RTA Book 2: Against Ruin's Fate - Chapter 8

Len exited the tunnels leading to the pillboxes, entering the main cavern, moving towards the medical bay close to the tunnel exit's cavern entrance.

Inside, Zannish and other civilians that had undergone the rough medic course on their way to Halem forest moved between beds, treating those from Pillbox Two.

“Bed!” Len yelled.

“This one!” someone slapped a stone bed. Zannish wholly focused on the patient infront of him.

Len put the wounded man down, people swarming him. “Airway is clear, clothes and gear melted to him. He needs morphine and liquids. Signs of mana poisoning.”

Clothes and bits of armor were carefully removed, scalpels and healing spells keeping as much of the patient together.

The patient writhed on the stone table, his body a patchwork of black char and angry red flesh where the skin had sloughed away entirely.

Len rolled his shoulders, four will constructed limbs appeared around him and grabbed onto the man.

Some backed up away from the limbs, a man holding a morphine syrette was searching the patient’s body with his eyes.

“Hit him anywhere that has enough muscle,” Len said. “Full dose, he’s got body tempering, it’s going to work through the painkiller quickly.”

The man stabbed it into the man’s pectoral that had been protected by the man’s armor and clothing.

Len used his tools to pull out pieces of the man’s gear that had melded into his flesh.

Two medics moved to secure Zannish’s patient’s limbs.

Zannish worked on the man without pause “Morphine!”

Herrera rushed into the bay, moving to the last patient.

The medical bay had become a battlefield of its own.

Len poured mana into his diagnostic spell, mapping the internal damage. The man's lungs were working, heart was under strain. Blood vessels near the surface had burst from the heat, and deeper ones were beginning to collapse.

"Fuck," he muttered, switching tactics. He needed to keep those veins and vessels open to keep nutrients flowing through the body and to the brain. 

“Come on!” a man on the other side trying to get an IV line into the man’s veins.

"IV access?" he asked without looking up.

"No good. Skin's too damaged. Veins keep collapsing."

Len cursed. They needed fluids and medications in these patients now, not after he'd repaired enough tissue for conventional access. His eyes darted around the medical bay, landing on a toolbox in the corner.

"Tool box. Get me screws at least six." He yelled.

One of his assistants ran over to the box and tore it open.

Len kept working on the man, he healed one of his ears. “We’ve got you lad, you’re all good. Tough bastard aren’t you!” Len let out a hard laugh and looked at a nearby assistant. “Keep talking to him, reassure him.

The heat had been so much it had melted the patient’s eyes. Their world was pain.

The man's body was fighting him now—the trauma response trying to shut down systems Len was forcing to function.

It was a fight as sure as one of magic and blade.

“Screws!” The assistant that had run off called out. Holding the screws in his hand.

"Good. Watch and learn." Len grabbed one screw without breaking contact with his patient. He activated his Form spell, feeling the metal's structure in his mind. With precise mana manipulation, he hollowed out the screw's center while maintaining its threads, transforming it into a makeshift intraosseous needle.

“Hold up the IV line!”

The man who’d tried to get it into the patients vein held it up.

Len put the screw over the needle and fused the metals together then pulled it over—the other man holding up the clear glass bottle holding a vastly watered down healing potion.

“When you can’t go through a vein you have to go through the bone, knee or shoulder.”

He located the deltoid insertion point by feel alone—the skin there was less damaged but still a melted nightmare. Without hesitation, he drove the hollowed screw through flesh and into bone, the threads biting deep into the marrow cavity.

Blood welled up through the needle—good, he'd hit vascular bone. He connected the IV line, and life-giving fluids began flowing directly into the patient's circulatory system via the bone marrow.

“Release the kink,” Len said to the man holding the bottle he released where he’d been pinching the rubber tubing and liquid flowed through it into the man.

“Good! I need IV bottles and tubing here!” Len called out and stepped back. “Keep removing as much of his clothing as possible.” He grabbed the screws from the assistant who’d brought them and modified them the same as the first.

“Bring three tubs of water to put them into, make sure the water is cleansed!”

People ran out as the IV kits arrived and Len modified them into IO needle ends. “We’re going to put the wounded into the tubs—their bodies will use the water to speed up the healing!”

“Got it!” Zannish yelled.

“Copy!” Herrera said.

Those holding the finished IO kits ran back to their patients.

Time became meaningless. Len lost himself in the work—rebuild this vessel, clear that airway, encourage cellular regeneration here, prevent cascade failure there.

Barrels modified into troughs with spells were brought to the patient beds next to the patients.

Canteens and barrels were hauled in to fill the troughs.

“Heat the water, want it warm too cold could send them into shock!” Len called out.

“Ready!” Someone called out and slapped Len on the back.

Len picked up the man he was working on and put him into the tub—the water colored with the bloods and soot on the man’s body.

Len used fuse flesh on the open wounds—stopping the man from bleeding more and continued to work on reconstructing the man’s circulatory system. He and those around him worked with a feverish focus.

Len felt the moment when the tide turned. The body's natural healing mechanisms, overwhelmed and shut down by trauma, starting to heal the man instead of just trying to support the damage. Instead of fighting his efforts, the patient's system began working with him—cells dividing, tissue knitting, inflammation responding appropriately instead of spiraling out of control.

"He's stabilizing," Len said, his voice hoarse. Had he been talking the whole time? Guiding the assistants through procedures? He couldn't remember.

He pulled back gradually, monitoring as the patient's body took over more of its own maintenance. The chest rose and fell on its own now, no longer needing his manipulation. The freshly repaired blood vessels held their integrity.

They were weak—damn weak.

We need stamina potions.

“Keep his pain managed, we don’t want him to fully wake up. His body tempering has him now. Keep him on IO. Test others for blood type and get that into him. He’s lost a lot blood from someone healthy will increase his stamina.”

“Got it,” The one that had got the screws said.

Len tapped him on the shoulder and moved to the other patients. He cast his diagnosis on them. Their patients were IO’d up and in their water barrels.

"The IO access worked," Zannish reported, checking his patient's improvised screw needle.

“Stable,” Len said.

“Yeah,” Zannish said, fatigue layering his voice.

He was covered in blood, grime and water.

Len used Cleanse on him and himself, removing the grime. “More patients to see to.”

There were wounded at different beds inside the medical bay now. Walking wounded.

Len’s mind moved to those that hadn’t made it. Jenkins and Harrison were the first they'd lost in this new timeline—shattering a fragile hope he hadn't realized he'd been harboring. The hope that somehow, with his foreknowledge, he could save everyone this time around.

Life just didn't work that way. It never had. He didn't allow himself to mourn. Not yet. There were others to help and his role as second in command was far from done.

There was a tired pain to it all. Good men dying too soon—again—despite everything he knew, everything he'd changed.

He felt every one of his years in both lives.

He moved to a woman that looked to be in charge of the incoming wounded.

"Where do you need me?" Len asked, drawing in mana to recover his reserves.

She gestured to the red-marked section. "Shrapnel cases. Stone fragments carry mana contamination."

Len moved directly to the first bed. A young private lay there, his torso peppered with jagged stone fragments. Shredded uniform had been cut away, revealing dozens of wounds where stone had exploded and driven shards into his flesh.

Len used his Diagnostic skill on them man.

“They teach you to duck son?”

“Was sight seeing.” The man hacked a wheeze.

Len let out a chuckle while the spell revealed what he'd feared—the stone fragments were leaching mana directly into the wounds, preventing natural healing and interfering with magical treatment. Each piece needed to be removed manually. He affixed the locations of the pieces of shrapnel within the man’s body.

His will formed tendrils at the wound openings.

“Do that with the ladies back in Goran.”

He drove the will threads into the wounds, grabbed the shrapnel, more will limbs holding the man steady and drew out the shrapnel.

The man grunted on the stone bed from the sudden and violent pain. Len pinched the wounds together Mend Flesh sealing the wounds before he pushed Accelerated Healing upon the man.

He bucked again. Len’s expression grim. It was a sign of mana poisoning taking effect. The man’s body healing against the intrusive mana.

A woman with severe burns covering her left side—another spell attack victim. Her skin was blistered and blackened, the typical pattern of magical fire rather than conventional burning. He used thermal control to draw out the heat first, then gave her a health potion.

“Plenty of food and drink, buy a healing ability if you want to speed it up,” Len moved on.

The third bed held a soldier convulsing slightly, skin showing the telltale vein coloration of advanced mana poisoning. A wound on his arm that was not healing.

“Healing potion!” Len yelled and cast Accelerated Healing. The man lurched up, ignoring his wounds as he tried to choke Len.

Len’s Will constructed arms grabbed onto the man and pinned him to the bed as someone ran up with a healing potion. Len poured it into the man’s open wound—the veins around the site of the wound returned to their normal coloration. His eyes rolled back as the potion’s healing effects spread through his body.

For nearly an hour, he moved from bed to bed, addressing the most severe cases before they deteriorated further. Military medicine was about numbers—save the most lives possible with the resources available. Emotion had no place in triage.

He'd done this in trenches, bunkers, shattered cities—and now a mountain full of magic. Death never changed. Only the scenery did.

***

As the immediate crises stabilized, Len straightened and surveyed the room, searching for any cases he might have missed. That's when he spotted Rick in the far corner, half-hidden behind a supply cabinet, leaning against the wall. He was pinching a wound on his side closed with one hand while awkwardly casting a mend flesh spell with the other.

All while he was talking into his sound talisman.

Trying to not bother anyone else.

Len crossed the room in quick strides.

"Fuck happened to you?" he asked, bending to examine the injury.

“I got injured, Fucking spell hit the pillbox, I put up a barrier, some stone shard hit me under the arm as I was shooting. Cut up under my shoulder and arm."

"I can see that," Len said dryly, pushing Rick's hand aside to take over. He pinched the edges of the wound together with practiced precision, then applied a more focused mend flesh spell to fuse the tissue properly. The wound was deep but clean—a slashing injury rather than a puncture or tear. "Why aren't you on a bed?"

"Others need them more," Rick said simply. His face remained impassive as Len worked, though the tightness around his eyes betrayed the pain.

He’d handled worse and Len focused on being fast.

“Clyde was killed,” Rick said.

Len’s movements paused for a half a breath. It had been what, an hour ago they were working on mechanical designs of the new enchanted engine.

“He was a good man,” Len continued his work.

Rick grunted, acknowledging and grimacing at the pain.

"Aren't there more wounded who need attention?" Rick asked, glancing toward the main treatment area.

“Anything left is going to take time to fix completely—the worst have been seen to already." Len finished and cast Cleanse on his hands, removing the blood and tissue residue.

“Thanks.” Rick rolled his shoulder to test the repair. “The wounded from Pillbox two?”

“In tubs—they’ll need time to recover. I want to focus on their eyes and ears—calm them down. Being blind and deaf in that much pain,” Len shook his head.

They fell quiet for a few seconds.

"We shouldn't be dealing with creatures like this for months, if at all," Rick said, keeping his voice down as he looked around. "The dungeon evolution, the mana storm, and now these creatures. Mana’s fucking things up much faster than last time."

"Obelisk was doing more than we thought," Len agreed. “Drawing in all the mana in the area to power itself.” There was a bite to his voice.

"We need to get everyone stronger, faster," Rick said, his voice dropping further. "We don't have time for gradual improvement."

"We've got all the factories working—that's pumping out a good amount of experience," Len pointed out.

Rick shook his head. "I'm saying we go to the source—tempering and cultivation."

The words hung between them, heavy with implication. They were talking about deliberately exposing their people to controlled mana damage, then healing them—repeatedly—to force their bodies to adapt at an accelerated rate. 

“Its effective,” Len let out a breath. "It's fucking painful, man. You think they're going to be willing to go through that?"

"We ask them, volunteers only," Rick said. "How many you think are going to step up after this?" He gestured toward the wounded surrounding them. "They know what they're facing now."

Len considered this. The soldiers trusted them—more than they probably should. They hadn’t been through the backstabbing and loss of social contract that came with the apocalypse.

What they were proposing required placing your life entirely in someone else's hands, enduring pain that would break most people.

"We'll need potions, enchantments, and all of that," Len said finally. "Tenebrook sent us off with carts full of healing potion, and I think we can get enough materials to pull together a healing enchantment." He frowned. "If we do that, then we're going to have to pull resources from somewhere else."

Outside, the echo of hammering on stone and shouted orders underscored the urgency of every decision.

"Conventional training would take too long. It won't be great—but it'll stop us having to worry about mana poisoning when we sleep. It'll make everyone stronger, able to work longer and use more abilities." He fixed Len with a steady gaze. "We're around the hundred stat mark. Everyone else is around thirty. They're not having the greatest time. We need to accelerate. We need to prioritize—think like we used to."

They had been cautious until now, concerned about the risks of pushing people too far, too fast. That luxury was gone.

Rick nodded. "Stone rounds aren't penetrating the muties' skin anymore. We need to go to steel if we want to get through it."

"Focus on steel HEAP rounds for the shoulder cannons and building more of the large gun barrels. We need to get the East and West batteries completed." Len crossed his arms and went into thought.

“That’s going to need more steel.”

“Stone carts, have people pushing them. If we’re going to be tempering up their bodies they can push it.  ticked off the priorities on his fingers. "Get people to push them, but we need to speed up the amount of steel we're getting to the factories."

Rick shook his head. "Conventional training would take too long. It won't be great—but it'll stop us having to worry about mana poisoning when we sleep. It'll make everyone stronger, able to work longer and use more abilities." He fixed Len with a steady gaze. "We're around the hundred stat mark. Everyone else is around thirty. They're not having the greatest time. We need to accelerate."

Len knew exactly what acceleration meant. Forced mana absorption overwhelmed a person's channels, causing internal damage. Body tempering through repeated injury and healing. Done correctly, the mana tore you apart, and the healing built you back stronger.

The problem came if the damage from the mana outpaced the healing, or if the mana stat grew too high relative to body. The results then weren't pretty—corruption, mutation, or death.

Len looked around the medical chamber at the wounded being treated, at the covered bodies of those they had lost. Beyond the walls, he knew the creatures would be regrouping, evolving, preparing for the next attack. And beyond them waited threats even greater—the fully evolved dungeon, the mana storms, the collapse of civilization they had witnessed in their original timeline.

"You're right, we don't have a choice," he said finally. "Not if we want to survive what's coming. Everything is a risk now—we're choosing which risks to take."

They had been cautious until now, concerned about the risks of pushing people too far, too fast. That luxury was gone.

"We have all this stone—should use it to create enchanted mines," Rick suggested, shifting topics with the rapid tactical thinking that characterized their planning sessions.

"We'd need to send out parties to lay them down," Len pointed out.

"Can we enchant the boulders that are out there already?"

"'Course, can make a form that will turn them into a mine."

Rick counted off on his fingers. "Focus production, mines, temper and cultivate."

"Need to make sure we get the soldiers trained up on how to use the new guns too—then we can range them into the forest to slim down the unnatural population," Len added.

He calculated resources, space requirements, personnel. "It'll take me a day to set everything up."

Rick held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded once. "Tomorrow, then. We start with ourselves. Figure out the process, the limits, the optimal approach."

"And after that?" Len asked, though he already knew the answer.

"After that," Rick said grimly, "we build an army that can face what's coming."

Len nodded as he had decided so many years ago—in another life, another timeline—if he could get power to save what he cared about for some risk and pain, he'd deal with that devil with a bloody smile and a heavy handshake every time.

***

As Len emerged from the medical bay to assess the damage firsthand, he found Christina squatted against the wall, canteen held limp in her hand, her arm resting on her knee.

She raised her head at his approach. Her face was streaked with dust and dried blood, her engineer's tunic torn at the shoulder. There was a hollowness to her expression.

"The western flank held," she said, as if proving something to herself. Her face crumbled, tears cutting clean trails down her cheeks. "We lost Clyde." Her voice broke. "He was running up ammunition, a creature spat out spines from its body, went through the pillbox, caught him." She waved her hands as if to conjure more words, more explanation, but found none.

Len remained silent, letting her grief find its shape. He didn't want to fill the air with false sentiments and comforting lies. They both deserved better than that.

Christina's eyes were distant. "The muties were so thick down there, you just needed to pull the trigger to hit something." Her expression sharpened with sudden fury. "If we got the cannons done earlier—"

"Christina—" Len started, but she cut him off.

"If I'd gotten the cradle design done a day earlier," she said in quiet fury that guttered before it had time to grow, "the western artillery placement would have been operational."

Len knew it wouldn't have been possible. They'd thrown together one gun, and the cradle had broken after less than ten shots. But he also recognized that logic had no place in grief. He'd carried the weight of perceived responsibility himself too many times to mistake it.

"We're all working against time," he said quietly. "What matters is what we do now."

Christina set her jaw and pushed herself up the wall, stoppering her canteen. "You're right." She wiped her face with her dirty sleeve, smearing dust into mud tracks. "What can I do to help with the firebase?"

Len took a moment, assessing her.

Trying to dissuade her would be talking to a steel wall. Might as well direct that determination into something constructive.

"The cannon we built in the Eastern battery. We need to have a different way to elevate. The cannon's recoil bent the one we have out of shape. Modify that, then build the other cannons.”

"Got it." Christina nodded and made to move away.

Len put a hand on her shoulder—arresting her movement. "It's no one's fault but this fucked up world. You gotta play the hand you're dealt, and sometimes the joker takes his due."

Christina met his eyes for a long moment before nodding and looking away. She straightened her shoulders and headed toward the engineering section, purpose replacing grief in her stride.

Len watched her go, then turned toward the command center. 

He’d seen it too many times—grief weaponized into purpose. The line between coping and cracking was always thin.

And he’d used people’s grief to push them further, to get more from them. It disgusted him to do so—but if it gave them space of thought and made them capable of surviving what was to come.

Len closed his eyes and let out a heavy breath. Ceremonies for the dead would have to be prepared to give everyone some closure. He’d need to talk to Joe Xinta and Captain Sam about their new tasks and priorities.

It was his job to get others ready for what was to come, it was Rick’s task to lead them. Grief fuelled his wrath—slow, burning and cold.

Len opened his eyes, his task set before him. With new resolution he pulled out his sound talisman and walked towards the entrance into the firebase.