"Theia!" Ethat shouted as he lunged off the bed. He grabbed the knife from my hand and threw it away, then yanked me around. "No! No! What are you thinking!"
He had an arm in each hand and shook me as he shouted. I froze as my teeth rattled and his withering magic swirled around us in a mixture of black flies and pollen and fireflies.
Ice clamped around Ethat's neck. He ignored it and plunged his face down to mine, his skin twisted and withered on one side of his face, drawing down the skin around one eye. His pupils had constricted into a tiny reptilian slit in a field of green. He held me pinned in his grip. "No."
"Don't make me do this, brother," Korr ordered, his voice rasping and tormented, and the ice around Ethat's neck cracked and creaked and then Ethat jerked.
"Ethat," I managed to squeak. His breath wheezed. His grip didn't loosen.
He jerked again as the ice collar made an odd crunch noise and blood trickled out from under it. Ethat's pupils dilated and squished back into orbs, and he released me.
I fell back on the desk. Blood splattered the pale decor. The ice collar melted off Ethat, and blood and trickles of water ran down his body. Blood wept out of a dozen small wounds on his neck. Behind him, Korr, sitting up now, and breathing with his entire body, dropped his hand back to the bed, and the ash soothing around his body seemed to have spread.
"No, no, no." I shoved around Ethat and crawled back up onto the bed. Korr had bent over his side, too weak to even fall back or endure the pain of moving versus the pain of staying like this.
He slid his gaze towards me, and said between gulps of air, "Get out of here. Go... hide... behind--when he gets...like...this. Your blood..."
"He's not a demon," I said as I dripped blood onto the otherwise spotless bedclothes.
Ethat clicked his teeth, gaze riveted on my bloody hand. Even as blood trickled down his chest and abs and the grooves of his thighs and a few drops wrapped their way around his shaft.
The door burst open and Asund launched himself through the air and landed on the bed in war-form with a snarl. Not far behind him was Itek, who was too big to get through the bedroom door in gryphon form.
Asund growled at the bloody Ethat. "Shhheee issss bleeeding."
Itek hissed angrily, and shifted down into human form. "What did you do this time, Ethat!"
Ethat backed up towards the window, the craze seeming to shake off him like he shook off pollen.
"Did you attack her?!" Itek snarled.
Asund growled, low and dangerous, his muscles clenching under his leathery hide as his claws curled into the abused bed-sheets. With sinister grace, he stepped over the footboard and crawled down onto the ground. Ethat gave him a polite but worried look.
"Stop!" I found my voice. "Stop!"
"Two of you bleeding is not a misunderstanding," Itek said, staring at Ethat. "Did you make your crippled brother restrain you?"
Ethat looked panicked and confused.
Itek looked at me, his golden eyes narrowing in on something, then snarled, "She is bruising. You handled her!"
Ethat looked at his hands with even more panic.
The rattle and swish of Ormiss' skirts preceded him as he came through the door, lightening crackling over him and extending up the walls and across the floor.
Korr was trying to get enough air and strength to say something, but he was practically ice-blue with the effort.
"Get the whip," Itek snarled to Ormiss. "We're flaying that thing alive. He bruised Theia, and she's bleeding."
"No!" I finally managed to find my voice. "No, no, stop. Everyone just stop. Stop. I made myself bleed. He was trying to stop me."
"Oh, so he restrained you?" Itek demanded while Asund circled back and forth in front of the increasingly panicked Ethat while Ormiss' magic turned stormy and a little dark cloud appeared along the ceiling, and the skies outside started to darken.
"Stop, please," I begged. "Please. He panicked. He would never mean to hurt me."
"Just like he can't resist murdering anything that catches his eye and eating it?" Ormiss growled.
"You're the one who turned Maris into gibs," I reminded him.
"I was thinking more about what happened with my cousin that required him being whipped into ribbons." Ormiss nodded at Asund, who flinched at the memory, even though he tried to hide it.
Ethat gave off a shiver of dust and black flies, the withering on his face suddenly getting worse as the skin retreated from around his eyes, and his hands, and he made a terrible sound and fled past Asund.
Asund twisted up into human form.
Ormiss didn't try to stop him as he ran out of the room. He was too furious to speak. It was Itek who growled, "We'll deal with him later. What the ever-loving fuck."
"Are you sure that this is not a post you took to get your brother out of sight?" Ormiss grit out at Korr. "Because you are too powerful a magic-user to get shuffled off to Haven."
"Stop it." Korr couldn't defend himself. Korr could barely breathe, much less argue with Ormiss. I crawled up next to him on the covers. Time to get to this before my hand stopped bleeding.
Korr seemed to radiate misery. He looked up at me with wintery eyes. "Why."
I hooked my good hand behind his head and helped him lay back. Damn, he was heavier than he looked, for as fragile as he felt. "The only magic I have left is in my blood. The demons can sense it. Healer Eaon said I still have it in my womb, so that means I still have some of it my blood. Maybe not much, but it's enough. It helped last night."
I mean, but Eon's logic, I had it in my skin and bones too, but I wasn't about to cut off a finger, stuff it into Korr's wound, and leave it there like an herb pouch in soup.
He rapsed, "Theia--"
"I've got to try." Tears burned my eyes. "This isn't going to kill you, Korr, but it'll never let you go either. It's withering you. The most healed you been has been halfway, now there's this."
"Because... we lost you," Korr said. "I will heal."
In time, maybe, but I doubted it. This wasn't a natural wound. It hadn't been caused by anything natural. Maybe he could live with it, but he'd never be healed from it. And we didn't have time. We needed him now.
I needed him.
What did it matter if I bled on him? I'd surely cut myself worse in the kitchen, and I'd probably do it again at some point. "It's just blood, Korr," I said, "I give it freely."
He looked so anguished and helpless as I pulled the sheet down to expose the injury. I rubbed the wound with my fingers to angry it up again, got a good palmful of blood--which looked like any other blood--and placed my palm right over the awful little pocket in his side. I winced. His skin was rough and seemed covered in a thousand little sharp hairs. He was too weak to offer any resistance through the pain.
I lifted my hand and made a fist to squeeze out drops of blood so they'd get right into the pocket.
"What is that smell," Asund said first. He smelled it first, but then the stench hit me too--something awful. Not very strong or pungent, but a sinister whiff of something that smelled like... not even death. Even a week old gutted pig corpse smelled nothing like that.
It smelled... did I know it? The beating wings in my head started again, and the sensation of pieces of me sliding and slipping while their seams loosened began. I grit my teeth and kept squeezing. A few more drops.
Itek surged forward. He peered down at the pocket, went totally ashen under his bronze, and whipped around. Without a word he disappeared. Everything was such a blur in my head and I was falling apart, a thousand layers moving and shifting.
Focus.
Was the wound fighting back?
Itek returned in a flurry of hair. "Hold my hair back."
Ormiss grabbed Itek's gold hair as Itek bent low over Korr's pocket. He weilded a fine set of tweezers. "Asund, get one of those dishes from his desk."
Asund tossed one of Korr's pen-holders and set it down by Itek. He also yanked the ribbon off Korr's braid, deftly twisted it, and shoved it into Korr's mouth. "I don't think whatever he's about to do is going to be pleasant."
I focused on bleeding. Korr focused on not screaming.
Itek peered at the pocket, cocking his head several ways, his eyes changing into a raptor's. In his free hand, Ormiss summoned a small, tight ball of raw magic.
"There," Itek said under his breath. He slipped the tweezers into the pocket, and grasped something.
Korr jerked and screamed.
My seams and scars threatened to tear apart.
Itek slowly pulled something free. Almost too fine to see. He twisted the tweezers, and the thing was visible only as a shadow in the world.
Korr collapsed into the pillows. Asund removed the ribbon and smoothed Korr's hair with his hand, but Korr barely seemed present, even if he was still alive. Veins stood out all over his body, and now he was sweating, and I didn't know much about Ice dragons, but something told me that a sweaty Ice dragon was not a good thing.
"What," Ormiss whispered, "is that."
Itek looked down at the pocket. "His wound is full of them. I can see them now."
"What is it?" Ormiss asked again.
I used my free hand to caress Korr's cheek.
Itek, his eyes still shifted into a raptor's, studied it a moment more before saying, "It's a hair. There's a barbed hook at the end. It's from that bug's leg. It must have had hairs on its legs, and although the leg went clear through, it left these in him."
"Why didn't the Healer catch them? The wound was cleaned a dozen times," Asund said. "It was debrided. At least twice. Nothing should be in there."
Ormiss leaned down with caution. "I can barely see that."
"I don't think it's meant to be seen." Itek studied the hair. Then he carefully placed it into the pen-holder.
I kissed Korr's cheek and sighed. He wasn't really with us right then--I sensed his acknowledgement, but that was all, and there was no need to summon him back from the twilight he'd fled to.
"I think it's your blood," Itek told me. "It's forced them to emerge."
"Or materialize," Ormiss said darkly.
"Do you sense magic on them?" Itek asked Ormiss.
"I sense something....that once might have been magic," Ormiss said, clenching his hand over the ball in his palm. It returned to him in a pulse of lightening. "Something that reminds me of squid and other relics, but that's not all there is. It was once magic. Or from the same font of magic."
Whatever that meant sent chills through all my seams and scars.
"Theia?" Itek asked.
"I'm fine." I was not fine, I felt like I was saggy and patchwork. "What do you mean... made them emerge?"
"Have you ever seen a worm be removed from skin?"
I shook my head. "No."
"It leaves a hole, but that's also the hole it breathes through. You suffocate it by pouring water over the hole. This forces it to extend its body outside the hole to breathe. You keep pouring water over it to draw it further and further out. You need to make sure enough of the worm is exposed so you can get a good, strong grip on it. Then you slowly pull it free. If you aren't patient, you will simply tear it, and removal becomes far more complicated once it's no longer mobile."
"You think my blood is suffocating those spines?"
"I would have seen these before now." He picked the tweezers back up.
"Wait."
"We have to get the spines out of him," Itek said.
"I know, but... I'm barely bleeding on him. Maybe more blood will do a better job." I was already clotted over too. Removing the spines was agony for Korr, and maybe that was because his injury was already so painful any little motion hurt, but if there was a chance drowning those things made them easier to remove, we had to take it.
"No," Korr rasped.
"I won't fester," I said.
One eyelid fluttered and finally opened. "No."
He could barely speak and he was going to argue with me about this?
"How many are there?" Asund asked.
"Two or three dozen."
"There are more, I think," I said. "I can feel a strange texture on the skin around the wound."
"Dear gods," Ormiss said, eyes widening. "What if they aren't spines, but they're worms?"
"And they're breeding?" Asund nearly dropped the ribbon.
"Well... that's... one... I haven't... experienced... before," Korr got out.
"Oh, hush. You hedonist," I scolded.
"This... is not... fun..."
"Perhaps hatching is more accurate," Itek said.
Ormiss grimaced. "I do not know much of bugs, but I know in the ocean there are creatures that reproduce through an assortment of methods land-dwellers would consider unconventional. Like squid, in which the male stabs the female to inseminate her."
"Charming," Itek said.
"Quite."
"Pervert," Itek told Korr.
Korr's lips managed to twitch in a smile. "Didn't... even... get me... a drink..."
Itek compressed his lips. He gave me that look, then shook his head. "Theia's right. We need to get these out of Korr. She's not going to be in any danger from bleeding. And if it makes it easier on Korr, the better."
Korr tried to protest. We shushed him.
"Asund," Itek said, "you're the best with a sharp object. You make the cut. Ormiss, go find something better than a ribbon. Korr, lay there."
/*******
PEEPS-
My downstairs neighbor just brought us mole chicken and rice. :: nom nom nom ::
So it also looks like we're set here in the US to forgive some student loan debt (looks like $10K - $20K) and I, for one, am glad to see it. I paid off my student loans a while back, but I'm so thrilled for people who are still struggling with it. $10K isn't going to touch some of my friends who have $100K+, but every little bit helps, right?
Anyone excited? Is it going to really help you?
~ Merry
(slightly political pantster)
*******/