Frozen Shoulder

"Bad news is your shoulder is dead. Good news is I can heal it, but it's going to hurt. A lot. You're going to feel something like electric shocks as the nerves reform and connect," Alex said.

"Just do it," Sophia said.

"Ok, here we go," Alex said.

He had never actually used psionic healing before so he wasn't sure how it worked. He put his hands against the cold, hard skin and tried to get a sense of the extent of the damage.

[New skill created: Bio-Scan]

He could feel and see in his mind where the dead tissue met the living tissue. He focused on the edges of the living tissue and concentrated on causing it to regrow, pushing out the dead tissue slowly as it reformed.

[New skill created: Regrowth]

Sophia hissed through her teeth as the living tissue regrew. It hurt like hell but it also itched something fierce. She wanted to lop off her shoulder so she could scratch the nerves underneath.

As the shoulder regrew, the dead shoulder pushed out and fell off, exposing muscle tissue, nerves, blood vessels, and bone.

"Ahh, fuck, that hurts!" Sophia yelled.

"Hold on, we're almost there," Alex said. They weren't almost there. He still had half a shoulder left to grow back, but he didn't want to tell her that.

After a few minutes, Sophia said, "How almost there is almost there? You said that an hour ago!"

"If you want to know so bad, just look," Alex said, frustrated with her impatience. He was literally working a miracle and all she wanted to do was complain. He got that it was painful, but he needed to be able to focus.

Sophia looked at her half-formed shoulder, nerves, muscle, blood vessels, and all. She leaned forward and vomited all over the ground.

"That's disgusting! Why did you make me look at that?" Sophia said.

"You asked why it was taking so long," Alex said. "I have to grow back your entire shoulder. What's wrong? You're acting like you've never seen a wound before."

"Not when it was on me!" Sophia said.

"Well, man up!" Alex said.

"I'm not a man!" Sophia said.

"Could've fooled me," Alex said, looking her dead in the eyes.

"If you weren't healing my shoulder, I'd kill you for that," Sophia said.

"Almost, done! Aaaand, finished!" Alex said. "See, that wasn't so bad."

Sophia looked over at her brand spanking new shoulder, with skin and everything, and a tear rolled down her eye. "Why did you have to make fun of me while you were doing it?"

"Got you to stop thinking about the pain, didn't it?" Alex said.

"You have terrible bedside manner," Sophia said.

"Now don't get bit by a frost wolf again, and we're good!" Alex said.

Alex started walking into the cave. He put up his forcefield and stopped. Hmm. He wondered if he could put a forcefield around Sophia.

"Hold still again. I want to try something," Alex said. He looked her up and down, assessing her size and measurements. He didn't want to put a forcefield halfway through her head.

"Why are you checking me out, you weirdo?" Sophia said. Despite that, she didn't move.

"Hold on. You'll see," Alex said. Once he felt adequately prepared, Alex visualized a forcefield around Sophia's body.

[New skill created: Shield Ally]

A forcefield quickly popped up around her. He tried telling the shield to do what it did for him—move with her body and protect her from external harm.

"Now move around," Alex said.

"I'm moving around," Sophia said, doing jumping jacks. The forcefield followed perfectly.

"Awesome! Now we can head inside," Alex said.

"Thanks," Sophia said.

"You're welcome. I protect my allies. As long as you remain my ally, I will protect you," Alex said.

Alex conjured a fireball in front of him to light up the cave interior as they walked inside. The mouth of the cave was massive. It looked like a dozen tanks could run through it side by side and still have plenty of room.

It was tall too. He couldn't see the ceiling even with the light from the fireball. As they walked farther inside, they came to a part with branching tunnels. One went to the left, one to the right, and another down the middle.

"Where do we go now?" Sophia said. "Do we just go left and start following a grid pattern to the right? That's assuming these tunnels meet back up with each other at some point. We could just go down one tunnel, hit a dead end, and have to go back."

"Hold on. I think I have something for this," Alex said.

[Clairvoyance: The ability to see things outside the normal range of human perception]

It was so vague, he wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but he could always just try something and see if it worked. He wanted to see if he could send his vision down a tunnel to see where it ended up. He focused on creating the skill.

[New skill created: Remote Viewing]

Alex tried sending his vision down the tunnel, but he couldn't tell if his vision was extending out or not because all he saw was black. It was too dark in the tunnels to see without a light source.

If only he could see in the dark. That was it. Maybe he could create a skill to see in the dark.

[New skill created: Dark Vision]

Now he could see in the dark, even in pitch black. It defied logic, but clairvoyance said he could see things outside the normal range of human perception, and pitch black was outside the normal range, so it made some sense.

Dropping his and Sophia's forcefields, he concentrated on sending his vision down the tunnel in the center. He got about one kilometer out when the tunnel opened up into a circular space.

It looked like a den where creatures rested. There were indentations in the piles of bones where animals slept. He was going to say he didn't see any animals, and he didn't, but there was something he did see.