Thomas looked over the pitiful band of survivors; four men, three women, and eight children. All malnourished, although in the two weeks since they had been found, they were doing better; Norris' magic was stretched thin, and their own group was on reduced rations. Which for Thomas was perfectly fine, because he'd spent two weeks rarely moving from a seated position in their encampment, and hadn't really been aware for most of that time.

Distinction: Spell School: Viviomancy

You may learn and cast spells of the Viviomancy school of magic; +2 to Maximum Mana

Distinction: Blood Magic

You may expend Health instead of Mana to cast spells; the Health cost is thrice the Mana cost of the spell. +3 to Maximum HP

He'd learned magic. Well, a magic.

Regenerate

Ritual - 3 Days

Restores lost limbs, and restores functionality to damaged limbs

He'd healed Norris first, to talk to the survivors. Then Anne, then Madelaine, then Arias. Then he'd eaten, and slept. It was all an eternity ago, and yet an instant; it felt like a strange nightmarish dream. A dream he was, reluctantly, preparing to relive. Thomas took a deep breath, preparing himself for another … well, he didn't have a word for the experience. He closed his eyes, focusing his attention first on the rise and fall of his chest, the cool air entering and leaving his nose. And then he shifted his concentration, and the colors began.

Geometric figures, edges blazing white. An infinite progression of squares embedded in squares, which began to flow past his mental perception; but they weren't squares, as each of the “lines” had infinite length, dizzying to try to comprehend, embedded in whirls and turns and angles which never crossed. They passed around perception, vanishing behind even as tiny dots resolved themselves into new squares, taking on the aspect of a tunnel.

The shapes edged in harsh bright white gradually began to change; not-squares softened into shapes that weren't quite circles, which came closer and closer together until their edges blurred into one another into a spiral, which tightened and squeezed out the darkness, and white was separated by white, and then two dimensions became three, and the whites separated out into colors smeared across the third dimension. The panorama rotated into shadows of yellow and green, adjacent and never meeting, and the bubble that was REGENERATION came into focus, an infinitely-branching tree of white and green stretching into a sky of yellow, the colors separated by an infinite distance.

A rain of pain and red fell from a blue beyond yellow, feeding the roots that stretched into eternity, although much of the pain and red was lost to the not-black expanse of void below. Pain and red fell upward the tree, filling minute pathways; REGENERATION met SELF and grew, a spreading mass of pain on pain painted in shades of pain and red. The paintbrush drew the fine details of the tree, the minute pathways, the veins, the subtle shades in color and shrieks of agony displaced, painting with the taste of metal and the touch of fire.

Musical tones blossomed across the canopy, the melody of life itself, bittersweet in beginning and end; this, too, joined the painting, and the tree crossed the infinite gap to touch the yellow sky. The rain of pain and red redoubled, and the roots stretched out to grasp a beating heart, flames burning high, elevating it in their grasp, and the blood it pumped was fire and pain and red, each heartbeat pressing life into the great tree, which stretched higher still, piercing yellow to reach blue, piercing blue to reach white, another suite of blossoms opening, adding striving and anger and jealousy to the melody of life, and lust and passion and acceptance, and time was blown along in icy gusts to join the burning pyre, jumbling past, present, and future into a frozen flame.

The eternity could only be measured from the far side, a gulf between the before and the after, for it was a chasm that time had fallen into. The tree encompassed the entirety of all, branches in every direction and rotation, green fed by red and metal outlined in lines of vibration and white, a trembling bramble that still grew, more and more, thinner and thinner, cutting lines of white, until it was all the vibrating white edges, which began to recede, forming infinite whirls and curves that never overlapped, that with distance averaged into straight lines, forming simple squares, receding into the distance.

Lungs took a deep breath, and two hands rose to his face; he wiped the sweat from his brow, a sense of trembling exhaustion rolling over Thomas, even as he returned to himself. The survivors looked slightly better still, since the last time he'd been aware. He looked down at himself; he had lost a little more weight, but hey. Thomas smiled as he flexed the fingers on his left hand. Once more. But tomorrow. He needed food, and sleep.

“Thomas?” Eyes opened, a confusion hammering him. Oh. Light. Colors. Thomas blinked, looking around, and found Anne crouching next to him, holding out a bowl of soup; manna bread boiled with conjured water, and pieces of the reddish-gray meat that the spider goo turned into when cooked. He offered her a thankful nod, throat too dry to talk, and accepted the bowl, sipping from it.

The lack-of-flavor of the manna bread, and the conjured water, sucked most of the flavor out of things they were cooked with, which had been, to his surprise, kind of a bad thing; the spiders, once they had started cooking them, actually tasted kind of okay, kind of like lobster only even more bland. He drank until his throat stopped burning from the dry, and then slowed down enough to look back to Anne.

“Thanks.” His voice rasped in his throat. His face and neck itched; he wasn't sure if it was just being out of it for two weeks, so the hair growth was more obvious to him than if he'd been there all along, or if the spell had accelerated it, but his hair and beard had grown in considerably. Thomas continued to eat, more delicately now, his attention moving around their now larger band.

“Sorry. Wanted to prioritize my arm. I'm Thomas.”

“Hello Thomas, welcome, and we add our thanks to you. I'm John.” The man who responded, looking up from the soup, which he was stirring, did so in a clipped and formal accent, at odds with his unkempt long gray hair and wild shaggy gray-and-black beard; he was also wearing only a pair of boxers, torn and ragged, which only offered the idea of decency. Thomas bowed his head, and looked around; Anne crouched near their campfire, her own clothes showing signs of scratches and tears, bow strung and ready, and her eyes shifting from Thomas to the entrance to their sheltering cave.

“Amanda, and this is Nathan.” A woman's voice; Thomas looked over, and blinked at the two adults, who were sitting in the dirt with the children, helping them stack rocks to make a little fortress. The adults were both shirtless, and the children wore an assortment of adult-sized shirts, including two familiar brown shirts; he blinked, and then forced his eyes back up once he realized his gaze has settled on the woman, Amanda's chest; she just gave him a tired kind of smile, her own eyes moving down him and back up in an exaggerated and deliberately-obvious way. Oh yes. He felt a moment of embarrassment, but also felt kind of … just, out of embarrassment; the well was dry. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, and she wore a pair of square glasses.

Nathan took a moment more to look over, and just waved, with a goofy grin, and Thomas blinked, as he re-assessed. Not an adult; a pimply-faced blonde-haired teenager. He didn't even have a proper beard yet. Thomas offered a smile in return, trying not to let his shock show.

“The others are out scouting for anyone else.” Anne's voice brought Thomas' attention back over. “And learning some survival basics. John's a Sage, Amanda is a Knight, Nathan is a Magician.” She glanced over the three; only Nathan looked up. “They all need things we don't have access here to be effective.” And Nathan blushed and looked back down to the small tower of stones he was assembling. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Nathan.” She looked at Thomas, and her voice lowered, until he could barely hear her. “There were others who showed up with them. They got the children here.” He nodded slowly as he processed the implication. Right.

“So what's the plan?”

“Arias hasn't spotted the roc in the last six days. If it's still gone tomorrow, we are going to try departing.” Thomas nodded slowly again, thinking about that. “Otherwise, we keep waiting, and try to help everyone get as many ascensions as possible in the meantime. We should have seen others by now.”

Arias and an exhausted-looking Norris had been the two to give up their own shirts. Arias, with a wild grin that was somewhere between grim and pleased, looked … uncomfortably good without a shirt, with her long hair, and her pants belted at a slightly skewed angle, sword scabbards hanging off either side; her skin was pale and smooth, and – and thankfully nobody paid attention to his uncomfortable shifting to try to conceal his reaction, when she appeared slightly ahead over the others, and he took a little too long taking her in. Although Thomas deliberately didn't look at Nathan, who had also moved to be less obvious, even as he noticed the motion. So maybe everybody was just being polite. Then again, Anne hadn't looked over at him, so maybe he hadn't been too obvious this time.

Once Thomas had gotten his mind, and eyes, back under control, he nodded to the others who had gone out with them; Madelaine was flanked by two skeletons, skulls lit with a pale blue light that wasn't quite like a flame, and looked quite pleased with herself. Also maybe a little bit crazy; he thought she was mouthing something. Norris had taken a slash to the arm, which was trickling blood; Thomas could guess the man didn't want to waste his limited mana creating bandages, when food was already in short supply.

“Hey. Good t'see yeh up'n about. Evan.” Thomas shook the man's hand; Evan was a thin, dark-skinned guy who spoke in a southern drawl, and sported a hairstyle Thomas guessed had originated as an afro, but which had turned into a flattened mess. “Brawler, Path of Stone. Like you? Only, I guess, newer at this.” His hands and arms were covered in ichor and paler flesh that Thomas guessed were chemical burns from punching the creatures here. He was wearing red plaid pajama bottoms, although they were shredded and stained.

The woman behind him waved; skin a light brown, she started with a chipper constantly-rising accent that made him think of meatballs for some reason, “Hey Thomas, it is fine to meet you, I am Faith.” The name came as a surprise, although the surprise immediately vanished into a hole of lost memory. Faith was taller than the others, albeit not as tall as Arias, and wore a white bra and brown skirts; she was carrying a makeshift club, which looked like one of Norris' summoned torches with bits of chitin tied to it. “I'm a Warrior.” She looked proud of the choice, letting the club rise and fall back against her shoulder.

“Allison.” Thomas didn't see Allison at all until she introduced herself, in a soft, shy voice. He blinked when she seemed to appear out of nowhere – entirely naked, with wild red hair and skin that positively lit up in the darkness. She blushed deeply when his startled gaze swept over her, and the blush carried down her chest, drawing his – nope, he pulled his eyes back up to her face. Her skin was nearly as red as her hair when she vanished again. Thomas felt bad for a second, but, well, it's not like he was any less exposed. More so. The thought that she could be looking at him as much as she wanted really didn't help anything, and he pushed it aside.

A thoroughly amused Anne, whose own gaze was unapologetically looking Thomas up and down, which he was absolutely not going to acknowledge, added for the vanished woman, “She's an Assassin. More shy than you were when you got here, which is quite the surprise.” Her gaze moved – Thomas tried to follow it, and got a flicker of red, but … couldn't find Allison again, and looked back at Anne, who had a smirk on her face, her eyes steadily watching something Thomas couldn't see. “Pity she chose a class so suited to being shy, she's nice to look at. She's also not very shy at all about looking herself.” This got a yelp, and Thomas saw a flash of pale skin, before Allison had moved somewhere else and vanished. Uh, well. Norris coughed, drawing Thomas' attention back over.

Carson was the last member of the new group, who had a vague and distant look on his face; Norris introduced him as a Magus who had chosen to specialize in Thaumaturgy, whatever that meant; a balding, middle-aged man wearing thick glasses, he was wearing what looked like a once-fancy suit jacket tied around his waist.

“Did everyone show up dressed like this?” Thomas had stopped to get dressed before he showed up; he could only sort of remember it.

“Woke up in bed; when I opened the door to leave my … bedroom, to go take a piss, found myself here.” Evan scowled. “The last thing I remember seeing before I opened the door were my boots sitting next to the door. They were nice, made of … I bought them at … ” He trailed off, looking troubled; Thomas shared a look with Madelaine, and he resolved not to ask anything else like that.

Only Arias and Madelaine had escaped injury; the others had a variety of minor scrapes, cuts, and inflamed bites. Thomas pulled up his one other spell, looking at it.

Take Harm

Immediate

Caster may absorb up to (Empowerment)*5 worth of HP damage, healing the target and damaging themselves; at Empowerment 5, a Misfortune may additionally be transferred from the target to the caster; at Empowerment 8, a Curse may additionally be transferred from the target to the caster

Thomas hesitated only a second, before moving to Norris; it only took a touch, and an instant eternity of colors flashing across a kaleidoscope bridge made of wind and fire. Norris blinked, looked at the cut in his arm, or where his arm had been cut; then to Thomas, whose arm bore a pale and shallow imitation of the injury; more health meant something, for this, even if some of it had to power the spell itself.

“That's … thank you, Thomas.” Norris hesitated, but Thomas just nodded

He moved to Evan next; the chemical burns and bite marks faded, Thomas' own flesh reddening. Faith shook her head, stepping back; he considered insisting, but her expression suggested it would only annoy her. Allison reappeared, however, face flushing as she tried to cover herself with her hands; he carefully didn't look at her while he touched her shoulder, and was startled by the pain that arrived. How many broken ribs had she had? She vanished as quickly again. Carson didn't react, when Thomas touched him. The wounds that carried over were a shock, though, and the man shook his head, eyes going lucid; that was a hell of a headache for Thomas, and he could only guess that the man's skull had been cracked, or at least a concussion, among the many other smaller flesh wounds. Thomas sat down on one of the large flat rocks that were set in a rough circle around the soup being tended by John, who nodded to him, then, ignoring the looks of concerns he drew from Norris and Anne, and scratched his itchy cheek while he pulled up his health. He'd taken that spell for a reason.

221/279 Health

The wounds they had taken would have killed any one of them, he guessed. He'd feel better in the morning, even with the additional cost Blood Magic had pulled out of him. Even accounting for how unpleasant and weird casting magic was, it was useful. Allison did eventually reappear again, and stick around, and after the initial shock of the situation, things kind of … just were normal, and they ate soup in a comfortable kind of mostly-silence, the children eventually joining them at the prodding of Amanda and Nathan. He noted that the children were entirely silent, and wondered, but did not ask.

The others did eventually start talking, and Thomas listened; he didn't know the others, but Anne and Norris talked freely with John and Faith in particular, about their plans for the next day, and what might go wrong. They'd be making a run for it.