The Finding

by Tim Martin

It was nearly dark when Boric fist saw the Brother Fire in the distance. His first thought was that the raiders had struck again. Indeed, in the two years he'd been away from the Frost's Peaks, he had seen near twenty villages destroyed or damaged. Closer inspection, and perhaps a little bit of intuitive knowledge, told Boric that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

The pockets of Brother Fire were small, not from houses, but too large to have been campfires. As he drew closer, he noted that it was the remains of wagons that burned in the dusk. Scattered about there were a few bodies, all orks, and all, judging from their dress and possessions, slavers. Each appeared to have died due to hacks and slashes.

Slavers or no, the bodies were the embodiment of the Elements, and as such, Boric set about his grisly task. One by one he dragged the six to the center of the clearing. When complete he began to gather what wood he could from the remaining wreckage. That's when he discovered the last body. Under the bulk of a covered wagon, whose axles had broken and tipped to the side, was the body of an obsidiman. Of too great a bulk for Boric to move, he bent to the task of looking for wagon scraps to use as a gurney of types. It was not until he pulled a large piece of timber from beneath the obsidiman that he noticed his dread, almost mortal, error. As the last of the length of the timber was removed, the weight of the obsidiman shifted, and he rolled to a side. And he grunted.

Boric cursed at his carelessness. A healer to the core, his first actions should have been to check the bodies for survivors. Yet he had become so jaded, following in the wake of the bloodthirsty terrorists, that he had assumed that these too were victims beyond his meager powers to save. It almost cost this man his life. Immediately, Boric set about trying to discern the condition of the Name-giver lying in the wreckage. Though he'd heard stories about all the Nave-givers, his experience in the clan was limited strictly to his own kind. Even after his exile, he'd only encountered a smattering of other Nave-givers. In fact, he'd met only dwarf and human beyond his own orkish kind. Still, he was a healer, and the healing arts were, to put it simply, reasserting the balance of Brothers Earth, Fire and Wood, Sisters Water and Air within the shells of physical and spiritual existence. Out of balance in one and not the other leads to madness or sickness, out of balance in both, and it let to certain death, or worse, a dark path.

First he checked to ensure that Sister Air was being taken in, that Brother Fire and Sister Water were not spilling out in the form of blood to the ground. Boric found many cuts and scrapes, and tended to them, but it told him that this person had been in a terrific fight. It was then that Boric looked beyond the victim and noticed, for the first time, the manacles on his patient's hands and feet. With snapped chains to each cuff, it became apparent that the obsidiman lying before him took part in the carnage to which Boric was an after the fact witness.

Boric, however, knew the history as well as any ork. Though the thought of slavery did not stir the same kind of anger in him that it did many of his kind, he nevertheless felt a deep and a primeval distaste toward the people that could inflict this kind of pain.

Brothers Wood and Earth, Boric could tell, were strong in this man, as they were in all obsidimen he imagined, so he set about balancing out the other elements. He bound the wounds that would bleed the most, particularly with movement, and spread an herbal salve into them. Boric then faced the hardest of all elements to balance out, Sister Air. More fluid and indecisive than Sister Water, Air would never be still long enough to get a grasp on. It was clear to Boric that this man would not recover unless he somehow improved the flow of Sister Air into his chest. How to go about this was difficult, though.

Normally, just pushing in on a person's chest would help them get started, but Boric's best guess what that this man had some broken ribs, and pushing in on the chest would be as likely to kill him as heal him.

It was then that he sensed the element. Normally, he would have to concentrate for minutes, sometimes hours before he would even have a chance of finding a true element. This one, somehow, jumped out at him. About fifty yards off the clearing there stood a grove of oaks, Brother Wood's most majestic Tree, as old as the ages - how they might have survived the Scourge, only the Passions could know. Boric rose and walked to the grove. In the center he discovered three kernels of true air miraculously resting in a bed of pine needles. Boric knew this was not normally possible, but he was never one to laugh at valuable gifts. He carefully picked up the pine needles and bore the kernels back to the wounded obsidiman.

He knelt in front of the still form and gently lifted a kernel to the stocky nose of his patient. With a gentle breath, he blew the kernel of Sister air into the nostrils of his patient. At first, nothing happened. The obsidiman's breathing remained shallow and weak. All at once, the wounded figure drew in a deep, powerful breath - exhaled slowly, and as if nothing had happened, his breathing became regular.

Boric did not know what turn of luck had caused those kernels of Sister Air to be where they were, but he again thanked the elements silently, that he was able to save at least one life.