Regardless of what the odds foretold, they fought against fate itself and made it back to the village. The two hour long walk which Gustav and the moles had to take, felt like the most boring part of the journey!
It was tiresome, because he didn't really know the way back home. This stretch of land was mostly flat, yes, but it still was difficult to find their way around in the dead of night!
Arila fell asleep a little bit on the way back, which was concerning at first. She was woken up, however, when the pool of singular lights that resembled her village, shone through her eyelids.
"Finally," She sighed.
Although most people were asleep now, some guards weren't. Once Arila's arrival was acknowledged, a few more of them rushed from every corner of the village, and gathered up at the guard house!
Unlike Gustav, they were more prepared to handle a wounded person. The ladies within this establishment which was built by mud, stone and courage, rushed left and right like spooked deer, to accommodate the wounded!
They took Arila to a seperate room, where they fed her half a kilo of sheep meat at first. The intent there was to give her a bit of extra strength, as she needed it to face the rest of the healing procedure.
"Those stabs are bad, but they missed your spine so this shouldn't kill you." One of the several guard ladies said.
"I didn't know that demons could work spears like that! These stab-marks look so cruel..." The rage-coated conversation continued.
"Not a spear," Arila corrected, as she powerlessy chewed through the food. "I was tossed in a pile of demon crystals..."
"What!" One of them screamed, and then hastily explained. "We have to clean this wound with saltwater, then. It'll burn whatever demons snuck through your flesh!"
Most people didn't react as kindly to anything relating to demons, but these ladies were willing to try and work around it. Arila was surprised that they didn't want to cut her head off; This was indeed a lucky day!
Yet, the process of a salt-water cleanse wasn't easy to endure. For that matter, they waited for over an hour, until the wounded lady felt a bit more lively. All that meat definitely helped, but now came the painful part.
"Here, bite this. Your horn is chipped, and we can't have you lose a few teeth too." A guard encouraged.
"My horn is chipped?" Arila asked, she was oblivious about such damage.
Gustav hadn't noticed either, as the whole journey was enveloped in darkness. Thankfully the damage wasn't too big, as only the tip of the horn was broken for a couple of inches.
As for the wound treating, they began the procedure by poking all the bloody places with a damped, simple rag. This helped open up each wound, but the blood-loss now was half as insistent in comparison, it was manageable.
Once the rag was damped with salt water afterwards, Arila started kicking around. The sudden burning sensation got her more lively than she could've been, through these past few hours! The pain was unbearable, but the motive wasn't as cruel.
They didn't know what kind of infections the demon crystals could cause, regardless if the conclusions were based on myths, or actual deadly infections. Either way, salt water was known to burn down, or at least reduce any wound-based illnesses!
"I think that's enough," One of the guards said, after they ran those salty rags across Arila's back, well over thirty times.
After she peeked at the whitened out, and dry-looking wounds, she continued. "Even demons would choke on that much salt, damn."
It wasn't a pretty sight, but this procedure was close to an end. All they had to do next, was stitch the three wounds together with a special string called 'catgut'.
Regardless of what the name encouraged, these strings were not made from actual cat guts, but sheep guts instead. Sheep-based stuff was very common in this village, and now these intestines would help do the trick!
"Done, finally." The group of guards celebrated.
The stitching was the least tedious part, because the wounds had already been numbed down by salt-water. It took about half an hour to seal the wounds, and the result was good enough.
Arila's flesh was torn up before, rather than completely obliterated. It took some muscle-work to push the sides of flesh together, where they ran the sheep guts over afterwards.
"You have to be the luckiest girl here. If it wasn't for those hairballs, you'd be dead before even getting back to the village." One of the ladies admitted.
"Wish I could find a guy who'd shave his balls to save me," Another one teased.
"He didn't shave his balls!" Arila hissed back, but then softened up. "It was sweet though, way better than breeding I can tell you."
...
The association between the signal beacon with a demon crystal, did seem absurd. So far, Gustav hadn't been able to piece the puzzle together.
It seemed stupid to implement a seemingly important material, right in the beacon structure which was still in its early stages of construction. He didn't know where to put it, especially since the crystal itself was just a few inches long, it was tiny.
"Hmm... maybe if I put it on this pointy top here?" He theorized.
This didn't feel right, and his brain hadn't received new information about the matter either. While he played around, however, an unusual pattern of light caught his attention!
When he placed the crystal inside the pyramid, the dim light it illuminated suddenly multiplied in intensity!
The insignificant light gained the luminous volume of a whole campfire, within a minute!
"So that's what it's for? Didn't know that iron would make it act so weird, maybe the hematite is making it act up... Dunno if there's hematite in this thing though." Gustav thought.
He had enough room to experiment. While he was gone, the blacksmiths seemed to have carried out his request. They coated most of the pyramid's skeletal structure, with a bunch of iron casing, but left one side wide open.
Presumably they hadn't finished the job yet, but this still helped. The iron layers were nailed shut into the pyramid skeleton, and he didn't want to know how expensive it would be to have one of them removed.
He needed this side that was wide open, to work on this beacon and experiment thoroughly too. After about half an hour, he suddenly received new information that deciphered how important the demon crystal was!
"It's the soul of the whole thing, huh? The signal..." Gustav mumbled, while he browsed through the new packets of information which pierced through his brain lobes.