Aftermath
A wild shrieking wind caused shivers to travel down Shima’s spine as she added wood to the fire. The wind was reminiscent of the blizzard that had suddenly struck a week ago and had left just as suddenly taking the farmers and villagers’ hopes with it. Those heroes had been their only hope of lifting the siege of that evil warlord and they had been efficiently killed by that mercenary the warlord had hired. Anger born of frustration burned a path through her body as his image forced its way into her head. 
	That tailless white devil had stood with no emotion as he watched the Warlord and his men ransack the small village. “How could he do that?” Shima asked the empty room. “How could he just stand there?” Shima kicked a bucket in frustration, spilling water across the floor. It clanged into the doors of a closet causing them to fall open to reveal a shining set of armor. The sound of the closet opening caused Shima to stop in her tracks and hang her head, shame filling her. “How could I do nothing?” Tears welled up in her eyes as a pit of despair and self-loathing seemed to open beneath her and waited eagerly to swallow her up. 
	Hatred towards herself boiled within her as she stared at the armor and sword. Her voice came out barely a whisper as she slowly stepped towards the armor. “Why? Why can’t you bring yourself to do something? Why? The answer is simple.”  Shima’s voice went cold with hatred, “because you’re a coward.” Memories flashed across her mind’s eye as she stormed to the closet tears flowing freely. She grabbed the helmet and threw it across them hut banging into the wall. Her paws grabbed the torso armor and threw it to the ground with surprising strength. The greaves quickly followed the torso to the floor. As Shima grabbed hold of the short sword her mind saw blood flowing down the blade and onto her paws. She turned the blade around and pointed it towards her stomach. “You’re just a useless BITCH!” She screamed as she started the blade towards her unprotected flesh. A sudden movement in the mirror on one of the closet doors caught her eye. Instinct took over forcing her to jump to her left, bringing the sword to bear on the intruder. “Who are y...” Shima was caught up short as her mind recognized the cloaked figure with the strange feline/canine face, whose eyes were so dark blue with yellow flecks throughout they could be mistook for a midnight sky surrounded by blood. Fear shot like lighting through Shima’s body forcing her to use all her willpower to keep the sword from shaking. 
“First of all,” Shima felt her throat tighten as she watched the mercenary barely shift his weight, his eyes tense, “I would like to know if you plan on using that.”  He nodded towards the short sword in her hand, his voice colder than ice. 
“Wha-“ Shima looked to the sword in her right hand. “NO! No. No. No. I don’t plan on using this.” She said as she dropped it to the floor. Relief flowed through her as the mercenary effortlessly shifted back to a non-threatening posture. She was amazed at the sudden release of tension from the atmosphere. If she didn’t instinctually know what to look for she would have never noticed the slight changes he went through. “Why are you here?” 
	Shima swallowed loudly as she saw the mercenary smirk. “I’m here to collect a payment.” His smooth velvet like voice flowed across her like a river flowing around a rock causing her heart to skip a beat. 
Shima’s voice was shaking as she asked “P-P-Payment? *gulp* What do you mean?” Confusion started warring with fear as the mercenary lifted an odd colored satchel from his should and threw it to Shima’s feet. Shima bent down and opened the satchel “Shit!” She yelled as her eyes made contact with the dead eyes of the Warlord causing her to fall on her rump. 
Shima looked up questioningly at the mercenary whose smirk had expanded ever so slightly and contained the idea of mirth. “We…” his sentence was cut off by a sudden burst of coughing. The mercenary looked into his hand and surprised Shima by smiling as he said “a bit of a fight.” 
	Shima gasped as the mercenary collapsed to floor his mouth and hand covered in blood. She stood frozen with indecision as a small but steady stream of blood flowed from the mercenary’s mouth. Again, the memories of her past assaulted her. Visions of blood and broken bodies clogging the trails in between giant tree trunks filled her sight. Her hands, arms, and chest were covered with blood as she ran from one body to the next. She was becoming frantic as she yelled, “Ananias! Ananias where are you?!” She kept repeating that one statement wanting to hear his warm rich voice to respond. Shima tripped a fell as something grabbed hold of her ankle. She turned and looked back to see a mouse grasping her ankle. “H-Help. Me.” He gasped out; blood accompanied the words as the eyes slowly glazed over. Shima screamed.
	The loud thud of a the warlord’s head hitting the floor ripped Shima away from her hell and back into reality to see a male lying on her. Shima looked outside and saw the sun disappear beneath the horizon and she couldn’t help but wonder how long she had been holding that head reliving her past while this mercenary was in a heap upon her floor. She kicked the severed head aside and ran to the mercenary. Shima let go of herself and allowed her instinct learned from years of hard training and experience take over. All of her previous uncertainty and anxiety were gone as she deftly removed the surprisingly heavy cloak from the mercenary and rolled the body over. She put her ear to his mouth and felt an extremely faint wind blow across in an almost sensual manner indicating that the male was still alive if barely. 
	Shima lifted the mercenary’s torso off the ground and removed the sword and sheath from his back, setting it aside. She paused to examine his strange torso armor, trying to see if there was a quick way to remove it or open the front. Shima groaned as she saw that no such mechanism existed with this piece of armor. She positioned his arms so that they were straight up from his body. She dug her hands underneath the tight fitting armor, lifted, and pulled back. The armor slid from his body quickly and freely, almost as if it knew what was going on and wanted to help. Shima set the armor alongside the sword and turned back to her patient. Shima went to her knees to the mercenary’s left. She overlapped her hands over his heart and closed her eyes, focusing on the release of her energy and letting it flow into his heart. She lost all sense of the surrounding environment and was suddenly within the mercenary’s heart. A small part of her energy flowed with the blood to do reconnaissance while the rest stayed at the heart and focused on keeping it beating. 
	The energy began to trickle back in with information about where and what the internal injuries were. “Head and neck fine, left lung punctured, ribs nine and ten broken, liver okay, stomach and intestines okay, pancreas good, extremely small tear in left kidney, right kidney fine, arms and legs fine. Let’s go to work.” Shima gathered a large amount of her energy and made it explode out from her location to the mercenary’s bone marrow so as to accelerate the production of blood. Next she left a small amount at the heart to make sure it kept beating as she left with the blood and headed to his left kidney. When she reached the kidney she moved right to wear the tear was and immediately went to work repairing it. Shima shoved energy into the cells to promote regeneration so as to seal the tear and repair the tiny blood vessels inside. The process was long and tiring. Even though it was a small tear it had to be repaired evenly or else it would rip open again later when a small amount of force was applied. To do this Shima had to focus completely upon spreading her energy out evenly along the tear, while using a small amount to keep his blood from flowing out. 
	As the last cell went into place and formed a seal Shima did a quick inspection of her work to ensure structural integrity before she went to address his ribs and lungs. As she approached the problem area Shima took stock of how much energy she had left. Her levels were lower then what they would have been if she were still in the habit of doing this kind of work. This translated into a tiny bit of worry in her mind that she may run out. Shima quickly squashed the little voice of doubt as she got to the puncture in the lung with a piece of number nine rib stuck inside. What she saw was good and bad. The good thing was that the section of rib that had made the puncture was also acting as a stopper against an incoming flow of blood. The bad was that as soon as one removes a stopper from a sink full of water the water has a tendency to flow through the hole. Shima focused her energy around the rib and the hole in the lung. The energy around the hole formed a sort of dam to keep the blood at bay when the rib was removed. 
	“Gently…Gently.” Shima had to focus almost completely on removing the rib so as to not increase the damage already done. The rib finally came free with, to her, an audible pop. Shima carefully moved it out of the way and left enough energy surrounding the rib so that it wouldn’t go anywhere while focused on repairing the lung. Again, she focused her energy into her hands and forced it into the cells of the lung tissue. The hole in the lung was much bigger than the tiny tear in the kidney. Shima could start to feel fatigue begin to work its way into her mind as the hole approached half way done. “I am so out of shape.” She thought to herself as she refocused on the work at hand.
	With a sigh of relief the last cell went into place sealing the lung. Shima went to work gathering up the errant blood and putting it back inside the blood vessels and then resealing them. Shima then moved to where the ribs fractured bringing that errant piece with her. Shima groaned as she got to the location of the fractures. She has always hated bone breaks because it’s like doing a puzzle and sometimes puzzle pieces go missing. This time however, except for the piece from the lung, the two ribs appeared to have broken clean. Shima moved to rib nine and sent her energy out to gather up the broken part and move it to where the break occurred. She carefully moved the two pieces so as to match up with the piece that was still in place. 
	Since the bone had separated from each other Shima was able to form a band of energy around the fracture. This technique increases the efficiency of the regeneration technique. It does this by decreasing the amount of energy bled off by Shima having to focus on evenly spreading out the energy. As the rib came together and solidified itself, Shima went along the rib and repaired the intercostals before moving on to her final project. She repeated the process with rib ten and corresponding intercostals before moving on to final inspection. Shima started at the kidney, where she applied a small amount of the energy she had left to probe for any weakness in the repairs. She then repeated the process at the lung and the ribs. Seeing that everything was up to par she went back to the heart. She checked his blood levels to find them satisfactory, removed the little energy left and extricated herself. 
	Shima’s eyes shot open to see nothing but darkness as the sun had gone down and her fire had burned itself down to coals. The wind was still whistling away outside reminding her of the cold. “I am so out of shape.” She said to herself as she had to work to get herself back up. Her entire body was tired and her muscles ached and complained as she set to work relighting the fire. As the kindling caught and the warmth of the fire began to fight back the ever persistent cold Shima turned back to the mercenary. A groan escaped her lips as she bent to pick up the mercenary. Her breath left her quickly as she carried him to her bed and despite her best efforts ended up dropping him onto the soft mattress. 
	For the first time since she had taken off his torso armor Shima actually looked at the bare chest of the mercenary. The fire light danced that can only be described as mesmerizing across his white fur and the ragged looking scars resembling a road map. Shima had to sit down on the side of the bed as she attempted to follow all the trails. “Wow.” Was her last thought as fatigue finally overtook her and she passed out.
***
	“Interesting.” Thought Gade as he woke up feeling comforting warmth snuggled against his chest. As he moved to a more comfortable his mind made the connection. “Wait a tic. My armor isn’t warm…” His eyes shot open looking down his body to find the beautiful suicidal wolf from yesterday sleeping soundly and snuggled up against him for warmth. Gade smirked as he studied the peacefulness that was upon her face now. There’s just something about watching a lady when they’re in a peaceful sleep.  It was then he noticed the sharp cold of the room. 
	Gade gently moved himself from underneath the sleeping beauty being sure to not wake her up. He moved towards the door and began a series of stretching exercises. During these exercises he noticed that he was all healed up, besides the soreness around his left side. Gade saw the pile of his stuff lying next to a wall near the door. As he went to put everything back into place he tried to figure out what exactly happened yesterday. 
	He remembered entering the small hut and seeing a wolf standing in front of a closet. She flowed like water as she turned and faced him. For one fleeting moment her body had been so full of confidence and danger that Gade had been worried he had a fight on his hands. Then they had made eye contact and all of her confidence disappeared as if it had all been an illusion. Gade pulled on his torso armor and began checking his throwing knives. Then, he had told her he was looking for payment and tossed her the head. He turned and saw the, now frozen, severed head of the warlord lying next to the closet. He grinned when he remembered the look on her face when she saw what had been inside the bag. After that his memory became fuzzy, he remembered coughing up blood and losing a fight to stay on his feet. Gade had known that his left lung had been punctured but, that generally isn’t enough to cause one to pass out. “Must have had some internal bleeding somewhere, but if that was true, then I should be dead.” Gade threw on his cloak and put the hood up and as he opened the door to leave he paused. Turning back to the closet and the severed head he looked at the ground next to the head. He saw white armor glinting in the early morning sun. 
Gade walked over to the armor and noticed that it was a torso piece and a set of greaves on a rack. He carefully picked up the armor and set it back upright. He lifted the torso piece from the stand and examined it under a critical eye. He noticed that it was a little bit heavier then he first expected yet still fairly light for armor. The armor was of a clamshell design where the wearer slipped it over their head and then tightened the sides. It was a simple design that easily protected the chest and back of the user while providing partial protection to their lower sides. The armor was made of a metal that Gade had never encountered before. He surmised that the metal had to be fairly dense as the actual thickness to the armor was only about half that of one of the scales on his armor. He set the torso piece on the table moved to the greaves. The greaves were of the same material as the torso and were set in flexible overlapping bands. These looked as if they were designed for a scout as they only went down to just above the knee.
Gade slipped the greaves and torso piece back onto the stand and noticed that a helmet seemed to be missing. He turned around and looked at the wall opposite himself and then down at the floor. He noticed a white helmet lying at the base of the wall. As he walked over to pick it up he noticed a nasty looking gouge in the wall. Upon picking up the helmet Gade saw the reason why. The helmet had two small pointy shapes that looked vaguely like ears with openings towards the front. There was a small length of metal down the back that was designed to help protect the wearer’s neck. A small piece came down the middle of the front to cover the area between the eyes. Gade was amazed that he couldn’t find any seems on the helmet. This told him that the helmet was made entirely out of a single piece of material. He brought it over and set it on the rack to complete set. As Gade moved the rack to stand next to the head of the bead he noticed the dropped short sword on the floor. His eyes were alight with excitement as he picked up the sword and examined it. It was a double edge blade with a blood grove down the middle. The blade appeared to be made of the same material as the armor giving off a bright white shine when tilted into the sun. He set the blade to eye level and studied the edge. He withdrew his own sword and set it on top of the short sword to compare the edges. As Gade came to the conclusion that the short sword was at least as sharp as his shashka he noticed an intricate gold pattern inlaid in the blade. The rivers of gold flowed throughout the blade forming many different symbols that held no meaning for the mercenary. Gade followed the gold rivers into a contrasting black handle and hand guard leaving more symbols behind them as they joined at the bottom of the handle. The sword was not a weapon of war, but a piece of art. Gade set the sword against the wall and moved to the sleeping lady. He covered her with a sheet and moved for the door. As he left he turned and whispered “Who are you?”