She was, honestly, a gorgeous woman. One of the most beautiful that he had ever seen, with such a great degree of his attention remaining on her even as she walked forward.
Standing at 176cm tall with a fit and curvaceous figure, she had rich mahogany hair, pulled up into a bun that had mostly come apart, the loose, rain-wet strands stuck to her neck and temple. Her eyes were green with grey within and around the edges of their irises. And just beneath her eye, in the centre of her cheek, sat a single beauty mark.
As soon as she had smiled, she walked forward with the first-aid kits and a bundle of clean cloths in her arms, setting them down beside Madeline with the young boy asleep while wrapped around her back.
’No! I just want to drink her blood! Relax, Dion... You are full, it’s okay.’
"For Marcus, don’t remove the belt yet. We need to replace it with something that can actually function as a tourniquet before we loosen it. He’s already lost a lot of blood."
She glanced over the others who had brought their attention onto her.
"I took a supplementary emergency medical workshop a few years ago. It wasn’t anything extensive, but they taught us basic trauma care. Enough to keep someone alive until they can get proper treatment."
Basil immediately stepped forward. "What do you need?"
"For now... we need to move him somewhere that is not wet, get the wet clothes off of him, and someone to keep Marcus conscious. Keep talking to him, and we can work out something for his tourniquet with the cloths."
Basil nodded and moved to help.
The woman turned toward Yara next, briefly glancing at her injured leg.
"And don’t put any weight on that leg until we know what’s wrong with it."
"Wasn’t planning on it," Yara muttered with a hesitant chuckle and wave of her hand.
"Paris, can you help me carry him?" Basil glanced back to Paris, who was standing right behind Dion.
"Ah... yeah, of course," He said as he hurried forward.
The two of them began to lift, with a few other guys bringing themselves to help carry. The woman then walked along with them as they left, leaving behind the main group of Irvin, Anton, Yara, Madeline, and Dion.
"What... happened out there?" Madeline asked.
There, immediately, with people filing out and leaving, Irvin dragged himself to his feet, his expression grimaced tight as he stomped away.
"Right after the rain began, there was a cat." Anton pulled a breath in between the words. "The rain had done something to it for it to transform, and it caused the same kind of... mutation in so many other animals. The cat had attacked Irvin and Marcus them while they were alone, and then we had to fight it when they retreated to us. The thing was at least the size of a wolf."
He stopped, and his jaw tightened.
"When they had been retreating, they thought they lost it... but it had just gone into hiding, and when we let our guard down it..." Yara chuckled despondently from where she sat. "It jumped off the top of a swing and just slashed his arm off."
Both of their gazes fell to the ground, and Anton’s lips pursed tight.
"We managed to kill it eventually, but the noise brought zombies... and eventually, gnolls."
"How... how did you get out?"
"Mutated dogs came."
Anton’s hands pressed down against his knees.
"A whole pack of them came down the road, and everything just turned into a mad fight, essentially. With the gap that they gave us we ran, leaving the car behind."
His voice had gone flat, and he shook his head as he chuckled.
"Both cars are gone. The cat destroyed the first one, and we abandoned the second one to escape. We had managed to load food in them, but all of it is gone now."
For those several moments, no one said anything. There were only a few people who had lingered around, and their expressions had gone strained and tight hearing everything.
Some muttered between themselves about how they had been lucky that Dion was here, repeating about how he had saved them from the mutated birds.
Then, Anton glanced up, finally meeting Dion’s gaze.
"I’m... sorry, I should have listened to you when you told us it would rain."
"There isn’t any need to apologise to me. I’m not the one who suffered for it all."
Dion looked down at the cuts and the dried blood and the hands that hadn’t stopped shaking from the strange cold of the rain where they pressed against his knees, then internally shook his head.
"Get some rest," he said. "There’s nothing anybody can do tonight, and sitting there taking it apart in your head until morning isn’t going to put his arm back on him."
Anton nodded without lifting his head again.
"And Anton." Dion turned away, about to leave once. "If anything, you brought everyone back alive. Whatever else you’re planning on mulling over tonight, think about that part of it as well."
Then he turned to go, and he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye as he did.
Paris had come down off the stairs along with Basil, having finished helping out the woman.
He didn’t linger any longer than that, turning to head back to his room.
The place was exactly as he had left it, although now, there was a lot more commotion from the people outside than earlier.
He sat down against the wall, and a part of him wanted to experiment more and think about how prana worked after seeing the changes in how it interacted with someone injured.
But then all of a sudden, a quiet knock came at his door, with whoever was behind it not saying anything beyond their knock.
Dion sighed and dragged himself to his feet.
"Come in."
Basil opened the door and stood in the frame.
He looked worse than he had an hour before, but at the same time... better? It was a strange mix.
After all, he looked somewhat relieved from the rain-induced sickness, but at the same time, with everything that had just happened, he wasn’t fully at all looking as relieved as he could have.
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