A few more snaps and the structural integrity of box gave way, revealing it to be stuffed with some salts and curing supplies used on the harvested bark. Useless. She broke open and tossed aside two more boxes, each filled with a seemingly-random assortment of firearm-cleaning tools, some hard bars of brown soap, even some lengths of rope or miscellaneous leather bits. Finally, one of the smallest in the room contained something helpful. She casually dumped out some dirty tins of herbal paste, stiff bandaging, a few empty (but obviously old and used) syringes, a little canister with an odd nozzle that had rusted over almost entirely, and a clasped metal box the size of an encyclopedia.<br/><br/>Letting the precious medical supplies collapse wherever they fell, she turned back to the blanket, which now had a mostly-dead man on it. Her eyes immediately noted the color of his cheeks and lips- they were far more white than they had been even an hour ago, his lips even slightly bluish. A little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she hadn’t seen anyone come back after their lips changed, but she ignored it just the same as if it had been a person who had actually spoken. Her murky eyes fell to his injured leg, and as she pushed his coat aside she noticed that the bandaging had a surprisingly small amount of blood on it; even if he looked half as bad as he did, she would have expected more red staining than that. Shaggy bangs fell in front of her face as she leaned closer over the limb, unwinding the bandaging that she had applied only hours ago- the final layer came off in a solid shell rather than lengths of linen, cemented together with fluids. The smell that washed over her as it peeled off was almost enough to knock her unconscious, and though she nearly retched the young woman still showed nothing on her face. Even to someone with no medical training, the leg was obviously… well,<span style="font-style: italic">bad</span>. Infection, probably, though the tissue had seemed healthy when she pulled the bullet out. Now, however, it was sick and tainted, a mixture of black and green that any human could tell was wrong just based on instinct alone. The rotten portion only colored the skin in an area the size of her own fist, but that, combined with his pallor… Liliana studied his chest, noting how his breaths came so rarely and shallowly they were almost impossible to see, even close as she was. Two fingers against his neck still revealed a heartbeat, but she had to press far too hard for only the barest, threadiest hint.<span style="font-weight: bold">”I think he’s past most help,”</span>came her deadpan response to the auburn-haired woman, her eye contact lasting only a second before dropping to the pre-cadaver once more.<br/><br/>Her options were fairly limited. She could try to cut out the lost bit of his leg, then re-medicate and bandage (for all the good it apparently did), but she didn’t think he had enough blood left to survive a paper cut let alone something like that. She could also inject him with the precious tiny amount of hopefully-not-expired antibiotics she had found and let him try to fight it out on his own, but she had no idea where or how to give such things past “stick the needle in, push stuff”, which made that whole idea more wasteful than anything else. It left her with one option: make it quick.<br/><br/>Her fingers wrapped around the handle of her knife, words from a memory echoing in her ears.<span style="font-style: italic">”On your right, sixth rib, upward thrust.”</span>The voice seemed so clear, but she couldn’t remember who the speaker had been. She leaned forward and curled her arm beneath the prone man’s shoulders, his head lolling towards his chest as he hunched slightly toward her, and without so much as another courtesy pause Liliana drove the point of her knife into his chest. The blade didn’t drag on any bone, and she could almost feel the resistance of the tough heart muscle as it buried in him up to her fingers. There was no drama to it, no last gurgle for breath or gush of blood over her hands; in truth, he seemed almost entirely the same. The few words the stranger had spoken to her echoed in her ears as those of her unknown advisor faded:<span style="font-style: italic">”… don’t know you, but you saved my life. I owe you…”</span><br/><br/>Her hair fell in front of her face as her head tilted down,<span style="font-weight: bold">”Not anymore,”</span>she murmured, words so soft they were little more than a breath.<br/><br/>Smoothly she lay him back down and held her knife steady, noting the few drops of dark crimson that fell from the corner of his mouth as the red-coated blade came free of his torso. Liliana absently wiped her knife on his coat, then set it to the side and delved into the wide pockets without so much as a flickering glance back to the dead man’s face. She removed a pencil, an empty flask and a silver chain necklace after only a cursory inspection, but the well-thumbed box containing a deck of playing cards caused her to blink and stare for a moment. He had been found alone, as far as she knew, and certainly hadn’t mentioned other people- who had he played with? For something as simple as stiffened paper, such things could certainly fetch a good price. Maybe both it and the necklace were simply being stored for later trade.<br/><br/>From his other pocket she pulled a dagger- it was only a little larger than her own knife, and a deep, burnished silver from its point to the base of the hilt. Intricate engravings decorated the entire handle, the detailed etchings seeming to depict various creatures that she couldn’t really identify, and even along the blade itself there were strange impressions of bizarre looking characters and lines. All of the illustrations seemed deeply symbolic, though what they symbolized went completely over Liliana’s head. Seemed sharp, though, and heavy. Her fingers even tingled just a little as they held lightly to the cold metal, seeming to miss the feel of it as she lay it with his other belongings and stood up slowly.<span style="font-weight: bold">”We should get it out of here,”</span>she said, softly but clearly, indicating the body with a negligent gesture.