This current patient was struggling. The Corruption was eating them alive. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but 30 different beings had come in all at once, and the floating island of Savepoint was very busy right now, trying to purify them and stop them all from dying. To make matters worse, the Thantir only had 31 members, and if it wasn’t for the Thantir’s two Time Drakes and their Life Goddess, they probably would have been overrun.
Thankfully, Kal were very good at organizing things, and they had gone through every patient, determined who needed to be dealt with first, and they had managed to get through most of the infected reasonably quickly.
However, this particular patient, a strange, bright pink, fox-like being that stood upright, the Corruption was quite deep, deeper than Kal realized, and was a bit tedious because Kayel, one of the Decaylings, wasn’t that fast at burning it away. Sure, Leh was gently guiding Kayel, but Kayel was scared of hurting the patient, who was squirming and wriggling around, even though they were tranquilized, and Kayel’s control of fire wasn’t as fine-tuned as the older Decay Lords.
At least, so far, Leh had managed to direct Kayel in removing the corruption in the more dangerous areas. But there was a small section on the patient’s arm where the corruption was chomping down on their fingers. Leh didn’t want to have to amputate the limb, but the wound was definitely not going away, no matter how much Kayel burnt at it.
Just as Leh was about to call one of his fellow Cleansers to help, Kayel very suddenly changed his attitude.
“Fuck this, I have a better idea…”
Kayel muttered to himself, then glanced around the room, looking for something sharp. He quickly found a small scalpel. Leh thought Kayel was about to cut out the infected skin and fur, but it turned out, Kayel was about to use the scalpel on himself.
With a low growl, Kayel removed his wristbands, then ran the scalpel across his wrist, making himself bleed heavily. He then started dripping his blood across the wound. Immediately, the corruption started hissing and melting, degrading into nothing. Once the majority of the corruption was gone, Kayel went back to burning out the last few traces, almost as if nothing had happened and this was a normal purification.
Once Kayel was done, he poured some of his blood on the wound for good measure, then used his ice powers to cool the patient down, and wrapped the wound in some nearby gauze. Everything was now sorted, and Kayel turned to Leh, who hadn’t really moved. Admittedly, Kayel didn’t really understand how the Cleansers showed emotions outside of their voices and glowing glass eyes. Kayel did know that they all rarely swore, and only used curse words if they were trying to show more extreme emotions.
“How… how the fuck did you…” Leh stuttered, paused, then clicked to himself a few times, calming himself down before starting again. “Kayel, how did you know that your blood would kill the Corruption?”
Kayel shrugged. “I’ve kinda done this before. Well, not the surgery, that’s new to me, but I’ve definitely used my blood to kill Corruptions in the past.”
“And you… you’re telling us this now? When we have a backlog of patients?”
“Honestly, kinda forgot. But also I wasn’t completely sure this would work.”
Leh clicked several times in frustration, then had a quick telepathic chat with the other Cleansers. There were only a couple of patients left, and Vikalos was dealing with one of them, while Retvik was about to start on the last one.
“Kinda feel I should have told you all in advance…” Kayel tutted. “So, uh, what do we do now?”
More clicks. After a moment, Pah appeared in the doorway. “You both done?”
“Yes.”
“Alrighty! Galyn is on his way here to wake the patient up and get them to the recovery room.”
“Is everyone else dealt with?” Leh asked.
“Pretty much…” Pah paused. Leh clicked at Pah a few times, and Pah clicked back, before switching back to normal speech. “Alright. Kayel, can you please go and decontaminate yourself, then go and find Koh, he should be in the waiting areas, he wants to have a word with you.”
“What about you two though?” Kayel exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, I’ll wash everything down and wash Leh down as well.”
“Oh. Alright…” Kayel shrugged, then headed off to the decontamination showers. Just as Kayel left, Galyn appeared in the doorway.
“Perfect timing!” Pah chirped slightly. “You know what to do, right?”
Galyn nodded. “Same place as everywhere else?”
“Yep.”
“Of course.”
Galyn summoned a couple of very thin syringes, then coated them in a general painkiller, one that would also help the patient slowly and painlessly wake up. After quickly injecting the required medication, Galyn turned off the brakes on the patient’s bed and wheeled them outside. Once the coast was clear, Leh and Pah spoke some more.
“So Kayel’s blood was just as effective as Elkay’s blood?” Pah asked.
“I actually think it was MORE effective.”
“Really?”
“I think so. It will need a lot of testing. And we’ll have to test the other Decaylings too. Maybe Kayel just has super hot blood or something, but maybe Nyssi, Tanos and Ret are the same.”
Pah shrugged. “Perhaps. I’m sure they’ll let us check. What about the other four?”
Leh tutted. “Kuta is a standard Decayon, so no. Talok might have the same acidic saliva that Tahvra has, but we’d have to check. Thassalin’s blood is nothing special, most Time Drake blood is basic. And I don’t think Phovoula even has blood any more. Still, we ought to test all of them. Just in case.”
“Just in case…” Pah stepped back and peered outside. Everything seemed to have mostly settled down. “Either way, we did good work today.”
“We did, yes. But, about this blood… I think this new source of anti-corruption blood might be even better than what we’re getting from the two Synaisthyns.. At the very least, we’ll have more of it available to us…”