Earth to shape the bone, Water to keep his blood pressure up and move the soft tissues about, Dark to dissolve scars, Light to provide energy to replace them, and so on." I work as I speak and his legs regain a close approximation of their previous state.

"You do good work, Babe." Amelia distracts me with a hug and steals her own donut, before sending Apricot and even more smug look.

"Grrr." The pixie actually growls at us. Laughing, I take pity on her and produce another box of donuts.

"Yeah, this is where it gets hard though." The projection zooms in on his still shattered lumbar region, the spinal cord highlighted so they can see the damage. "I've got to puzzle this mess back together. And, if I don't do it right he'll never walk again."

"Can you?" Marcus asks hopefully.

"Maybe." I shrug. "Olson, would you mind drinking this?" I hand him a small glass of Sap. "I need to get a better feel for how a healthy spine works, and since you're his father, yours should be the most similar." I already checked myself, but I don't know if my unique biology makes a difference.

"Anything." He tosses it back like a shot of alcohol.

"You're going to feel some strange sensations now. That's me mapping out where all the nerves go." I gently trace out and memorize the signal flow as I stimulate nerves all across his lower body. "Sorry about all this, I'll be done in a moment." I apologize as he winces from a wave of pain washing down his legs.

"I said anything!" He grunts. "And I meant it."

"Okay, I'm done." I nod and hand Marcus another glass. "I can do this, it's going to feel weird as I reconnect everything. So, if you need me to stop at any time just say so."

He drinks the glass down, and says. "Do it, please."

"Alright, I'm going to work in sections and I need you to tell me what areas you feel sensations coming back too."

I restore his vertebrae and begin rebuilding and reconnecting his nerves. The whole process takes longer than all the previous healing combined. But, everything goes perfectly... well aside from a bit of embarrassment when a certain set of nerves gets reconnected.

"Now wiggle your toes, and now your feet. Good, good. Alright, you're still weak, but one at a time, I want you to try lifting your knees. Everything feel alright? No weird sensations?"

"It's all good. Oh, gods. Thank you so much." Tears of joy stream down both his and his father's faces. "Can I?"

"Try walking?" I finish for him. "Of, course. You're still weak, so I'll support your weight with magic. Oh, I almost forgot your arm." A second later and it's back to normal. The last of the Sap had since been used up, but he doesn't need to know that. And, after piecing a spinal cord back together, fixing a mis-aligned bone is child's play.

"I'm doing it, I'm walking!" He crows.

"That's because you weigh about ten kilograms right now, and how about we get some proper trousers on you." I summon a pair from his wardrobe and dress him before he can blink. "That's better. I'll slowly increase your weight, you just try to walk normally. You've been in bed since spring, it's going to take a while to get your muscles back."

As he walks up and down the hall, laughing at the astonished looks of the servants. I start working on a variable gravity Rune for him, it's better than crutches. Anything's better than crutches, as anyone who's broken a leg before can tell you.

"Not bad Sorrel. Not bad." Apricot hangs from my back. "Even if you did tease me with donuts, you still did a good thing here today."

"Yeah, you did." Amelia hugs us from the side. "How long do you think before he's walking without assistance?"

"That all depends on him, and how hard he works. He's struggling at one third his normal weight right now, but it's not slowing him down. So, I think he'll get his full strength back in just a few months. As long as he doesn't over do it and hurt himself that is, but I'm sure they have trainers to help him with that."

"We do." Marcus says as he re-enters the room, sweat dripping from his face. "I cannot thank you enough. I had resigned myself to slowly dying in that bed. Then, you came and gave me my legs back, my life back."

"I do what I can." I nod and hold out the device I just made for him. "Here, clip this to your belt." He does so without comment. "That'll let you walk without crutches until you get your full strength back. Push the down arrow, that number that popped up shows what percentage of your weight you are at right now."

"Sorrel!" His mouth hangs open. "This, this is too much. I've never even heard of a Rune like this."

"Would you rather walk around on crutches?" I hold out a pair for him.

"I graciously accept your generosity." He bows and almost tips forward.

"Maybe turn it down a bit more, just for now?" I cock an eyebrow. "Oh, and it shouldn't, but if it glows red that means the charge is going to run out. Just call and I'll fill it back up. And call me directly if you have any health issues. This was the first time I've done anything even remotely this complex, healing-wise at least."

"On that new Rune phone device that dad gave me?" He double-checks.

"No, just hang your head out the window and shout really loud." I roll my eyes. "Yes, on the phone."

"Hahaha." He topples onto the bed from laughing so much. "Thank you, I needed that."

"And I need dinner, I'm starving. Healing really does take it out of me."

***