After setting Yun down on the slate, Laurence pulled five boxes from his bag,as well as a pestle and mortar, a large erlenmeyer flask filled with slightly salted water, a small knife, and a series of glass tubes that were propped up on a stand. He opened up the boxes, one by one and looked at the herbs in front of him. His first two boxes contained perfectly preserved stems, leaves and roots of the first genesis mixture. There were a variety of ways to make the Malmas Tincture, the first mixture, but it usually required pairs of weaker herbs. These herbs were generally quite safe because other than the basic medical properties they held, they aided in healing by galvanising the mana of the world around them and drawing it in, slowly and safely restoring the body while not causing more problems from overdrawing mana from the body. For these reasons, any plant that can become a Malmas Tincture variant could be used as an emulsifier, a binding agent, for several plants while only slightly reducing medicinal properties within the more toxic ingredients, and could be considered an earthen tier medicine.
Unfortunately, because of the nature of the mana on the eleventh floor, they would be rendered useless other than with reference to their natural capabilities and mixing properties. Their form of healing through mana was rendered completely worthless.
The third and fourth boxes were filled with rarer saint medicinal plants. They generally had similar natural capabilities to the earthen tier medicines, but were much more toxic than their earthen counterparts. They also drew from within and without, using a combination of mana from the world and from within the body to use their greatest healing capabilities, however this could cause the body to overdraw on it own mana if the medicant, the healer, was not careful and the patient could end up in a coma or much worse.
Laurence looked at the fifth box before shutting it and putting it back into the bag. “I don't need that just yet,” he muttered to no one in particular before taking out a variety of Earthen medicinal plants and began pulping them. He filled three vials with a combination of pulps and the water from the odd flask, stoppering them and mixing them and watching as the fluids became red, blue and green. He looked at the fluids before closing the first box, tapping its side twice and reopening it. Inside the box was now two large seeds that looked like a black and white pair of chilli peppers respectively. An odd aura poured out of the box, combining a feeling of purity and life with a thick stench of death and decay.
At the smell of decay that sprung from the box, almost everyone began gagging and looked towards Laurence. Jim strode over and looked at the contents of the box, before pointing at the two seeds and saying “What the hell are those things? One is making me salivate and the other is making me gag”.
“These are the two most potent and valuable earthen herbs. The Dead Man’s Tongue, and the Angelic Deception are two pivotal plants that make the basis for any true life or death elixir. One is used for restoring life to damaged tissue and the other is purely for degrading and removing bad cells”. Laurence stopped talking to pull a set of tongs out of his bag and then carefully grabbed the lustrous, fleshy, white seed. He then cut the tip off and returned the seed to the box as carefully as he had removed it before pulping it, emptying and diluting it and then thoroughly washing out the mortar bowl. He even went as far as getting a small salamandrite stone out of his bag to cleanse the bowl with flame before continuing.
“I thought that was the life one, why are you being so careful with it? It smells so good!” Jim said, reaching out towards the box.
Laurence slapped his hand away almost immediately. “There's a reason why it's called Angelic Deception. It's the fruit of a man eating plant, one that specifically grew to kill Saints. It lures them in with a sweet scent and then when they take a bite of it, the poison within paralyses them and stops the brain from working, killing the victim. The poison then gets to work making the flesh soft enough for the tree the fruit comes from to swallow with its tentacle-like roots. It's pretty interesting really, but not as interesting to watch. The decaying process takes around three days, which is way too long to watch a corpse for”. Unlike how Laurence had treated the first seed, he grabbed the black, withered fruit and bit the tip off. He moaned happily before putting the fruit down and cutting a large chunk out of.
“Dead Man’s Tongue, on the other hand, is honestly one of the most delicious fruits I have ever come across, even if it does smell like arse. It also rejuvenates your skin and makes you feel calm. It's so good that it was almost forced out of existence. It only survived by developing that awful stench that would even put off carrion, so nothing in its right mind would eat it. I assume such was the case for the man who found out about it”.
Jim frowned before taking a step backwards and sighing. “This is too weird. I will just let you do what you need to”.
“It's probably best if you do,” Laurence replied before continuing to pull out herbs and mix them with the five vials, now red, green, blue, white and black. As he continued to work uninterrupted, Cleo and Winoa looked at each other with wide eyes. He was living up to his family name, even through the oddity that was the little hidey-hole they were in and the fact that he practiced the Book of Creation, the clanless book. “Red, for coagulation, Aguara Leaf base to mute the effect of the Kingsbane”. He picked up the red vial, slipped in two thin seed pods and shook the tube, watching it until it began to glow. “Blue, for blood production, Iconis Rose and Alasa pulp working together... And black, Dead Man’s Tongue working with a Starflower for extreme rapid healing”. Laurence clapped his hands together, grabbed the three tubes and shook them until the herbal essence had been thoroughly diffused within the fluids. Retrieving a sieve from his bag, he proceeded to drain all the fluids through it into the empty vials, leaving him with four tubes of coloured liquid and one of watery paste.
“Time to begin,” he said, picking up the knife by his side and making a simple incision across the bruised area of Yun’s chest. Blood sprayed out as the pressure from the fluid that had been building up since Yun was injured had finally released itself. There were three shards of bone going into his liver, a large vein, and his intestine. Somehow, the bone that bisected his vein had managed to jam into the ribcage and get stuck while also stoppering the blood from leaking out of his chest. It was the only reason why he was still alive.
Laurence swore. “I didn't think it would be this bad... But I can fix this”. He pulled out a brush, one made by Yun for Laurence to use when applying potions non-orally. It had a super-fine nib made from the hair of a Saint level Komodo Snake, a body made from Saint tier Mother Onyx, and clasps made of softer Memory Iron. It was a truly valuable item, and was the product of rewards from several jobs that had gone smoothly back in Spirit. Yun had spent several days making it, making sure it held fluid as long as there were three fingers touching it, two fingers would allow for the release of fluid and one finger would cleanse the brush of any fluid at all. It was both excellent for healing and for painting, although Laurence rarely did the second.
Dipping the brush into the red liquid, Laurence began tracing any points of the body leaking blood, letting it clot. He knew that the clotting would generally not be a good thing, but in the right places it would stop Yun from bleeding out while Laurence removed the bones in his organs. He traced over the incision, then over the large vein that had been severed, then over both other major injury points. The blood became solid almost immediately, letting Laurence pull the bones out of Yun. They had snapped off, and would need to be affixed back in place, but that would have to be done last. Before that, Laurence had to cleanse his brush and begin working with the black fluid.
He dipped the brush into the black tube as lightly as possible before putting no more than a droplet on the punctured intestine, making sure to spread it evenly across the wound. Once he finished he watched as the hole itself closed up, leaving nothing but a thin white line on where the intestine had torn before. Next, he did the same thing to the liver, but took a small amount of the Dead Man’s Tongue and pulped it, placing it inside the hole that the bone had made before covering it with the black fluid. As the fluid drained into the organ, the pulp wriggled and churned, meshing with the body, and restoring the liver to its peak state, albeit slightly off coloured.
Finally, Laurence turned to the prominent vein that had been hemorrhaging blood. He found both ends of it and held them together, making sure that he did not damage or deform either one. He knew that they would bounce back and reform quickly, but if he warped the shape of the vein it would make aligning them properly a pain. He held the two tiny tubes close with one hand and knocked off the built up clotted blood that had formed over the wound with the brush before flipping it round, dipping it in the black fluid and drawing a quick, precise line over the area connecting the two parts of the vein. Like the intestine, in mere moments the vein was back in one piece. Laurence sighed, and relaxed slightly. The most dangerous part of the surgery was done.
“Winoa, could you come over here and pull the excess blood out of Yun’s body with a funnel of wind? I can't leave that in there or it might cause more trouble,” he said, taking a moment to clean the brush and wipe off the sweat that had accumulated all over him while he had been working. He had only been in surgery for five minutes, but the focus of it made Laurence feel like he had been running a marathon for hours.
“Of course,” Winoa replied, quickly summoning a jet of air that allowed the excess blood flowing about in Yun’s chest cavity to leave. She kept it floating just in case Laurence needed it, but he ignored it and went back to work. There were three bones that had split off from the body, as well as seventeen fractures over Yun’s ribs. Most would take a few weeks to heal without mana, but Laurence did not have that long. He grabbed his brush and once more went to work with his black fluid, carefully tracing breaks and realigning offset bones until all that was left were the three chunks and to close the body up.
Taking the longest bone, he set it in place and immediately traced a line with the brush over the break. He held it in place until it set and then immediately went to work on the next bone. This was harder as a chunk had been broken out of the bottom. He grabbed a piece of the pulp he had used to fill Yun’s liver earlier on and placed it where the bone used to be, before sealing up the other side with a quick swipe of the nib of his healing brush. All that was left was the smallest bone.
The last bone was the hardest, unlike the other two there was no simple way to hold it in place or to fill up the gap that was causing the issue. The bone had splintered like a flower blooming and had left one end of the rib as sharp as a knife while the other was uncomfortably wide. There was no easy way for Laurence to fix this, but after a moment of thought he came to a conclusion. Using his truesight he measured the lengths of the opposing rib and measured the total length of the bone plus the shard. Comparing the two he worked out he would need to use about a fifth of his only Dead Man’s Tongue to repair it, which gave him pause but Yun’s life was more valuable. He pulped the herb so it wa ready to be affixed to the bone and then grabbed his knife. Before he could fix the bone he had to deal with the calcium flower that had been created during the accident.
He grabbed his knife once more and quickly severed the protrusions of bone from Yun’s rib before collecting them up and placing them to the side. He attached the pulp ‘bone’ and began aligning the real bone into place. The moment he felt that the measurements were equal to the other side he let go and watched as the pulp began writhing and morphing into bone. After a minute, the bone set and Laurence began pulling Yun’s chest closed. Dipping the brush into the healing fluid once more, he ran a line up Yun’s chest and watched as the skin knitted back together, leaving an off colour line on Yun’s already pale skin.
As the wound finished closing, Laurence sat down in a heap and breathed out. The entire procedure had taken twenty minutes, but they were the longest 20 minutes he had ever experienced. Yun was simply too important to Laurence’s plans for him to die in some no name mound on the eleventh floor, so he had put his all into healing his brother. He lay down and let the chatter of the others wash over him as he recuperated from the immense mental drain he ha just experienced.
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