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“I am very, very glad that I don’t have to face you as an enemy, Sonia-ida.” Indaturan had come up behind them during the fight. “With an attack like that, you’ll shred Mitakrian’s defenses.”

“She shouldn’t have threatened my family,” Sonia said. “No one threatens my family and gets away with it. Not to mention the absolute idiocy of her attacking Matt. Doesn’t she know how much damage that would do?”

“I don’t think she knows,” Alaryia said as she knelt down beside Daniel. “Savira and her court tended not to pay attention to what was happening outside their confines unless it interfered with their experiments.” She turned her attention to Daniel. “I’m going to extract the slither of her essence now. I’m afraid it will probably sting a bit.”

What with the affinity clash, Daniel suspected that was an understatement but the sliver had to be removed if he didn’t want to be drinking the antidote for the rest of his life so he gritted his teeth and nodded at her.

“I’ll numb it as much as I can,” she said. “But I’m afraid that I can’t just turn off your pain receptors like Hal did when she healed your shoulders. Savira’s venom is forcing them to stay active even with the amount of antidote you’ve drunk.” She shot a glare to where Savira lay. “That has to be deliberate.”

“Just get on with it, please,” Daniel said.

“Of course.” She paid a gentle hand between his shoulders and began to glow. A moment later, his whole body exploded with pain for a split second before both it and the light cut off abruptly. He looked over at Alaryia to find her scowling. “That,” she said, “was much worse than I thought. I can’t expect you to tolerate that level of pain for long enough for me to extract the sliver.” She tutted to herself before sighing. “It’s not usually advisable to let someone lose consciousness while envenomed? but I think I’ll have to make an exception.” She pushed the flask back into his hand. “Drink as much of that as you can stomach and then I’ll knock you out long enough to extract this damned thing.”

“Why is it usually inadvisable?” Daniel asked before gulping down several mouthfuls from the flask. The antidote was very rich tasting and he soon found he couldn’t empty the flask.

“Because you can’t drink while you’re unconscious,” Indaturan said. “And for some reason, no other method of getting antidote into the system is effective. If people lose onsciousness while envenomed they usually don’t make it.”

“Ah,” Daniel said. “Hence asking me to drink as much of it as I can.” He put the flask down. “Which I have.”

“It should be enough,” Alaryia said. “I’m going to do this as quickly as possible so I can wake you back up before it wears off. That means it’s likely to be messy and I’ll have to heal the damage I do pulling it out once it’s done.”

“Okay.” Daniel said. “Let’s do this.”

Alaryia nodded and laid her hand on his forehead. There was a soft brush in his mind and everything faded to black.

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