Work Text:
MICHAEL:
In hindsight, perhaps a dragon was not a smart choice for a solo mission.
It had started out well enough, I had everything I needed in theory: weapons, water, some sheep, get away horse, and a nearby town ready to pay me a bag full of gold for the trouble. It would go a long way to help me and the boys who were admittedly strapped for cash at the moment, which was why we had agreed to split up and take a number of smaller jobs so that we could get ourselves on solid ground before taking on big jobs that required things like planning and equipment upgrades and long travel. Then I had to go and screw it up.
Like I said, it started out fine, but then I hadn’t accounted for a baby, especially not one old enough to breath fire or fly. It had swooped in out of nowhere just before I’d been able to dispatch the mother and my left side had gotten it pretty bad. Then it had flown off with my horse and well, at that point my only real option had been to jump in the river and let it carry me down stream.
Once I got a few miles down and was being to struggle to keep myself up in the surging current I made my way closer to a shore I’d seen on my way to the dragons’ den, laying in the shallow water and letting it cool the irritated, painful areas of my body. I knew I was bleeding and in for probably double the amount of scars I’d had going into the mission. The others were going to kill me if the burns didn’t do it first. We were supposed to meet up in three days and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it back to the town who’d put up the add, let alone the city, and with my track record they might just think I was running late.
Ashton had told us to stick to small missions, and while I had gotten into the beast slaying business when a dragon had attacked my home village that one had been young, I should have known better than to go after a fully grown one on my own. I could practically hear Ash’s voice in my head, calling me stupid and irresponsible for rushing head first into such a mission without making sure I had all the facts first. He was the responsible one in our merry band of misfits, originally a knight but forced to flee when the king of the country he served went mad and the crown fell to enemies. he’d met the rest of us a few years ago, slipping easily into a quasi leadership position after pulling Calum, Luke and I out of a few sticky situations.
Calum was more used to my inherent form of brash, brave and thoughtless, as he occasionally called it. he wouldn’t be surprised I’d gone after a dragon, not at all. He’d been there the first time I’d gone after one. I’d left without telling him or my family I was going to take care of the dragon, and when he found out I was missing the next morning it hadn’t taken him long to put two and two together. He’d pulled out his looking glass and watched me take care of the dragon, then came to get me once it was done and tried to use his magic to heal the broken bones that had resulted. Unfortunately Cal was better at defensive spells than those of the medical variety and instead had caused the bones to half liquify.. Now we left the healing to Luke.
I still can’t believe how much I used to hate Luke. He came from the next town over and for years had carried around an open disapproval of anyone who made their living via the nomadic questing/odd job route. Needless to say someone like me, who had longed for that kind of adventure, butted heads with him pretty often. But then it turned out that he was not so much annoyed by adventurers, but jealous of them. He wanted to go on quests and live the nomadic style and get away from his tiny town, but his doctor father had essentially forbid it, leaving him to experiment with herbs in the woods and pretend to hat the stories he secretly sought out with a passion. After he had helped Calum figure out the right way to heal broken bones he’d tentatively started to come over and offer advises knowing that Cal and I planned to leave town in a year when we were old enough. He’d said that ‘if we were going to go through with our plans we might as well be prepared.’ It didn’t take us long to figure it out though, so when we left we took him with us, much to his father’s outrage.
Luke would be worried. Granted they would all be worried but Cal was so used to it that it didn’t even phase him anymore when it came to me and Ashton’s would be masked by anger. Luke would just be freaked out when they found me and that was probably the worst part about the whole thing. Luke was normally pretty good under pressure, but as soon as one of us was hurt he started to panic and lost his cool, moving around frantically as he set up what he needed to heal one of us. Sometimes people outside our group saw his panic and were sure that he was just throwing whatever he grabbed together, liable to poison us or make us worse, but we all knew he was just that good at what he did. He knew exactly where everything was in his bag of healing and exactly what was needed to cure most everyday injuries. What he didn’t know was why he had taken one of the books from his father’s modest library, cures for uncommon poisions, reversals for hexes and curses (Though that was a bit more Calum’s department admittedly), and uses for exotic plants that he wasn’t familiar with.
I was tired, I wondered if they would find me in enough time for Luke to heal me or if I was finally going to be done in by my own stupidity as I closed my eyes and let the river do what it could.
When I woke up it was to someone calling my name and I opened my eyes, but couldn't bring myself to look towards the voice, my neck hurt too much and I was stiff from the river that I realized was getting colder as the sun went down.
Then Ashton’s face poped into view, upside down from my perspective as he bent over and took in the sight of me. “Damn it Michael, how big of an idiot are you?”
Calum’s exasperated sigh came from nearby and then I felt a hand on my right leg as he took in the damage. “Hi Mikey.”
“Hey… how’d you guys know I was in trouble?”
Ashton motioned towards the lower half of my body where I assumed Calum to be. “We will all be dead the day that Calum looses his looking glass. Literally, hope and pray that that day never comes.”
I nodded as Calum came into view and they gently started to pull me up, jostling and touching my burned side as little as possible while they lead me further up the beach where Luke was rushing around mixing up some kind of greenish goop in a bowel while he had bandages boiling in water and a blanket laid out on the grass.
“Don’t set him on the sand there’s probably enough in his wound from the river! Ash stir the bandages, Calum can you cast a spell that will give us some shade over the blanket and freeze some of the river water? I’m going to need you guys to hold him up while I do his back first then we can lay him do-“
“Luke.” I grunted to get him to stop rambling. “Breath. you guys are here, I’m gonna be alright now, yeah?”
He paused everything he was doing for a moment before nodding and going back to reverently mixing his paste.
Calum lead me over to the blanket and held me up as Luke began to spread some of the paste over my body, mumbling spells as he went, stopping only long enough to have Ashton hold me up while Calum used a spell to freeze a chunk of water and lay the now clean bandages on top to cool them before they went on my skin. Ashton took in the sight of my burns and frowned at me. “A dragon, really?”
“Beat one before… wasn’t expecting the little one…”
He rolled his eyes in response. “You could have died, if Cal hadn’t decided to look in on you we wouldn’t be here right now and you would be dead.”
I nodded. “Good thing Cal knows me well enough to know I’d do something stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid.” Luke mumbled, smoothing bandages over my rib cage.
“Just Brash, brave and thoughtless.” Calum agreed, handing Luke more scraps of linen.
Luke nodded. “And we love you for it man, but seriously get a sense of self preservation, please. You’re going to kill me with worry.”
“Sorry…” I closed my eyes as they let me lay back, head on Calum’s lap as Luke started on my face. “What are you putting on me?”
“It’ll keep you from scaring for the most part, there’s a few on your back and leg that I doubt will heal all the way but the rest of you will show little to no evidence of the burn."
“So my face is still pretty for you all?”
Ashton snorted. “Your face was never pretty Mike.”
I swatted at him with my good arm, already feeling some of the pain ebb away. “Oh shut up, Luke likes my face, that’s why he’s saving it. Right Lukey?”
“Yes Mikey, I like your face.” He nodded. “Now hold still.”
“Yes Sir, Doctor Sir,” I laughed out as he continued his work and Ashton got up to look for some dinner. After a few minutes I remembered the horse and equipment I’d lost. “I’m not sure what condition the things I have left are, but I lost some stuff.”
“We know.” Calum nodded.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He said. “It’s still mostly near the den, we’ll go get it once your healed. and we’ll get both the dragons.”
“Together.” Luke reminded me. “Like normal.”
“Yeah…” I nodded, feeling drowsy “Like normal.”