The Worst Healer
Copyright© 2026 by InSpite
Cursed
Sierra drew in a ragged breath as Rhian snapped her fingers in front of the Fencer’s face, demanding her attention.
It had taken Butter’s help to pull her out of the shallow hole where she’d been clawing at the ground, heedless of their warnings that she’d cause a further collapse.
“The ground is too unstable,” Rhian signed wearily. “Digging isn’t the answer here.”
“They just ... disappeared.”
Sierra drew in another shaky breath. “I led them both here, filled their heads with all sorts of stories about dungeons, and then I lost them both the moment they set foot in one.”
“Why did I think I could do this after last time?” she added, staring blankly at the dirt and bloody scratches covering her hands, “I wanted to prove I could do it, but I can’t.”
Rhian snapped her fingers again, louder this time. “We will find them. But I can’t track through the ground, we need to go deeper.”
“We came here together,” Rhian added. “I was the one who missed the trap. That’s on me, and I’ll apologise to them myself. When we find them.”
Sierra nodded slowly, trying to push past the blind panic she’d felt when they’d fallen. “What was it? I still don’t understand how they just fell through the ground.”
“There must have been a hole or crevice there already.” Rhian signed. “I heard a crack, so I’m guessing the Hunter covered it with wood and then laid flagstones on top of it.”
“From above it looked like the rest of the floor, and my weight wasn’t enough to set it off,” she concluded. “Whatever the hole was, it was unstable. Carrie crashing into the sides caused them to collapse ... but I heard rocks sliding. My guess is they fell through to another floor.”
Sierra nodded, taking a moment to calm herself.
She had to lead this group deeper into the dungeon, and to do that she needed to be composed.
“Alright,” she said finally. “Deeper it is then.”
I was lost in swirling pain and darkness.
A voice tugged at me, sometimes screaming, sometimes sobbing. It pulled me close to consciousness now and again, but the pain soon pushed me back under.
Everything hurt.
As I slipped in and out of consciousness, that was my one constant.
Not a ‘tired after a long day’ kind of ache.
I needed an ambulance, but I was about as far from being able to get one as you could get.
Eventually I tried to open my eyes, but it made no difference. The darkness was complete.
Something whispered to itself a short distance away, nonsensical musings about friends and abandonment. I tried to make sense of the words but slipped away again.
The pain woke me some time later, pulling me to the surface instead of pushing me under for once. The slight movement as I stirred caused me to cry out. That hurt too.
My right leg was agony, my thigh and knee sending jolts of pain at the slightest movement.
My back, head and left shoulder all screamed that something was badly wrong.
I tried to focus, tried to think but, for a moment all I could do was slowly breathe as the agony gnawed away at me.
I heard something shift in the darkness surrounding me as a figure moved towards me, scraping over rocks and rubble.
“I thought you were dead,” a quiet, almost lifeless voice said from somewhere in the darkness. “I thought you’d all left me in the dark.”
“Ellie?” I’d heard her angry or joyful. Drunk or bored. But I’d never heard her sound flat and emotionless ... for a moment I wasn’t even sure it was her.
Her gag must have come loose in the fall.
I was relieved she’d survived the ordeal and seemed to be coherent enough to put together sentences. Still, something about her tone warned me ... until she was fully healed, she was unpredictable and deadly.
“There was a trap, we fell...” I started to explain.
“Spark,” the quiet voice commanded as light blinded me.
After a moment of straining my eyes, I was finally able to see Ellie, covered in dirt and bleeding from a cut to her forehead.
A tiny flame danced from the tip of her index finger, creating a small circle of light around us.
“I was going to eat you ... but I wasn’t hungry yet,” she whispered.
“There’s some food in my bag. If you can find it ... maybe eat that first,” I suggested hopefully.
She nodded solemnly.
“You were dead though,” she insisted, “and there was a bone sticking out just here.”
She gave my left thigh a poke, then scuttled backwards when the stabbing pain from the gentle prod made me cry out.
“Regenerate,” I said, mostly to myself when the pain faded enough that I could think again. “It was still running when I fell.”
Ellie’s light seemed to be fading.
Or I was.
Luckily, I didn’t have to move anything but my mouth to cast Regenerate again.
With the Spell cast, I felt my consciousness fading again.
I tried to fight it and stay awake.
Ellie must have noticed too, because I finally heard a little emotion in that flat voice as I faded. The last thing I heard before I slipped away again was a desperate “Don’t leave me alone in the dark again...”
“You’re supposed to be a fencer, not a berserker.” Butter’s normal good humour had disappeared as he confronted Sierra. “You need to start acting like it.”
“Jonas and Sylvie can’t go any further. Skye is nearly out of Mana.” He reeled off his complaints before gesturing at the dark welts covering Sierra. “And just how many more times do you think you can swing that cursed sword before it kills you?”
“We have to find Carrie and Ellie,” Sierra insisted through gritted teeth. “We push on.”
“No, we don’t.” Butter stood firm, crossing his arms over his chest. “We won’t survive another fight like the last one. You need to let Rhian do her job and find us a path instead of charging recklessly from one battle to the next.”
“We don’t have time for that, they’re down there somewhere.”
“So is Jonas’ sister...” He softened his tone. “We can’t help them if we never reach them.”
“Jonas’ sister is dead. Everyone here except Jonas knows that,” Sierra spat. “I won’t let my friends die here too.”
Rhian snapped her fingers, interrupting the conversation to sign to Sierra. “We rest.”
“We push on,” Sierra insisted angrily. “We’re going to find them.”
“We rest. And you put that fucking sword away.” Rhian paused her signing to gesture to the black and red handled sword.
Sierra rounded on the Scout, but Rhian held up a hand before signing. “If your goal is killing yourself out of guilt, go off on your own and do it.”
“I’m going to find our friends,” she continued, “and right now, letting this lot rest, then proceeding carefully is my best chance of doing that.”
Sierra looked for a moment at Rhian and Butter, standing side by side opposing her, then let out an angry sigh.
“Four hours. No more,” she conceded, sheathing the black and red sword. “Then you find us a path down.”
A gentle humming awoke me.
Everything hurt, but my body felt badly battered and bruised, not broken like it had been the last time I woke.
As I stirred, the humming stopped abruptly.
There was a quick motion somewhere close by in the darkness, then something cold and sharp pressed against my neck.
“Who are you?” a cold, lifeless voice demanded.
“Ellie?” My voice came out hoarse as I struggled with the words. “It’s me ... Carrie.”
“You’re not Carrie though ... are you?” The words were emphasised with a gentle poke, just enough to draw blood.
I let out a sigh. “I guess, technically, Carrie isn’t my real name,” I admitted. “I was covered in blood and said ‘I’m fucking Carrie’, and Sierra took me literally. You see there’s this film ... and a book too. This girl – Carrie – gets drenched in blood. I guess it’s a reference from my world.”
I probably should have stopped talking.
“See, she was in school...”
“Oh my God. Shut up,” Ellie whispered. “You’re giving me a headache.”
I heard motion again and the sharp object left my throat.
“OK, you’re Carrie. No-one else is that bad at telling stories,” she conceded, sounding confused. “But ... could you always use Regenerate? Things are a little blurry, but I was sure you only had three Spells.”
“We met a Paladin.” I pulled myself to a sitting position slowly. “Remember when you said something would just click into place? Well, he cast Regenerate and click.”
She didn’t respond, so I continued. “Sierra, sort of blew up about it, but ... as we’re out in the middle of nowhere there wasn’t much to be done about it.”
“Sierra ... and Rhian.” Her voice finally sparked with a little emotion. “Where are they?”
I gestured upwards before realising the motion was useless in the darkness. “Above us ... somewhere.”
Again silence.
“I fell into some sort of trap the second I set foot in the dungeon,” I explained. “You were on my back, so we both fell down here.”
“We’re in a dungeon?” Ellie seemed a little relieved at that. “I thought ... I’d been sent somewhere dark.”
“No,” I said firmly. “You’re here because I was clumsy.”
“I can do something about the darkness too,” I added softly. “I’ll cast Light, but cover your eyes, it’ll be blinding at first.”
I heard a motion but no response, so I fumbled about, grabbed a fist-sized rock and started the Spell.
“In darkness, let there be: Light.”
I had to screw my eyes shut for a minute or two until they adjusted to the blinding glare.
When I managed to open them, Ellie was peering at me timidly through bloodshot eyes.
“I ... used Spark to light us for a while but ... it went out and I forgot I could cast it,” she finished quietly.
She looked like she’d been dragged through brambles and dirt for half a mile, with grime and scratches covering her skin. Her normally silky dress was tattered, covered in dust and small tears.
The blood from the knock to the head she’d taken had dried over half her face, aside from tracks below her eyes where tears had washed away the blood and grime.
Her head and eyes occasionally twitched, making her look almost feral compared to the confident and assured Ellie I was used to.
I couldn’t help breaking into a grin.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said, meaning every word. “You really had us all worried this time.”
She gave a self-conscious smile before remembering something. “I organised and arranged everything while you were unconscious.”
She gestured to a meandering line of objects, a mixture of things from my pack interspersed with rocks and clumps of dirt.
Each object was neatly arranged a set distance from the next, but the order was chaotic and the row weaved back and forth, not to mention the rocks that clearly didn’t belong in the arrangement.
“I ... don’t know why I did that,” Ellie concluded, her enthusiasm fading as she looked at what she’d created. “It seemed important at the time but...”
“You’ve been having good and bad spells for a while now,” I reassured her. “But this is the first time you’ve been ... coherent.”
“Everything seems so hazy.” She stared into the distance for a while before shaking her head slightly. “You must be hungry. And thirsty. It’s been ... well ... I don’t really know but it felt like weeks.”
“Some water would be good.” I walked over to the supplies laid out and picked up a canteen, taking a couple of gulps of water before it occurred to me to ask. “Have you eaten or had anything to drink?”
Ellie thought about it for a moment. “I can’t really remember.”
I handed her the canteen, noticing she reached out with her left arm while her right was tucked close to her body. I could see dark bruising through her torn dress around the elbow.
“Ellie, it looks like you’re in pretty bad shape. I’m going to cast Regenerate on you,” I said gently, reaching out a hand slowly to avoid startling her.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” she warned sternly but made no move to avoid or interrupt as I cast the spell.
“I know,” I muttered, “but I can, and we have bigger problems to worry about right now.”
“Thanks to Sierra’s OCD, at least we don’t have to worry about supplies,” I concluded, looking at the long line Ellie had arranged. “But I think we need you healed up before we try to move.”
Ellie hummed to herself quietly, watching a graze on her wrist very slowly vanish.
I gathered up some of the food – little leaf-wrapped packets of dried meat and hard biscuits – and set a portion in front of Ellie before settling down opposite her.
Just as I was about to bite into a lump of beef jerky, she stopped humming and looked up at me.
“You said your name wasn’t Carrie,” she declared suddenly.
Shit.
I paused, hoping she’d forgotten that.
“You made one of your weird references, and she thought you were introducing yourself,” she added with surprising insight. “So, this whole time ... you haven’t even told us your real name?”
I opened my mouth to protest but ... couldn’t really find the words to justify it.
“The thing is...” I finally managed. “The longer I left it the more awkward it became.”
Ellie looked both offended and unconvinced.
“And the more I heard people call me Carrie, the more I liked it,” I added hastily. “It’s ... just my name now. I prefer it to the one people called me in my world.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly, accepting my justification but not letting me off the hook. “So what’s your name?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to give her my name, and it took me a moment to put into words why.
“I like being Carrie. I like being part of Red Briar,” I said slowly. “I don’t want you to call me another name.”
Her eyes lit up slightly. “A secret then,” she whispered.
She leant forward, arranging rocks in a circle between us.