Bella

She straddles the line between Plague and Nature, believing that death is a natural part of life, and life a natural part of death. She can heal the sick unless she believes they cling to life past their prime, in which case her medicine is the bottle of toxin she carries around her waist.

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Bella was originally apprentice to a Nature flight Spiral healer who specialized in trauma. Her mentor often saw the casualties of Dominance wars, and as the wars got more intense, he was sent out into the field as a medic. He naturally brought Bella along with him, where the two healed - and occasionally battled - side by side on the fringes of the Viridian Labyrinth. They doted on injured dragons with compassion and care, bringing life back into the eyes of the warriors. As Nature dragons, they felt at home among the trees, though less at home in the trenches and tunnels that were dug through their roots.

One battle, her mentor was injured. It wasn’t fatal, but it took Bella several frenzied hours to drag him back to their camp. They were fighting Plague flight, known to play dirty, and though her mentor lived through the attack, he soon came down with grievous infection. Bella did her best to keep him alive, tipping his head back and dribbling water down his throat, but she will never forget the horrors of her mentor’s last few days.

As medics, they only wanted to treat the wounded, and one of Bella’s other patients was a Plague Ridgeback with a broken leg. He quipped that Bella should just end her mentor’s life while he was still healthy; as his health failed, the suggestions became more serious. Bella refused to take his advice, feeling that failing her mentor would mean failing as a healer. She fought to the end, even when his breathing was shallow and the Ridgeback had clapped a hand on her arm.

The Ridgeback, even with his broken leg, helped dig the grave. And then he gave Bella a vial, and told her what was in it and how to make more, so that she wouldn’t have to go through that again. He borrowed her grief to make her whole again, helping out around their makeshift hospital and learning a bit of the Nature healing trade himself. When the battle was done, and the patients healed, the Ridgeback left overnight. His leg had been healed for some time, and he wanted to demonstrate that sometimes it was best to end things quickly.

She never forgot the lessons of either of her mentors.