Chapter 2: Fox Ears

The United Kingdoms of Carthogary-et-Hutum always sent an emissary at the end of each year to confirm whether the limited slots of medic were put to good use. They weren't often a bother to Jethro. In fact, the only times they were outright hostile was during his first years when he kept misplacing his licence. It almost became an affair that needed the king's involvement. The king was a busy man. Getting to his throne meant one of two things; you were either promoted or slain for treason. Surprisingly, this also applied to the king's children. Jethro had once heard about a prince who was late to several gatherings and had his head on the chopping block. At least there was equality of some sort.

This time around, rumours spread that the emissary would be a lady, the fifth to be knighted by the current king. Jethro was not particularly excited about so many willing to participate in war, men or women. That meant more campaigns, more fighting and crucially, more stitches and mana manipulation. The job was good. It paid well. But it was more fun when he had nothing else to do but sit around and remember about a world he no longer had access to.

"We need a medic!" A stretcher formed from blue mana burst through his tiny office, forcing him to jump in surprise, lift his arm to the air and mutter a phrase he could now do half asleep.

"Lord of the broken, master of health, I seek power now. Summon: Gates of Expansion!"

The walls of his office slowly tore off and whirled around as tiles stacked across the floor neatly on all four sides. A bright light shone and it was done. The office had now turned into a massive operating room.

"What seems to be the problem?"

It was at this moment that Jethro realised who his guests were. They were half human but their ears betrayed them. Wood elves. The types to sing songs that would create illusions for those that travelled the enchanted forests. Jethro took a moment to feel the mana cost. He had about five minutes until he could use mana again. He could not afford to be anything but courteous. They must have noticed his apprehension because one of them flexed his fingers and a small sword appeared before him. The sword was edged on Jethro's throat.

"All tu sayin. [We come in peace.] Ween kno weer not yoo locool geh-ss bah yoo fin we doo eh-nee-thee to geh aau of thees prob. So, feh-ex em, plees. [We know we're not your local guests but you'll find we (will]) do anything to get out of this problem. So fix him, please].

"One of you spoke to me without your woodland accent. I'm sorry to be blunt but I'm only going to cooperate with them. The last thing I want to do is translate and do my job at the same time."

The sword was withdrawn.

"Goo one. Not scaar af maa shool [Good one. Not scared of my sword (shool in Old Woodland Tongue).]"

A young elf appeared and walked towards Jethro. Jethro summoned a shield hidden in one of his ballpoint pens and extracted it. The elf immediately understood and took a step back. The one who was on a stretcher began to convulse and Jethro stared at the time. Two minutes left. He had to do this the traditional way. He closed his eyes and tried to remember if there were any hidden potions around his office. The kingdom always gave medics a short supply of everything so Jethro had to find other ways of getting cheaper supplies from local breweries. The good stuff was for those who were rich and government officials. Jethro was hesitant to give the elf even the standard fare but he decided to make an exception today. There had to be one on the new shelves he summoned. He was right. One appeared on his arm as soon as he thought about it. It was moments like this that he was happy about the passive ability medics had.

Normally, when one used mana for anything, there was a natural cost. For medics, it was a timer cooldown on everything but one passive ability; short distance summon. The Lord of Healing, Hypocreta, allowed for anything useful to the work within one metre to be summoned without cost that the medic may have freedom to save a life. This was cool when he had to do a surgery or two. Not so much when he couldn't summon a bag of chips. Then again, if he was hungry one time, and thus food was necessary to the medics work, would that mean…

"Aargh!"

No time to find out. The MP potion was forced on the elf's mouth. This was to prevent the patient from trying to spit it out while it was still active. MP potions were useful but some of the ingredients they lost over time to become accessible made it so bitter that it was soon only something a medic could prescribe. Slowly, the patient relaxed as the healing process began.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, get out. All of you."

"Yoo fee heem tha poh-shoon. Shoo bee get-en beh-eh. [You fed him the potion. He should be getting better.]"

"Potions don't save lives, they only heal small unnoticeable wounds. That leaves the larger ones to be handled next-"

The sword was back.

"Yoo doh enaaf. [You've done enough.]"

"Don't insult my line of work."

Jethro summoned an empty flask and quickly threw it at the elf. The flask connected with his face, shattering upon impact and sending the elf and his sword to the ground.

"Unless the rest of you want to test my patience too, get out."

Only the young elf and the patient were left. That was a lucky call. Jethro could count the number of times that type of summon wouldn't count to Hypocreta. Maybe the god didn't like wood elves either. He lifted his hand towards the patient.

"Stasis: Anaesthesia."

A calm humming sound was heard as a barely visible bubble encapsulated the patient. Stasis was a family of spells that held someone frozen in time, creating an unchanging anomaly that allowed medics to figure out what went wrong. The Anesthesia spell specifically allowed the patient to be operated on, provided that at the end of each successful or failed approach, the body would return back to where it was and only after the spell was worn out could true operation be done. Mana costs were always the same amount of time the stasis would be in effect. In this case, Jethro had only one hour to figure things out, maybe less depending on when the wood elf would wake up. He took a deep breath and began to dig in.

He summoned a surgical knife on one hand and a surgical glove on another. Since he couldn't use mana anymore, he had to take a guess where the problem would be. He closed his eyes and tried to remember every event leading up to this moment. When the patient convulsed earlier, the first thing they reached out for was their stomach. Wood elves were intolerant to a lot of things so most likely, the elf ate something he was allergic to. His knife ran through the tough skin and it unravelled just enough for him to see slight decay in the walls of the colon. Jethro sighed.

"Tree roots…or barks, depending on the age of the tree."

Of all of the things that could be dangerous to wood elves, it would have been ironic that trees were the most dangerous things to the elves. But in reality, they were named so because they loved taking care of trees and a great part of why that was was their inability to consume them. Trees became sacred to the wood elves and this loyalty has been held steadfastly from the golden age. Someone had to have used a solution of tree roots to poison the elf. Jethro wasn't really concerned about investigating further. It felt like a political issue and he was not very interested in keeping the elves waiting.

The cure to the poison was fox ears. Just two of them would do. Right as he was about to summon his supply…

"Not a step further, Jethro."

He turned around to meet the emissary. She was dressed in brand new knight gear drenched in an annoying shade of light blue and held out a claymore at the medic.

"We've already gone this far. And you've probably already read my file so you can tell that I don't really care for elves."

"Who cares about your opinions of elves? What matters is you have committed treason."

"Fine."

His scalpel and knife vanished from his eyes.

"Nothing is worth losing my licence."

Even while saying that, he could tell the emissary did not seem to care. Her eyes glittered with a flame that mere cowardice could not extinguish. She was looking for a fight. With his eyes, he pointed at the stasis, hoping to communicate how unfair a battle this would be. She nodded and shot an arm towards a small pouch on her belt and she pulled out a totem. Emissaries were able to manipulate to a lesser degree all types of magic as long as they held totems for every affiliated deity outside of their own. But the magic cost was even greater so it wasn't advisable to do it more than once or twice. She pointed the Hypocreta totem at the patient.

"By the power of Hypocreta, Stasis: Release."

The patient collapsed on the mana stretcher and began to breathe heavily. The poison was getting to him. Jethro turned to see the patient and a mana blade was tossed his way, scraping his cheek as it hit the wall and broke to smithereens. He turned to see the emissary smile.

"Summon: Wood Chipper."

A small surgical blade appeared and he caught it with his thumb and index finger. It was a little heavier than he remembered. The emissary was not amused.

"Are you that eager to die?"

"You're a brand new emissary. This is going to be more than enough."

"Have it your way, then. I won't hold back."

She steadily gathered momentum for her blade, swinging it in circles and charging up electric power. Elemental types tended to be flashy like that. She then charged ahead recklessly and Jethro parried with little effort, the impact of the clash sending her to the ground. She was up and ready to swing her blade at him again. He lifted his blade in time and barely stopped her from cutting his hair. She quickly deactivated her blade and sent a roundhouse kick for his head. It connected and he spun in a daze. It was strong but it wasn't enough to-Kick! Hook to the nose. Several jabs to the face in quick succession. Knee to the jaw and he was on the floor. Activated the blade and swung it for his neck. He spun wildly and blasted a heavy mana sphere attack that both disarmed her and sent her crashing to the wall, cracking it.

He grabbed one of his pens, activated a mana shield, jumped across the room to her and smashed the shield on her head. He then caught the collar of her armour and with trembling fingers placed his blade right next to her right eye.

"Yield, emissary."

"Lightning: Lightning Pulse."

Jethro knew what that did but was too late to react. The electrical pulses in his nervous system shorted out and he was brain dead for a second. She sent a strong hook to his jaw and he fell. Disoriented, he instinctively tried to crawl to his desk. She caught a fistful of his hair and yanked it, causing him to scream.

"You fight well, emissary."

"Even when I hold the upper hand, you still talk to me like that?"

The sword materialised on her hand and she slowly dragged it towards his neck.

"Emissary, look around."

She did. There was nothing peculiar about her surroundings. Outside of the debris they both caused, the room was pretty much the same as she found it. In fact, she felt a little stupid for following his instructions. He smirked a little. Nobody notices it the first time.

"There were elves outside right as you got in, correct? Did you ask yourself why they didn't try to enter the room when we started fighting?"

"Why would they interrupt our fight? They have no stake in it."

"Think a little harder. Why did you want to fight me in the first place?"

It was then that she noticed that even the elves she found inside were missing. She drove her sword to his neck, blood slowly dripping against the length of the blade.

"Where did you summon them? Answer me, you traitor!"

"With what mana cost, emissary? I used my mana to summon my blade, remember? You should instead be asking what sort of blade Wood Chipper is."

She lobbed his head off in fury. The head laughed as it fell to the floor, drenched in the blood that flowed from the severed vessels.

"What are you, Jethro?"

"A Medical Knight, dear emissary. There's a good reason they aren't that many of us to begin with. It's because we're hard to kill. The kingdom made sure of that right as we graduated."

"Your blade makes you…immortal?"

"No, no, nothing that extreme. You want to kill me? Wood Chipper lets you do it. Then…"

The emissary fell to her knees. A strong force pulled at her, robbing her of her power.

"It takes every single drop of mana you would have used in that scenario…and it gives it all to me."

The emissary struggled to breathe. She coughed out a pool of blood as her vision blurred for a moment before she felt herself stable enough to look around. The young elf stood there staring at her in confusion. Jethro stood next to the patient, mostly fine. The bruises he got from the fight seem to still be there and there was minimal scarring on his neck but he looked alright. He was holding a flask that was filled with blue essence crackling with electrical output.

"If I used something stronger than Wood Chipper, you would probably be dead. Now, I'm kinder than most medics so you'll have your mana cost back in just a bit. For now, have a seat on the floor as I finish. Greet the nobles on your way back. I may know one or two who might want to know how I'm doing."

With a smile, he turned around, summoned the fox ears and began to make an antidote.