I finished book five thismorning so I get to make yet another DungeonMary post :]
Grace gets the burn up his arm (like how the PHM book describes it, not the tiny movie scar) from the battle with Imogen. He takes care of support and healing, but with his minor attacks, he can help with the fight.
Grace saw a summoned bolt of light or fire or who knows what come from somewhere. It might’ve been Imogen, it might’ve been from a crawler, he didn’t know, arcing in Donut’s direction. She was already low, she’d already used her cockroach ability. Grace had seen what Carl had been like when they first ran into Ferdinand and he had hurt Donut. If she died? Carl would be gone. Donut was one of his last tethers to who he was before the collapse.
Grace didn’t have time to cast spells, not at the speed of light, so he made the—albeit impulsive—decision to push her out of the way. He shouted out as white-hot pain wracked his body, mostly pinpointed to his arm and shoulder, but it reached his neck and pricked his fingers as well. Grace bit back bile as he fell to his knees, face squishing into the dirt as Donut shouted his name and darkness clouded his vision.
Grace woke with a start, coughing up blood and dismissing a million notifications and achievements. Imani stood over him, bringing her wings back to her. “Oh, man,” he rasped, sitting up. “Did we win?”
Imani had a pained smile on her face. “Yeah,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “we won.” She placed her hand on his, and he reeled back, hissing.
“Holy smokes, that hurts—" Grace tried to wring out his hand, but that sent even more shocks of pain up his arm and a rush of tears to spill as he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry Grace. The burn is going to scar. I tried to heal it the best I could. I didn’t think it would still hurt,” Imani winced.
With his other hand, Grace waved her off. “No, no, it’s okay. You did great, Imani. Go help the people that need it. I have my own spells and like a million bandages.”
Grace wraps up his arm to hide it and uses one of his healing spells to help with the pain, and hides the burn. Carl and the people running everything had enough to worry about without needing to be guilty for something Grace did to himself.
Grace tells Donut he healed right up, and he’s all good now, and he doesn’t even mention any of this to Carl. But he keeps the bandages on. He’s never really liked burns.
Instead of really bad chemical burns, like in the book, Grace gets general heat/high temp burns + lichtenberg scars up and down his arm.
Next I get to write Carl and donut learning just how bad the scarring really was because Ryland downplays when he’s hurt really bad :)
