Chapter 21 · Bound to the Executioner: Leveling Up With My Enemy - Chapter 21: Stitching in the Dark

"Don't you dare die on me, you arrogant prick!" Vesp screamed, her voice echoing off the damp, jagged walls of the abyss.

She slammed her palms against Soren's chest, feeling the wet, hot soak of blood through his tunic. He was out cold, head lolling back against a slab of cold limestone. The fall had been a disaster, but the internal bleeding was the real killer.

"Pip! Scan him! Now!"

The small arcane familiar buzzed frantically around Vesp's head, its metallic wings humming like a trapped hornet. "Internal hemorrhaging in the thoracic cavity. Multiple rib fractures. Left lung is collapsing. Probability of survival without immediate intervention: 14 percent."

"I don't like those odds," Vesp snapped. She ripped open her medical kit, the sterile smell of antiseptic clashing with the metallic tang of blood and the sulfurous stench of the rift.

She pressed her fingers to his carotid. The pulse was thready, erratic. He was slipping.

"You owe me a century of servitude, Soren. You don't get to quit before the first payment," she muttered, her fingers trembling as she prepped a needle.

She didn't have a proper surgical table.