RP:Curse of a Deathly God
Part of the Vakmatharas' Jar Arc
Summary: Krice brings Leone to help with the plague, as promised. She pulls a sample of the illness from Yozenra's body, and officially names it a curse. She recommends that they bring in clerics to stem the tide.
Chartsend Garrison/Makeshift Clinic
Krice had been gone for one day and half of another; such was the nature and breadth of the world and all its sprawling landscapes. Traveling between Frostmaw and Chartsend was a schlep, even for a wyvern, and he had paused in-between to give her ample time to rest whilst tending to various things. Now he was aboard the saddle of Gylworliath once more, his green-scaled, triangle-headed draconid flying high overhead. She hadn't ever landed in the city before now, but given the seriousness of Chartsend's situation, Krice led his wyvern to the beach from whence he would then venture inward - without the large beast. It wasn't long before he arrived at the clinic and stepped up to the nurse to receive a medical mask, a second one given to the high priestess Leone, hot on his heels. Whatever scrutiny she had made of the town on her way through, they were both here now, ready to interact with Pilar and perhaps, ready to discuss potential cures for the problem at hand.
Leone arrives with Krice. Though originally on the back of the wyvern, the farrier appears on foot beside the black-clad swordsman. She is slowly undressing, the heavy cloak, gloves, scarf and other accoutrement needed for the frigid Frostmaw climate peeled off until the farrier is simply in her smithing leathers. The smith is squinting at the sky, her head turning side to every now and again, her neck sometimes bending at odd angles as if she were attempting to get another perspective. She sniffs, coughs, and looks pointedly at the silver-haired warrior. "What did you say you think it is again? Poison?" The dichotomic gritty and glossy tones slide over one another with the query.
Pilar was hard at work tending to the ill. She had actually just switched out someone's bedpan and was cleaning the soiled one when Krice and Leone came in. She didn't notice them at first, focused as she was on her less-than-pleasant task. She set the cleaned pan aside and began to scrub her hands when she finally saw her visitors. “Oh! Mister Krice! Lady Leone! I'll be right there!”
Krice regarded Leone and spoke to her through the mask, his eyes steady but guarded. " It feels to me like some kind of dark magic. It reminded me of Vailkrin, but I don't know if that means that it's -from- Vailkrin, or if it's just -been- there." He shook his head and murmured a quieter, " I don't know. Pilar used her magic to find it within one of her patients, a friend of hers, and said that it was a poison. I'm not sure what it is other than what I know I felt. And it's the same across Frostmaw - and potentially in Schezerade. I've never been there." The warrior fell quiet and once Pilar noticed them, he dipped his head in a nod. He would only move forward once Leone did, following the high healer inward.
Leone extends both hands toward Pilar in a welcoming gesture. "Miss Pilar," the conflicting notes of silken and salty seep forth over tawny lips, "What can you tell us about what's going on here? Information, experimentation, treatment. What's been successful, what hasn't?" The farrier wheels one hand at the wrist, indicating that her questions would continue to compound, and that they could easily be extrapolated along the same line of reasoning.
Pilar approached the two. “Thank you for coming so quickly,” Pilar said. “Well, between Mister Krice and my friend, we've come to the conclusion that dark magic is responsible. I examined my friend, Yozenra,” here she gestured to the unconscious naga in the nearby cot, “and found something that felt similar to a poison, rather than a sickness. But when I tried to extract it like, my magic didn't affect it at all. We did some digging and the sickness seems to have started in my neighborhood, but we haven't found anything to explain it.” Yozenra coughed, and Pilar flew to her side. She dabbed at the naga's sweaty brow with a cool, wet cloth. “We've been treating the symptoms as best we can. Nothing is really improving, but what works best seems to be magical in origin. Potions made from magic herbs are what we've been using most, but we have some healers here who have been using magic on patients directly. Those we've lost include a child and others who were already not in the best of health.”
Krice glanced toward Leone after observing Pilar through the entirety of her reply, his eyes communicating something that perhaps she would be able to discern - but perhaps not. With Pilar once more distant at Yozenra's side, the warrior moved inward, gazing over the nose-bridge swell of his medical mask at the vampire. He kept his voice down so as not to panic anyone with his information. " Frostmaw's people are suffering headcolds, and everyone sick has the same magical aura attached to them. Chezerade apparently has a sickness, too: solar sensitivity. I saw the winged bard and Hildegarde and each of them has symptoms, along with the dark energy swarming around them. It's stronger with them - and with you, Pilar - than on the other people affected." He squinted, not sure why this would be. For the benefit of the vampire and the priestess, he added, " And by all accounts, everything started around the same time - roughly a month ago."
Leone 's eyes flicker over toward the ailing Naga when Pilar metions her, the lime green gaze flashing dangerously toward Krice as the swordsman speaks in the next instant. The smith draws near to the other healer, and extends a hand toward the ill naga. "Dark magic. When Krice first told me about it, I guessed a curse. It sounds almost precisely like one," the high priestess remarks as she begins to peel off her jacket. The scorched garment is carefully unzipped, either arm dislodged, and the hide garment promptly handed to Krice to hold. It may also help his particular growing affliction. "May I...have a look? If I'm able to pull a sample of the dark magic, and hold the energy, then I can study it without having to be any further intrusive upon a patient. Then, perhaps, we'll be able to discern its origins and how to best deal with it," the smith explains to Pilar.
Pilar stopped. Stronger with her...? She turned to look at Krice in horror. “Do... Do you think... *I* brought this here?” Five people dead, because of her. So many more suffering, because of her. Yozenra... Because of her... Her gaze moved to Leone as the priestess spoke. “Yes, yes of course!” Pilar moved to allow Leone better access to Yozenra.
Krice gazed pointedly at Leone and stepped forward to take the jacket from her once she had removed it, thereafter hesitating before he slung it over his left shoulder; the two halves curled around his body, resting across his chest and back. Pilar's concern that she had been the one to infect her people earned her something resembling a compassionate look from the usually stalwart warrior and he shook his head, unable to answer her definitively. She could indeed have brought the curse to her people, but it could also just be coincidental. All in the timing.
Leone puts aside Pilar's reaction for the time being, indulging in the healer's fear and guilt of potentially infecting the community she so loved wouldn't do anything to further or hasten a cure for it, so the sacred smith sets to work. There's a flash of light, like a flume of gas igniting, and the farrier's hands are engulfed in twisting, undulating azure blue and white streams of energy. The coil up her palms and fingers like miniature serpents. The tendrils of holy magic are immediately applied to the sick naga, the smith's fingers pressing against scales and skin, allowing the energy to delve into the depths of the ascribed patient. The cleric searches, seeking out the black magic turned illness within the patient, and ferreting it out from wherever it resides with her holy power.
Pilar wrung her hands as she watched Leone work. She flinched away from the holy magic; good-hearted as she was, she was still a vampire. The naga groaned softly as the dark magic recoiled from the forces of light. This was nothing natural, nor arcane. This was darkly divine, the work of the God of Death himself. No mortal cleric could lift his curse alone. Leone, however, wasn't trying to lift it. Her magic, after several tense minutes, finally snared a piece of the dark magic and pulled it from Yozenra's body. Where Leone's power was bright blue and white, Vakmathara's curse manifested as crimson and red.
Krice must not have had any problems with Leone's magical light before because he stood within a couple metres of the woman as she worked. When it erupted this time, however, he winced and turned away with a grunt, his back to the healers as he pressed a palm against his eyes and hissed in discomfort. It was all subtle, guarded, tempered responses but not entirely obscured from detection; he hadn't expected the priestess' ability to cause him such discomfort. Was he perhaps acquiring the headcold that had plagued Frostmaw's citizens? An accompanying sensitivity to light? As such, he didn't see the crimson energies pulled from Yozenra, but the signature of the magic changed, intensified, and he stepped away to exit the clinic, his pace brisk but calm.
Leone carefully, gradually and with great caution, pulls the knob of dark energy from the bedridden naga. Once she's managed to extract the dark crimson curse from the patient, one of the smith's hands is shoved into the satchel on her hip. A blessed vessel is produced from tote, and the metallurgist coaxes the shred of Vakmathara's curse into the opening. The cork is firmly pressed into place and promptly warded, disallowing the dark energy from escaping. "Oh how nasty," the sacred smith comments in elongated tones, "But I certainly recognize this. It is evil. And divine. A dark god's curse." The same hand employed before dutifully puts the filled phial back into the satchel, only to re-emegere with an empty one. "And now you," she says to Pilar, "If you're carrying it, and it's stronger in you, as Krice says, then I'll need some. Perhaps I can also put up a ward or blessing - or both - to stop it from spreading," the diminutive farrier declares while a glowing, energy-consumed hand is stretched out toward Pilar.
Pilar was so absorbed in what was happening with Yozenra that she didn't even notice Krice's discomfort and subsequent exit. She struggled to watch Leone's work. That holy power hurt her eyes and made her feel sick. Still, she listened to Leone's words and gulped. “Dark god...?” This was bad. And then Leone was moving towards her with that hand, and Pilar yelped as its proximity started to burn. “I-I don't... I don't think that'll work... I'm a, a vampire, and your power... it hurts.”
Krice removed the medical mask from his face, tossed it onto the desk by the receptionist nurse there, and turned around the doorframe to exit, a thwap of hair and coat-tail announcing his departure.
Leone pauses, considering Pilar's words for a moment. Her hand hovers before the vampire as she thinks, lemon and lime sights leaping here and there over the healer's countenance. Was getting a sample worth hurting the woman? Not right this moment, no, but there may come a time... The smith shoves the thought away, and shakes her hand. The flurry of cerulean and argent hues disappear, cast off like raindrops from a dog's coat. The bantam blacksmith rubs her fingers together, smoothing over her palm and the hot, red welts that now cover it. "Mm, dark god. A deathly one, I think. That certainly explains things. Well. I'll have to get samples from Hildegarde and this winged bard, then," the holy woman pronounces, "Can you arrange that for me?" She pivots with the question, looking over her shoulder to where Krice should have been - where he /was/ just a few moments prior. The cleric huffs out a sigh and gently shakes her head.
Pilar sighed, relieved. She was not in the mood for more pain. It was then she noticed that Krice was gone. “... Um...” She looked to Leone. “Is there... anything we can do right now to help them? Should I try to get some clerics in?”
Leone nods to Pilar's query while frowning at Krice's absence. Damn. And he has her jacket, too. The smith returns her full attention to Pilar, and again nods, just for verification. "Yes, clerics on anyone well enough to handle the warding and blessing process. They're not cleansing - not yet, at least. Not until we get more information. For now they're containing. Cordoning off the curse to one part of the body, something non-vital, depending on how widespread the infections are. I think - hmm. I think this curse saps life. Slowly, but brutally, it's draining them."
Pilar gulped. Sapping their life... No wonder it wasn't affecting her. She had no life to sap. “Okay... Okay. I'll get started finding some right away. Thank you, thank you so much. Please, keep me informed.”
Leone nods once again to Pilar. "I will. I'll write duplicate missives to all of the healers involved," she promises, "And with any further instructions. We're going to need clerics. Priests. Clergy of all kinds. Monks, too. Anyone with divine influence, abilities, or power. We're going to need them," she says to the vampire. The statement is followed by a grimace and a subtle gesture. "If you'd prefer, I'll take care of your curse myself, after some practice and some further investigation, I should be able to do is as quickly and unobtrusively as possible."
Pilar twiddled her fingers. “I... I'd appreciate it. I'd hate to cause any more trouble for Chartsend.”
Leone gives Pilar a soft, sympathetic smile. She inclines her head toward the vampire-healer, and then quickly makes her exit in search of Krice...and her jacket!