Feverdreams (Sama'el)

[Poison]

Continued from here.

OOCPermission to guestmod given by DS Lariat.

Summer 42, 511 AV

Fire, there was only fire, hot, red fire that seemed to come from the depths of the earth, from somewhere deep under Endrykas or from the sun itself. It was the only thing that existed. It had consumed the whole world, had burned everything to cinders. It had taken a hold of Sama’el’s entire being as he lay there, in the tent, while the two healers desperately tried to find out what was wrong with him. His skin was so hot that touching it was almost painful. It was red as if he had walked through the desert for days and never found shade, never found a cool place to rest. The fire seemed to consume him from the inside ...

His eyes were glassy, and his throat was parched and swollen as if he hadn’t drunk anything in an eternity, and the cool water that Caelum had washed his face with only brought a temporary relief. The things one usually did if somebody had a fever just didn’t seem to work. Sama’el was slowly drifting away, into a different place, into some kind of coma, but never quite reaching it. He wasn’t conscious, but not completely unconscious either. His world hadn’t turned black as an unconscious man’s world would. Instead everything was filled with blinding, bright white sunlight as if he were suddenly high up in the sky.

It was hard to form any kind of coherent thoughts in that state. Everything was blurred. Everything seemed to be melting in the heat. It was incredibly hard for him to make out what Caelum and Denen were saying. Their voices seemed to come from far away, from the other side of the world. It was as if they weren’t important anymore. There was another voice that filled almost his entire being now, a woman’s voice, singing a song, a song of the sun that threatened to take his life. Or maybe it was just a hallucination, brought on by the fever, another step closer to the end.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

In dream logic, what seemed most important to him then was to sing back to the voice. He knew the song, or thought he did. It was familiar, like a song sung in childhood, or a lullaby from his infancy. The frustration rose like a tide within, not being able to match the voice. Perhaps it was his mother's and he was so young all he could do was gurgle with glee or scream with fear and loneliness. Perhaps he would awaken to slavery again, a godless state of cold and want. There were no songs from those years, none he wanted to sing again. That frustration blazed as if he had dived into the heart of the sun, and he did feel that heat in his body as well as his feverish mind. He was thirsty, but nothing made sense. He was only sometimes aware of what was going on around him, and so he tried to sing back to the voice, croaking incoherently to Caelum and to Denen, though perhaps the Ethaefal caught a hint of familiar melody.

[Caelum]

"Hide Thy face," the Exile swore. Divine light was glowing in opal hues, trespassing across the flesh of his right hand. It pricked and sparked and recalled with every sting the hour in these same grasses over a year gone wherein sweet Rak'keli's laugh had been born by a Drykas wind and left him tear-dried and alone. His next to last tie to the souls inhabiting Mizahar was flaring up with a strange fever that threatened to boil the brains right out of his skull and he was stuck, staring at the fingers of a hands that had been beaten and scarred, known chains and tribulations, because a goddess had finally deigned to pay him one last heed. A voice like the dawn age slid through the soft of the tent's interior, heard and not heard, remembered by pieces of his brain that were mostly numb throughout. It was as if his skeleton was a wind-chime and these holy symbols the weather that made them scream. "No, this is not normal," he managed to reply to the distraught Denen. Surety found a foothold in his words, strengthening his voice until it rose in creation of a melody for the harmony of all that god-haunted djed he could feel spinning cobwebs through the air. They could not have his last family member. They had taken all else from him, left whatever he had been on the side of fate's road for carrion. He leaned forward, the shadows of curving horns sprawling across Sama'el, and shifted until he could settle the young man's head into his lap. His hands were cool as rain water, the healing power flowing out from a gnosis he had earned -- for good or ill -- long ago spilling into this blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh. He did not care what the pavilions of this era might say of his right to claim Drkyas heritage or what those ascended deities decorating the heavens suggested as to whom and where he belonged or not -- he knew. He knew because it was calling him north and onward, screaming for him like a pulse running out. Knew because it was too beneath his hands now, wracked with a fever that shoved up against a distant consciousness of lives and memories as flogged free of him as his right to chose between something more than shadow and shade. Beneath his hands, Sama'el's fever dropped degree by degree, not enough but still progress. "We can heal him," he told Denen, sun shocked eyes catching that of the Brokensong's. "It's in my mind. My soul remembers. I've seen this before."

[Denen Sunsinger]

Denen was doing whatever he might to keep himself calm, but the thin hand that clasped that of his friend trembled. The power and goodness of Caelum's voice would fall upon deaf ears, and had he had the power to use them, his focus would likely have been directed elsewhere as it was. He watched the Ethefael, that strange, celestial being, with cautious, grim eyes, and drew Sam's hand near his heart. He squeezed his eyes shut, ducking his head low. Goddess, please. He is everything to me. I will devote my every moment to thee if thou wilt intervene for him. Goddess, my people were born of loss, if thou wouldst have my life, I would give it. Please, do not let the Dark Lady take my Ankal. Despite his best efforts, when he lifted his blue eyes, they were bright with tears. He counted himself lucky to be at least clinging to his sanity. His head snapped up as Caelum spoke to him, and he nodded. "I'm...h-here," he murmured, praying that some hint of his voice might break the barrier of Sam's understanding. "W-We will heal y-you, Sam. I swear by Rak'keli." He looked, then, to Caelum. "W-Whatever...I mmm-must do to save...him...I will."

[Caelum]

"Myrdas," Caelum replied to Brokensong's determination. There were queer lights in his eyes like spots on the sun, flowering with ancient knowledge that stirred in the bones of him. They had been embattled many years by the partial amnesia that plagued the whole of his celestial race. Moments and names, faces and feelings, places and phrases scattered his consciousness in fragments of not one but dozens of lives. Across their corporeal frames was a star's skin stretched thin and fragile as fine spun silk, ready to rip like the Ukalas themselves but unwilling to release clear memories of his existence there. Myrdas, however, bled free, trembling on his lips. It was as if he feared it might be smoke when he first spoke it, but in the repetition found it was more solid than first imagined and he uttered it with the exacting force of triumph. "Myrdas." The tips of his fingers maintained their vigil against Sama'el's temples, caught in a campaign to keep the Watchman's fever from gaining further altitude. The grace of Rak'keli may have been potent enough for it, but it was only solitary drop of that divine magic within the windmill tilting ethaefal. Maintaining eye contact with Denen, he formed his words with care, speaking slowly in concern that Denen's handicap might wobble Caelum own precarious hold on cure. "It is a star shaped, flowering plant. It was used long ago to cure a fever of this degree. It was here, among the grasslands, before there was a sea.." He blinked, attempting to allow his mental and spiritual moorings to unwind while not yet losing his tether on the world. The curse of his kind, it was. "It's here. You may already have it. You'd find it sheltering in a copse, stealing nourishment from the roots, hiding its face from the sun though it wilts by night." His right hand felt afire, Rak'keli's winged snakes emblazoned there twisting, it felt, beneath his skin, sliding around his bones; but it was not that goddess he was thinking of as he blinked back what felt almost like a sun daze. "Syna led me to it once. Long, long ago," he murmured.

[Poison]

It was indeed a song that had been sung in his childhood, a lullaby that his mother had sung to him when he had been a mere babe in her arms. For a moment the voice resembled the one of the woman that had given birth to him. There was a feeling of warmth, of comfort for a moment, but then the fire returned. It was not his mother that sang to him, not her embrace that kept him warm, it was the desert in the middle of the day, and the woman that sang to him was not of this world. Part of him knew her. He had sung to her before.

Through the Ethaefal’s efforts the fever dropped, but not enough, not nearly enough. Still, it was some kind of progress, and it gave Sama’el a break from that feverish madness. For a moment he was able to think clearly again – he could hear Denen and Caelum talk, could feel their presence, but the bright light in front of his eyes remained, and thus he couldn’t see them. It didn’t hurt though. His body was still burning with fever, he was still burning inside, but his eyes didn’t hurt. He was staring at the sun, some kind of sun that was inside of him, but his eyes remained largely unaffected.

Denen would indeed be able to remember the flower that Caelum had mentioned. He had seen it in the grasslands, but a few days ago. Caelum though, Caelum could see it in his mind. That strange light that had touched Sama’el had touched him as well and revealed things that had previously been hidden. Was that really the cure? Would it bring Sama’el back? Would it end those strange fever dreams?

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

The fire sang in his veins, pulsed with his heart. It was not his mother, but something greater. Within the confines of his mind, he called out to her. To Her. "Hello? What's happening to me?" In the world where his body resided, his lips moved and his body stirred, but his mind was somewhere else, talking to someone he could not see. There was a rush of coolness, something familiar, something that reminded him of Kasb'el, but it was a stopgap measure. The solar fire still ate away at him, filling him with energy fit to burst his seams. Perhaps he would just burn up and burn away, drift as ashes among the grasses of Cyphrus. It wouldn't be so bad. "Hello?"

[Caelum]

OOCPosting to revert back to original order. Let me know if this is not acceptable and I will delete and revise for proper positioning. Myrdas held static in the ethaefal’s mind, a vision of perfect clarity limned in the light of a younger sun. It was startling in detail, more vibrant and clarion than near any recollection cluttering the past life ruins of his soul. “Syna,” he breathed and a lump rose in his throat, sore and suffocating. “We don’t know, Sam,” he when on when his descendant’s anxious cries called him back to focus upon the here and now. Determination solidified his syllables. “But we’re going to fix it. Denen is here,” and with that he slid a hand free of the Watchman’s head to reach for Brokensong’s. A fresh, cool cloth was slapped with a softer splatter into Denen’s palm and he jerked his chin, the shadow of curving horns elongating across the wall of the tent. “Try to get him to drink some water,” he directed quietly with the hand marked by newly activated healing gnosis sliding from Sam’s cheek to his arm. Maintaining this contact and, with luck, the steady stream of Rak’keli’s attention in this sun struck haze, he reached for the healer’s kit he had carted in earlier. A small glass vial was ultimately plucked loose and with this he delivered his attention back to Denen. “Dissolved worm root,” he explained. “Dose the water with it. I’ve seen it help lower fevers before. We need to get the myrdas, but one of us also needs to stay with Sama’el. If you know where I can find it, I’ll go; or if you can travel more quickly, I’ll try to draw it, to describe it. What do you think?” The density of divinity was making him dizzy, but in the back of his mind he understood that was likely psychosomatic. Syna. Syna. Syna. Grief and love, pain and longing tangled and tore, shoved deep and deeper. He could heal Sama’el, his last reliable tie to this earth. He could fix this. He could. He could. Even if Syna believed in him no more.

[Denen Sunsinger]

He had to keep calm, though his hands shook. His features were grim, and he watched carefully, taking in all that was said to him. He couldn't stay here. He would be driven mad. He looked down to Sam's glazed, feverish countenance, and he took a sharp, deep breath. He took the rag in his hand, nodding. “I h-have...I have...root,” he answered, and he stumbled up to his feet to crush it in preparation. The root, like most of the things he gathered, had been left to dry, and it broke apart with enough force in the stone bowl. He reached clumsily for water, applying it bit by bit, until he was able to douse the rag. He hurried back to Sam's side, where he sank to his knees. A gentle hand brushed the dark hair from Sam's damp brow, and he leaned near him to gently open his mouth. “Sam,” he whispered. “Drink.” He brought the wet rag to his lips, coaxing him to drink. “P-Please. I-I-I'm here.” He took a moment to look up to Caelum, brows furrowed. “D-Draw the...the picture,” he answered softly. “I w-will ride.” He rested a flat hand on Sam's chest, signing against his skin. “I love you, Sam. I will return soon. I swear.” He hesitated, glancing up to Caelum a moment, before he leaned forward a pressed a soft kiss to Sam's lips. “Please. T-Tell me what to look for. I...I have to ride.”

[Caelum]

OOCI’m out of order again by request. Y’all just can’t keep me in line. I mean.. Boo-yah. Old eyes rested for a while longer on Sama’el and Denen, absorbing the evidence of their relationship’s nature in silence. There was no judgment in his regard. That was a thing he had a habit of reserving for the gods like some mad hubris. Ultimately, however, he knew he had no right; but if anyone ever had or ever would, would it not be someone like him? There were those worshippers of the divine who mistook great power for absolute right even though the desperate recovery of their very world stood as a witness impossible to ignore to the flawed nature of Mizahar’s entire pantheon. The Sunsinger was not one of them. He had gone too far and waited too long; and finally he had shed all his skin on the side of fate’s winding road as testament to the transformative existence even all their gods were subject to. He would be the last to decry a connection consisting of love. With utmost care, he raised his hands from Sama’el and felt the stalled surge of the goddess Rak’keli’s borrowed power. It caught in the back of his throat like honey wine as he kept an eye on Denen’s administrations while easing back to his own path. Once again he dug into a saddle bag, fishing for the little book he had carried with him long and then a stub of charcoal. Settling cross-legged on the tent floor, he jerked the knife out of his boot and scraped its razor edge along the charcoal stick to sharpen it. Slivers fell like flaking shadow before he was satisfied enough to press a page beneath a palm and tear it loose of the binding. Flipping it around, he used the book cover as a makeshift writing desk and began to sketch that which might save his descendant. It took time, every stroke slow and drawn with exquisite care in a desperate attempt to concentrate every iota of drawing ability he had. It was, unfortunately, very little. The air in his lungs settled and swished steady as a surgeon’s hand, heartbeat slowing to a heavy drum as he refined his focus in an effort to maintain the image of the myrdas with perfect clarity in his mind while at once reflecting it in charcoal on the page. Broken bits and pieces of death-buried memories began to prod against the surface of his consciousness, but he took them as aid rather than hindrance. Despite this, it still took some effort keep even his healer’s hand from trembling. “It is star shaped,” he repeated quietly, attempting to verbally draw the picture for Brokensong at the same time. “It has many spikes, layering down about a bushy center. The leaves are variegated and many and the stalk is prickly with tiny hairs. It’ll be cream and blush and bruise colored and smell faintly astringent. It is typically short, low to the ground and has multiple flowers per bush. The roots go deep and if cut will bleed an amber liquid. Taste it and it’ll be sweet. Here –“ The paper, complete with his crude but painstaking rendering, was thrust out at the Drykas. “Bring back the whole plant. Several if you can. If not, one should do it,” but he clearly did want to take any chances. “If all else fails, it’s ultimately the root that will be our best shot.” Sunstruck eyes lowered back to the fevered Sama’el for a moment before rising again to Denen. “Godspeed,” he said. And meant it.