Demon Blood

[Civet]

Bryce had gone to his patrol that evening after healing Rhea of the poison that afflicted her. He was tired on that patrol, to be certain, but he usually has a good estimation of how much healing various injuries will wear him out and wasn't too worried. He had a bad headache, was a bit crabby and tired, but didn't really have too much trouble getting through the shift. He figured he would recover from it while he slept between that shift and his next. While on the shift he told the other men about the large badger-type creature that assaulted the tavern, and how Biske and some others fought it down.

Rhea had insisted that it was the demon blood that poisoned her, and he could only assume she contracted it through Biske when she tried to heal him. Biske had suffered wounds from the creature that attacked outside the Dagger, and it made since that it would affect him. Bryce didn't really expect to get poisoned himself from the blood. Sure, it had splattered on him, the stuff had splashed everyone that was there, but he never actually took any injuries.

He was sluggish when he woke up in the barracks, still beat, but he figured once he had breakfast he would feel renewed. Usually it's a quick rebound from exhaustion due to healing. After his morning meal of whatever slop the cook passed for food, the young aspirant attended sword drills. By the time they were leaving for patrols he was coughing and feeling even more fatigued. A couple hours later he was lagging and the cough had become chronic, his face adopting an unhealthy pallor. He was quite adament that he could finish his patrol, but it was soon obvious that this was poor judgement on the healer's part in regards to his own health. Eventually they sent him to go rest back at the barracks.

Hopefully Agnie wasn't on the patrol with him, that would have been insult to injury.

[channe]

Oh, but she was.

She most certainly was.

[channe]

Oh, but she was.

She most certainly was.

Agnie watched him go, as silent as she always was when they got stuck on a patrol together. Really, the guy looked terrible, and you can't fault someone for getting seriously ill -- can you?

But when you can heal like Bryce can?

"...can't he just heal himself?" she griped, under her breath, to no-one.

[Jirai]

The veiled girl had been forced to throw away the clothes she had been wearing that day, disgusted at the waste. She'd liked that outfit! But it had been horribly stained with blood. She'd also spent a good amount of time scrubbing herself, where the blood had leaked through her garments to the flesh below. Tired, she went to bed early.

In the morning, she still didn't feel very good. Head was aching, and her skin felt... well, funny. Still, to avoid the brotherly ministrations that Kals would no doubt provide if she remained in bed, she got up and went about her business. Today, this involved several trips from the tavern to the town and back. Unfortunately, she was only halfway back from her second trip when she collapsed on the side of the path.

[Tolleson]

Rhea Einatre

Waking up sometime in the mid-afternoon the seamstress gave a pathetic cough and a a few moments of drowsily grummbled words before righting herself and standing. Realizing only moments later she was in the Rememdium and that she no longer felt dizzy or sick at all. Bryce must have been accurate with his skepticism towards her almost certain assesment, which at this point she couldn't clearly recall. He'd practically carried her from the Inn here. She stretched and looked around curiously, trying to locate the good healer, masking it with a feigned heavy yawn.

Without finding anyone, or rather, trying to avoid confronting someone she tiptoed to the door and slipped out. The master of escape, she'd grin childishly but consider ernestly where Bryce, or even Roderic had gone. Finding herself basketless, but feelight right as rain on the path back to the Inn, again.

[Tolleson]

Rhea Einatre

Upon reaching the Inn and finding Una, Roderic, and a very sick Bryce, the seamstress is convinced she must repay Bryce for having stayed with her though the night or healing her, which, she's uncertain, but greatful. As he appeared to grow weaker and Una would escort him out and she would follow and offer her own support in getting him back to the Rememdium.There she finds a chair at sets it beside the young man's bed, determined to look after him as he did her. Although she leaves briefly to retieve her basket from the Inn, she otherwise stays at his side for the duration of the evening, sewing and singing softly a slight lullaby. The song is not a powerful one, but sweet and gentle, and might keep his fever down, and his dreams pleasent long into the night and early into the morning, for try as she might her eyes finally drop into dream, resting over the arm of the chair, sewing in hand. The seamstress asleep.

[Suede]

Kals hadn't thought much of the initial disappearance of Rhaena, she often wandered to handle her own business while in town; learning to ride, eating lunch with Bryce, spending time with her less scrupulous friends that always attempted to infect her habits with their utter lack of propriety.

So it wasn't until well into the day that he became curious. A worry that rose quickly when she didn't respond to his calling, and thus he'd pulled on his cowl and veil... weapon as well, for traveling without it in Myrken Wood bothered him, and set off to town at a slightly hurried to pace to see where she was.

Knowing his sister, she'd been distracted by a bit of nonsense and he was fretting over nothing. This idea was stripped from his mind when he'd seen that form lying prone in the road, and bled to real worry when he confirmed it as Rhaena. No time had been wasted in picking her up carefully as he could and spinning right around on his heals. He -thought- she'd looked a little pale, now she'd gone and run herself into illness.

Later, when he went to find Bryce he'd found the healer sick as well and resolved to simply nurse Rhaena himself unless her condition worsened... at least till he could ask Bryce for anything else he should be doing.

[Tolleson]

It was no secret that the seamstress had entered the Inn sometime earlier that evening, her basket sitting clumsily on the pocked porchboards that would carry two women as they left later that same evening. Prior to this depature the seamstress Rhea and the healer Rhaena had only just met, both women deeply concerned for Bryce. Though speaking briefly, Rhaena had agreed to lead the more than simple seamstress to the good healer. Perhaps she didn't know how Bryce had helped her, no, she couldn't have - he'd said, she wouldn't like it. All the same...

Seeing this beautiful veiled woman before her she was sure this was the lovely Rhaena, the woman the good healer had forced himself to come to, even as he stumbled, feverishly falling, desperate. She was gorgeous. Despite Rhea's concern for Bryce, her heavy heart began to sink, realizing trouble that perhaps; it was her, and as she truly believed had been her that caused the healer's illness in these last days. How beautiful Rhaena was, how truly beautiful. A mind would oppose the sway of someone to tell Rhea it was not her fault, but as she had initially thought, it was the blood. Just as a mind would tell her; this was not jealousy now, it wasn't envy. No, but the pang of reality, a biting one. A wincing prick, the crimson emotion she tried against and fought to hide. But what was she? Just a seamstress... that was all.

The two would leave, into the night Rhaena would lead her then to where she knew the good healer, Bryce to be. Rhea would follow timidly as first, unsure of this woman, unsure of the following events and what would come of this evening. At least now she knew it was blood, at least now she knew it was a poison. Courage grew like the song that dragged across the back of her mind, it floated to the moon in her eyes alone and gave a halo to the moon, courage like the weeds of spring, the vines of summer flurished, and into the night there was daylight, if only to her eyes alone. But it was there and soon they would meet with the ill healer and set right, make well, the things that had come wrong. And as the night came and passed, the lonely, masterless basket of a simple seamstress waited at the Inn, a sure sign that the woman to whom it belonged was there.

[Jirai]

It was late when they left, surely her brother would be annoyed. But the veiled girl did not care. Her meeting with Rhea had been a haphazard one, but one that may prove worthwhile, if the seamstress could heal Bryce. That was a bit of an odd thing to her mind, the woman being a seamstress and healer, but she was willing to take any chance at this point.

So she lead the other woman along, down the path to the town and to the Barracks, where she would give their names and request to see Bryce Larose.