RP:Mending a Broken Wizard
Winter Berry Garden
Svilfon is laying in a pool of melted snow, made pink with his spilled blood. He isn't moving.
Satoshi isn't sure what's led her here. The letter she found addressed to her, still clutched tight in a small hand, or the howls of wolves calling their packmates to a meal. But whichever it is, the kit stumbles into the garden at an unsteady run, her abrupt appearance scaring off the three scrawny winter wolves that have been circling around the wizard's prone form. As the lupine go growling into the bushes with tails tucked low, Satoshi skids to a halt outside of the pinkish pool Svilfon lies in, her face uncharacteristically open and readable as a book--if a book could be a book with only one word in it: Worry. "Svilfon..?" the diminutive magus calls in a quiet voice, reaching forward to nudge at his hat with the rolled end of the letter he'd written her.
Kirien 's here because he knew; because he felt it somehow; because something innate that he does not ever both to question has compelled him to come here. It must have been today. Vengeance. Closure. He's reminiscing himself as boots crunch softly through the snow, the only real sound betraying the otherwise silent and pensive empath, his thoughts turned inward. There are echoes in his mind and in his ears, of voices and of things that feel like home. But then there's an echo here, too, that Kirien begins to notice through his thoughts, and it's loud, and it drowns out the memories. So he follows its call until he comes across the garden and snow stained pink with a scent the terramancer's come to recognise instantly. With the recognition comes concern, however. "Svil?" It takes him a moment to cross to the downed wizard's side along with Satoshi, completely ignorant of the wolves that might still be lurking amidst the shrubbery, and kneel in the snow to inspect the other.
Svilfon feels himself being drawn from the pits of his agony by a small voice and a light prod. He doesn't want to wake; his body is mutilated almost beyond recognition, though his hat has remained completely unscathed by the entire ordeal. The tattered remnants of his robes are basically no more; thin strands of material, their magics long since depleted. But he cannot remain in the relative bliss of healing sleep - he feels his body losing its second battle with death.. the more permanent one. So with a miserable groan he opens one of his eyes and spies the snow-queen. Whether he smiles or not isn't clear, his face is a mangled mess of burns and torn flesh, and all he can manage is a raspy, "Arghh." Not the most intelligent answer from the wizard, though this entire ordeal has hardly screamed intelligence. His eye rolls back in his head for a moment, and darkness threatens to once again swamp him, before he hears the words of the empath. "Didn't... die." He coughs, "got the bastard... for the captain..." There is a wealth of contentment in that statement, layered as it is with the agony he feels. But he did what he set out to do. He was content.
Satoshi unceremoniously plops down in the melted snow beside the wizard, heedless of the tinted water soaking into her clothes. She has bigger concerns than stains currently, like a covenmate waltzing with Death on her doorstep. "C'mon, wizard, don't you go bowing out. We haven't had our dance yet. And we have a potion to make," she urges, straining to keep her voice its usual light and musical self for the sake of coaxing Svilfon away from the tempting final rest. Eyes wide and helpless are turned on Kirien then, the lost expression made all the worse by her currently childish features, before she tugs weakly at Svilfon's immaculate hat. "This isn't so different from how I found you before, right? But we have Kirien instead of a talking frog to help you this time."
Kirien has already scrubbed the mess of blackened smudges off and is relatively fresh-faced at least. Svilfon and Satoshi might have attempted to place the blame elsewhere but he's a perceptive one as always and knows well their fondness for trickery and mischief (besides, he's sure neither Trebel nor Yuu could have drawn such a fine goatee or mono-brow). For a moment or two the empath just sits there beside his ruined coven mate and friend and looks as helpless as Satoshi, though the words Svilfon manages seem to spur him into action. He leans over the wizard's prone and bloody form so as to hug him, a bit awkwardly, but heedless of the blood beginning to mar and stain his precious coat. "He sailed away across the sea, never to return," he murmurs into burned flesh or the remains of a fine robe, "and we hoisted the colours an' maybe we sang for him. I won't sing now. Not even a 'yo-ho'-- because you're not sailin' anywhere." There might've been a tightness to his voice but Kirien doesn't notice it. "You're not-- you're not followin' him. I won't let you." Then what would it be worth?
Svilfon loses himself in Satoshi's euphonious voice; even higher than usual, and with its forced lightness, it is still a stark contrast to the pain tearing through his body. When she finishes speaking and Kirien does, too, the wizard lets out a mangled smile and the quiet words, "won't die... survived a lesson with Satie... nothing can...." He coughs out a clog of bloodied mess from his throat, before turning his arm to rest on Kirien's shoulder. He pushes against the terramancer, using it as leverage to lift himself from the ground until he's assumed a slumped over sitting position. He turns his face to look at Satoshi. Blood pours from it, and the attempted smile he flashes the mini-Satie looks more like a pained grimace, before he drops his head down and speaks to them both in quiet tones. "Won't die... Just need... to rest... my own fault..." He shakes his head, his fine hat shifting from left to right. "Bastard drow... was... strong," he ends lamely. Hardly an adequate description of the monster Tiphareth has become.
Satoshi scrambles back to her feet, a deep scowl marring her normally smooth and smirking features, and she looks on the verge of a childish foot-stomp. A boot is even lifted, before it's forced into a heavy step that begins the kit's trudge away from the two vampires and toward the surrounding shrubbery. Her small form disappears into the foliage with hardly a rustle and silence reigns until it's shattered by a high-pitched yelp. Futher yelps, barks, and whimpers soon join the first, mingled with the occasional snarling curse and crackle of ice, until two white-furred forms come crashing through the bushes to land in bloody, frosted heaps at Kirien's feet. Satoshi follows the wolf carcasses soon after in a far more controlled and stately walk, her scowl still present along with a collection of fresh scratches. The first of the wolves are kicked when she reaches it, her words brisk and precise as she looks to Kirien, "Feed him. It will start the regeneration. That will help me." That sharp look is turned on the mangled wizard then, kept carefully determined and calculating to force away that nagging anxiety. Gods, is -this- the disadvantage of investing emotion in others? How unpleasant a feeling.
Kirien 's happy to become a support - it's something he's good at. A foundation, solid and as immoveable as the earth beneath them, he holds Svilfon upright and hopefully keeps him grounded in some way to reality. It's where he needs to be right now, not sailing into eternity with a song on the wind. "It's done now," he says, softly as briefly his blind gaze turns skywards, "It's done now an' you'll live, and it's all laid to rest." Absently the empath starts wiping at the blood some as though trying to clear the wizard up, though it's a mostly useless effort considering how much of him has been torn apart and rent open during his earlier battle. "Thank f*** for durability, eh?" A bit of a laugh follows while Satoshi stalks wordlessly into the bushes and the air fills the pained yelps of wolves and a scuffle. Kirien can't help but raise an eyebrow when those corpses are flung to land near his feet; but he reaches to grab at one and drag it closer all the same, onto Svilfon's lap. Holding it up by the furred scruff of its neck, he dangles its throat before the man. There might've been a brief flash of knife to slice the beast's throat open and allow blood to flow, but there's also no weapon in Kirien's greyish left hand as he lowers it back to his side. He winces, just a little. "Saves me bringin' down a mammoth at least." Though they might need one.
Svilfon takes a moment before he is fed to look at Satoshi, standing there in her indignant anger. For a lingering moment he doesn't say anything, before he speaks in a rasping voice, "Together... we avenged the captain... I will repay you someday. It will... not be forgotten" He would tip his hat if he could, but the man's last energy was used in sitting up. So instead he smiles an awkward smile, flashing bloodied fangs and missing teeth in equal measure. It is not clear whether he understood the source of her own anger, but he offers what he can. As Kirien brings up the wolf's corpse, Svil is silently thankful the man tore open its throat. With a quiet growl in the depths of his throat, a primal reaction to his great hunger, the wizard wraps his tattered mouth around the wound and begins to feed. He had an idea of what Satoshi wanted to do, and for it he would require his strength. So he draws the blood from the beast, and for once doesn't spill a drop. Not that it's noticable amongst all the blood, but still!- he is learning.
Satoshi shoves that wavering uncertainty deeper, forbidding it from interfering with the task at hand. Healing is something the kit is sorely untested at, and a single doubt wiggling into the forefront of her thoughts will be enough to destroy her resolve and send the soothing waters down a dangerously icy path. Steeling herself, Satoshi steps closer and lifts hands sheathed in illuminated water. "Keep him on the wolves. I think this will hurt," is the only instructions she gives to Kirien before palms--one cool and the other frigid--press against Svilfon's shredded back. Upon contact the waters begin to spread from her hands to slowly seep into the myriad wounds coursing over his body, while the kit herself closes her eyes and begins singing in soft tones a soothing melody, notes akin to a snowflake drifting along on a breeze. It's instinct--and Ko'tar, singing back-up--that guides Satoshi now, gently directing her waters to seek out the deepest of injuries, desiring to fill in and solidify with ice broken bones, knit torn muscle with threads of liquid, and frost over gashes. It won't be pretty, or pleasant, and she certainly doesn't have the skill nor energy to repair everything, but with any luck--and no flinching from Svilfon--the kit may just manage to mend the very worst of his battlewounds.
Kirien can't help but slide a deviously knowing sort of smirk towards Satoshi. He wisely keeps his mouth shut on the topic of the concerned feelings radiating from her though, especially when it fades into unease and doubt. Features even out and his expression melts into something more reassuring before the empath's turning focus back to Svilfon, obeying those words without truly understanding what Satoshi intends to do and gripping a little tighter to the other with one hand. When her hands touch the wizard though and that aura of an odd sort of healing magic begins to seep through the man's shredded body and into his perception, Kirien realises what exactly it is the magus is intending to do. The wolf is still held up at Svilfon's mouth for him to feed from and Kirien remains a solid support for him, subtly soaking up any pain felt during the workings of Satoshi's magic into himself; as much as he can take. He's no healer, but he can steal away those unpleasant emotions and sensations for a price. Kirien, selfish and selfless, is willing to pay it if it grants relief to those he cares for.
Svilfon feels Satoshi place her hands on his mutilated back. He had experienced this before when they were in Venturil, the first time the snow-queen saved his life. It was not pleasant, the mixing of her insidious ice with his tumultuous fire, but it had worked once and he knows it can work again. So he bites down on the bleeding flesh before him, it sinks through the gaps in his teeth equally with fangs, but at least he would not shatter his remaining few teeth as he clenches down in pain. And then it starts, her icy weaving into his mangled body; healing on the wings of her frozen water the worst of his injuries; knotting bones back together with frigid ice, his fleshy wounds frozen to stop further leaking of blood. If it were not for Kirien sharing this burdon, the wizard would have pulled away and probably ended up killing himself in the process, as well as maybe Satoshi. But he can handle the frost within his blood, sitting there in her garden surrounded by his coterie. He would bear the ice again for the continued life it gives... and once again he is in the snow queen's debt.
Satoshi's untrained healing magic falters then, the waters on her hands thin and fluttery as butterfly wings before she pulls away with a sharp gesture to leave no more than an icy patch on Svilfon's back as obvious mark of her presence in his blood. Shimmering droplets trickle off her hands to leave a blue puddle beside the pink, the liquids quickly joined by Satoshi's tails as she sits down hard with a splash and sigh. "Live and I'll take that as payment," the miniature magus replies in strained tones while waving her usually useless arm dismissively. Already the foxkin's eyelids are drooping, drained to her core by the intense finesse and focus such casting requires, a toll she's not used to paying. "Just..." the words are eaten by a wide yawn, "live." The only thing keeping her from dropping off completely is the lingering fear of a charcoal stick should she fall asleep.
Kirien honestly finds the sensation he siphons off to be utterly peculiar. It's almost akin to phantom pain that lances through his body but it's quite real, though any of his own recent wounds, if still a little tender in places, are no longer causing him such hurt - the only thing that does is his left hand, dulled nerves that have not quite fully turned to stone protesting the insidious poison corrupting them. So his body is really a bit unsure of how to act or react; but this agony, fierce and biting as it is, Kirien continues to take into himself and endeavour to drown. Jaw tight, he leans into Svilfon some during the healing process until it comes to an end and he's left with the remnants of pain to deal with in the quiet. There's little to give away what he's done save the probably noted lack of more intense agony expected by the wizard, and the way Kirien sways a bit, the empath thoroughly drained by his own attempt at relieving his coven mate's burden. "Definitely live," he murmurs and with a yawn, "or I'll kick the s*** outta you." It's meant to lighten him up a bit. Knowing Kirien, he probably would kick him though.
Svilfon draws an un-needed breath through his nose as Satoshi pulls her hands free from his back. With a quiet cry he pulls his mouth from the wolf - it is drained almost entirely by now - and raises his frost-covered hand to rest on Kirien's shoulder. He understood what the empath has done for him, and with a squeeze that could well leave sanguine snow-flakes on his shoulder, the wizard drops his hand once more. The second wolf is close, and Svil lays back, easily keeping it within reach. He would need to feed again before long, to aide his undead body in its healing process, but no longer can he feel death's hand resting on his own shoulder. With eyes shut, he speaks again, "If you bastards draw on me... I will be most upset." He gives a gurgling laugh that sounds just a little forced, before he lets himself drift off once more into sleep's healing embrace; silent in his true thanks to the coterie for what they have done to ensure his could avenge fallen captain. And there he would remain, beside the snow queen and terramancer for as long as they would stay - safe from dying, his own demon destroyed... for now at least.
Satoshi said, "Ditto. Death for drawings." With that, the kit keels over, asleep before her head finds Svilfon's arm-turned-pillow. "...no charcoal..."
Kirien huffs a bit at that and falls to collapse in the snow beside the wizard, curling on his side. Pain that should not naturally be there still swirls in his gut but he ignores it in favour of nudging his forehead against what is possibly a shoulder or at least an upper arm and closing his eye. "It took me half a day to notice you drew on me, an' another half an hour to scrub it all off." Another huff of chilly breath and then he's slipping into sleep alongside his coterie, and is quietly thankful for life (and family) after death.
Satoshi is pretty sure they look like a murder scene now.