Chimera

Chapter Two: Lance

Lance stared at the wound, silent for a second. He was pulled out of his oblivion by a question.

"What does he need for the injury?" his dad quizzed him. Lance was an apprentice, a medic in training, so his parents had to constantly test his knowledge to make sure that he would be worthy of the job.

"He needs some vampire bat anaesthetic to tone down the pain while we work on the laceration. Aloe vera gel can help heal the wound. Yarrow can then be used as antiseptic to clean out bacteria, and then we need to bandage it up."

His dad nodded, signalling for him to get the medicines. Lance had been correct. He nodded back, then hurried over to get the items he had listed. One wall of the surgery was dedicated completely to medicines. The wall was covered in shelves, which are stacked with various jars of antidotes and medicines. First, he needed the painkiller. Vampire bats naturally have an anaesthetic in their saliva so they can bite their victims painlessly and so avoid detection. However, in Las Lagos, medics harvested the bat saliva and bottled it for use as a painkiller. But it needed to be superheated first to kill off the bacteria.

Next, he needed aloe vera gel, which could be used to some extent for burns and lacerations. Nothing was really guaranteed, though. He remembered what he had been taught in history class, about the medical wonders that existed before the Great Deterioration.

There was a jar of the aloe gel on a low shelf, so he took it. He went to the dried herbs section of the wall and got a sachet of dried yarrow. Lance handed it all to his mother, who began to treat the man.

He hoped that he would heal quickly, though his wounds were deep.

On the bright side, Shredder Falcons have relatively clean talons, unlike those of vultures, so the wound probably won't get infected, Lance remembered.

If the man had been scratched with the claw of a carrion-eater like a buzzard or vulture, the wound would be full of bacteria and rot carried from festering flesh. And if he had fallen prey to the Aeroserpents, flying snakes who were thought to have venomous bites, it would have been a different story.

"You can go home now," Lance's mother said after they had finished bandaging up the man, "thanks for helping."

Lance smiled. He was glad that he had helped, but the metallic reek of blood was filling his mind and he needed to clear his head.

Lance walked straight to his home, went into his bedroom, and sat down on his bed. His mind still filled with thoughts of the man's wound, he pulled out a book. It was a catalogue of medicinal plants that Lance was trying to memorise in order to graduate his medic apprenticeship faster.

Lance was reading a section on the evening primrose, whose oil could be used as anti-inflammatory, when he noticed just how dirty he was.

Lance took a break from the catalogue and hurried to the bathroom. He undressed and stepped into the shower stall. Lance turned on the shower. The cold water cascaded down from the showerhead and soaked his hair. The opulence of a warm shower was near unattainable, though in the times before the Great Deterioration it was said to be a luxury that even the commonest of people enjoyed on a daily basis. But Lance didn't mind. The water's coolness was refreshing and reinvigorating, after the desert dust and beating sun. As Lance inhaled the floral scent of the soap, his mind wandered to the important question. What creature would his Chimera form be? It was the animal that he would have to live with for the rest of his life, so he hoped that it was compatible with his body and personality. After all, being able to transform into a fierce animal would give him strengths and abilities that he had never experienced. He wondered what life was like before the Great Deterioration, when the Chimera Mutation hadn't yet been released upon the world. And what would it be like today, if it never was?