[Danny]

[OOC: Read 'Searching' before this post]

Rushing outside, Olm was confronted by a small but rapidly growing crowd. Not for the first time, he cursed the morbid curiousity of Pyke's inhabitants, snatched up his medical bag, and pushed his way through the crowd.

"Excuse me... Coming through... Oh let me through, I'm a doctor... I... oh."

It was clear that there was nothing that could be done for this patient. Of his upper body, nothing remained. there was a bloody mass of flesh remaining in the top of his pants, but nothing more.

"What happened?"

Faces turned to him, en masse.

"Flew off into the air..."

"...Didn't see nothing..."

"...Must've been invisible or sonething..."

"...Never stood a chance..."

Putting up a hand to stop the outpouring of explanations, Olm began to scan the sky. Above the Blacksmith's, he saw a small red shape hovering in mid-air. As he watched, small pieces of the mass were torn off, and then vanished. Covering his disgust, Olm pointed it out to some of the villagers, then ran back into the surgery.

"Spider! It's got someone!"

Spider was already on his feet, and now he headed towards the door. "I knew it."

"Hey, where are you going? You can't attack that thing in the state you're in! It nearly killed you last time, are you going to let it try again?"

"I have to confront it."

"Well then, me and Jase are coming with you, then." Olm began to pack medicines and equipment into his bag.

"No thanks, I'll be better off without yer. I don't see what help a tin can and a mud who thinks he's a vykker could give me..."

"Spider, listen to me!" Olm tried to look as stern as he could when he was looking almost vertically up. "You are not even half-way recovered yet. If that thing gets another shot at you, you'll almost certainly be killed. And there's... something else."

Something in Olm's voice made Spider pay attention. "What do yer mean?"

"There's poison. In the claw marks. The samples we were able to extract from your wounds were not sufficiently pure for Jase to be able to synthesize an antidote. You're being kept alive at the moment by the antibiotics we've been injecting in you every hour. So we have to come with you, to keep you alive, and also to try and recover a pure sample of the poison from the creature itself."

Spider sighed. "Alright, but not the can. Just you."

Olm frowned. "Are you sure? Jase would greastly improve the chances of your success."

"I'm sure. Get what you need and we'll go."

Olm waved his bag. "Packed already." He led the way out to the crowd, which was gathered aimlessly about the square. Looking up, Olm saw that the red mass he'd seen had gone, and there was a calm in the air that suggested the creature had gone for now. But Spider turned his head both ways, then pointed roughly down a narrow street.

"This way."

And Olm tried his best to keep up.