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Re: Dropping By
Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 4:17 pm
by Finn
The minstrel—ex-minstrel?—was certainly still dazed by the events if not blows to the head. There was no sign of intense damage to his skull, but perhaps a healer would see what wasn't obvious to the untrained eye. Were he more calm, he might have acceded to Torin's will and gone to the Tranquil Gardens, only asking for Lyra's help if he wanted a second opinion when it came to his precious hand.
Torin embraced him. That was new. He didn't know the man well, had only met him while busking and invited him to a recital here or a show there since the man enjoyed music. He hadn't seen him in a while and certainly hadn't expected him to come calling on today of all days, but he supposed that was lucky as he wasn't quite capable of taking care of himself just yet. He wished Arry were here, though an irrational part of him was glad he wasn't. This was not a situation he wanted to put Arry through.
So he wept on the shoulder of a kindly acquaintance who was tending his hurts.
And then Arry was there, or perhaps he was well and truly hallucinating. Finn couldn't see aether—that is, he couldn't see all aether all the time. He was attuned to symphonies, which allowed him to sense aether that had any bearing on the machinations of Mesmer. Sometimes he saw it, other times he heard it or other. In reality, as much as people talked about it with regard to music and sound, it wasn't either in reality. The musical metaphors were just an easier way for the mind to grasp it all.
But now he saw Arry, clothed in golden power like some terrible aspect of the divine.
The thugs hadn't been angry; they had been sadistic.
Arry was angry, and there was something sadistic about his symphony. Finn could sense it through his own Rune, which ached under the hair covering his scalp. He attacked Torin, and the lines of power reverberated before him. Though they hadn't been intended for him, their feedback made him groan and collapse in on himself even more than he had under the weight of Torin's kindness.
"Arry..."
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 4:28 pm
by Torin Kilvin
The door coming open and someone entering with cut-off words was something Torin would barely remember thereafter. The position he was in, holding Finn did not allow him to easily turn and look at the new arrival.
Something moved into him, in no way he could have described. The whole of his life's pain rose together, like a tide through a cave, up and through until it was full, and then too full. Something inside him snapped; quiet and loud as the breaking of a bone in a silent room. It felt quite like that, like someone with unimaginably strong hands had reached down and pressed their thumbs into his collar bone until it had given way, crumpling inward into his flesh; a soft shattering.
For a time he couldn't breathe. The sum total of what he'd endured was, altogether, too much to process at once, so he was just a jumble of feeling. When he pulled back enough to look at Finn it was more instinct than with any intention. Finn could not do anything about what his life had been, and even if he'd been able to, in some way, the thought did not occur to the runesmith.
Yet, the part of him that was slowly collapsing saw in the musician something kin. The part of Torin that had risen up, hardened and cold, to survive the moments that had made him, stirred and woke.
Finn was injured, enough that it might mean his life if he wasn't seen to. Internal bleeding could take its time, end lives in silent shock. Standing Torin turned and saw Arvalyn. Unbeknownst to him, tears had welled in both his eyes and as he moved had spilled over to slip down both sides of his face. His voice, when it came, was entirely detached, not even cold; it was empty.
"Finn is hurt. He needs a healer. Lyra. He needs clothes." Moving around the room as though the other two men were ghosts, or perhaps as if he was, he searched for clean clothes for Finn. His search showed his ignorance of the space, his lack of knowing where anything was kept.
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:06 pm
by Arvælyn
The cold silver of Arvalyn's gaze remained as fixed upon Torin as the tethered spears of aetheric energy he was manipulating as if on instinct alone. The half-elf seemed barely aware, as if more a vessel of ire than a conscious creature. It wasn't until the breathy utterance of his name from Finn that he broke enough from the seeming trance to regard the human in Torin's arms.
The silvery glow emanating from his eyes started to dim as it transitioned back toward the warmth of gold, and a look of concern replaced the scowl of scorn. The taut tethers loosened slightly about Torin's heart, but did not withdraw. Still, the intensity diminished enough that Torin seemed to find both his footing and his tongue.
Unable to process too much of this at once, several of the tethers quit Torin's symphony in favour of Finn's, where they twitched at the extent of his pain, causing Arry to wince and gasp. He cursed through his teeth in Mythrasi, then instinctively projected soothing energies toward Finn to ameliorate his pain. Without realising it, he was actually channeling those threads from Torin not himself. Allowing the interloping human to shoulder some of Finn's agony even as he offered a level of physical support that Arry's smaller form would not have been capable of providing.
The half-Hytori looked more himself, as he stalked to the wardrobe to fish out a robe. It was one of Arry's own- Well, it was one of the Velvet Cabaret's own that he'd nicked for a night and left here by accident- but the dimensions were a better fit for Finn, and he knew it wasn't something Finn would mind getting ruined by blood.
"Help me put him in this for now." Arry instructed, and there were still echoes of the aetherial in his voice that made even this simple suggestion tug like a compulsion. His voice was normal as he continued, "And I'll gather some traveling clothes for after he's been cleaned up."
Part of him wanted an immediate explanation, but he would prioritise Finn's wellbeing for the moment, over his dread curiosity about what had been transpiring- how Torin even knew him, let alone ended up in his apartments with him in this state. The mere thought, caused him to shift more of Finn's pain toward Torin. It wasn't even necessary to balance the twain. He might have projected tranquility and comfort into both of them, rather than creating a funnel from one to the other, but as long as Torin could function as a beast of burden to conduct Finn to the healer, he had his uses.
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 3:27 pm
by Finn
They were talking about him like he wasn't there; they weren't talking to him, just moving around him now. Perhaps that itself helped to wake him up from his daze.
"Arry, please stop... he was trying to help," he said, unsure if Arry would even listen to him. That terrible aspect remained, and it was difficult not to feel resonances between Arry and the men that had done this to him. He was trying to remain lucid here.
"My hand."
He held it up as they eased him into the borrowed robe. It both throbbed with pain and pierced his mind. But worse than that, worse than all his other injuries, he worried that was the one that would ruin him. None of his fingers were bending the wrong way, but his hand was swollen into immobility and he had both heard and felt the crunch of bone when it happened. It had haunted his nightmares.
But they had him dressed and Torin had another shirt for him, and they were bundling him off and down the stairs to the small courtyard adjacent to the modest stables. The proprietor was there with a horse saddled and bridled. She looked concerned, murmuring under her breath, but she merely handed the reins to Torin and said something about being glad young Finn had such fine friends before retreating. Finn managed a smile that hurt his injured face.
He knew this horse and touched his forehead to her neck. The simple scent of clean horsehide was grounding, reminding him of home.
"Kneel, Daisy," he said, and she did. It was a trick the mare had been taught to delight children, but it was functional for Finn. Even a gentle hoisting into the saddle would have hurt. The calmest gait was going to hurt. Hurt was his present and would be his future, it seemed. But he slung a leg over the saddled horse and then blinked at them. He didn't know if Arry intended to ride with him for fear he would fall out of the saddle or something. He just didn't know.
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 6:33 pm
by Torin Kilvin
When the pains he had seen, touched, tried to clean with water now redder than pink, Torin knew what was happening. He didn't know how it was happening, which of the two men was using what type of magic, but it felt right. The physical pain steadied him, even as the crumpling of his psyche continued.
His insides pulled and his ribs protested as he moved, his hand ached dull and sharp in different ways, talking hurt. Looking at Finn was like seeing into an odd mirror, he looked like how Torin felt. If they had asked him, he would have asked for more of it, more of the physical pain so Finn, who had already carried it for a whole night, could have a respite.
Arvalyn helped dress Finn in a robe, over which Torin threw a cloak. Letting a badly injured person grow cold was dangerous, though, the horse's warmth would help. When the animal had knelt he deadlifted Finn into the saddle so he wouldn't have to bunch or more the injured abdominal muscles Torin could feel pulling just from the musician's breathing.
Arvalyn knew the way, as did Finn, who had revived some since the actor's arrival, so Torin could remain silent, leading the horse. Whatever looked he held as they walked, it was enough to keep back both questions and vendors' intent on selling until they got a look under his hood.
The morning streets felt different than they had only an hour before; the air was grayer, the air heavier. The smith kept glancing up, wondering if it was about to rain, and being confused to see the sky cloudless, but still somehow lacking in color.
The journey was tense, and he had trouble remembering it, moment to moment, until one of the other two had called a halt outside a shop that he could now look up to read the sign of.
Ale'Ephirum.
He would lift Finn down again, if the man would let him, would carry him into the building, if allowed. Either way, he would stand without speaking unless someone spoke to him, waiting for when he was needed.
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 9:59 pm
by Arvælyn
"I'm sure he was." Arry hissed, more distracted from his wrath than assuaged of it. But Finn was such an innocent to the intentions of the city's sundry vultures. Arry might have searched their symphonies for alleviating elements, but his mind was elsewhere-... On Finn's comfort and Torin's anguish along with the practical tasks he needed to perform, like the gathering of clothes and conducting the maimed minstrel to mount the mare.
By and by, when they were sat agee with Arry in the unfamiliar position of the rear holding the larger Finn aloft, he felt an odd tone in Torin's symphony. He might have noticed it earlier, but Finn's pain clangoured such cacophonous discord that he'd overlooked it. Masochism? He snarled. He might have expected that the knave should derive pleasure from what ought to have been pain. He was careless enough with Arry's afflictions, so why shouldn't he find mirth in his own? It was such a subtle thing, that deviant descant. Yesterday he might not have even noticed it, let alone been able to warp it, but in the aftermath of his strange dream he seemed to have opened up in new, potent ways. He ceased to funnel Finn's pain into Torin, and rather channeled his own in a way that silenced that note of relish he'd been enjoying. Arry didn't know himself well enough to realise he was imbuing Torin with a different form of pleasure in the doing. Exchanging Torin's masochism for his own sadism.
Meanwhile, he held Finn's waist with his Rune-bearing arm and amplified the soothing effect he'd been emanating since before they'd left the apartment. It would be distracting, derived as it was from a memory they would share. A night on a rooftop, the sky full of stars... Tentative comfort tinged with the stirring of new affections. A reminder as much as a relief. Arry didn't know why he was suddenly able to invoke such disparate sensations in two different people simultaneously, but he wasn't able to do much else. He was silent and verging on catatonic, so that when they paused before the Ale'Ephirum, he was jostled back to conscious thought and a little waver of the energies he was plying would twitch into both of their symphonies.
"Help him down." He said to Torin and this time the command was not augmented by any aetheric compulsion. Only condescension tinged with contempt.
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 3:01 am
by Finn
Re: Dropping By
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 5:56 pm
by Rune
R E V I E W
Lore:
Finn:
Etiquette:
Politeness Through Pain
Endurance:
Shame
Psychological Trauma of Physical Injury
Broken Hand
Split Lip
Black Eye
Broken Ribs
Shock
Politics:
Requesting Aid
Wording Diplomatically
Fair Warning
Torin:
Persuasion:
Apologizing
Offers as Recompense
Medicine:
Looking for Signs of Concussion
Assessing Blood Loss
Reassuring the Injured
Washing Open Wounds
Recognizing a Broken Hand
Recognizing Bruised Ribs
Assessing Split Skin
Keeping a Patient Hydrated
Bodybuilding:
Carrying Another Person
Running:
Running Up Stairs
Arvalyn:
TDA
Points:
10 each,
Finn and Arvalyn may use for Mesmer
Injuries/Ailments:
Finn is severely injured physically, Torin receives psychological trauma from a Mesmer attack.
Loot:
None
Notes: Let's see how the two hurt boys recover, if they recover.