<Stupid! Stupid fucking idiot!> There was a chance that Jorik was alive, but Reidar had been too scared to check when he was fighting the mutated man.
Reidar dropped to one knee beside Lena, his hands already glowing with the light of mana. He was casting Circle of Renewal.
The warmth spread through her torn clothes and into the deep gash on her head. The bleeding slowed, then stopped as torn flesh and broken bones began to knit themselves back together under the spell's influence.
Her breathing, which had been shallow and ragged, deepened into something more stable. The terrible pallor of her face regained a hint of color.
Reidar kept the channel going, pouring more mana into the healing circle until the worst of the damage was sealed.
The problem was that Lena had lost a lot of blood, and there was no way for that to get produced by a healing spell of such a low tier. The spell itself wasn't even that fast or effective.
Lena's eyes blinked open, clouded for a second before clearing. She tried to push herself up, wincing hard.
"Easy," Reidar said as she tried to move. "You took a hell of a hit."
She blinked, her gaze going around the clearing before locking onto him. "Silas…"
"Gone. For now." Reidar let the healing energy fade, the glow receding from the area. "He left you alive."
Lena's hand went to her temple, probing the freshly closed wound.
"No, he thought I was dead." Her fingers came away clean. She looked from her hand to Reidar, her expression unreadable. "You helped me."
"I wasn't going to leave you to bleed out."
"Why?" She paused.
"After what happened… after what happened at the lake. You still decided to help us."
"You see… I'm an idiot."
"At least you are an honest one…"
"Not so honest." Reidar gave her a dashing smile.
He stood, offering her a hand up. "Can you walk?"
"Lend me a hand." Reidar then brought Lena to one of his primal pack wolves. and helped her get to the top of the creature. At least that way she could move.
"We can't go back to Havenwood," Reidar said.
"What? Why?"
Reidar kept his voice low as they moved through the trees. "When I got back to Havenwood, Martin was waiting with fifty fighters. Mara was right beside him, looking like she'd just survived a massacre."
Lena's jaw tightened. "She got to him first."
Reidar nodded.
"She told him I murdered Aaron, you, Lysa, Torren, and Jorik. She said I was the one herding monsters to the walls. She said she had proof." Reidar laughed bitterly.
"I don't know what this proof was, but my summons made everything more believable, I guess. Who else could control monsters like that? It was the perfect lie."
"Martin believed her?" Lena was in disbelief.
"He said he'd had suspicions about them for a long time, but suspicion wasn't proof. What Mara gave him was. He banished me on the spot. He said that if I returned, I would be considered a hostile invader."
Lena was silent for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the path ahead. "He chose the word of the bitch healer over the man who saved his settlement."
"He chose the story that kept his people from panicking. My word against theirs. A stranger against their trusted healer? It was never a contest."
"He's a fool."
"He's a leader protecting his own. And we played right into their hands. They created discord between me and you all with the first attack, then used you to seal the deal. Now they have him isolated, trusting only the viper at his side."
"Right, vipers…"
"What?" Reidar asked. Lena's facial expression suggested that she had something terrible to say.
"I woke up around the time you were escaping," Lena said, straining against the wolf's steady gait. "My head was spinning, but I could hear them."
Reidar kept his eyes on the path ahead. "Hear who?"
"Jorik and Silas. They were talking. Jorik was on his feet, standing beside Silas like they were old comrades." Her fingers tightened in the wolf's fur.
Reidar reined his wolf to a halt, turning to face her. "That's impossible. I saw Silas hit him with a fireball. He was engulfed in flames."
"He wasn't burned. He was fine, standing there. They were planning. They were discussing… the Progenitor. Silas kept saying the word. Jorik agreed with everything the man said."
Reidar's mind raced, connecting the pieces. The lack of a death notification for Jorik meant he was alive; that was true, but he would have never thought he was actually the double agent, although the chance of one being inside the team had already been discussed.
Though since Lysa died, Torren died, and apparently both Lena and Jorik did, Reidar dismissed the thought as just weird assumptions he made.
But he was in fact right. "There was a spy, and I was right all along."
Lena gave a grim nod. "He was one of them all along."
"That explains why the church knew where I was at all times." He paused. "Mara and Aaron told them about the Lake quest, while Jorik told them about the quarry."
Frankly speaking, Reidar wasn't surprised anymore. It was just that, if he had the chance to get back to Morv'axil, he was going to buy skills to spy on people.
<Morality can go to hell at this point.> He sighed.
"Look, Lena. With everything that happened, I've decided to leave."
"What?" She couldn't believe that.
"You can't be serious!"
"You can't really blame me, Lena. I came here just to rest and restock, agreed to help you guys out of kindness, and ended up being attacked twice, being forced to kill people, and actually being accused of being the mastermind behind this situation. Not only that, but I was humiliated thoroughly by both Martin, who played with me, and Silas, who treated me like an interesting specimen."