Open Wounds II [Anton]

[Hector]

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Now that the tension had settled and both men could be reasonably sure neither party was a liar or otherwise hostile, Vergil could finally lower his guard, maybe not all the way down, but at least a notable amount. For as strong as his sense of self preservation was, most of his bristled demeanor was out of defensiveness regarding Hector. At this point, he'd go to very questionable lengths for the sake of protecting the younger vampyre.

But then there was the question the other had asked. What, exactly, were he and Hector going to do now? He clicked his tongue and pulled in a breath, brows furrowing in thought.

"That is…a good question. All our affiliations and ties lead back to Zaichaer– a city that now lies in ruins. Starting over somewhere else is the only option, but we…don't really have a destination in mind. Where, exactly, are the planned stops of this airship? I suppose we'll just…pick one from the list." He'd dropped most of the coldness and hostility from his tone, at this point sounding more exhausted than anything else. "...but before that, I do need to fix my companion's hand. Putting all the little bones back in place will be a tedious endeavor, no doubt." While he spoke, Vergil cast a sidelong gaze towards Hector's mangled hand. It was bent in ways that might make another sick and a sickly, dark mix of bruises.

"To add, you needn't worry about any harm coming to anyone on the ship," upon expressing this sentiment, he dipped a thumb beneath his shirt collar, hooking it onto a chain and fishing out a rather ornate looking pendant, set with a peculiar gem– in actuality, a greater dragonshard– colored in hues of deep, dark reds.

Directing eyes of gold to the pendant and then back to Anton, he spoke, "This is Sanguinyte– a dragonshard. Alongside the more traditional method, it will help keep my companion and I sated without needing to alert anyone to our status or…inconvenience them too much. I do apologize about burdening you and your crew with our unique needs, but it simply cannot be helped. As payment, we'll happily assist anyone else who has need of our particular skill sets." Vergil's tone had fully shifted to something softer and more polite, almost amiable.

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Aidolon Speech

'Thoughts'

"Kathalan Tongue/Speech"

"Vallenor Tongue/Speech"

"Common Tongue/Speech"

"Mythrasi Tongue/Speech"

[Anton]

The topic of conversation shifting away from the revelation that vampyres were real and existed to the far more prosaic matter of airship landing schedules was very much welcomed by Anton, the lord visibly relaxing as he began to discuss perfectly mundane things. With a pair of living monsters who, he had been ensured for his entire life, did not exist. That would take some getting used to, and in his heart of hearts he did not know if he was making the right decision to permit the two safe passage. Still, they had proven their worth, and as far as he knew had yet to harm anyone. So long as that held, he could not convince himself to raise a hand against them. Not after they, or really rather Vergil, had done so much.

"We stop first at Haqs, then at Satesoria, then fly straight on after leaving Karnor. The borderlands are far from safe, even those of the Imperium, and we'll fly fast and high. After entering Geleros itself, we make straight for Gel'Grandal. Little point in dawdling, and unless you know somewhere else to pull strings it seems the best bet for everyone." Granted, if someone aboard the ship did urgently ask to stop somewhere in the Imperium, neither Anton nor Vanessa would deny it, but there was nothing to suggest that would be the case. Certainly, they hadn't bothered to schedule such a stop - and that was all that mattered at this stage of the journey.

Hector's hand was obviously broken to Anton's arcane sight, but the grisly details were entirely lost on him - perhaps for the best. So it was perhaps with more casualness than he was expecting that upon being informed of the need to fix the limb, he replied with a rather casual, "My apologies, do not let me keep you."

Anton put far more focus upon the revealed sanguinyte, the dragonshard resonated with a drum beat that sounded like a heart. The sound had been there before, but muffled and hidden by the vampyre's aura, overshadowed by the strangeness of their unknown rune. Now however it was as clear as day, and he gave the pair a slim nod. "I'm aware of it, yes. I've made use of it myself in my youth. Do not think me ungrateful, but, I must ask. Why? Why have you helped?"

[Hector]

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Vergil knew of the places that were listed…though not anything near encyclopedic about any of them. Haqs would likely be overcrowded on top of being unfortified. He had nothing against Satesoria, but of the two, Gel'Grandel evoked the most of his interest. The Imperium considered magic to be a tool like anything else. They embraced its use to make life better. While one could lob many a criticism at the nation for a variety of reasons, there was a distinct allure about the place if only due to its treatment of magic.

Though it was unlikely that there would be anything even close to public acceptance of their Vitalis rune, they'd probably have the best chance of not immediately being hunted if found. The Imperium was known to be…pragmatic. If he and Hector were useful, then perhaps they'd be spared, even accepted once the veil was lifted. Plus, Hector's love of the arcane did not stop where his own runes ended; Vergil knew he wanted more, and in a place like that, he'd have a much easier time acquiring runes or finding somebody to train him in alchemy or scrivening.

"If those are the options…we'll probably want to stay until landfall in Gel'Grandel. We'll do our best to not be a burden, rest assured." This, he very much meant.

When the nobleman acknowledged the state of the elf’s hand, Vergil once again looked to his companion. Gods, fixing the thing properly would be such a pain. He'd have to teach Hector better control of Vicissitude in the near future. Fixing wounds like this on yourself is significantly easier provided you’ve enough focus, energy and ether. But on somebody else? It can be difficult when one cannot see the exact patterns of the breaks. Being a perfectionist, the doctor really didn't want to try and use guesswork, but it was either that or deglove the entire broken mess.

For a brief amount of time, the older vampyre had lost himself in his own head, trying to decide on how he wanted to approach this conundrum. Then, the captain's ward spoke again. He blinked, shifting both his gaze and his focus back on the third party.

"Why? I'm a doctor first. I've been practicing medicine longer than I've been a monster; I made a vow to heal at the start of my career. I do my best to maintain that promise to the best of my abilities– circumstances permitting." To him, it really was that simple. There was joy to be found in healing the sick or repairing the injured.

Hector's motivations were far more selfish, but in situations like this, he simply followed his mentor's lead with the goal of not making their lives harder. There was enough on his mind already, no need to add more by being hostile or refusing to assist where he could. He fully intended to assist in Vergil's endeavors to help others once his own body was in working order again.

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Aidolon Speech

'Thoughts'

"Kathalan Tongue/Speech"

"Vallenor Tongue/Speech"

"Common Tongue/Speech"

"Mythrasi Tongue/Speech"

[Anton]

Anton, still young and naive with little practical knowledge of the Imperium aside from his mother's stories of her girlhood surrounded by privilege, made a crucial mistake. He was relieved to hear that the vampyres would disembark at Gel'Grandal, deciding that the Inquisition would serve best to contain them. He doubted that Haqs would be able to stop them if they put their minds to mischief, especially considering the chaos that the city had fallen under with the press of refugees. Satesoria would handle them better, but it had no recourse for mages save the pyre, and he was still loathe to dismiss someone to death or life as a fugitive.

No, the Imperium suited them best, he agreed. He had hoped that they might have some secret rendezvous they could be dropped off at in order to reconnect with the Covens, and let witches take care of witches, but this was a close second. At least with their dragonshards they shouldn't need to feed off of any of the crew or refugees, and he suspected that he knew why the surgical suite was so pristine and clean now. As unsettling as that particular though was, Anton could not help but admit that it was admirably efficient.

He considered leaving things then and there, accepting Vergil's explanation at face value to return above decks. But something stuck in his mind. "You were a doctor first?" he asked, curiosity getting the better of him. Anton didn't come out and ask how the man had become a vampire, but it was obvious that the question was on his mind. "Perhaps I should leave you to your work though," he said, making to exit the room to give the man a graceful out if he didn't want to discuss such matters with him.

[Hector]

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Vergil appeared a little confused at the question, but before he could open his mouth to answer, the young noble followed that up with another remark. Really, he was right, making Hector wait like this was markedly inconsiderate to the younger man. Beyond that, he always had the compulsion to treat the elf with the best care he could muster, almost babying him, so his anxiety at just…doing nothing was building. Although, there was something that could be construed as a middle ground, should the other man agree to it.

"Hm? Of course. Ah, it was…" he trailed off for a second, not wanting to outright admit to having been, or…well, still being, a Mender. At least, not unless he really had to for whatever reason. "I received the mark in my forties, and I'm fifty-two at the moment. A colleague of mine, one who I always thought was a miracle worker, introduced me to the concept of the rune and the miracles it could perform. In that respect, having this black mark on my soul is worth it. Everything else be damned– without this or something else, perhaps maybe Ioniri's gift? many of the feats I've performed would've been downright impossible." He regarded the rune with a sort of reverence, almost. Vergil truly believed it was a blessing. A shame it was often used so cruelly.

"...you can linger if you have more questions. We have nothing left to lose at this point, but if you've a weak stomach, I wouldn't look in the direction of my work. To set these bones, I'll probably have to, at least partially, deglove him. I'd rather not work blindly if I can avoid it." He stated this more as if it were a chore to do than the painful, fairly grotesque procedure it was.

Which, to be fair, he'd repaired many a shattered skeleton before and at least for this patient, he would feel relatively little in regards to actual suffering. Granted, even if sensation is muted, it can never really be described as comfortable to be skinned.

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Aidolon Speech

'Thoughts'

"Kathalan Tongue/Speech"

"Vallenor Tongue/Speech"

"Common Tongue/Speech"

"Mythrasi Tongue/Speech"

[Anton]

Power, then. The power to save, but power nonetheless. An unoriginal, but still interesting reason. No doubt he thought himself a healer, and Anton could not help but admit that was true today at very least, but there was the oh so minor fact that he drank the blood of the living that he simply could not get over. That was the one thing all the stories agreed upon, and they had all but admitted it was true by showing their bloody dragonshards. Still, he had made his decision, and would not deviate from it. No matter how much sense it made to do so.

"Do not mind my presence in the least," Anton said with a casual air. It was not the gore that had terrified him during the flight from Zaichaer, but the curdling of the very auras of what had once been friends and neighbors into atrocities. Mere physical damage, the likes of which he couldn't even see, meant very little to him. Even if it did, Anton was far more concerned about discovering more about these vampyres and their cursed rune than he was squeamish, and set himself to settle in for the duration of the operation.

"Are you certain that you may operate while distracted by questions however?" he asked, actually genuinely curious. This was a far more involved surgery than any he had actually undergone himself, one that he assumed required the utmost concentration and care. Still, the surgeon in this case did have an advantage that very few others could even dream of possessing, that much Anton was forced to admit.

Without waiting for the answer, and more importantly before the operation could truly begin in case the answer was in fact a no, Anton asked the question that he had been dying to ask. It was not precisely relevant, but the more important ones had already been asked, and he now permitted himself to indulge in his personal concerns. "Do you know if the Covens are alright?"

[Hector]

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So it would appear that Anton would remain unbothered. To be fair, it's not like he would be made to stare at it regardless of circumstance. Only thing unavoidable, really, would be the sound– however, that's only really all too awful if one is sitting there breaking bone. In this case, the bones are already so destroyed that doing so would help absolutely nobody.

However, before he began, the other man said one more thing. Casting his gaze back, "...should be fine unless you intend to go out of your way and be an active disturbance."

Realistically the only risk would be that it would take slightly longer. If he made a mistake, it'd be easy enough to stop any major blood loss and stabilize whatever the new issue was with vicissitude while he would work to fix the damage. Vitalis was nice for very many things; keeping people alive in crisis or when they crash is definitely a great example.

Now, the next step would be to get that pesky skin out of the way. Considering the fact that the hand's very structure was broken to bits, he didn't really want to extensively handle it lest it fall apart more. Therefore, he'd opt for a strategy that would require the least amount of movement.

Gently, Vergil picked up the elf's hand and flipped it over so that it was palm down. To start, he picked up his carving sickle and began to cut away the flesh on the back of Hector's hand. While he did this, Anton delivered another question, this time with a voice most eager.

"The Covens? In truth…I am not sure. Had we been in the markets, that's very likely where we would still be. I don't doubt they had a negation field of their own to keep them safe. Unfortunately, Hector and I were on the city's perimeter when the rift tore the sky," he sighed, sounding just as disappointed as this answer likely was for Anton to hear. "I really do wish I knew. Any and all of our loved ones were among those in the Covens."

For all either of the vampyres knew, they could all be dead, even. And while he very much doubted this, it wasn't exactly easy to purge the thought when there was no way to verify.

Once the main patch of skin was cut away, Vergil made five more incisions, each along the center of Hector's fingers, then pulled the skin apart so he could see the extent of the skeletal damage beneath. To this, the fingers on the elf's over hand shifted, grasping at nothing in particular. His whole body tensed in discomfort, because while Vergil had refreshed Pheromancy's analgesic effect, that didn't take away the very gross sort of pressure he felt from being cut apart or the crawling, horrid irritation of having one's skin peeled from one's muscle.

As expected, the bones were crunched into little tiny pieces. Wasting no time, the healer of the two began to shift Hector's bones back into position, sometimes having to remove the pieces altogether using forceps and resituate them back in proper alignment lest his vicissitude knit things together bent or uneven.

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Aidolon Speech

'Thoughts'

"Kathalan Tongue/Speech"

"Vallenor Tongue/Speech"

"Common Tongue/Speech"

"Mythrasi Tongue/Speech"

[Anton]

"I see." Useless, then. Perhaps it'd be fine. Perhaps it'd work out. He didn't really know after all, he didn't really know anything, come to think of it. There was just innuendo and implication, smiles and smoke. Anton had no reason to worry, and so he wouldn't. At least, that's what he told himself. It turned out to be easier to say than to do.

So caught up was Anton in his ruminations that he barely even noticed Vergil go about his grisly work upon Hector, focused on his own private drama. An errant thought broke him from his reverie, and he looked at the two with a curious expression as the one worked upon the other. The loneliness and isolation that the pair felt was genuine, they truly did only have each other now as far as they were concerned. It was surreal to empathize with vampyres, but perhaps it would've been stranger to not have such feelings for anyone experiencing sorrows so great when he could hear their very emotions.

"Should I learn anything, I shall let you know," he absentmindedly swore to the older man, paying attention to the surgery in front of him with only the most clinical of evaluations."But why move on so swiftly?" He resisted the urge to point out that they could have asked to be dropped off outside the city, or for them to loiter beyond the mists for a sign, or one of any of a number of possibilities. They were all plausible, and that made the men all the stranger for it. "Surely the Covens have some method of regrouping, of knowing their own when situations become dire. Or is the vaunted Order of Reconciliation so incompetent that you and yours have not been meaningfully tested until today?"

[Hector]

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On Hector’s end, he largely sat in silence from the exhaustion caused by having your body cut apart and put back together. Even if it was mostly Vergil’s aether willing his flesh to repair, it was still taxing on his system as a whole. He found himself swimming around in his own thoughts, tense from the constant, unending stimulation. It was hard to focus on what the other two men were saying as a concept. He heard their voices, recognized the words, even…but they held no meaning, made no sense. His brain just wasn’t processing the noise as proper speech, and even if it was, what input would he have? With his mind as addled as it was, would he even be able to string together a proper sentence?

The next thing out of the noble’s mouth was a promise and then a question. Valid inquiries, really, but the answer was a complex thing.

“I…a lot of it was done out of panic. Sort of...heat of the moment. Hector was half dead and I just wanted some place quiet and safe to take care of him. Though there is the omnipresent sound of the engine or wind whipping by here, it’s as close to what I wanted as I could really ask for,” he sighed, reflecting back onto his choices.

“...and while I acknowledge the markets themselves were likely not obliterated, they would exist surrounded by devastation. Mired in conflict. I have no doubt Zaichaer’s governance now lies largely uncommanded and, truth be told, I don’t want to be around while people squabble over what to do next. That, and the rift itself still exists. Staying would have been…more of a risk to our lives, I think. Even if the rift never reopened, the potential for civil conflict is high– the Covens have stayed their hands in the past, but the Order…well, I wouldn’t be shocked if there was some sort of uprising.” He spoke in a voice almost disconnected from himself, as if he were an observer of his own life.

Creating a rift between one’s circumstances and conscious perception is an interesting coping mechanism; it’s a form of avoidance that allows you to function in the moment but solves nothing and offers no succor for the flood of pain that one will surely fall into once one reconnects.

As Vergil spoke, his work continued. The gorey puzzle before him was slowly beginning to resemble the proper structure of a hand, though the fingers still lay in disarray. He’d fixed the bones of the carpals and metacarpals, neatly putting them all back into place and knitting them together with Vicissitude, weaving a mix of nerves, tendons and muscle back into proper place and attachment using a combination of thread and needle as well as vicissitude. He managed any bleeding by quickly Crystallizing the blood after any laceration was made, stemming the tide. It was faster to simply use both techniques at once instead of sticking solely to one or another. While his hands worked to sew one wound, he could push aether through and regenerate another area at the same time. Splitting his focus like this was harder when he would speak, but nonetheless doable, slowed in pace.

Once the bulk of the hand was complete, he moved to the thumb and repeated much of the same over the smaller area. Each finger would be fully repaired before he’d move on to the next. On Hector’s end, he appeared largely subdued aside from any manipulation concerning nerves. From the way he twitched, this was still very unpleasant; Vergil often had to hold his wrist steady while he went.

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Aidolon Speech

'Thoughts'

"Kathalan Tongue/Speech"

"Vallenor Tongue/Speech"

"Common Tongue/Speech"

"Mythrasi Tongue/Speech"

[Anton]

"I see," Anton said after a long pause, the Augur examining the surgery unfolding before his sightless eyes. There was the intellectual understanding that what was happening was rather gruesome, but the fact that he didn't actually see it enabled him to instead focus on the magical surgery itself. It was rather fascinating, truth be told, even if it was powered by a rather unsavory sort of magic. Vampyres were things of legend and myth, scary stories meant to frighten children into obeying their parents, not... this. Whatever this was.

He was... not expecting a gentle healer. That confusion could wait however. Both because whatever he thought he knew about the most maligned of Runes was at the most moment unimportant, but also because 'I see' was not a particularly riveting reply. Propriety still mattered, even when ones interlocutors were two decaying corpses kept together with the blood of the living.

"You are right, of course," Anton eventually replied. "Zaichaer has been reduced to a husk of itself, at best, and a nightmare at the worst. There will be little peace there, I fear, and precious little hope. It will be some time before anything like the old days return there, after so much death and destruction. We should be lucky if the death toll does not increase in the days to come." Anton couldn't judge the men's choice. It was, after all, the exact same reason why Anton and his family were fleeing.

Of course, Anton had no intention of resting on his laurels in the Imperium, but he trusted few with those plans. Especially not these two. At least, for now.

"Well, I will leave you to your rest. Good day, both of you."