/What help can I be?/

A man stumbles into me cradling his intestines in his hands. I help him to the ground, so he's laying on his back. Looking from the blood covering me to the chaos, I clench my teeth and steel my resolve. I take a deep breath and organize my thoughts, freaking out won't help these people.

First, we need to gather the severely injured in one place to get treatment.

"Andri," I bark.

"Yes, Princess."

"You're going to be treating people as we bring them to you. Start with this guy." I'm already up and moving when Andri takes my place. "Ryo, Lina, and Daric. Help him."

I don't wait for their reply as I move on.

"Lar–."

"Princess, I urge you to leave this matter to the locals," Irvin's voice cutting.

I stop and smile bright, "What did you say?" I bite out.

He hesitates, "What would you have me do?"

"That's what I thought you said. You, me, Lark, and Scias are going to work in pairs to carry the injured to Andri. You will be working with Scias."

He opens his mouth, but I cut him off.

My voice is tight. "I can already feel the objection you're going to voice. So know now, I don't care. People are dying a few feet away. Go." He bows and leaves without another word, Scias following on his heels.

"Alright Lark, it's you and me."

We threw ourselves into the fray. Carrying the broken, bloody, and burned. As we work, more people joined in. At some point, someone showed up with fresh bandages and medicine. The sun has long gone down, and for light, there are several illuminated gems set up along the ground and hovering in the air.

I ignore the blood and gore covering me. Determined to save one more life. I hold down a flailing young man as Andri uses Soma Asura to control the bleeding. One of the man's arms was blown off leaving torn, chard flesh and shattered bone. Andri did what he could to keep the man from going into shock and keep from bleeding out. With each person, the orange glow becomes dimmer and takes longer to treat. Unfortunately, he no longer has the energy to spare to knock them out, and pain reduction herbs have a minimal effect, meaning he's kept awake and in pain throughout the whole ordeal. I do what I can to talk to him trying to provide some modicum of comfort, but it becomes apparent he's being driven to insanity with pain. Andri manages to tend to all the major wounds and maintains his life. Having no time to sit and comfort him, Andri moves to the next victim. Over and over, through a seemingly endless body count. I dragged people from under the rubble and take them to get patched up, then move onto the next. He has continued to take on the worst cases because none of the other healers are capable of using Soma Asura to the extent he can. Most of the time there was nothing Andri could do. He may be able to control blood flow, accelerate the healing process, and discover internal injuries that may have otherwise been overlooked, but he can only use so much asura at once and only for so long.

Using asura for too long takes a toll on the body. Though mages are by birth, stronger, faster, and more resilient, they still have boundaries. People are considered a mage when they can take external asura and make it their own. The process of doing so takes control. When Asura Poisoning happens, control starts to fail, asura fluctuates throughout the body, and causes shakes. Before long asura breaks loose and causes damage to internal organs; worse case organs are turned to pulp under a wave of asura.

So when I saw Andri's hands shaking I knew regardless of his personal desire to keep going, he needed to stop. As soon as he bandaged the latest victim and got up to go to the next, I stopped him.

"You need to rest," I point out.

"Thank you for your concern, but I'll be fine for a little longer," Andri says.

"You're shaking. Only an idiot would miss the fact you're hitting your limit. You've had to have treated well over a hundred people, and that's not even half of the worst cases. Rest, or you won't be able to hold on."

He remains quiet, stubbornly moving on to another person.

"Andri!" I yell exasperated.

"Princess, if I can save one more person, even at the risk of myself, I will continue to press on."

I sigh, "Fine, at least try to work on the less severe cases and hold off on using asura for a while."

I receive no reply as he continues moving. I'm certain he's just disregarded most of what I said. I roll my eyes but can't help but say, "If your organs rupture there's no one around who can help you, and if you get yourself killed who'll help all these people?" That gets through to him because he pauses then slowly retracts his Soma Asura. Satisfied, I continue searching through countless bodies for those still alive.

At some point I find myself shoulder to shoulder with a local soldier who stands a head and a half taller than me. He has short dark brown hair and a square face with a deep scar over his left milky eye. his brown right eye pins me with a questioning look while his dark brown skin stretches over corded muscles as he flexes to lift the boulder trapping someone underneath. In an attempt to be helpful, I stand next to him as we both shove. I'm nothing but a wisp of air compared to him, but I'm mage enough to be stronger than the average man. As the boulder rolls, the poor man underneath yells in pain. I grimace but resolutely shove. As soon as the man is free a couple of people come and drag him away. When I think the man is going to leave to help someone else, remains standing there staring at me. It should be unnerving because he looks like the type to munch on nails in his free time, but I can't help but like the stoic man.

"So...are you gonna tell me your name?"

"Garon," his deep voice reverberates.

"Emma." I wait for him to say something else, but it would seem Garon is a man of few words. I dare say, even less than Irvin.

I was going to open my mouth to speak when people came over.