The Arena's Healer

Being dragged by Blackheart through more twists and turns inside the arena brings them to the open pit, filled with dirt and sand flooring. The arena was filled with people surrounding four roped-off areas where grunts or yelps of pain accompanied weapons clanging.

These areas are surrounded by all manner of warriors cheering them on and placing bets on the winners of the fights.

In the middle of these fighting places was a young man sitting at a wooden table that had been brought out to deal with the warriors in a sort of registration process for all these warriors, trying to secure themselves a spot in the arena to gain glory and money.

"Jacob, great news! We finally got ourselves a healer!" Sir Blackheart shouts to the young man sitting at the desk with his voice booming over the clamor of the arena

"That's great news, Sir. Now we have everything necessary to open up the arena in the coming days," The man named Jacob says as he stands up and walks over.

"Jacob Ringly, nice to meet you," The young man says while extending his hand to the Doctor.

Jacob seemed to be a nice enough young man as he wore some nicer clothing with decent looks, which made the Doctor think he was from a well-off family. However, as he shook the man's hands, he felt callouses on the man's hands, not typically seen on the hands of someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

"Nice to meet you. The name is-"

"AUGH!!!"

The Doctor's introduction gets cut off by the blood-curdling scream from one of the roped-off areas.

Without anyone realizing it, the Doctor was already there checking on what had happened as if he were a phantom that manifested out of nowhere.

Looking at the situation, the Doctor sees that a fighter was currently lying on the ground while he was clutching at a stump where his hand should be while blood was splurting out.

"Well, this is an easy fix," The Doctor says while he moves to the Fighter's side and looks closely at his condition.

The Fighter was writhing in pain as he clutched his stump, but suddenly, he felt a strong pair of hands grab his stump and prevent him from writhing around. The Doctor then grabs his bag and begins to proceed with the procedure by identifying where the hand got severed.

Thankfully it was along the forearm, which would be easier to recover than the joint since the joint had more complex and delicate parts, whereas all the forearm had was just flesh, muscle, and bone, which could heal on their own.

"AUGH!"

The Fighter is still crying out in pain, which will be annoying and distracting in reattaching his hand, so the Doctor inspects the weapon he had used for the fight.

It was a simple blunt-ended short sword meant for training, sparing, and not to kill or harm extensive damage to a person. However, the Doctor mainly grabbed the weapon to view the handle and see how big it was.

Seeing it suffice, the Doctor shoved the grip horizontally into the Fighter's mouth.

"Bite down and shut up."

The Fighter says nothing more but bites down on the sword's grip before the Doctor begins to work.

He grabs the severed hand off the ground, washes off the blood and sand from the exposed flesh, and applies some paste to prevent infections while also doing the same to the stump on the Fighter's arm.

Muffled winces of pain come from applying the paste on the stump, but it was meant to hurt, so the Doctor leaves it to be as he lays a piece of cloth on the sandy arena floor, where he begins taking out some items to complete the procedure.

A needle and thread, bandages, more water, clean cloths, and more ointment are placed on the cloth.

Constantly cleaning the man's stump of blood was a hassle since there was so much blood in a person's body, but then again, looking at the Fighter and seeing that he was a half-giant meant that he would not be dying anytime soon.

However, as a result, the Fighter's skin would be naturally thicker than a human's, so the Doctor had to pull out a different, bigger, and higher quality needle even to have a chance of puncturing the skin.

With that, the Doctor sets to work cleaning the wound while simultaneously reattaching the hand to the stump, which takes a few minutes.

Once reattached, the Doctor begins to apply more of the ointment to the area where the hand was reattached before wrapping it up in bandages.

Once done, the Doctor takes the time to wrap the man's hand into a sling around his body using more bandages before taking out a vial from his bag, which he pours the contents into the mouth of the Fighter after removing the grip of the sword from his mouth.

The man's expression instantly becomes almost euphoric as the contents of the vial get drunk by the Fighter.

Once done emptying the vial's contents, the Doctor begins packing up his gear after wiping clean his tools and hands while seeing that his clothes had gotten blood on them.

"Fuck I just washed these," The Doctor says while packing everything up and standing up.

Looking around, the Doctor sees that the arena is quiet, with everyone currently fixated on the Doctor. Since he reacted so quickly to everything, he did not even take longer than fifteen minutes to do everything.

"Hahaha!!! That lucky bastard should pray to the gods for you being here today of all days, Doctor," Blackheart says as he enters the area while looking at the Fighter, who is smiling like a dumbass as if nothing in the world mattered.

"What did you give him to act like that, though?" He asks

"Simply a mixed concentrate of opium and devils whisper to numb the pain," The Doctor says while looking around the area

"Well... then I guess doctor's orders then..." Blackheart says as he knows full well the effects of those two drugs

"Alright, then, who did this?" Blackheart asks everyone gathered to find the culprit behind this matter

"Are you alright?" The Doctor asks, causing Blackheart to turn and see that the Doctor is currently kneeling and talking to another fighter who is currently sitting on the ground

They were currently clutching at their head as if they had a headache. However, they were mumbling to themselves with words like 'It's not my fault' and 'What have I done' escaping their mouth.

The Doctor looks over them and sees that they seem to be in shock at this, and honestly, the Doctor is a bit as well, seeing as this Fighter was of the Avarian race.

[Gonna comment the picture of them]

The Fighter was a she, and currently, she was scared out of her mind and needed to get out of her thoughts, and what better way than-

'Smack!'

Slapping some sense into them.

"Alright, now look at me," The Doctor says while forcing her to look at him.

"Wha-"

"Listen here, it's alright, okay. You did nothing wrong accidents happen, alright," The Doctor says, trying his best to comfort the Fighter.

Silence from her before she starts bawling her eyes out and pulls the Doctor into a hug which he allows since he knows she needs it now.

She cries into the Doctor's shoulder while hugging him tightly. At the same time, the rest of the fighters feel awkward about the situation since they are primarily seasoned fighters who have dealt with deadly situations before. It is painfully evident that the girl hugging the Doctor had little to no experience in this field.

Eventually, the Avarian releases the hug and, with a sniffle, wipes her beak while suddenly noticing the number of people around them.

She gets embarrassed and blushes like crazy at how weak she probably looks right now in this situation.

The Doctor stands up and looks at everyone present before sighing to himself and looking at Blackheart.

Blackheart looks at the Doctor and motions him to stand to the side while he disperses the crowd to continue what they were doing and to have some people drag the half-giant Fighter out of the arena.

"That was some mighty fine work back there, Doctor. I like you more and more," Blackheart says as they stand off, away from everyone else.

"Well, I did what I could, so at least now he will have his hand; however, it will probably not be as it was before," The Doctor says while looking out at the matches in the areas within the arena.

"Well, now then... there seems to be something you want to ask me?" Blackheart asks

"..."

Silence hangs between them before the Doctor sighs and looks at Blackheart.

"I think there is something that should be done for those who are less experienced," The Doctor says

"Go ahead. I'm all ears."

"How about we split the fights between life-and-death matches and casual fights for inexperienced fighters?"

*Sigh* "We considered such an option. The mayor dislikes blood and wants something less... gruesome than fights to the death. However, after considering everything, we realized that such a thing would not bring in enough money to cover the costs of setting up..." Blackheart explains

"Well, what if I know of a way that may appeal to the people?" The Doctor asks, which catches blackhearts attention

The Doctor leans over and whispers into Blackheart's ear before pulling back. Blackheart has a serious, thoughtful expression as he considers the Doctor's proposition.

"That... might work in drawing in people to watch the fights," Blackheart says before looking out onto the arena where the fighters entertained themselves with their matches.

"Well, we might as well give it a try. There is no harm in that," Blackheart says while looking over to the Doctor.

"Alright, Doctor, we will test out this method of yours once I get the approval from the mayor, until then just get the necessary supplies you will need for the opening fights of the arena in the next few days as we plan to be very busy during the opening week," Blackheart says while walking off to help Jacob handle the paperwork of the Fighter's applications.

With that, the Doctor sighs to himself before looking down at his clothing to see that he needs to rewash them of the blood and snot he received in the line of duty.

"U-um excuse me?" A voice calls out, drawing the Doctor's attention

The Avarian from before was shyly looking at the Doctor and fidgeting around.

"Glad to see you are alright, miss?"

"Lilian, I just wanted to thank you for saving that man's hand. It was an accident; I didn't mean to do that to him. I hope I don't get arrested..." Lilian says with the last bit mumbled but still audible to the Doctor

"Hahaha!!!" The Doctor starts laughing, startling Lilian, who is caught off guard before blushing like crazy, thinking that she is being made fun of

"Listen here, Lilian, oh... You did nothing wrong, and if I can guess based on the results of your little fight, I would have to say that you impressed everyone here with that strength of yours. Cutting the hand off a half-giant like that is practically impossible with any blunted weapon if anything, you made yourself look better here amongst the fighters," The Doctor explains.

"Eh? Y-yeah, I just uh... never expected that to happen, so I just thought I would be punished..." Lilian says while her wings go behind her back, and she starts to get nervous

The Doctor, however, smirks before he leans toward Lilian moving his mouth by her face, and whispers to her.

"You might want to clean that talon of yours of the blood and hope no one paid too much attention to how the half-giant lost his hand, alright?" The Doctor says before pulling back, and Lilan looks pale as she realizes that she has been found out

In reality, she had 'accidentally' cut off the half-giant hand after he claimed he would pin her down and rape her on the spot, which she was, of course, not going to take. So she showed off her talons to him while scarring him by inflicting damage to his arm, but instead, she underestimated how sharp her talons were and did a clean cut with one of them.

With a slight smirk, the Doctor enters the arena to find his workplace so he can start preparing everything for the upcoming opening week, where there will be fights every day for seven days.

'Picking to work at this place was a good choice,' The Doctor thinks as he leaves the arena pits.