The makeshift bandage sticks to Lyra's arm quite well, but it hikes up her loincloth so high, that she's pretty sure that girls around her can see her private parts through the cloth. The bandage is quite dirty and grimy, and hasn't been treated with alcohol. It cuts off the bleeding - but is likely to result in an infection.<br/><br/>Lyra pokes around the Scout Barracks. In one corner is her bunk.. A place to crash and recuperate from small injuries like cuts and scrapes. Bad injuries are likely to worsen if she sleeps and doesn't treat them first... but small ones will heal given time. An empty crate for her personal belongings is there. In it is a picture of her mother, handdrawn by one of her mother's talented sex-slaves.. Lyra had never met her mother. It was the only thing she had that let her know where she'd come from. She'd grown up in the orphanage... one of their... talented girls... with a future. She kept her grades up in school, and hadn't been relegated to the abatoirs below where the worthless ones to society ended up.<br/><br/>And now she was a scout... still just barely scraping the gap between life and death. Life wasn't easy in the World of Bones.<br/><br/>to the left of the mass barracks, was the armory, closed and locked with a cage made of so much valuable metal. You could make more weapons than were held in the cage.. if yo'u'd just used it to make spearheads.. But Lyra knew what would happen if every Alley Orphan and peasant got their hands on real weapons... best to keep them down in the muck where they belonged.<br/><br/>Above the armory, linked by a rickety wooden staircase that had once been solid, but had been trod on for every day for the last hundred years, was the Officer's headquarters where she was supposed to return to present her scouting findings to the brass (Their medallions were gold with flawed Diamonds actually - but everyone called them the brass for some reason).<br/><br/>The only thing lyra dreaded more than going to speak to the Brass, was failing to report to them at all. Every scout knew the punishments for desertion were nouthing to be laughed about.<br/><br/>There was no medical station anywhere in the barracks.<br/>Some of the field medics nearby were busy applying clean bandages with alchol swabs to their cuts and ruises. But they quickly put them back into locked personal containers. Lyra knew that asking them for help for free wasn't going to yield any results. They'd just overcharge her for something she could elsewhere... or just say 'no' if they didn't like the cut of her jib. The Scouts were a no nonsense kind of group. You either learned to fend for yourself and your squad, or you ended up as a shitty skeleton in some dusty corner of nowhere.<br/><br/><br/>Some of the scouts were playing a game of chance and skill with knives and dice in the corner<br/>The one on the left counted three dice up... then picked up three knives, and a set of funny looking cards. The one on the right counted the rolls of three dice and picked up two knives, and some of the cards... There was a terse exchange of cards. between the two girls. The knives swapped hands a few times. Some cards weere placed face down on the table. Each girl handed some friends gathered behind their opponent the knives that they'd won. Shells were placed on the table. The kind of money that amounted to a lifesavings, and not a small bet. The bets were called and the cards turned over.<br/><br/>One of the girls jumped up and called victory. The other looked crestfallen as she was grabbed and held down against her will. An adjudicator - with a Medallion that denoted high rank, looked over the cards with a studied eye.<br/>"Fair bet.. no cheating had here."<br/>the crestfallen girl screamed as her opponent stripped her, stuck a knive in her gut just above her pussy, and unzipped her belly. Intestines slopped out ontl a little tin tray that had been waiting the entire game for its offering soon she was empty apart from the essentials.. The loser kicked and squealed as they bound her. The winner picked up her shells into a  bag, and her and her friends carted their squirming prize off somewhere to be a lovely Serenasday afternoon roast.<br/><br/>the dying girl on the shoulders of her gambling opponents, groaned in pain as she was hauled past lyra. She coould see the emptied out husk of a girl, still struggling even though her fate had been decided already.<br/><br/>Lyra had never learned the game - but the rewards seemed pretty good for the winners. Unfortunately she had no shells to bet.<br/><br/>"The dealer called out "New game." and two new desperate, thin and moulnourished girls came over to try their luck at the game. The house took their cut of the shells offered, and then the cards were dealt again, and the dice rolled. The rules of double Cranko were complicated... but winning meant everything.