Legend of Ransera

"...so, of course, I went first to the mind healers because he admitted to being a danger to others..."

"Oh, Diera," Kala said softly, reassuringly, "of course you did the right thing. I'm hardly the greatest healer but if he wants my opinion, I will, of course, give it."

The nurse seemed mollified, and handed Kala off to the Avialae physician to bring her up to date.

"This is what you get for visiting," he said apologetically. "We always have more work."

"I am happy to help, of course," she replied. Self-deprecation wasn't repeated here. He knew her skills in the hospital better than most; if he thought she could add something, then it was quite probable she could. Based on what he had told her, she wove new layers over the room's wards. She was less worried about the patient hearing her than she was about his admitted violence being turned upon any of the healers here present.

While Kala had never met a so-called Vitalitasi, but she was well-educated and had seen more of the world than most. The so-called lost magics were not so very lost. A dreamer sat upon the Hytori throne. There was a time-cursed elf currently in Kalzasi—unless he had blinked out of the flow of time once more. And here...

She wove protections around the room now that she could semble the blood rune, as well as what she knew to be utile against hexes and vengeful spirits. Of course, they wanted to help the patient, but they also had to protect the populace from a pandemic of violent sanguiphilia or one feral creature.

Then, she fell into a light trance, sembling the patient long and hard. The physician went about his rounds, and when she sensed him approaching once more, she gave him her diagnosis. He looked crestfallen, and she put a hand upon his arm.

"Go. I will interview him. We need more information."

"Are you certain, Kala? You are a lady and a vice-minister-"

"And you are a master healer. This seems more an arcane affliction than a medical problem, but I will share whatever information I glean and let you decide a course of treatment."

He still looked dubious. It was not, unfortunately, a new experience for her. Her wings were hidden under a glamoured cloak, and Sahfri had done a fair job keeping the revelation of her wings from becoming public knowledge. Only Marda Ahtivan knew she trod the path toward divinity among the High Lords and Ladies of Kalzasi. But most Avialae men had a savior complex; it was rather built into their blood.

She supposed Avialae women did as well.

He nodded. She went inside, personally warded to the teeth.

"Hello," she said with a calm smile. "My name is Kala. I am sorry we kept you waiting so long."

When he rose and bowed, she replied with a bow of her own. His own words gave away what she could already sense, but it was nice to know she wouldn't have to dance around pretense. It was difficult to hide things from a master sembler, and often it was irritating to have to pretend not to know things.

While she gave no implication of threat, some people did find her unnerving. She was often too still, too quiet, and certainly, she hadn't looked away from him, and hardly blinked, since walking into the room and sealing the only point of egress behind her.

"Well, I failed to bring Talon Novalys back when I journeyed to Gel'Grandal, but I don't believe I was punished for that failure. I do not think the Great God would deign to curse someone for so small a failing. Then again, for many patients who come to the Tranquil Gardens, there are certain comorbidities. I cannot claim to know the Dragon King's mind."

She made no move to sit, but stood where she had stopped upon entering, hands clasped. She watched. She studied. She sembled.

Whatever she thought about how monsters were made, she said merely, "Do you seek the removal of the Rune, the kindred spirit, or both?"

The common wisdom was that a Rune could not be removed as it was writ directly upon the soul with the soul's consent, but she had already seen many exceptions to rules in her short life, and she had heard tell of runic initiations with consent that was dubious at best. There was his Rune of Vitalis, and the aetheric changes to him that might once have been bloodborne, but were now systemic. Then there was the spirit that clung to him, like drawn to like, and while it wasn't a ghost, she might be able to reason with it or...

Something.

Perhaps that was all he wanted: to have the spirit removed so he would be able to live without conscience once more.

So no, she thought to herself as his face reacted more viscerally than his voice, he would not give up the power that relied upon the vitae of other beings to rid himself of the spirit of betrayal. Serene as an idol, she observed him and she listened. She also listened to the interesting tale the spirit had to tell.

"The spirit tells a different story," she informed him, "a story of murder in the jungles of Ecith, a story of a Vitalasi allowing a spirit of betrayal to attach itself to him because of his own choices and actions. From its perspective, this is you paying your debts."

Kala didn't believe she had chosen this day to visit her old colleagues and friends at the Tranquil Gardens by chance, though she did not yet understand the exigencies and variables of Fate either, ongoing apotheosis notwithstanding. She had been asked to sit in on an international criminal trial for a Dawnmartyr, and now the more knowledgeable medical minds of the hospital were asking her to adjudicate this—whatever this was.

Such spirits as these were not truly her bailiwick; she had training in necromancy, but Asallon was the person she went to regarding celestial, infernal, eldritch, and wild spirits. He was not here at present. He could be called, of course, but this was a knot akin to the one the legendary Hytori king untied with his sword.

"Have you fed within the bounds of Kalzasi?" she asked carefully.

This was a legal, moral, and magical conundrum more than a medical one, but now she had to suss out the proper course of action. Only with more information could she do so.

A pale, barely visible eyebrow arched slightly. He challenged her, but his words didn't match what she sembled and therein was another conundrum. Her gaze shifted slightly, not looking past him, but almost through him, at the tyran of betrayal who certainly gave a biased account, but she sensed that so did the Zaichaeri. The longer she was near him, the more she sembled of him.

She sighed.

"Well, Master Monteliyet, I am no summoner. The spirits I work with are those of the dead, and while the pall of death clings to you, this is not my bailiwick." She considered asking Asallon for his input; the summoner did know a great deal more about spirits than she did. Stellar spirits had begun to seek her out sometimes, and some of them might even be considered infernal, though she wouldn't call them evil.

The spirit of betrayal didn't seem evil, either, or chaotic. Whether it could be trusted, she didn't know. Whether he should be trusted, she didn't know. Despite long-standing tensions between Kalzasi and Zaichaer, she had managed to build some bridges with Zaichaer's civilian leader. She had not managed to do so with the head of their Order, however.

Kala wondered whether she could just out and out contend with an infernal spirit and push it out of a host. While apotheosis came with no instructions, she had managed the odd miracle or two; of course, she didn't know whether those were repeatable.

Hmm, and Torin's friend Sivan is both a summoner and a member of the Kindred, she reminded herself. Perhaps he or the coven to which he belonged might help, though they seemed more fluent with the wild court than the infernal. Her eyes continued to study, her arcane senses to probe.

Whether he deserved help or not, he was certainly a challenge. She pushed deeper.

"I see. So that's your final answer, then. So be it," he said, baring his fangs at the young mortal before sinking them in. He drained the poor lad of the majority of his blood, Dimitri's fists and feet flailing in useless defiance as he was fed upon. Dreyfus was searching for the reason for this betrayal, but as he walked through the memories of the human he only found that Dimitri loved him; well, was in love with him. This made this all the more confusing, and his threats and accusations hurt him all the more.

Once he had his fill of the human, Dreyfus held him close.

"Allow me to release you, then." And with a sickening snap, he twisted Dimitri's neck. Laying the human on the ground he began to cry tears filled with regret, sorrow, but, most of all, anger.

"Dimitri..." she whispered. She didn't know if she could summon his soul, whether it had gone to the Grimlord's embrace or the afterlife of one devoted to another God. Perhaps his own lifeblood, devoured and transmuted by this creature, would be enough.

Perhaps she wasn't even calling him intentionally, but she had sunk deep into memory.

The vampire seemed to change his tune on a dime when she spoke the name of the deceased, and she paused to let the secondhand memory. He was a volatile one.

Whatever else she might have said, counsel given, or treatment offered, he made his choice and circled around her. Like any woman in a small room with a dangerous man, she didn't take her eyes off of him, turning so that she was facing him as he made for the door.

"As you wish, Mr. Monteliyet."

She followed at a bit of a distance, and then watched him depart. She held up a hand so the nurse wouldn't stop him for billing. Best to just let him go. She didn't know if he would catch wind of the blood reserves or similar and go into some sort of a frenzy. She followed with her mind's eye, sembling until he had quit the building without incident, and then filled the doctor in on her assessment so he could make his notes and follow whatever best practices the Tranquil Gardens and the powers that be in the city required.

Kala sighed, then prepared to leave. She wondered whether he would be successful in divorcing his soul from its kindred spirit and, if he did, whether it would have bonded so closely to him that the removal damaged one or both of them. Perhaps he would learn to embrace the lesson of his choices, embrace the spirit that had found its match in him, and find Unity.