[Place of Purging]See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me (Mara)

[Sian The]

Newcome to a knowledge and love for Viratas? Sian sucked in a breath of air and bit down on his cracked lip as the air touched his open neck wound. Under and above and through the pain, there hummed too a stinging burn that made his flesh feel like it was bubbling slowly – like a thick stew on the edge of the hearth. Pushing past that odd sensation, he asked, as much to distract himself as to hear the answer, “Morwen? Then you are from the far, far north?” Sian’s eyes sought Mara’s, and he could guess with accuracy – this half blood was not native born to Kalinor. A healer – a Whitevine – Sian had heard of the way the Vantha separated themselves into groups, holds. And this healer worked here – in the clinic. Was this a place where the unfortunate girls they ripped away from loving families were held until they died a horrible death while giving birth to more of the loathsome spider people? Could Jael even now be on the other side of some flimsy wall? Down a short corridor or behind the next door? His dark eyes went to make a survey of the room which held him, and he wondered if the door was locked. “Your father was Vantha?” he continued, his voice strained, almost preoccupied. He did wish to confirm this possible boon of the gods, or fate, but the sensation in his neck was growing. His squeezed his eyes shut tight against it, feeling like his blood was literally boiling there – where the . . . thing, had bitten him. Without thinking he clenched both fists and the one with the broken bones sent an excruciating stab of pain up to his shoulder. “Gods . . . “ he hissed through clenched teeth. And then he passed out.

[Mara]

Mara had pried agape the dressing without qualm or unease, and he got a hold of his rags to decontaminate the zone, hanging on still to their abstracted dialogue. He was arranged to respond when he encapsulated the prospect of the ill-treated collar. Disbelief foraged and unsealed his compressed lips and a draught of ejected air, nearly winding him. He said nothing on tenterhooks, not to distress him, but he could make out the stiff swallow in his throat and the rallying exudate amalgamating with an alien substance into the clefts of his clavicle in a diaphanous and sleek patina.

Amethyst stones flashed toward his phizog, and soaked in his aggrieved expression and clenched jaw. Mara surveyed him with worry and leaned his palms down upon his shoulder to attempt pacifying his tensing build.

He did not witness the crimping of his splintered hand but the choking cry that was produced depressed razorblades inside him. What had he done incorrect? It was his first assumption. Had he overlooked something in his initial work over? Could he have impeded this obviously unbearable torture before it had arisen to this? He wanted to call to him as he paled into the dark, to assure him he would repair his error, whatever it was. He then realized he did not even know his name. The oblivious body before him now knew more of him than he could riddle out about the other. A strained frown undid his careful front and he forced himself to go back to the core of it all.

The puncturing formation of jaws swelling over the tender pulp had malformed from how it had materialized previously. It had festered into a tar of simmering secretion as dark as raven's downs and like nothing he had ever viewed. His chest ascended and fell quicker, and he grappled to clear his mind and think realistically.

It was the unknowing. Where to begin and what to do, they were questions he could not begin to remedy. It was slashing apart his confidence in his skill, with each undulation of the seemingly slumbering body writhing with hushed agony.

"Calm down. Calm down." he chanted to himself and began to try and ring a waterfall of wet over the obsidian jewels of flaking skin. Sian's body tensed a hiss pulling from between his teeth. He wanted to scream, the feeling of such helplessness was not one he took well.

"Calm down." His took a deep breath grasping a shuddering limb and running it through his hair. His eyes closed and drew in through flaring nostrils. "Zintila, continue to watch over your faithful supporter of Lhavit. Grant him some pardon." It was a quiet lamentation. "Morwen, guide my actions, and Viratas allow me the astuteness to heal him." if it seemed foolish to others, he fret not. It stabilized his hand and decelerated his contesting mind.

The water had provided negligible sway to rinse away the substance, its material seemed to cling from the innards of the wound, budding from the inside and weeping out. He daubed at it and it clung to the fibers of his towel, equal parts give and take as he withdrew. Some pitch-black paste remained upon the cloth, while ropes of fibers soaked into its sticky mass. In his restored focus, he was allowed to see past the disturbed expression and emphasis solely on his schedule.

Mara saturated the towel again and stroked firmly at the secretion until it was beginning to smear away, and stripes of glimmering clear water coated it instead. Still the rims of each beet colored puncture were orbited by the charred looking skin, and lines of greyish-blue veins connected in laces of clustered roots.

He soaked a fresh towel, and forced its sopping material to the rind and left instead fat drops of conserving run off. Fingers pressed to the wound and he constrained his opposing arm to his forearm, distributing the freezing chill over the wound to cap it in a polish of paper-thin ice. Just as heat would slay contamination, extreme cold could extinguish bacteria and if nothing else slow the progress and provide some comfort.

A shaking leg receded from the examining surface and he considered from afar the injury in opposing perspective. His breath shuddered in release and his hands rested upon the peak of his head with dismayed and thought. This was completely foreign from anything he had ever heard of, no journal, no literature, no experience had ever glimpsed to an exuding black and virtually blooming infection. It cultivated speedily, and caused immense pain and an unnatural reaction to the surrounding flesh. "What the fuck am I supposed to do?"

[Poison]

THREAD AWARD!

Sian:
Skills: Meditation 2, Observation 2
Lores: Kalinor is safe, Acquaintance: Mara, the Place of Purging

Mara:
Skills: Observation 5, Medicine 5, Persuasion 1
Lores: male refugees are superfluous, Acquaintance: Sian, Religion: Zintila

Notes: This was fantastic thread! Sian, I'm sorry that I couldn't award you more XP. You were unconscious/too severely wounded to do much for most of the thread.

The 2 XP in Meditation are for "going to a place of peace" during the operation because this is pretty much what meditation does.

Mara gets maximum XP in Medicine for the extremely detailled description of treating Sian.

Send me a PM if you have questions or think you deserve more/different XP and lores!