“—rower.” In the din of the battle, I missed the first half of what was shouted, but I recognized the voice. Dorian had made it. Even the sheer urgency in his yell couldn’t dampen my relief. He was alive and healthy enough to bellow. He yelled again, “Burrower.” This time, everyone heard him.

  A wave of tension rippled through the ?ttir. What would frighten them that much? “R?gnor, what—“

  Energy surged in front of me, and our fortifications exploded into a shower of dust and shrapnel. Injuries flared in my awareness as ?ttir across the front line grunted in pain as they staggered backward. R?gnor slammed into me, knocking me to the ground. I scrambled to my hands and knees. My mouth grew dry as I took in the scene.

  For half a heartbeat, everything was still. Dust drifted in slow spirals around terrorvoles frozen by fear and the ?ttir who either stood resolute or lay on the ground clutching their wounds. Far too many fell into the latter category.

  The stone splinters had done more damage than should have been possible. They acted like a shotgun blast, overwhelming the stoic warriors. Low at first, then building, groans of pain filled the air around me.

  I scurried over to the closest ?ttar on the ground. He lay sprawled on the ground, clutching his stomach. His injuries had overwhelmed the fearsome ?ttarsk pain tolerance. Multiple shards of sharp stone riddled his body and had shredded his shirt. Each created wounds that oozed a dark red. They didn’t penetrate as deep as buckshot, but their size…

  I spared R?gnor a glance, trying to ignore the chorus of moans from around me. That blast had taken down too many ?ttir, but at least R?gnor had managed to come out unharmed. He moved to reform the line with the less injured. The shrapnel had shredded quite a few terrorvoles, but many had come out unscathed. Yet even those who didn’t still found a way to ignore their injuries. Wounded or hale, they all moved with a new urgency.

  However, when the first of the monsters hit the line, many didn’t try to attack the ?ttir, opting to rush past them. Those died quickly, but the monsters without an exit dropped into a vicious, terror-induced frenzy.

  They only want out of here. Did that new monster—burrower?—scare them that much?

  The thing remained hidden by a billowing cloud of dust. My stomach tightened at the uncomfortable implication: Could it launch more volleys like the first?

  The sounds of battle began to return to the cavern, eclipsing the ominous rumbling of stone scraping on stone that came from the tunnel and bringing me back to reality. We needed more men on the line, but based on simple visual inspection and my growing sense of nearby injuries, a potion wasn’t going to cut it for the ?ttar in front of me, at least not without help.

  I am a [Physician], and I need to start acting like one.

  I had a person who needed help. I pulled out what remained of my potion. It would have to do. However, as I went to pour it into his mouth, his eyes flashed open, and he grabbed my wrist. I fell backward in surprise, but he didn’t release his hold on my arm.

  “Human, what are you doing?” His voice was weak, but his grip was iron. I would not be leaving unless he wanted me to.

  “Helping you.”

  He couldn’t hide his disbelief, and something snapped inside me. Steel entered my voice. “I am trying to bring you back into the fight.” With each word, a coldness had spread across my forehead. Had something flowed from me to him?

  His grip relaxed. “How?”

  I barely hid the shock of my words penetrating his thick skull. “I can enhance healing potions.”

  He grunted. “I will use mine.”

  Stupid rules. “Look. We don’t have time—”

  Some primal portion of my brain screamed as a surge of Energy and Aether exploded from the tunnel to the vein. I threw myself to the ground as a dull thump echoed through the cavern. All around me, loud grunts of pain filled the air.

  How many more did that just injure?

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  My sixth sense beckoned me, but I didn’t have the time or the mental reserves to use it. Instead, I picked myself back up, ignoring the incredulous look on the ?ttar lying beside me. “Fine. Give it here. I will take some to work on the external wounds. Then you can drink some—no more than a quarter—after I start.”

  That amount should cut it for the internal injuries. Better to undershoot and reapply than overshoot and waste. My gut told me that we would need every drop of this stuff before the day’s end.

  I took his potion, activating [Enhance Medicinal]. The Energy flowed down my arm, through the wooden vial, and into the liquid within. He didn’t question me when I poured a small amount into my cupped palm. He waited for me to start before quaffing the healing liquid. I dipped the fingers on my right hand into the small pool of potion, but then, for good measure, I rubbed my palms together to coat both hands with the healing substance. I then placed them on his shredded, blood-soaked torso. Hopefully, the potion would last long enough to address every wound. He had so many injuries that I would have to smear the potion across them all sequentially to get a better understanding of what I was dealing with. Except, I didn’t have to.

  I froze as information about his injuries flooded my mind. It was too much. I registered the potion’s effect on all the wounds on his chest, not just the ones near my hands. And, with each thump of his racing heart, I picked up more until I could detect every place at which the potion tried to act. From his puncture wounds to his cracked rib to the small scrapes on his back, I could see them all in my mind’s eye.

  This shouldn’t be possible. I had used healing potions before, but they had never felt like this. Sure, the potion had so far acted as a medium to conduct my power—my magic, or whatever the hell let skills work—but my range, my reach, had never extended this far. What I could sense, what I could control…

  Had I just never had the chance to flex my skills? I had never used a potion for such severe injuries—or was this a taste of the power that levels could provide?

  “Human, are you wasting my potion?” he growled.

  The palpable anger in his voice restored my focus. “I got this. Just a moment.” But he was right to be angry. I had wasted precious seconds by not holding back the effects of the potion, and he had taken so little.

  Please let it be enough. Please—

  There. Though weaker than I would have preferred, the potion’s familiar signature called to me. I focused on it and channeled my skill. My patient grunted as I kicked the potion into overdrive, but his vocalization didn’t stop. It tapered to a low thrum as the world around me slowed to a crawl. I blinked, or I tried. I couldn’t move, but I could think. I. Could. Think.

  An ache in my skull grew, but I welcomed it. Rarely in an emergency did I ever have time to think. I just reacted, following the routines I had burned into my brain through training and sheer repetition. Now, I found myself in an emergency with no time to deliberate and with no experience to fall back on. I needed so much more than what I had, but if I couldn’t have knowledge, I would take the gift of time.

  I had underestimated his wounds. My initial sense had detected all the injuries, but with more time, I got a better feel for them. He had at least twenty different injury sites, and two were deep. No organs were hit, but what if he moved with one of those stone shards still in him? Or if a chunk broke off inside him? I needed to remove those stones while closing those two wounds. A tall order, but doable.

  The world snapped back into focus as I slammed Energy through my skill. The low thrum morphed into a shrill cry as his abdomen tensed like a drum. Still, I achieved the desired effects. Tissue regenerated, pushing up the earthen fragments lodged in his flesh. As if they were nothing more than a splinter, pieces of bloody stone popped out of the wounds, rolled off his stomach, and fell to the ground. I reached over and pulled out the deepest shards, closing the wound in a manner that ejected the remaining debris. I gave the wounds another pass, crushing any colonies of bacteria that tried to find purchase with [Suppress Growth].

  I rocked back onto the balls of my feet. “You will be good now. I healed the major wounds and your ribs. The rest will finish shortly, though a few scrapes might not close without more.”

  The ground trembled again. I scanned the room, looking for the beast, but the back half of the cavern remained obscured by a cloud of dust that hadn’t settled. It also hadn’t billowed forward. By the swirls in the clouds, they seemed to be slamming into an invisible wall.

  Dorian. That had to be him—no one else had that skill. He was alive. But he wasn’t done yet.

  Unlike in the storm, dust had managed to push past the wall. A dusty haze had started to take over the edges of a cavern, obscuring the light stones along the wall. A central zone held strong, but it wouldn’t take long for me and the rest of us on the edge to be fighting in near darkness.

  I let out a sad laugh. He’s probably too short to see over the ?ttir to know what’s happening on the edges of the cavern. If we survived, I would make sure to crack a short joke later.

  “Dorian!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Maximize your [Dust Suppression].”

  Nothing.

  I readied another yell, then the air cleared. In the back of the cavern, the edge of the cloud wall started to move back. Dust fell, leaving clear air behind it. As Dorian pushed more power into the skill, the dust coalesced into a dense line that rolled backward until it slammed into an invisible wall. A thin wall of dust oscillated, shifting backwards and forwards in an irregular pattern. The hairs on my skin rose, and the thin membrane of dust began to glow with an eerie green light. A yell—human—and then a roar—bestial—echoed across the cavern, but when they faded, all the dust had settled, leaving our enemy in sight.