RP:A Pure Heart

Part of the Thy Kingdom Come Arc

Summary: Leone, Krice, Callamyre and Grailan covertly meet at the behest of the High Priestess, for a mission which was initially not detailed to them. The holy blacksmith soon reveals to the group at large that they are there to purify the fallen Steward, ridding her of her accursed and corrupted heart. If only it was that simple. There are steps that must be taken, and complications that must be carefully routed around. Callamyre is successful in removing the heart-turned-phylactery. Grailan is successful in destroying same said organ, and the job is presumed finished until the farrier drops a pointed turn of purpose: Hildegarde's new heart is assembled, and ready to be implemented. Callamyre navigates the treacherous waters of dragon blood once more.

The Frozen Throne

Leone is waiting just in front of the throne, and in a direct line of sight from the door. She paces, her hard-soled boots thumping in rhythm against the stone floor as the hem of her cloak sweeps large circles of dust and scattered flakes following each motion. A letter had been sent, a rapid call to arms for those who factored into the Steward’s successful resurrection: Callamyre, Grailan and Krice. The pretense was simple: it was time to remove the accursed heart from the Steward’s body. And so, the bantam blacksmith found herself rounding the room in regular circuit, awaiting the arrival of all three of her requested attends. Strange, though, that the body of the Silver knight was missing, nowhere to be seen in the throne room, nor any adjacent to it. At least...not yet.

Krice didn't question the absence of Hildegarde's body. He entered after Leone with the knowledge that her abilities, and the tasks for which she utilized them, did not always deal in the obvious or the visible. In direct contrast to the pacing woman, his steps were almost entirely soundless, his movements inherently stealthy. Dressed in his usual black attire, with his katana sheath strapped to his back, the warrior moved across the expansive room toward the priestess’ location, his features calm. As those gold-streaked eyes passed over Leone's emerald counterparts, his expression softened with guarded fondness and he dipped his head in greeting, subtly scrutinizing her frame. The last time he had heard about the woman, she had been in less than healthy condition. “ Hey,” he greeted, his voice relaxed but hushed. “How're you doing?”

Callamyre felt inadequately prepared to assist with a dragon resurrection, but that didn’t stop her from responding in person to the missive. With a bulky carpet bag in her left hand, and a small journal in her right, the vampiric woman ventured uncertainly into the throne room, a chill settling into her bones; her hazel gaze darted to and fro in nervous reverence for what had transpired to bring these persons together, but as she realized she was not the first one to arrive, she made a beeline in Krice’s direction, heeled boots clacking on the stone floor. Once closer to the warrior, the scholar fixed her attention on the blacksmith as she held the journal against her stomach. “Hello,” she parted with, nodding first to Leone, then to Krice, before returning her eyes to the shorter woman. “I came as soon as I could.”

Rather than receive the summons via letter, the Dread Knight so unerringly named Grailan more or less simply knew that he was required; the letter’s destination would not be found, the courier unable to deliver to a man that could not be found by conventional means, but that did nothing hamper the beckoning that the undead felt. It tugged at his conscious, his being, and pulled him toward Leone like a connection of the spiritual, the metaphysicial, or the otherworldly. These could also be correct descriptors for the entry of the male, which came unlike those preceding him. Instead, along the circular wall and with an abrupt tearing sound followed by that of some churning and restless energy, a ghastly green portal swiftly grew from a single point to an oval shape. It was tall and wide enough for two adult men to pass through width-wise while the highest and lowest points met the floor and ceiling, respectively. From it emerged the figure of the dead man, who breasted through the threshold of the portal and pulled with him several rivulets of that wraithlike green substance, as if he were rising from beneath the surface of calm waters. Clad in an obsidian-like platemail armor, both black and glossy, the man was a solemn presence of overbearing melancholy; the black attire was adorned with the aesthetics of several ivory-carved skulls and courted by spikes that were more for show than practicality. Over his head and along his back was a full, black hooded cloak, which masked most of his face sans jaw, mouth, and nose, in a veil of shadow -this contrasted bloodlessly pale skin and deadened white, straight hair that hung in tresses from beneath it. He was not silent; every step echoed and was delivered with the permeation of this sorrow, of which he was eternally damned with, and resonated among the room by the sheer geometry of the room. Grailan made his way from the wall toward the center, and halted just before it before his gaze, veiled by the shadow of his hood, implied to move (with tension, surely) toward the steel-haired warrior and made evident by the direction of his chin. Leone and Callamyre were neither acknowledged nor greeting, but only insofar as the damned soul’s disposition toward Krice.

Leone heaved a startled gasp. Krice's silent traverse from threshold to throne was only made known once he spoke. "Hello," the farrier exhales the word as if it were held in reserve for this precise moment. A very shallow smile turns the petite plover's lips up at either corner. "Hmm," she pauses verbally, "I'm..." The measure of the priestess's health is not complete, instead interrupted by the approach of Callamyre. The diminutive human turns toward the vampire, her smile growing into a warm grin of greeting. "Thank you so much for coming," the metallurgist's sour and sweet timbre greets Calla. Grailan's sickly green portal garners the blacksmith's attention a moment later, the limpid depths of leafy green watching the wide-shouldered figure emerge from the other worlds. "Ah," the cleric says in a single note of grit and gloss, "We're all here." A moment's pause finds the farrier's gemlike, jadite sights tracking in the direction of the Knight's gaze - and back to Krice. "There's something for you behind the throne," the plover points out before she begins to move toward the back of the room. There is no door, no indication of anything beyond the fort's solid walls. The clergy woman's hand passes over one of the bricks, and the area immediately to the left un-knits, revealing a doorway. The view beyond is one that at least Krice has seen before: Fort Frostmaw's War Room. A large, irregularly cut table has been turned upon its edge against the far wall, the legs removed and stacked to conserve space. The center of the chamber is consumed by the Steward's corpse, still preserved in-state, frozen in a block of ice.

Krice pinched his lips closed in an expression of apology, for having startled Leone, before Callamyre’s arrival drew his attention. Glancing along his left shoulder, he observed his vampiric companion's approach with crimson eyes locked on hazel, expression softening with guarded fondness. His overdeveloped senses alerted him to the arrival of a certain Death Knight, thereafter, proving his emotional reservation a sensible option if behaviour. Turning his head, the warrior watched, his gaze steady, as Grailan emerged through his wispy otherworld doorway and began approaching. Krice and Grailan weren't enemies in the exact sense of the word, but they were far less than friends--hardly even allies; the silver-haired man tolerated the tall creature for Leone's sake. The priestess’ words drew his gaze before long and he stepped away from Grailan and Callamyre to follow her, though only as far as the throne. Behind it, Krice found a new sheathed weapon, which he hesitated to touch in favour of visually scrutinizing it first. As a curious smirk touched the line of his mouth, the man reached out and took up his new weapon in his right hand, just under the handguard, before touching the hilt with his left. Partially unsheathing it, he gazed down upon a few inches of steel in stunted admiration of the craftsmanship before Leone's revelation of the ‘war room’ drew his attention. The new sword was sheathed once more and slid into place against Krice's right hip as he hesitated for Callamyre to catch up. With the vampire at his side, the silver-haired enigma moved forward to approach the Steward's frozen body at the center of the room. A few metres back, he halted and waited for further instruction from Leone, his gaze intermittently drifting toward Grailan. Though he appeared relaxed, Krice was prepared and poised for action at a moment's notice; the priestess likely would not have given him his new weapon if it wasn't going to be needed.

Callamyre’s hazel twins remained fixed a moment longer on the smaller woman, her gaze scrutinous but soft concern. Although Leone greeted her, the vampire’s attention was also ensnared by the otherworldly portal and its passenger. Looking quickly over a shoulder toward Grailan, Calla felt herself moving away from him, and closer to the warrior; whether it was to protect him from whatever ill favor was shared with them, or to protect herself from the Death Knight, it was yet to be decided. In the spirit of keeping the peace and diffusing tensions, she joined Leone and Krice as they moved toward the throne itself, and what lay beyond. The appearance of the new weapon earned Krice a curious glance, but she assumed it was neither the time nor the place for such details. As a result, the chocolate-haired woman moved closer to the warrior again, remaining closeby as he moved toward the dragon’s suspended corpse. The nearer they became, the more pronounced her frown grew, and she instinctively reached for Krice’s free hand. Chewing on her lip, she looked toward Leone in anticipation, but rather than lurk back like the warrior had, her curiosity urged her forward. Leaving Krice’s side, the scientist stepped quietly and carefully toward the frozen Steward, hazel eyes adopting a faint golden glow as they studied Hildegarde’s body with great care and respect from about three feet away. “She looks strangely … peaceful,” the woman breathed softly.

Grailan’s armored form, a blackened and glossy suit of platemail that entombed him, trailed the group with resonating steps that echoed throughout the reverent silence of the hall; the sound disturbed the air with the ambient offense of every cadenced step. It did not seem to matter that his pace lagged behind the threesome, and as their gait continued the space between himself and the living three gradually grew until the latter stopped and the former’s unchanging pace allowed him to catch up. Upon the remnants of his walk, once the Dread Knight ceased, the trim of his raven-colored cloak fluttered around his calves, ankles, and shins in an elegant dance as the dead man stood to look easily over the shoulders of Callamyre and Leone by little effort of his enormous, hulking frame. From the direction of his chin it was implied that his stare was upon the ‘peaceful’ Hildegarde, but within such proximity the weight of the shadow that his hood cast was not as pronounced, and dead, lifeless gray eyes could be seen upon the pallid and bloodless face of the male. His silence broke, which hopefully did not immediately startle either of the two women, as the white-haired man briefly (and slowly) turned his head to ‘glance’ at Krice intermittently, “From my understanding of Aramoth, peaceful is not how one would want to enter his embrace,” to constitute his remark on the God of War. The voice was just as haunting as his presence; it seemed to echo itself, which at the core was a loud, monotonous and melancholy sound. The subsequent echo is what truly was otherworldly, as it was a distorted mockery of his voice that sounded both ethereal and disembodied, as if it were the muddled voice of some spectre through the veil of the afterlife.

"Right," the farrier breathes out, a verbalized depiction of her attempts to organize her sommersaulting thoughts. The petite plover's brain churned, and her hand quaked as two fingers pincered the bridge of her nose. The phosphorescent, peridot sights were lost behind gossamer lids for an instant, a sealing shut of the attentive yet exhausted orbs for a moment's pause, to pull her scattered brain back to order. "You can leave," the High Priestess orders, the four guards positioned around the room the direct addressees of the statement. They file out amid much clanking and clanging, thanks to their blue-tinged plate armor, and the farrier hastens to close the concealed door behind them. She then reaches back, and gently lays a hand on Grailan's gauntleted arm before directing luminescent, lime green sights at Callamyre. "We're going to remove Hildegarde's heart. You can manipulate ice, and you're learned in the ways of the healers. I need all of the vessels leading into and out of her heart to remain in tact - and..." The sentence trails off for a moment while the cleric's citrus-hued sights swivel to the floor. Full, rose-taupe lips purse, and then draw taut against pearly denta with the inhalation of air through clenched teeth. "There is a dagger tip embedded in the flesh just behind her heart. It must stay there, at all costs. Once the heart has been removed, I need you to fill the hole in with ice. Her new heart is coming, soon." The plover pivots upon one foot, pressing her attention to the sorrowful undead next. "And once Callamyre removes her heart, you must destroy it. It has to be burned. I have set up a brazier in the far corner already, distant so as to not melt the ice. I cannot touch it; neither can Krice. Nothing living may touch it," the bantam blacksmith cautions. Krice is the next to be burdened with the clergywoman's concerns, and a furrowed brow is turned to the swordsman. "No one else may enter. I don't care who they are. If that door opens, you kill whomever comes through it," the blacksmith states firmly, "This part of the rite cannot be interrupted. Nothing can be allowed to go astray."

Krice didn't look at Grailan too often; his attention was on his surroundings, the corpse in the middle of the room and the departing guardsmen. When he felt fingers brush his hand, he instinctively closed his own around them and glanced toward their owner, gold-freckled eyes aligning with Callamyre's hazel counterparts. He hoped to convey through his glance a sense of calm and reassurance, and belief in her ability to assist Leone and help the fallen Steward. When the vampire stepped forward, he released her hand to let her venture closer for inspection of the frozen corpse. As he directed his gaze toward Leone, Krice listened attentively to all the details and instructions she gave to each party, lifting his chin at a subtle angle of portrayed focus when her words shifted to him. Her order to 'kill whoever enters the room' didn't seem to garner too much of a reaction from the warrior, at least outwardly, but he hesitated a moment before murmuring a quietly firm, " Got it." Taking a step back, the enigmatic man pivoted away from the group with a brief glance sent toward Callamyre and ventured just a few steps closer to the door, standing roughly between the trio gathered around Hildegarde and the entry point.

Callamyre turned from her examination of the fallen dragon to fix her hazel-gold twins upon the Death Knight, dark brows rising. “Oh? Well, I suppose that is true,” she said in conceding tone, her brows falling to knit over the bridge of her nose as she accepted her ignorance of local religion. She dropped her gaze back to Hildegarde, her frown growing as she took another step toward her. “But, as I understand it, we are not letting her go into that dark endless night anytime soon; not if I can help it.” Her voice trailed off, the last clause of her statement uttered partly beneath her breath. Looking up again in alarm as the guards swiftly departed, the scientist found herself staring expectantly over toward Leone once more, attentively soaking in the details of their plan. Although her experiments often carried questionable methods, she had never actually removed someone’s heart, at least not with the intention of keeping it whole or sustaining the life; it was usually long after the creature had died. She supposed in this case, the dragon’s current state was not that different. Calla shifted from one foot to another, darting her gaze toward Krice, then back to the blacksmith again, her hands finding themselves in a nervous clasp. “Ohhh,” the woman murmured, returning hazel-golds to the fallen steward. Her mind spun with possibilities of failure; what if she was unable to stem the arteries and veins? What if she was unable to fill the dragon’s chest cavity? What if the dragon’s blood got on her? The vampire was especially anxious about the lattermost fear, but it, like the others, was quickly buried in favor of doing what must be done. Peeling one glove off, then the other, she tucked both into her belt, where her journal had previously found itself, and set her carpet bag on the smooth stone floor. Callamyre exhaled deeply, sending a glance toward the others, and moved even closer to Hildegarde, her carpet bag sliding across the floor seemingly of its own accord to join her . Crouching down, she pulled open the clasp for the bag, tucked in a hand, and extracted two elbow-length gloves. Before pulling them on, she turned her gaze toward Krice, as much for reassurance, as to reassure him, that all would be well. Biting her lip, she frowned even deeper. Directing hazels with a glowing glint of gold toward Leone, the vampiric woman spoke softly, “Ready when you are.”

“No living may touch it,” echoed the forlorn voice of the melancholy undead, who solemnly held his vigil nearby despite the distorted resonance of his disembodied voice near the not-quite-gone Hildegarde’s body. The Dread Knight did not cast his glance elsewhere for the moment, but instead, he allowed those lifeless yet sorrowful gray eyes to fall upon the body with patience; there was no need for a lack thereof. Yet, Callamyre needed to tend to the form sans its heart, and Krice was a living being, so therefore, it fell upon the condemned soul to empower a shot of his own redemption by the destruction of the corruption within the heart -the burning of the daggertip that remained lodged within there, as well as the muscle that housed it. “This will not be quiet…” The volume of the voice of the undead lowered, yet there was no diminishing factor in the manner at which that ethereal version of his words echoed after he spoke, as he referenced the destruction of the heart. A slow slide of his gaze toward Krice -was the katana-wielding man capable of slaying even the good-intentioned that sought to disrupt the ritual?

Leone's attention swivels around the room, first landing upon Krice at his post between door and procedure. Next, the luminous, peridot pools alight upon Grailan and his patient demeanor. The plover then looks toward Callamyre and, assured that the scholar is prepared for the undertaking, steps up to stand directly beside the body of Hildegarde. She has no capacity for wintry powers, no knowledge of ice and snow control. The only thing the bantam blacksmith can do is produce heat. One hand flares to life suddenly, a brilliant aura of orange and red engulfing the limb just as it is lowered into position upon the block of ice. Steam billows up, along with a serpentine hiss, and the gentle patter of dripping water taps out a muted rapport upon the room's woolen rug. The hole formed in the block of encasing ice is just barely large enough to expose the Silver's torso - and bring with it the realization that the redhead's chainmail dress still bedecks her body. The heat from the farrier's flaming hand redoubles, the sunny colors peaking into purples and blues, as her callused fingers work into the linked coils of metal. Like fresh caramel, the metal melts and turns gooey at the farrier's touch, all five digits scooping away tendrils of molten mithril. Promptly, the petite priestess's opposite hand swoops in, her palm creating a fleshy bowl in which to capture any of the dripping ore, lest it burn the Steward's body. A nod is then shaken out to Callamyre, a silent invitation for the freckled female to proceed.

For reasons he did not state to the others, Krice silently moved further away until he was within reach of the room's large doors. Extending his right hand, he placed his palm over the seam between the doors and held them closed, a buffet against any curious or concerned citizens who might have attempted to enter; if the procedure was going to be a calamitous one, then undoubtedly others outside the room would hear it - and holding the doors closed lessened the likelihood that he would need to kill. Turning his head, the warrior redirected his gilded gaze toward the trio surrounding Hildegarde's corpse, watching in wordless wonder as each party worked to resurrect the fallen steward. He caught Leone’s gaze and then shifted his own to Callamyre, reciprocating her unspoken message of reassurance.

The seconds between each uttered comment between the four people seemed to drag on for eternity, until at length the vampire drew in a deep breath, held it, and released it; as she did so, she felt the room fade away from her. With growing curiosity, she leaned over Hildegarde’s supine form, watching with reverence as the mithril melted away, exposing the dragon’s clothing beneath; the blacksmith’s abilities earned her a respectfully awed stare, but it lasted only a beat or two before gold-hazel eyes dropped back to the dragon. “Alright,” she mumbled half to herself, “let’s save Hildegarde.” The gloves came on, then, rolled carefully all the way up to her elbows, securing one and then the other with small tourniquet-like strings bound around her upper arms. As she moved, the gloves emanated a faint glow as if they were enchanted. Now that she was prepared with the proper accoutrements, Callamyre leaned forward over the dragon steward and extended both hands, palms down, over her sternum. As she did so, the air grew thick and crackly immediately surrounding the spatiomancer. With a groan of bones and whine of sinew, Hildegarde’s chest was sundered, layers of skin and muscle peeling back and curling away to reveal the ribcage; the ribs themselves began to trembled, straining against cartilage until they, too, were furled away from the chest cavity with a resounded clap, the bones bouncing as if sprung free before settling down around the dragon’s shoulders and arms. “Well,” the scientist murmured, “that was easier than I thought …” Sending a quick glance around, she leaned further over Hildegarde, getting a closer examination of the scene she’d be working with: her heart was large, strong, with multiple chambers and arteries that, at least with a cursory glance, appeared to be in good condition. Callamyre intended to keep it that way, but as she pulled her hands away, wringing them together, they subtly trembled. The undertaking at hand was far more monumental than she’d ever performed before - her subjects were usually dead, and staying that way. Keeping her gloves on, she reached a hand forward again, this time to gently caress the motionless organ, the tenderness in her touch seeking to soothe the creature it belonged to in her own strange way. The following moment, her touch was firmer, and joined by her other hand as she held the heart in place. Her eyes had forgone all semblance of hazel in favor of a bright, bioluminescent gold, interrupted in luminosity only when she blinked. Holding her right atrium in her left hand, and the left atrium in her right, Callamyre fixed her stare at the arteries, veins, and her aorta, each one snapping apart with the most delicate of sounds before curling away from the heart, then releasing a soft hiss as they were then cauterized without ever being touched. Now came the hardest part: removing the organ without touching, dislodging, or in any way affecting the dagger tip nestled beneath it. Calla tightened her hold of the steward’s heart, and held the rest of her body perfectly still - almost afraid of moving for fear of ruining everything. Then, beat by beat, millimeter by millimeter, she very carefully withdrew her hands from the opened cavity, and, keeping her arms extended, she stepped away from the steward, thrusting the heart in Grailan’s direction. “Here -- careful,” she warned him on a weary exhale, lifting her glowing twins toward his face as she handed the organ off.

The heart was thrust toward the Dread Knight with the lift of those glowing eyes toward him, which were met by the perpetually melancholy, dead, and subtly glossy gray eyes of the armored undead, and Grailan did not shy away. Quite the opposite, in fact, as a gauntleted hand lifted with a funereal lack of haste that was both haunting and reminiscent some despairing apparition. As the palm rose, pointed toward the ceiling to make a platform with his hand, the glossy obsidian armor acted quite unnaturally; the platemail glove actually pulled up and away along the arm of the dead man. It withdrew in tendrils of mercurial darkness, and left remnants of black shreddings that fell away to dissipate into the air like ash from the pale, bloodless arm of the Dread Knight. With his bare hand, he accepted hold of the heart, but it was moved with an uncanny precision -despite its slowness. The eternally damned man could not move very fast to begin with, and now, with his attempt not to dislodge or disturb the tip of the dagger inside of the organ, he was especially slow; luckily his unlife allowed him the single-mindedness of a zombie, with intense focus upon the task at hand. He simply had to make it to the fire upon each metallic, hollow step that echoed and resonated with a haunting sort of otherworldliness.

Leone seems to be holding her breath for the duration of the heart's extraction. The blacksmith winces as the Steward's flesh and bones rend, prying upward like the splintered keel of a ship. The operation is gruesome, but she cannot look away. The petite plover's nearly phosphorescent sights remain trained upon Callamyre and her patient for the duration. She heaves a breath out once the offending organ is handed off to Grailan, limpid, lime-hued sights swinging over to the death knight as he oh-so-carefully carries the corrupted heart to the fire. A nod is shaken out through the sterling and ebon cranium, encouragement and approval meted out through the action. Another moment, a beat of silence and relief, passes before the High Priestess snaps to attention. She plunges an arm into nothing, the limb up to the elbow disappearing into the space between worlds with only a thin blue ring indicating that she hasn't become a spontaneous amputee. The portal window expands, energy crackling around the dimensional rift as it widens, eschewing reality for the grey plane beyond. The blacksmith withdraws her arm gradually, her hand the last to emerge, and this time clutching a plain, wooden box. The cask is sizable, at least when compared to the diminutive human, and takes the entire reach of thumb to index finger for the cleric to hold. She drops the box onto the opposite, opened palm, and presses it toward Callamyre. "The new one," the farrier exhales, tension denting the hollow of her throat and seizing the ligaments of her neck. Her posture stiffens as the mechanical heart in a box is handed over to Callamyre. Of course, until this moment, she had not appraised the vampire that she'd be installing the blue iron organ right now, as well.

Krice was the most outwardly calm of the - those who felt anything, anyway - few gathered around Hildegarde’s corpse, remaining by the door with his ears attuned to the world beyond it, and his gilded eyes fixated on the scene ahead of him. As Callamyre removed the old heart from the dragon’s chest cavity, he watched her attentively and without faltering, almost as if he was attempting to communicate his calmness into her, to bolster her confidence, to quell her nervousness. As magic and divine powers crackled through the room, the silver-haired enigma lifted his chin against them and stiffened slightly, though he had full trust in the abilities of the vampire and the priestess; he knew that their respective magics would not be waylaid. Through the duration of the operation’s first step, from heart-removal to new-heart retrieval, Krice was a soundless spectator, solid and unwavering in his task to defend the room and its inhabitants. Well… Two of them.

Callamyre was spared little time to gather her strength once more, or to draw a breath - instead it fell from her on the wake of another, a great weight being lifted from her shoulders with the ceremonious passing-on of the unbeating heart. It was so like her own, in that regard, and to see it, as clear as day, filled her with a combination of sadness, and hope -- hope that, if they could bring Hildegarde back from the dead, perhaps, one day, she could shrug off her mantle of vampirism. Her bioluminescent twins shifted away from Grailan once she was certain he had the organ in his pallid grasp, moving toward Krice to remind herself that he still existed on this plane; she shared with him a brief, pinched smile, ephemeral as it was as she then turned her attention back toward Leone once more. “Of course,” the scientist murmured. Quiet steps brought her closer to the priestess, and it was with the utmost care that the scholar took the new heart for her patient. The iron was cold in her hands, even through the gloves, and she hesitated a half-beat. She nodded to Leone, then, and it was with more certainty that she closed her hands around the heart. Drawing in a deep breath, she approached Hildegarde once more, her splayed chest exposed to her whim. For a better view, and better purchase, she leaned against the dais upon which the frozen steward lay. Several moments passed as she carefully nestled the heart in its new position, and as she did so, the arteries, veins, and aorta reattached themselves to this new vessel with whispers and murmurs, as if they approved. This part was more involved, and it took a lot more time to reassemble than it did to remove, the savant wanting to ensure that the host took the new organ without any complications. The mechanical core was a perfect fit of course, its creator well-suited to the task. Another few breaths later, and Hildegarde’s muscles and bones began to stretch across her sternum once more, creaking and groaning and all but re-growing themselves into a protective husk around the new device. As Callamyre na Trough took a step back to admire her work, she let out a satisfied, but weary sigh. Her eyes retained their glow, but her face was strained, her skin pale and stretched.

And during this, Grailan moved with an eerie lack of haste that was appropriate for the hulking armor that he wore and the persona of remorseful death that made him. Every step was haunting, and every stride brought him unerringly closer to the brazier that was the destination of his cross-room trek. Ambient clicks and clacks of plated greaves coupled with the heavy sound of soles against the ground resonated and echoed through the mostly quiet chamber, which set a haunting backdrop to the events that were occurring and played a melancholy, yet spooky spin on what was going on; like Frankenstein’s doctor and his quest, it almost seemed as if their efforts were part of the occult, with inventive sciences that were mostly incomprehensible to the bucolic or even the layman, coupled with the presence of magic. Surely they’d have an angry mob armed with pitchforks and torches upon their doors soon. The path completed caused the Dread Knight to hold his hands, and thus the object of that old heart, over the burning brazier with a pitying expression and mournful gaze. As his fingers released, the fire eagerly rose in a billowous pillar of flame, like an angry inferno, to swallow the submission whole -not to mention the arms of the escort. He, however, neither felt pain nor exhibited any signs of doing such; for his forearms and hands burning like a pair of torch-lines, those dead, dull gray eyes watched the flames consume the heart.

There is no joy in the farrier's face as Callamyre settles the newly forged, blue iron organ into place. Consternation and concentration crinkle the corners of the metallurgist's eyes before a tight nod is given to the vampiric woman. It is a gesture of approval, and a notion of thanks. More, proper thanks will be coming soon enough, but for now the petite priestess is far too focused on the events which must come next. The bantam blacksmith's attention is strained, redirected to the hulking death knight and his cursed reliquary quarry. Brilliant, jadite sights come to bear on the black-clad Grailan, squinting against the flaring of the light as the heart burns into ash and cinder. "Thank you," the sacred smith says, her tongue thick and dry against the roof of her mouth as each syllable is scraped out like old, flaking paint. "All of you," the dichotomic notes of grit and gloss finish, addressing the room as a whole, "What's left, I'm afraid some of you cannot help with, and others of you expressly should not. There will be blood and holy magic, copious amounts of both. Hazards that threaten at least two of you," Leone enunciates in concise measure, looking pointedly at each of the others in the room in turn.

Krice kept his distance as told, not purely because it was an order, but also because it just made sense; he possessed no skill that made him capable of helping the trio in the center of the room. The warrior guarded the entrance to the large chamber as Callamyre and Leone set about healing and resurrecting the fallen Hildegarde, soundless and steadfast in his task. When at last magics had dissipated and a new heart had been delivered to the Steward’s chest cavity, Krice stepped forward to reach Callamyre’s side, extending his right arm toward her. Leone’s warning of the hazards to follow earned her the warrior’s crimson-hued attention and he stared. His fingers flexed against the back of Callamyre’s left elbow before he subconsciously repositioned his arm around her waist, just under her arms, to draw her gently into him for support. The green-eyed Priestess would see concern in Krice’s eyes, and an unspoken request that she not exert herself if at all possible. He accompanied that look with a quietly spoken, “ Take care of yourself,” before he turned for the exit, leading Callamyre at her own pace out of the room. In keeping with Leone’s need to proceed with Hildegarde, the large door was closed behind the warrior and vampire, no mind paid to Grailan - who could simply zap himself in and out of realms. What did a guy like that need a door for?