The scene before Izzy as he stepped into a small, bunk-lined room was unlike anything he had experienced in his life. He’d seen it in shows and movies, but nothing he’d dealt with in real life measured close.

  He had done plenty of traveling in his time and enjoyed getting off the beaten path. This inevitably included injuries and mishaps. He’d broken his leg slipping on slick rocks on an excursion in Norway, one of his cameramen had gotten a compound fracture in South America, and a visiting producer had lost a chunk of their foot to a piranha on the same trip. He’d gritted his teeth through his and his friends' pain and gotten to work on the survival checklist they’d all drilled on. In his experience, everybody always made it out okay.

  Nobody in this room was okay.

  There were 10 bunk beds jammed into the room with a small cot on either end, every space was occupied by a person with horrific injuries except for one grimy, blood-covered human on the cot near the door. Two cat-people walked between the beds checking bandages and offering water or wine depending on the state of the occupant. Izzy nearly gagged at the smell of old blood; he didn’t think he had a weak stomach, but apparently it had never seriously been put to the test.

  “Jeez…” mumbled Izzy as he took in more details of the scene, his gaze fixed upon the first person in a lower bunk.

  The cat-person looked like they had pissed off a blender the size of an ice cream truck. They were missing an ear and, by the shapes of the bandages, they were missing half their left foot and a large chunk from their right bicep. They lay in a mess of their own making, either asleep or unconscious with their mouth slightly open. Izzy could see they were also missing a few teeth.

  “What…” Izzy said slowly as he looked at Rajir. “How the fuck am I supposed to help with this?”

  Rajir looked at him with a dejected and exhausted look, his relief and visage from the front room evaporating.

  “Fortunately, it shouldn’t be anything from you,” he said quietly, trying not to disturb any of the patients. “We have a healer who is familiar with how to use spell coins. Today, you are just the messenger.” Rajir indicated the bedraggled human on the cot near the door. “Titus here is the only healer we’ve found. He’s been working himself to the bone just trying to keep people alive. Blew through his potions after the first few people came in and has been healing until he passes out from exhaustion for hours. This coin might tip the scales for a few of these folks. Another healer would have been ideal, but the coin should do.”

  Izzy gave himself a second before speaking. “Okay… we’re just gonna leave the whole “potions” thing alone for a minute,” he thought. “But using magic too much can have physical effects on the user?”

  He furrowed his brows, apparently there could be side effects. This made sense with the experience he had with the strength coin. His brain had felt like it was being stabbed by multiple hot pokers at the same time as a pair of rottweilers fought over it as a chew toy. Or was it something about vinegar and a blender? Maybe he was being adversely affected by this whole magic thing after all.

  He finally spoke up.

  “All right,” he said. “I just hand the coin over to Titus and he takes care of everybody?”

  “Almost,” Rajir replied. “There are limits on those coins. What was the number on the star with the cross?

  Izzy pulled it out of the pocket on the front of his makeshift kilt. It was a four. Some relief came back to Rajir’s face and he nodded.

  “That’s lucky,” he said. “Obviously a higher number would be better, but a four is about all I was holding out hope for.”

  Rajir leaned over Titus and slightly shook the man on the shoulder. The healer didn’t budge.

  “Titus,” Rajir said in a kind voice. “Titus, wake up friend. I brought you some help.”

  Titus’ eyes flickered open. He had a large, round face with laugh lines, crows feet, and creases on his forehead that appeared to be made by holding his eyebrows furrowed a lot. Izzy got the impression that this man had seen some shit.

  After the healer’s eyes focused slowly on Rajir, he shifted on the cot. Rajir stepped back as Titus failed once to pull his stout body upright, and then got into a sitting position on the low cot. He put his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands, rubbing his face slowly and pushing his fingers much too hard into his eyes.

  “Raj,” Titus said in a weak voice. “We lost Marcus. I don’t know how long you’ve been out, but he took a turn for the worst after I gave Elana here,” he indicated the cat person with the missing ear, “a touch up. I had almost passed out just to keep her alive. And then… then he…”

  The fat old man’s body started trembling, his hands covering his face. He stayed like that for a moment, and when his face left his hands he looked up with an angry look on his face, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “All he did was shift in his sleep!” Titus hissed, waving his hand at the back of the room in frustration. “He bumped his shoulder on the frame and opened up his wound. He woke up only long enough to cry out and passed out from the pain. We…” he shook his head, tears flying away from his face. He choked out the next words, “we couldn’t tell. I wasn’t awake enough to think through why he would have cried out. I just sat back down because I thought he cried out in his sleep.”

  He curled his hands at his body, smashing the tips of his fingers into his hefty chest several times.

  “Sat on my big ass while a person needed my healing. I had one fucking job!” He threw his face back into his hands and continued to tremble.

  Rajir sat on the cot next to the weeping man, the cot creaked and for a moment Izzy was worried it was going to snap in half. Rajir threw an arm around the exhausted healer.

  “I’m not going to tell you it’s all right Titus,” Rajir said, his voice a pleasant purr. “None of this is okay and we shouldn’t have to deal with it. You’ve done amazingly, though. Everyone who is still breathing in this room is only here because of you.” Rajir indicated Izzy with his other arm, “My new friend comes bearing a timely gift.”

  Titus peeled his face away from his hands and looked at Izzy. His self-deprecation paused for a moment as he finally took in the pasty young man, covered in blood and wearing an odd skirt and a troubled look on their face.

  “Hello, Titus, I’m Izzy,” Izzy began. He indicated the gore covering his front, “Don’t worry, this isn’t mine. I’ve been lucky and just have some cuts and bruises. I believe I’m supposed to give you this.” Izzy held up the coin in front of Titus, flipping it back and forth to show the symbol and the number.

  Recognition and relief filled the old man’s face for a moment but, as he caught a look at the number again, he began to frown. Izzy was immediately concerned. He looked at the coin again himself; it was the same one that Rajir was so excited about, so what was Titus so worried about?

  “Is there a problem?” Izzy asked, looking back at the healer.

  “Not with the coin,” Titus said softly. He drew in a shuddering breath, letting it out just as harshly. “I’m the problem. I can use those just fine on a normal day but…” he waved a hand, indicating the patients in the room again, “today is not a normal day. If I used that, I’m pretty sure I’d be out of commission for the rest of the day if it didn’t just outright kill me. It’s a Grade 4 and I’m only Grade 3, so I need to be more recovered to use it.

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  “Those things come in handy in a pinch but the backlash can be a bitch. It takes a toll on your magic and if you don’t have enough to handle it, it'll plant you on your ass. Most of the magic comes from the coin, but you need something to help guide it. But I shouldn’t have to tell you that, you’re the one who walked in with that thing.”

  “You can’t use it?” Rajir said, his eyes going wide and standing up to look down at Titus. “So are we stuck with you almost killing yourself every hour or so until we find somebody else to help?”

  “Every hour is getting harder and harder,” Titus said, looking between Rajir and Izzy. “Like I said, there is a very real chance it could just kill me. You’d waste the coin and lose what help I can give over the next few hours.”

  Izzy had a sinking feeling and rubbed a spot on his forehead that always flared up with stress. He knew where this was headed. He’d seen enough anime and hero movies to know what was going to be necessary. He could see that Rajir’s exhaustion was also starting to get to him. The cat-person looked around the room helplessly.

  “Nobody out there can use it,” he said, waving his arm in the direction of the front room. “It’s all laborers and traders out there. I’ve got Earth magic, but not in healing. More like rocks and such. If I used it I might accidentally swap some body parts with some stone, or just fizzle it out. I can use them on myself, but that’s no surprise since practically everybody can.”

  Izzy rubbed harder at the spot on his forehead. Palming the coin, he started massaging his temples in anticipation. “Yup,” he thought. “This is fucking happening. How? Just… fucking how.”

  He looked up at the two men lost for words in their misery, then cast his eyes around the room. The cat-people serving the patients who were awake had stopped and listened to the exchange, worried looks on their faces.

  “I’ll do it,” Izzy said after a long moment of silence. He took in a big breath and blew it out between his teeth in a hiss. “I used a strength coin with a three on it. All it did was give me the worst migraine of my life and then it went away after a few minutes. I’ve never used one of the coins with a four or done any healing on other people, so you’ll have to walk me through it.” He took a look around the room one more time, “and tell me which of these poor people to use it on.”

  Titus’ eyes went wide and he stood up. He wobbled on his feet for a moment and stepped over to Izzy. Rajir was also giving Izzy a strange look. Titus pulled out a multi-shaded monocle and plopped it on his face like a Civil War general and held up a pure white crystal between Izzy and the monocle.

  “Are you kidding me?” Titus said, moving his head around to look through the different shades of the monocle. “What? You’re telling the truth, aren’t you. I can see the faintest signs of magic left from the coin, but I’m not getting anything directly from you.” He took off the monocle and put it away with the crystal, “Izzy, what core do you have?” he asked.

  “Ummm…” Izzy said. “Human?” he guessed.

  “No, no… Wait… what?” Titus said, getting frustrated. “No. Did you hit your head and forget how magic works?”

  Izzy had, in fact, hit his head multiple times today. Considering where he was standing he wasn’t going to complain. Also, he couldn’t have forgotten what he had never learned.

  “Let’s pretend like I have?” Izzy suggested, doing what he could to avoid the ridiculous nonsense that his real story would be.

  Dropping out of the sky when you went to bed a few hours ago on a trip to Bermuda didn’t seem like an easy conversation to have.

  Titus looked back at Rajir who was openly reassessing Izzy.

  “Who the fuck is this guy?” Titus said, exasperation and desperation thick in his tone. “I would obviously really appreciate some help, but this is getting weird.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Rajir said. He walked over and put a hand on Titus’ shoulder. “But do we have a better option? He was willing to hand over the coin for you to use. Now, he has offered to do it himself when he has nothing to gain. I say we let him give it a shot if he thinks he can handle it. You’ve already said that you don’t think you can.”

  Izzy watched as the two silently communicated by just looking at each other for a moment, strongly hoping that there wasn’t some telepathic thing happening of which he was unaware. They both seemed like pretty good guys, but Izzy was getting the distinct feeling he was going to be in the middle of some shit once they all got through the night alive.

  That is, if they got out alive.

  “Okay,” Titus finally said, putting away the monocle and crystal. “I’ll explain it the best I can. First off, that coin is a grade four. As the number suggests, and because of this kind of spell, you can pick four recipients of the effects. At even higher grades, that gets less stringent, but never mind that now.”

  He indicated the first four lower beds.

  “These four have the worst conditions and I can’t get ahead of their injuries,” he said, frustration leaking into his voice again. “I can just keep them alive and relatively comfortable at this point. Some of the others are in more pain than these four, but nobody is even close to being as critical.”

  He moved over to the cat-person in the first bed. Laying his hand on her forehead and closing his eyes.

  “Healing is about guiding the body and soul into their natural states,” Titus explained. “The body breaks and the soul hurts, but they both know what they are supposed to be. Healing, one of the magics most possible from an Earth core or shard, guides the body and soul back to their correct states. Using a small amount of magic, you can feel or imagine what the body and soul want to be like. Then with more you can guide them, using the magic of the coin, on their journey to return there.”

  He pulled his hand back and opened his eyes. “That initial feeling or painting in your mind needs to be held while the healing magic guides their body and soul. You can’t make their body or soul be anything they don’t naturally want to be.” He shared a look with Rajir. “You need to hold onto the feeling for as long as the magic flows, or at least as long as you can to help them along.

  “What Rajir said before about replacing their limbs with something else doesn’t make sense. However, since he hasn’t done anything like it and actually practices unrelated Earth magic, it could be that he would completely waste it.”

  Izzy let the words wash over him, trying to remove his initial thoughts from his awareness and take the man at his meaning. This man believed in souls and spoke of them as though they were a real, nearly tangible thing.

  “Focus,” Izzy thought, admonishing himself. “You’re trying to help heal people with magic, not debate religion. And don’t think too much about how ridiculous all of that was.”

  Thinking about what Titus had said a little more, something occurred to him. Some video games had this kind of thing to describe your character’s health or body’s condition. Sometimes it was even a little outline of a person and it would indicate injured or removed parts of the body. Depending on what the coin did when he touched these people, he might have a passable method for holding onto the information.

  “Okay,” he said, looking at Titus. “I think that makes about as much sense as it is going to. How do I get that initial picture of what needs fixing if I don’t have that earth… shard… thing.”

  Izzy was used to learning new things and struggling with some topics, but this hocus pocus, voodoo, spiritual stuff was particularly difficult for him. This was just so far beyond his normal vocabulary and purview that he was having a hard time even just asking questions.

  “Pick-sure?” Rajir and Titus said together.

  “Fuck,” Izzy thought. “It happened again. Why don’t they understand certain words?”

  “Uhhh… painting?” He replied, recovering quickly and using the word Titus had used.

  “Ah!” Titus said with recognition. “It will be the first thing you do after you activate the coin. Right after you crack it open, place a hand on each patient starting with Elana here. A little of the magic of the coin will be spent to help you with understanding the healing that needs doing. Once you have it, hold it in your mind and repeat it for the other three. Once you have it for all four…” He paused, looking a little worried. “Hold on for as long as you can. The rest of the spell coin magic will take over. I’m not going to lie to you Izzy, this is not going to be pleasant. If you thought the Grade 3 coin was bad…” he trailed off.

  “Sheesh, man,” Izzy said a little sarcastically. “You’ve made the sale, stop selling!”

  Titus chuckled uncomfortably. “We’ll be here to catch you when you pass out, because you will most definitely pass out. However long you can hang on, you’ll do more and more good here. Don’t get hung up on trying to do it perfectly, you probably won’t help regrow limbs. Just focus on going for as long as you can until you feel like they are no longer critical.”

  “Yeah yeah,” Izzy said, actually starting to worry about his decision to do this. “Let’s just do this thing.”

  Izzy was going to do something impossible, again. He had lost count of the impossible things he had done and seen in the last hour or so. At least this time he was a little more prepared. He steeled himself and took position next to Elana.

  “For science,” he whispered, and he clapped his hands together over the coin.