Second to last part! Clearly, this one might do best positioned slightly before LToY. _________________________________ After he was captured by the poachers, Gerard had almost killed himself trying to escape. He spent hours trying to find a way to escape, from changing his forehooves back into something close enough to hands to actually work a knot, to blindly yanking at the ropes that bound him. He was too exhausted to do the first quickly, though, and the trappers were paying quite enough attention to him to make sure that he wasn’t able to complete any such attempt. Pulling at the ropes, meanwhile, had nearly strangled him, and yet the knots still held. In the end he collapsed, despairing of all hope. He would not be able to reach his family in time for the Yule. When he came to as he was being loaded onto the cart, he renewed his struggles. Lois caught his eye, however, and Gerard could see the self-assured look behind the assassin’s eyes. Gerard decided that he would get no more from struggling than he would from staying still, and so decided to stay where he was while the group loaded him onto their wagon of furs. As an extra precaution, they cruelly looped a rope around his broken leg, forcing him to injure himself further if he decided to attempt any further escapes. Being transported in a cart that was already full of empty furs and dangerous traps was hardly a comforting feeling. For all Gerard knew, the poachers intended to turn both Metamorians into a profit in a similar fashion. The thought made Gerard’s skin crawl, but there was little to be done for it at the moment. Hopefully Lois had a reason to be confident; otherwise they would find out before long exactly what the men intended. He found the ensuing trek exhausting. He was doing little more than resting himself, but he could not find any way to fully fall asleep. He couldn’t even remember how many days it had been since they had attacked the lutin encampment. Without even this reference point, he could not figure out how long he had before the Yule. For all he knew, it had long since passed them by, and he was now only fighting to reach Metamor alive. The wave of magic caught him completely by surprise. By the time he noticed that the man pulling the cart had stopped, he only had enough time to look up into the advancing wall. He was certain it was over for all of them. He braced himself, waiting for at least some sort of pain to follow the wave’s arrival, but never felt anything. When the shouting started, he did his best to try to see what was happening, but he was tied down in such a way that he couldn’t see what Lois was doing. What he could see was that the cart’s driver had mysteriously disappeared, and the trapper that had been watching the wheels on the right side was now partly hyena. Before Gerard even had a reasonable amount of time for this to register, the wagon was yanked roughly away from its stationary position. Lois had taken hold of the handles and was furiously pulling the cart through the trees. Gerard was not foolish enough to believe or even hope that Lois could outrun their enemies for long, but as they grew farther and farther from the trappers, they could hear nothing that indicated that they might be pursued. Gerard turned carefully to avoid injuring his leg, and saw nothing but the dark forest stretching out behind them. Lois stopped immediately after reaching the road, making sure that no one was following them. He waited there for several minutes, eyes and ears twitching about in an attempt to catch any sign of pursuit. When no one came, Lois took a few moments to settle his nerves, but didn’t stay put for long. He began to pull them along down the road as quickly as he could, pressing his paws deeply into the road in an attempt to make good time. Gerard was still in shock at this point; he hardly understood what had just happened. Had Lois set something up so that they could escape? He had thought that the man had no magical talent. In that case, did he somehow know when the wave would hit? Had they simply been astoundingly lucky? He was so surprised that it wasn’t until the sun started to put in an appearance that he realized how little any of those questions really matter. They had escaped! That meant that they were headed back towards the Keep again! He turned to look down the road, eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of the walls. They would make it back to the Keep soon, they had to. The appearance of Metamor’s guards made his heart skip for joy. While Lois was clearly exhausted, the stag felt nothing but a desire to leap out and run down the road. They couldn’t be far off now! Still, he had to wait for a good while before they were even allowed to move again. Gerard was untied and helped out of the cart, while several of the other patrolmen unloaded a supply wagon that would provide a faster, safer method of transport for the two men. As they waited for this to finish, a field medic checked on their injuries. He said nothing to Gerard, but his face was grim after he looked at the leg. All Gerard discovered about the injury aside from that was that the medic recommended waiting until Coe got a good look at it. They would withhold any attempts at diagnosis in the meantime. As the medic worked on Lois, Gerard spied something that the ermine had hid from him to this point. It was a bound wound to his chest. Despite the uncleanliness of the area, it seemed to have mostly healed. Still, by what Gerard could see of it, there was no way that it had been a comfortable southward march for the assassin. The medic tended to it, cleaning the area and replacing the bandages. All the while Lois spoke quietly to one of the other patrolmen, grimacing every so often as the medic would press a bit too hard, but never addressing the medic directly to complain of it. He noticed Gerard watching before too long and nodded to him, giving him a small smile. They were both slowly coming to realize that they had succeeded in their southward trek. It was just a matter of the short hop back to the Keep, and they would be back home. The wagon was finally emptied of its contents, and Lois and Gerard jumped in while one of the patrolmen guided the wagon back to the Keep. No one came as an escort; if the cordon was doing its job, no one would have to. Still, it left just the two of them and their driver on the road, and left the last leg of their journey feeling almost as lonely as the rest had been. Lois was quietly eating something that the men had been able to provide while they were stopped. Gerard had been offered something, thoughtfully prepared with his feral form in mind, but he had hardly touched it. Even though he logically should be starving, the concept of returning home made him lose all desire to eat. He watched the road for a while, but finally ended up falling asleep during the ride. The stag was simply too tired to resist the urge to sleep. He was still sleeping when they entered the gates, and Lois had to gently prod him to bring him back around once they had fully come to a stop. All Gerard wanted to do once they stepped out into the city was to find out what day it was and rush home as quickly as he could. There was simply no convincing Lois or their driver, however. They insisted that his leg should be treated before he went anywhere, and he found that, no matter how he tried, he could think of no way to counter their assertions. His leg was a priority. He just hoped the healer could work quickly. * * * As the healer at Metamor, Coe’s life was seldom boring at all. The atmosphere around the Keep was such that he had to deal with many injuries a day. Many people avoided seeing him if possible, as field medics and mages were often skilled enough to deal with most patrol-related injuries. Still, he managed to have a reasonably active workplace almost every day, whether he was dealing with diseases or injuries or anything in between. This meant that whenever he was asked to come quickly, it was most likely a reasonably urgent case. When he saw the stag, still in feral form, he could see why he had been summoned. The deer’s hind leg looked horrible; if they were going to have any chance of saving it, they needed to move quickly. This he concluded without ever having touched the injury or inspected it. It simply looked that bad. Standing in the room beside the stag was an interesting ferret-like creature, still decked out in his patrol gear, and from the look of it, fresh back from a grueling patrol. As the patient seemed to be in no position to speak for himself, the raccoon turned and asked his companion to explain what had happened. “We ran into a little trouble up north,” the man said. Whether from exhaustion or force of habit after a long patrol, the man’s voice was muted. “A lutin shaman shattered his leg using some sort of magic. I did what I could to keep it steady, but there was only so much I could do given the resources I had.” The healer nodded. He looked at the deer for half a second, and then turned back to the other man. He wanted to be able to address the patient, and so began to ask the ferret man what the stag’s name was. He was cut off, however, when the man pushed past him with a shout. “Gerard, stop! You’re not helping anything!” Coe turned and saw why the man was yelling. The stag had begun to shrink down, evidently shifting into his more humanoid form. The leg, already grossly misshapen, shifted even more awkwardly as the shifting continued. Coe added his own protests when he saw what was happening, but the Gerard was not going to be deterred. After several minutes, the grunts of a deer were slowly supplemented with, then replaced by the yells of a man in great pain. He was laying down now, hoof-hands grasping as nothing and flat teeth grinding as he forced the changes to their conclusion. Finished, he collapsed completely, panting from the exertion. “You fool!” his companion yelled. “Your leg is plenty ruined enough without you injuring it further.” “Sor — Sorry. Need — …” The stag gasped, hardly able to get two words out at a time. “Calm down and catch your breath,” Coe ordered. He settled down beside the man’s leg, carefully working paws along its length until he could feel the broken bones. The cuts he assumed came at the same time as the break were old enough that the bone would have started to fuse together again, but he could feel the breaks clearly, and they still shifted as though they were fresh. Perhaps the stubborn deer had done him a favor, he mused to himself. If the leg could indeed be saved, he would have had to re-break it to set it correctly as it was. The raccoon healer called for a razor, and soon was shaving away the fur from around the cuts. What he saw made him bite his lip. It wasn’t pretty; the injuries had become infected, and it was already advancing quickly. They would have to work fast to save what they could, and there was no guarantee that they would be able to save much at all. His patient was finally able to catch his breath, a small wonder on its own as Coe had not been afraid to press a little bit on the wound. As Coe continued his inspection, he finally completed his explanation. “Lois, I’m sorry,” he said, clipping his sentence short. “I need – I need arms, Lois. I need to be able to hold my wife. I need to be able to hug my children.” The white-furred creature said nothing, but a sidelong glance revealed that he was nodding. Coe shook his head with a smile he simply could not suppress. “Your wife and children will have to wait for a little while longer, I’m afraid,” he announced. “Don’t worry, though, I’ll get you to them before the Yule.” The stag snapped his head in the raccoon’s direction, lips quivering. “What day is it?” he asked breathlessly. “It’s Yule’s Eve,” the healer responded. “You must have been pretty far gone if you didn’t notice the wedding preparations.” Gerard paid no mind to the healer anymore, instead looking at Lois with a pained, but genuinely relieved, smile. “We made it,” he gasped. He laid his head hack on the ground, antlers clicking softly as they touched the stone. “We made it,” he repeated. Lois nodded, leaning up against the wall. He expected that just being back would be enough for him, but finding out that they had succeeded in returning in time for the Yule had an unexpected effect on him. He had not expected to care at all about when they got back, but the revelation made him feel like a tremendous burden had been lifted from his shoulders. For whatever reason, he found that he actually cared about making it in time for Gerard to keep his promise. He leaned his head back and smiled. Perhaps the journey had been worth the trouble after all. !DSPAM:4ea8aa0830371804284693!