Five days after the second raid, the cloud tree warned him that someone was coming. The little world tree telling him they were armed and would look a little further out to see if there was anyone else. He no longer risked the moving vines, instead keeping them as a patrol unit around the village.
Chris looked up from where he was tending the medical grass, harvesting a few blades. Having found when mixed with a bit of the fig's juice and shadow berries it turned red. He wanted to believe it turned into a health potion or at least a means to counter poison, but had no way to test it just yet.
Gently tucking the blades into his pocket, he dusted his hands and began making his way over. The cloud tree's mist had thickened and began swirling in a pattern across the ground, thickening in the direction they were coming from.
"How many are there?" he asked. The world tree answering that it was just the one, and that they seemed to be hurt, that there was faint blood dripping onto the ground, that they seemed different from the bad men.
Chris grabbed his staff, the weight becoming a familiar comfort as he slowly walked to the gate. He positioned himself just inside the living wall like he had done last time, ensuring the ents could see anyone approaching that the world tree may have missed, knowing that the scream flowers would also pulse warnings if anything got close.
As he stood there he watched as a figure stumbled toward the village, the mist still low and circling around them, but he knew the cloud tree could raise it if needed. The first thing he noticed was that their armor was more knight-like than Walter's was, allowing for mobility and flexibility rather than purely taking hits. Next was how they seemed to be limping, going so far as to use their blade at times to keep moving. Lastly, he saw their face and how she looked half-dead and clearly having been through hell.
He watched her move towards him, well, if you could call it moving. She seemed to take three steps then stumble and need her blade to catch herself before trying to press on further. The three steps soon became two as she got closer before she fell to one knee. Trying to push back up but clearly not having much strength left to do so.
Chris hesitated. She wasn't that far out now, but she was a stranger, and that meant risk every time before now. And yet he couldn't help but remember the old man, how he was just as much a stranger and yet he helped him. Could he really call this a haven and safe place when the first person who came by that was clearly hurt and needing help was cast away due to his paranoia?
The world tree gently used a root to tug his sleeve like a little child, telling him the person felt sad, lost, and needed help. Asking if he was going to turn them away when they felt nice and clean.
He wasn't sure what to make of that, wanting to ask if it could now feel people's emotions and what it meant by feeling clean, but would do so later. There were more pressing matters at hand needing his focus and attention. Choosing instead to trust his first sprout and take one final chance on a stranger.
The woman seemed to collapse entirely as he walked over to her, a hand reaching forward either to keep going or towards him. He didn't know, but felt it didn't matter. As he got a closer look at her, he could see the damage properly now. Wounds that should have killed her days ago. Armor battered, scratched, and dented. A few leather straps hanging loose where they'd been cut or torn. Some even sticking out from the steel armor bits, seemingly having been padding. Her face was now hidden behind a closed helmet that seemed to have fallen shut, but he could at least still hear her breathing. It was shallow and with a faint wet almost wheeze to it that sounded wrong.
He also noticed how her hand never left her sword. Even while unconscious, her grip remained firm and strong, wrapped tightly around the hilt. Picking her up he found she seemed to be deceptively light as he carried her to the shadow berries. Considering using the new potion he made, but instead choosing to stick with what he knew worked. Maybe a simple solution with a few blades of medical grass mixed into it.
Gently he rested her on a small patch of the medical grass growing next to the shadow berry vines and removed her helmet, pouring a solution of medical grass-infused water into her mouth as the shadow berry vines worked their way under her damaged armor through its various gaps. He couldn't help but rest her head onto the ground and turn away, looking at the base of the vines with a faint blush as his mind wandered, against his will, to some rather mature content he had seen before coming here. Unlike what his mind tried to make him imagine, their vines only slid over her body while pressing their leaves against wounds while letting its sap drip into gashes. He noticed the red streaks in their stems seemed to begin pulsing. A small thing he hadn't noticed before, but realizing it was probably them now trying to work overtime to heal the girl.
The medical grass, or rather 'the Critic' as he'd started calling it, chose to speak up a few minutes later. Telling him how she had three separate wounds that should have killed her, and a range more that should have finished the job. But something seemed to be keeping her alive. Not entirely her own body, but possibly something or someone else. When he asked if it was possibly some kind of magic, the grass went silent for a few moments and then replied it could have been her being stubborn.
Its response made him pause and actually blink in confusion for a few moments. "Which one do you think it most likely was then? If there's multiple lethal wounds, how is she still alive if not by magic?" Chris asked.
He could all but hear it huff in a mix of frustration before noticing multiple blades of grass wrap themselves around her wrist. Telling him it was looking deeper before telling him it was stubbornness that she was still alive. Chris could feel the disbelief in its words before it added that magic would have left traces it could have picked up on, that it was just part of its nature that it could detect that kind of thing.
That didn't really tell him anything, though. Just that she was somehow beyond any normal human if she survived with fatal wounds. Before something seemed to click in his mind, making him frown. "A summoned hero? Or someone with inhuman blood allowing them to survive like this." He muttered softly. He knew he wouldn't be getting an answer, though, till she woke up. So with a sigh he waited for the vines to finish before taking her to his old hut and laying her down on the bed. "Either you manage to survive and wake up, or I need to dig another grave further out. God, I never thought I would actually be getting used to such a thing. The shows and stuff always made it seem so much easier." He remarked, looking at the girl then to himself. "Then again, I probably wouldn't have changed as much as I did if I had things easy." He added softly with a smile tugging on his lips. "Maybe that was the trade off, empathy for a better body that women love." He continued with a small chuckle.