The Seed of a Rose

[Teron_Ashfiend]

It is a studious gaze that follows the ethereal gypsy, paling beneath crimson eyes as she falls to her knees upon the merciless floor. Her words are a whisper, her being a whisper, weakening and failing even as he watches. That silence continues, broken only by shallow breaths that echo into the silence surrounding them. The weight of sorrow in its fury unleashed upon the gypsy.

Yet it is not sorrow that paints the floor beneath her as scarlet as his cheek.

Teron shifts Deliverance as he closes the distance between them. That whisper reaches up through the strangling exsanguination and taunts with a certain, striking severity. It rebukes his ignorance to the scarlet fundamentals of mortality. It reminds him that people die. In silence he takes the measure of strength that she spills freely, painting the floor as she had Deliverance's blade and his cheek. It was a sign, Teron recognized, that he had seen before - often in those who had become intimately acquainted with his wrath.

Closing the distance between them, Teron slips Deliverance onto his back as he falls to his own armored knees. The creeping chill that lairs protectively about him seeks to crawl over that paling flesh while mailed hands move to encircle her wrists to note those unstoppered wounds. Armored hands that burn with that leashed grave chill that, given her allowance, move to press those bloodied palms together - a gesture symbolic of a simple prayer.

Thoughts turn in his ancient mind unhinged from the steady stream of easy hate. Concern and worry are strange fellows that begin to run amok in thoughts that begin to quicken like a racing heart. There is a place for such medecine as binds the wounds of the living, a place he had heard of in passing, often in the wake of his wrathful shadow.

"Now I will deliver you," he murmurs at length as his ruined cloak descends upon the pair of them, given her cooperation, to once more carry both through the corridors of shadows. In a moment the priory is replaced with the remedium, and a heavy boot is for that door as he seeks to pluck Khalika fully into a dread cold embrace.

Whoever the first person to behold him, towering and clad in that ancient armor with eyes stirring in an easy anger to give shadowy shape to such things as concern, those eyes are for him. Those crimson eyes of livid flame eyes set in a taut and porcelein-pale visage, painted with fingertip streaks of Khalika's blood over the length of a lifeless cheek. And with it a voice that grates and rattles like old, rusted steel drawn in the depths of a deep barrow-tomb, framed in the vehicle of torn and tattered lips.

"Fix her," both command and plea as the chill snakes about them both and even reaching for whatever soul awaits them at the remedium.

[Khalika]

The woman had nothing left to deny him, a pool of blood soaks into the worn leather around her knees and thighs. Then she is consumed by him. For a brief moment she beleives he has come to do what she asks, instead he is moving her. She has traveled in this fashion twice before. The first was here after the stand off at Snowstill, the second. When he found her in a drown hole. Then ended in foggybottom after snowstill, where she watched his fury unleashed upon the sleeping innocence. When he pulled her from the drow hole they went to Caer Gardraark, was he taken her there now?..

No, for he is not that 'fiend anymore.

The remediumn, that was were mortal wounds are healed. that is where he whisked her too. She had no fight to stop him. she was a limp reed in his arms, eyes now empty and blank, looking out at what was fast becoming night. Head leaned against a shoulder..A quiet whisper to his ear..

Don't leave me..again.

[Dulcie]

The doctor's assistant was frequently present in the lobby of the Rememdium. It was close to the supply cabinets and it let her greet the farmers and townspeople that came to check on their loved ones. With a doctor there now it was much easier for Janessa to attend to some of the daily business of the place instead of muddling through the healing process herself.

The door opened then and there was a man holding a bleeding woman. She paused in her steps, hearing those two words that were spoken to her, but feeling a deep sense of unease that crept up from her toes to the top of her head. She was sensitive in a number of ways and something about this whole scene made those sensitivities set off alarm bells. But there was a sign on the Rememdium that spoke true to everything she believed in. Peace and that all were welcome to treatment, those were the traits that Doctor D'Raael had instilled within her.

"This way." She'd say calmly, motioning for the man to follow her with the woman that he carried in his arms. "Tell me what happened to her." She was good at gathering information, and though she moved with haste it was at a careful pace, stopping briefly by the doctor's office to knock, knowing that would rouse his attention before she continued to lead the way to the empty room that awaited Khalika.

[Suede]

Lucas had been attempting to organize some notes he'd been taking on tracking a few minor illnesses passing through the town when the knock came. There had been a small stack of pages scattered across his desk, and he was recording small details on a patient near the bottom of one when the knock came. It shouldn't surprise the doctor, really. People in this town really -did- find ways to get hurt. Even if there wasn't some rampaging tentacles thing in the Dagger someone would wander off and find a reason to get cut open.

So he simply threw the few pages in his hand over a shoulder to flutter on the floor till later, a strong reminder to them who was in charge in that room, and slipped around his desk, grabbing the apron he left by the door to cover his clothing while he worked. The blood stains on this one were gone from the last time he'd worn it, and he had to figure out how exactly Janessa managed the small miracle.

Dr. Brennan slung the door open, the apron half-on and froze partway through a stride when he saw the Ashfiend carrying a woman he didn't recognize. He didn't react with sweating, a whimper, scream, or shaking, but he stayed very still for a moment until he caught Janessa's movements and started moving again. He finished his stride and waited for the armored man to bring Khalika closer, eyes already trying to look her over for her injuries.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

You left me behind...

How many had he sent to this place? How many perished before they reached what care awaited them here? Finally, he himself had made the journey to bring healing to someone. A tale, Teron mused, perhaps having come full circle.

The woman that meets them is a quick study, wasting no time on such foolishness as screaming. For an anguished 'fiend knows few tricks to get what he wants from people and none of them had ever been considered pleasant for the recipient. Her reaction is quicker, a brief study, a stride to follow, a knock for the master of the house. Both are a credit to Myrken courage, having likely seen much in their time. Some of his own work, even.

For his part, Teron is a silent witness. His blackened plate armor is the product of countless fires and wars, nearly obliterating the two wilting roses that cross the sword, the symbol etched into the battered breastplate. Gauntlets have been reduced to near slag and scrap, poorly concealing the stark white flesh beneath. The length of his ruined cloak flutters out behind long strides that, despite armor and burden, are muffled and almost silent as if the world only whispered at his passing; some dark thing spoken of only in hushed tones.

That chill suppurates from him as another mantle altogether, coiling fiercely about gypsy and Ashfiend, tendrils leeching at wrists and ankles as his towering presence fills doorways and draws near enough to catch the scent of ash and old fires. Whatever table, bed or chair awaits is for the wounded gypsy. For the quick glance she is weak and pale, for the brief study her palms have been sliced and allowed scarlet life to ebb away and feed floors, grasses and plains that all of Myrken might be a vampire. Perhaps it was.

"Her hands," Teron speaks in a rumbling sepulchre voice through lips frayed like old rope. Eyes filled with smoldering embers flicker over the fading Khalika, resting upon those hands that he releases from their prayer-like clasp to reveal the wounds visited upon her by grasping at a sword, for her own deliverance in death. Deliverance ending in a doctor's care.

The chill crawls along the floor like a tamed miasma as that gaze moves to assistant, to doctor, and back again with the weight of a thousand tamed, simmering curses. Death is an easy companion, recognized and barely acknowledged. Yet to restore life easily crushed is beyond the Ashfiend's grasp, too far beyond one who knows how only to destroy.

You left me behind..

The gypsy's words echo across the vast expanse of an ancient, dulled mind. Those are words screamed at Ariane, Elysia, at the world and its tireless light and breath. They stir the memory of breath through ruined lips, the forgotten shadow of compassion for one who had risked much to treat with him when all of Myrken would see him unmade, who strove for his side when they attempted, and failed, just such a thing.

"I will not," is the only seed he can offer at this moment for the gypsy. For now, her life is for these strangers that his blade at one point may have kept single-handedly employed. For now is Myrken grace tested to work for one who has slaughtered their own, without thought to such things as pity and mercy. A grim slaughter might await both should they refuse, and yet more death will not stop Khalika's.

Dark eyes flicker again over the pair of healers as he awaits their ministration of life or death.

[Khalika]

Those hands..Those damaged and mutilated hands. She did not simply grab the blade known as Deliverance, she had clinged to it like a life line. Down through flesh and muscle it cut. Further damaged by the gauging of her fingers as they had dug at the wounds, tearing at the opens with grim filled fingers till Teron had stopped it by straightening them into prayer, if only to keep them from clawing anymore.

He would lay her upon a bed, most likly similar to the one she some weeks ago dropped Agnieskza Kaczmarek. Would they recognizes the Gypsy once she is unfolded upon the bed? Possibly though it seems the remedium has a virtual revovling door.

As it is she is not moving, though not yet complete uncouncious, eyes looking up towards the ceiling. Would he tell them? when asked how she came to such injuries. Would he tell them of her request? of this lasted attempt to end it all? She does not move to ask him not, she does not do much at all as hand rest limp upon her body. The doctor is there now, looking over wounds with his best brave face, the aid seem of a one mindedness, they might note though, once blood is cleaned away and tended that tips and prints of finger hold the affects of frost bite.

The chill let's her know that he was close, she seeks through blurred weakienng vision for his form. A hand lifting up towards him..

"Wryin's gone.." withered in despair those delicate words..then it falls and she succumbs to the pressure behind her eyes and is out, only the faint lift and fall of her chest as signs of life.

[Dulcie]

Whether Janessa recognized the woman or not, it didn't much matter. She would have helped her equally no matter who she was. She had come to Myrken in the days after the Ashfiend, but the woman had seen her share of horrors. Perhaps it was why the Rememdium was such a good fit for her. Strong of stomach and of will she rarely left the place.

There was movement and words all around her, but the red haired woman was solely focused on her task, which involved making sure that the woman stayed alive long enough for the Doctor to help her. A quick glance over her shoulder would assure her that the doctor was following and as soon as the gypsy was laid down upon the bed she'd be reaching for clean bandages on the nearby shelf. She'd take one small stack in her hand and offer the other out to the man who had brought the woman in. She'd demonstrate with her stack, pressing them to the woman's bleeding wounds, keeping the pressure tight.

"Do the same with her other hand, like this." She'd show him, waiting to see if he'd hold to the task. With a staff of two people Janessa frequently enlisted help when it looked like the hands present wouldn't be lost to swooning. She had no doubt that this man would stay on his feet. She'd keep the pressure there on the hand that she held, waiting on the Doctor.

"What's her name?" There was no questions about the injuries. If Brennan had any he would surely ask them. Janessa cared more for the person, what she could do to keep the woman present in this world without passing to the next. With pressure held on the woman's one hand, her fingertips would lightly brush down along undamaged fingers, a soft soothing touch. She knew the woman wasn't awake any longer, but her tenderness for her ward was apparent. It was with those keen green eyes of hers that she would note the subtle differences in those fingertips, and soothing fingers would move to wipe away at the blood there, noting the gore beneath her nails and the different color of flesh there, as if she had been keeping her fingertips stuck in ice.

"You might want to take a look at her fingertips when you've got a moment Doctor." She wouldn't say the word frostbite out loud. It was too strange, too unusual. Perhaps she was incorrect about what she saw.

[Suede]

Brennan was inclined to faint, just simply pass out and not deal with terrors that burn through you with chill horror and leak tentacles from about their body. He'd lived in Myrken, oh yes, in his youth. But he'd been sequestered from the nightmares when they came. Then he'd left to study, and since he'd been back he'd had the fortune to not experience any of Myrken's more intimidating personas face to face.

Of course some part of his brain said he might not wake up if he passed out in front of this wall of armor, and so he moved, functioning fully and alert for now, but knowing somewhere he'd probably be passed out in the near future when his mind caught up with itself.

The wounds were only given a cursory glance before he pulled open a cabinet to pull out a pair of leather straps he used as tourniquets. "Just cover that hand for now, Janessa. I'll work on this one." As he spoke, for the first time since the arrival, he was quite proud that his voice didn't waver and he pulled the first strap tight. The one for the arm Janessa was by was left loose for the moment. "How did her hands get cut this deep? Animal or anything dirty?" He needed to know how much of an infection risk there was, let Janessa deal with the more personal things.

She was better at them.

Brennan would pull on some gloves and begin to examine the the damage to the hands. Tendons sliced, delicate muscles carved in two. This was going to be a real mess for him to fix, enough so that he barely bothered to consider the frostbite on Khalika's fingers in favor of preparing the tools he'd need to cut, sew, and mesh together whatever he could. "This is not going to be easy to fix." Wonder if she needed her hands, the doctor did.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The gypsy offers the caress of a secretive name, a name of someone unknown to him, yet shared with a certain intimacy that it bore the weight of an affection turned dark. The sound is a thing peculiar to the ear, and to the heart, and it is a sour chorus Teron found to be quite familiar. That sense of the familiar with the gypsy, with another person, narrows and softens both his infernal gaze and the chill that billows and roils about him in a silent, invisible tempest. Wryin is meaningless and yet meaningful, and then she has passed out entirely.

Quetions then, and requests for assistance. At this, for the woman, there is a glance from the roaring inferno nestled in his unblinking eyes. This is a window to chained fury, albeit a dimmed hate, and yet hate it is all the same. And with that look every shadow in the room shudders in perverse revulsion and reaches, slanted, towards the length of Teron's own. She has asked a nearly unthinkable thing, this woman of quiet courage, has beseeched a fiend to help heal another. Bid him clasp rent flesh and help prepare it fore wholeness with hands forged to do naught but plunder and destroy.

But the other healer, the male, has stepped forward to answer that request. It allows Teron a look for his own hands, visible and lifeless beneath the gauntlets Khalika herself ravaged before his being imprisoned. The chaos of the unknown surges around him in a certain gray mutedness, compassioned dulled by the furnace of his burning soul and yet it is compassion all the same.

More questions, and they turn that livid gaze set in a horiffic visage towards the pair once more. Teron plucks the massive sword from his back, its ancient length colored black in blood yet bearing the residue of fresh leavings. It is hefted easily, almost carelessly, the weapon held by handle and blade to offer them a view of this once-relic stained in murder and dishonor. It is a banner, like the chill, and the wrecked cloak that hangs from armored shoulders, of shadows and ruin.

"Khalika," he rumbles in reply. "Her name is Khalika. She grasped the sword by the blade, as one holds to a promise." A pause then. "Or a memory."

Teron leaves the weapon for both to see, one seemingly concerned about how such wounds were caused. A promise anchors his feet despite the quiet murmuring that bids him leave the healing house for those who fought to live. Such places, he considered, had no room for 'fiends. And yet, for the moment, this one did. Offered by one he had sought to murder, who had greeted him with such sharpness as a dagger to the cold flesh beneath his caging armor. Words spoken by one who felt betrayed.

Possibly even by one who had preferred that he remained free.

Such thoughts repulse him from her as she pales yet further, a single and silent step moving his towering frame away from all while their shadows yet reach collectively for him. It is a hideous thing that Khalika has displayed, that begins to worm around his dessicated and hellbent thoughts.

It is a seed of compassion. A seed that blossoms with a silent thought for his own liberator: a plea for her safety.

[Khalika]

As Tourniquets are pulled tightly around pressure points to slow the bleeding of appendages and allow experienced hand to do work a more human magic. The body still breathes, It fights this battered and beaten form, it fights for it does not know surrender. The mind may have given up but the body persevers relying on instinct that has been weaved into its every fibre.

Eyelids flutter, yet remain closed as the three forms move and speak around her, questions asked and answered. The mind is a red mist of grief screaming for an end. Until Voices soon became a single voice.

"Or a memory..

His words sending her tumbling back...As one memory floods over another in unstoppable waves. Soon she is overcome with the images of sea green ringlets and a laughter that chimed and charmed. They danced around her these images, though when she reaches out to touch them. To grasp for her sister one last, she falls further and further down. Till they are both swallowed up by the bitter cold of the sea. It fills her lungs, but she pushes on further and further down, desperate to catch her, to save her. Just like the last and all the other, she cannot reach her, and the image sinks into the dark nothingness of the sea.

And the Gypsy screams....

Eyes, snap open and shifted about frantically, confussion, disorientation meet her head on as she looks to Teron, then Janessa and finally the doctor as she can feel the turniquets about her arms, they feel like straps, straps that bind..

"Where am I?.." She struggling now, trying to get off the bed, to pull her hands free.. "Where's Wryin?....Let me go...WrRyin?.."She is shouting about, her struggles will soon become frantic as she hears no responce..."Wryin?.....WRYIN!!?...

[Dulcie]

Janessa worked easily with the doctor. They had been working together long enough now that she understood what he asked of her and she was able to follow his directions without question. She took the other hand of Khalika's and when the strange man offered the name she had asked for she'd look back at him and offer a soft and gentle smile, giving a little nod of her head. Despite the chills that went down her spine with the man's presence she was ever the vision of kindness and respect. At the doctor's words that this wouldn't be easy to fix she'd glance over at him with concern. It was one thing when people lost an arm or a leg. But hands? That would be terrible.

"We'll take good care of you Miss Khalika." She'd be beginning before the woman had re-awoken, her voice soothing and calming. One thing she had learned in this job was even those that were unconscious could sometimes hear, and occasionally a kind word made all of the difference. It wasn't seconds later that the woman was awake and thrashing. Janessa would try to keep the injured hand in one of hers, the pressure tight, but with the other she'd try to press the woman's shoulder back down so that she wouldn't come up flying at them both. The little red haired assistant was by no means a strong woman with her slight frame and her gentle nature, but she knew a thing or two about patients and the human body and she'd try to find a spot where she could be most effective in holding the woman back. Even as the woman struggled Janessa would speak with her in the same calming tone.

"You're in the Rememdium Khalika. You've been injured." The frantic struggle would require Janessa to pause, having to take a breath before she continued, some of her words a bit choppy as she struggled with stopping the woman from getting up. "A friend of yours brought you in and the Doctor and I are going to take care of your wounds. Sssh now, let us help you." Another pause and breath from the assistant who was now a little red in the face from her efforts, beads of sweat forming along her brow. "Who is Wyrin Miss? I'll try to help you find him if I can."

[Suede]

Brennan gave the blade a glance, forced his eyes away from it, and attempted to go back to the task at hand... please pardon the pun. Some sort of magical sword, and judging by the person holding it, not a particularly good one at that. It would explain the oddity of her frostbite, and meant who knew what else could be going on inside her.

He absently pulled his bloodied gloves tighter over his hands and attempted to begin muscle and tendon back together when Khalika awoke, struggling. He grunted, tried to hold her hand down, and even went as far as to shift his weight so he was half-sitting upon her elbow. "Sit -still-, I need to fix this before the tourniquet has been on too long, and you're making this difficult."

He'd already lost the needle he'd been holding to the floor and would have to get a new one once the gypsy had calmed down enough for him to move his hands. "There's no Wryin here, just a big man in a suit of armor."

[Teron_Ashfiend]

There is a man struggling to anchor and retie the gypsy's rent flesh and tendons. There is a woman who struggles to aid the flailing gypsy as her memory burdens her anew with fresh horror, pressed into a meaningless name. About them the chill of his presence pulses and slithers, coiling about each and all in a slow and mindless terror. Crimson eyes dimmed in his ruined visage as he beheld the tortured Khalika writhing in agony of body and soul, and the pair of healers struggling to heal one who had sought death.

He thought of Khalika as he caught her in his final stand against Myrken, and his inability to destroy her.

Armored hands moved to stow the enormous weapon upon his back one more. The length of his shadow touched upon Janessa's as the hate-burned coals in his eyes guttered in stirred promise and memory. Locked into combat in the mountain reachess against Burel, Ariane, Malaroth, and the gypsy herself dashing into the fray. She had nearly shattered his hand, which he regarded once more through still ruined armor. Pale and lifeless. Bloodless. Soulless.

The rain had falen upon him in his prison. There, beneath the biting rain and its sharp hiss against his freezing armor, he had bowed before an awful truth, the ghost of which the writhing gypsy called up within him in some anient sorcery of her own: that, in her way, she knew him. In a fashion he also knew her.

Khalika spasmed and shrieked that name like a curse that grasped at his unbeating heart with a searing, grasping hand and began to squeeze even as the doctors struggled to contain her hate and misery.

He needed her.

The sword forgotten, Teron ventured a step forward. The length of his ruined cloak brushed against each in turn as he maneuvered about them in steps too silent for one born down by such things as scoured and scorched plate. His hands, charred and lifeless, clad in ruin and wreckage, are not healer's hands. They know only destruction. And as he moves to stand at the gypsy's head, his shadow consuming her, those same hands seize her flailing own.

A touch is as frostbite. Frost slows and enfeebles, and strength crushes and confines. Beneath his weight and hideous strength, he plies both to the gypsy's wrists to pin her motionless that these two might complete their work and restore her to health.

His visage is above hers, framed in the tattered length of frayed, stalk-like blonde hair. Bloodless lips, searing eyes whose hateful fury gutters and drifts into smoldering sparks and hissing coals. Lips that frame for Khalika, once more, "I will deliver you, as you have helped deliver me."

[Khalika]

Deliver me...

She wanted to be delivered by him, she brought him Deliverance like a trophy or a blessed child..

There is no deliverance, there is only the hard cold life that waits, that grips her heart like his cold touch grips her wrist. Holding her firm so that the Doctor and his aid may do what they can to close her wounds.

Eyes look up through the well of liquid that fills her lids to the brim, his vision a blur reflection that is hardly recognizable. She has not strength to fight or curse..To refuse care and let the life drain from her. Her heart beat is a rapid event as her body shakes in numbing pain, and shock soon sets in.

"Teron, Take away my pain....."

[Dulcie]

There was a great deal going on then. Brennan's orders, the large armoured man holding down the patient and then the woman's tears. She could sense that there was far more going on in this situation than she could even begin to comprehend. Still the woman's thrashing had stopped and she'd do her part taking up that hand that she had lost in the struggle, pressing on the wound to staunch the bleeding until the doctor could attend to it more readily. Her green eyes would flicker over the woman and the armoured man, considering the tears that were shed and the words that were spoken, her own expression one of deep empathy, clearly upset to see someone hurting so much, though it certainly wouldn't make her hesitate in her wok.