Finally, I managed to unfreeze and rushed over to Soren. He was clutching his right eye and baring his teeth, trying to stay silent throughout the pain. But the right side of his face was bloodied and warped, and the eyeball had been completely detached from the socket. Some vomit rose in my throat, and I forced myself to swallow it down so I wouldn’t upset him as he lay curled in a tense ball. His hand clutched the right side of his face where the Nidhogg’s fangs had run down creating two deep and bloody crevices in the skin. His blood formed in a pool underneath him, and I knew I had to do something. I was the stag, and I couldn’t let this kill my Erlking.

I removed his hand from where he was clutching the wound and placed my own hands on top of it. Before I started, I sent a small prayer to the gods that this would work and I would be able to grasp onto the stag’s power enough to heal him. Anxiety and doubt rose in my throat, but I forced them back down like I had the vomit and got to work.

Focused on the wound, the position of his body, feeling his blood pulse like it was my own. There was a strong connection vibrating between us like the strings of a lute that had always been out of reach whenever I tried to touch them. But now? I grasped on the cords, and whiteness burst behind my eyelids as I took in all of Soren’s pain. The burning, the stinging, the aching, the throbbing, everything that was stormy inside him hit me like a brick wall, and for a moment, my connection wavered.

Please come back, I called to the link the stag had created in me. I must heal my Erlking. It’s not time for him to die.

My bond with the cords connecting us tightened, and while still in pain and with my eyes closed, I somehow knew if I opened my eyes, they would be bathed in golden light. Soren’s wounds were closing up; each sinew and muscle and cut slowly closed and leeched away the pain. I did not see it, but I knew what was happening all the same as the connection to his body deepened, and finally I pulled away from Soren and opened my eyes.

There were three new scars over his right eye, freshly pink, but healed, but his eyeball was completely gone, leaving an empty socket that was gruesome to look at. Even with all that effort, I couldn’t regenerate his eye. I didn’t have to be linked to him to know he would take this very poorly.

“Janneka,” he said softly, “I can’t see out of one eye.”