With the eyes of three very concerned friends and one mildly concerned monster all giving her different versions of the same look, she gritted her teeth in pain before admitting the truth. “Fine, I got a scratch from that invisible dog thing. Garm. I didn’t think much of it. I did a spell, and it worked until the last two days. I’ll be fine. An infection’s not going to be the death of me.”

While I appreciated the faith Diaval had in herself, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen. The wound smelled rancid and black necrotic tissue surrounded it. It was amazing she’d been walking for so long without being healed, if not incredibly stupid and risky.

And, of course, it came during the time where I couldn’t access any of the stag inside of me and couldn’t heal any of her wounds with anything that I had physically on me.

“Do you have any physical magical power left?” Lydian asked, shoving between Rosamund and Seppo. Each gave him an angry look.

“Not enough to heal the wound—if I had that power, I’d have healed it in the first place.”

Lydian scouted the area for a moment, knees in the snow as he dug in with uncovered hands. Blood soon streaked through the snow from the cuts of the ice on his fingers, and he clenched his teeth but dug on until there was an impressively deep hole in the ground. When we went to look, he held us back at arm’s length. “You can’t see this,” he said. “You don’t want to.”

Squishing sounds came from the hole as he dug his hands around in it, and the squelching made me want to puke. From behind me, Seppo was puking and Rose’s voice rose to comfort him.

Finally, he found whatever he was digging for and pulled it up from the ground. His hand was covered in red all the way up to the elbow, and his furs were drenched in what I could only think was blood. I frowned at the object in his hand. It was nothing but a little root.

He pushed the snow pile back into the hole. “Don’t mind my hand. It’ll heal itself. Not the first time I’ve dug into the world’s guts. Blood isn’t mine for the most part.” He shifted over to Diaval once more and held the root out to her. “Do you think you can do a simple transformation?”

“How simple are we talking here?” she said.

“Root to maggot.”

Maggot? Why in Hel would she need a maggot?

She nodded, swallowing deeply, then closed her eyes and whispered something we couldn’t hear. The root transformed slowly from top to bottom, the bark becoming pale and fleshy before the creature squirmed around blindly.