Lament of the Slave

Chapter 29: Hunger

I was lost in my thoughts, thinking about my skills, when someone's cough pulled me out of my thoughts. I looked up in front of me at the guardsman the Captain had left behind. Despite the darkness that prevailed and the helmet on his head, I saw that he hesitated, unaware of what to say.

It reminded me of situations I had already experienced a few times and that was when nervous men tried to invite me on a date. Like this guardsman, they didn't know how to start a conversation, they hesitated with their hands behind their backs, holding the flowers they wanted to give me.

To be fair, every time when I asked a guy on a date, I was no less nervous, afraid of the answer to my question, afraid of refusal.

Anyway, I wondered why this man, whose name I couldn't remember right now, behaved as he did, but the idea that he would like to invite me on a date made me question his sanity. Who would want to date someone who looked like a Frankenstein's monster?

Unaware of how I would react to a possible proposal for a date, I swallowed dry and asked him cautiously, "Yes?"

"I ... um, when I was on patrol ..." he said nervously, pausing for a moment, "I found your wing on the ground."

As he said that, he showed me the thing he was hiding behind his back, my wing. It was crushed in a place where Zander Denholm grabbed it, but otherwise in one piece. Even the muscles, tendons, and skin that were torn out along with the wing from my back were still attached to it.

Grabbing my mouth, I leaned to the left side and threw up.

"What happened?" Janina asked, appearing beside me.

I looked at her and pointed to the wing in the guard's hands.

"Erik!!" she shook her head when she noticed the wing.

The man wondered, "What? I thought you could ... reattach it!"

As he said that, I stopped vomiting and looked at Janina, "Is it possible?"

"No," the healer shook her head, "...and before any of you say anything, yes, I am able to reattach severed limbs, but only freshly separated and to someone with normal regeneration!"

Massaging her nasal bridge, she looked at me, "Korra, you have excellent regeneration, your wound has already begun to heal, if I wanted to reattach this wing to you, I would have to remove the already healed tissue."

Well, that didn't sound pleasant.

"What if I don't grow a new one?" I asked her, not even thinking about the fact that I wanted a new one because I already missed both wings.

Janina smiled, "Based on what I saw, I'm sure it will grow back."

I wished I had her confidence because I wasn't so sure. Nothing like that was written in the description of the skill. The only sentence that suggested something like that was: As long as the brain is not damaged, you can find a new way to die later. The idea that I could continue to exist as a brain without the rest of my body and find a new way to die didn't seem very likely to me. Based on that, I assumed that I should be able to regrow the missing parts of my body, but it was just a guess. I didn't dare try to cut something off, not even a little finger, to confirm this idea.

"Really, because I'm not sure about that!" I said, doubtfully closing my eyes for a moment, thinking. "but I guess I'll find out."

This was the best time to find out the range of [Never-Dying]'s abilities, its limits. Moreover, if my wings don't regrow, and I was sure there were other ways to get them back. This was Eleaden, not Earth.