nexus_sages | Just a Scratch [TW: Blood]

Current Mood: fine
Current Music: "Black Eyes"-Radical Face

Entry tags:

Just a Scratch [TW: Blood]

We've all seen it before. Someone shows up to the Nexus, fresh from some assault or battle, all beaten and bruised. It's just one of those things that happens in this place.

But it's usually newcomers, not well-established residents.

Ixis Naugus has hobbled his way to the Forum, leaning heavily on his staff and looking like hell. His face is covered in blood, in equal parts from his nose and a long diagonal cut slashed across his face. He's been bleeding from it long enough that it's streaked down his beard and stained a good portion of it red. The wizard is also sporting a gouge in his left side; a grievous puncture wound from the looks of it. That's got the whole of that side darkened with blood as well.

Naugus finds himself a chair and drops himself heavily into it, panting for breath. Adjusting both hand and claw on his staff, he looks about before managing a weary, possibly sarcastic, smile.

"How are you today? I'm fine."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It takes him awhile to notice Schön, a bit caught up in just closing his eyes and waiting for a wave of pain to pass. Eventually, it's the bit of silver on the man's cane that catches his eye, turning his head to regard the man properly.

He cracks a wide grin, his teeth stained pink from the blood that's been running down his face from nose and cut alike.

"You should see the other one."

"I should like to," he replies brightly. "Where can I find them? And I don't suppose I could interest you in anything for those injuries?"

"Me? No, I-..." He looks himself over, all covered and stained with blood, then back to Schön. "I'm fine." He said that at the start, didn't he? Perfectly all right! It was a good day overall. He's too good to die of bloodloss. That's a death for chumps.

"Look for that Overlander waif with the silver in her hair. Amal-?...Amelia. Right. That was it. She doesn't take well to opinions on her silly little homeworld, but it's a moot point either way now. All's well."

Schön accepts Naugus' refusal without fuss, although he does cast his eye over the mage and his surroundings. Any blood Naugus is leaving behind on furniture or the ground is fair game, after all, and he seems not to be paying much attention to it at the moment. The thin man takes care not to let his own interest be apparent.

"Ah? And what did you do to her? In your... 'triumph?'" Yes, those air-quotes are probably audible.

Leave it to Schön to think of an idea like that. Though it's not a bad one. And it's not one that Naugus would think of until well after the fact. And certainly not worried about it at this exact moment. Fair game indeed.

Besides, he's got a good story to tell! "Hah! She made a great, martyr-like deal about how she was going to have to seal off her world to save the simple-minded masses that live there. An entire zone of yokels afraid magic; so afraid that she knew with dead certainty that if they witnessed it, they would immediately resort to riots and murder. Can you even imagine?!" He at least thinks his rival can agree with him on this point. These people sound like the worst to mages like them.

"Of course, I shared this and she didn't take kindly to it. Made a great fuss, attacked me! Me! Even after I warned her what a horrible idea that was. Hahhh, so...I just was the bigger man and did exactly what she wanted!" He wheezes a laugh, like about to share the best punchline with Schön. "I sealed her portal! I opened it and smashed it closed for good! Completely shattered the wall between here and there! Just like she wanted!" He dissolves into raspy giggles.

A slim blond eyebrow ticks upward. "Shattered the barrier, you say?" That bears investigating--is Naugus honestly that sloppy with his spell-work, or did he misspeak and mean to say he broke any connection? When he isn't probing the mage himself, Schön will have to find out.

"And what of the girl? Might one assume she, too, lies bleeding somewhere? Perhaps without your robust constitution to support her?"

"It and any chance of her opening another. Hhhhehehehe! I made sure of it. It is closed off by way of me just caving the whole thing in, destroying any portal magic between here and there. No door will open from here and there ever again. This is after she doubted and rebuffed me more than once to open it for her too. No payment, no agreement. I offered to do it with no strings attached! And she couldn't stoop to work with someone like me. I'm hoping she's properly learned the error of her ways now. I hope she realizes what it means to tangle with an Ixis."

As far as the girl, he waves his claw, then winces because of the gouge in his side. "Probably laying there still, crying her idiot eyes out. You'd think I'd killed her world with the way she carried on."

"Mm. Was she as... literally wounded as yourself? Or did you cut solely to the ephemeral heart?"

"Who cares? Not me." He honestly can't remember at this point. All he knows is h won and he's bleeding. That's the two major details that matter here, Schön.

He blinks slowly, once, looking almost like he's fighting off a wave of nausea.

"...How do you know if an organ got injured?" Just asking.

"It depends upon the organ. Perhaps I could interest you in a remedy for your current ills? No magic of my own, if you distrust it so, but a healing draught that might make you less uncomfortable."

"Which ones are here?" He points at the left side of his ribs with a (of course) just as bloody claw. He has no idea. He's no doctor. Guts is guts. Just keep them on the inside and you're fine.

"Do you even know healing magic?"

"I know all sorts of magic," Schön replies airily. "It's difficult to judge, but speaking broadly, there might be a lung, a kidney, possibly some sort of spleen, and a great deal of assorted bowel in the vicinity of your wound. A ruptured bowel is a particularly nasty way to die, I understand. Fever that kills slowly and exceptionally painfully, over the course of several hours or possibly days." Okay, he might be drawing that description out just a little bit.

"A spleen? That sounds like a made-up word. Are you making that up?" He has to be. Schön has plenty of reasons to try and get his goat! But that also sounds like the most undignified means of death too. Forget it being agonizing, it sounds humiliating. Here Lies Ixis Naugus: Done In By a Poked Bowel.

"...So what's the cost for ensuring I don't have jabbed bowels or lungs or all those others you mentioned." Even if you're risking bleeding out, you gotta keep business in mind.

"As entertaining as that sounds, I have not invented any new words today," he answers, with a smile that doesn't promise he didn't make it up some other time... but also doesn't promise that he did.

"One favor, details to be specified upon redemption, but not to exceed your ability to perform--which for you would not be a problem, I'm certain--at a time and place of my choosing."

"The last time I said that to someone, they thought I was going to call in a sexual favour. I have no idea why. It was Harrowheart. Have you met him? He said that wouldn't be possible because he only fancies muscular men, but." He holds out his arms as if to say 'LOOK! LOOK AT ME! I AM THE MOST JACKED!' Also the most bloody.

Is this even his roundabout way of asking if Schön plays that kind of biz or is that the bloodloss talking.

"I do not solicit or accept sexual favors as payment," Schön answers evenly. Naugus would seem more the most jacked if he were not also the most presently punctured.

"Good. Classy. You probably do fine on your own in that respect." He has to close his eyes again as another nauseous wave washes over him and leaves him feeling kind of cold.

"...All right. Fine. One favour. One. Just ensure I'm not going to drown in my own blood or I'm seeping bowel juice into my bones or whatever may be the case."

Schön gives a quick, tight nod. "Agreed." Reaching into his inside jacket pocket, he comes out with two vials and presents them to Naugus. The liquid in one is honey-yellow, the liquid in the other is grass-green. "Drink the yellow one to close any open wounds and start you on the path to recovery, then the green to quell any infections that may have sprung up," he advises the Ixian mage.

The yellow potion feels warm, tastes like the smell of baking bread, and fizzes faintly going down. The green potion tastes of mint and feels faintly cool, syrupy but not cloying in texture.

He takes both and downs them both readily, smacking his lips a few times after they're drained. He figures Schön is on the level when business is at hand. And besides, if he poisoned him, he wouldn't be able to call in a favour to the great and powerful Ixis Naugus! A horrid loss for anyone, surely.

He sits and frowns for a moment, wondering if the draughts are even doing anything. Or if he took this medicine for no reason and now he's going to be stuck with a favour when he never had a pierced spleen to begin with. (If he even has a spleen at all. It STILL sounds made up.)

But then he coughs. And coughs even harder still, lurching forward with the effort and force of each one, clutching his chest soon with his one good hand. And soon the fruit of that apparent labour is him drooling, you guessed it, even more blood. Naugus looks up at Schön with ears flat in suspicion. Is that evidence of poison or just ("just") a punctured lung having been part of his damage? (Spoiler: it's the second one.)

Naugus may wonder if Schön dealt true, but Schön himself knows for certain. As such, he remains unruffled through Naugus' coughing and suspicion. He meets that suspicious look with a thin smile. "There, you see? Mending already."

"Mending? I'm hocking up blood! Blood's supposed to stay on the inside. Everyone knows that!" He wipes at his lips in irritation.

"The wound from which it bled is now closed," Schön counters, unruffled. "So it is no longer needed in its role as a patch to that wound, and might as well be expelled before it hinders your breathing, hmm?"

"This is so-...Ugh. Just a horrible reminder we're all sacks of fluid." His gloves and sleeves are useless in getting his mouth cleaned off at least partially, so Naugus just yanks his cape around to use that instead. Whatever, all of this will have to be cleaned anyway.

"You're keeping remarkably reserved on the gloating, I must note."

"Why dilute the sting with other troubles?" he asks pleasantly. "You have placed yourself in debt to me, on my terms, not yours. That is something to be savored at my leisure, I think."

As much as Schön might like to needle Naugus about living things being bags of fluid and yet somehow beyond the reach of his water-mastery, he refrains, not wanting to give the other mage ideas. Let the dagger of that debt be twist enough for now.

He coughs again a few times, this time into his cape to save some time on the clean-up. Also, very good call on not giving Naugus ideas regarding fluids and his powers. That's a grim route of research that everyone should be glad hasn't occurred to him.

Naugus points a stern, gore-coated claw at Schön. "Don't think you own me or anything of the sort. Sore subject, that. You just have a task you get to call in and that's IT." The fact he feels the need to add this clarification is...weird. Or maybe it's just the bloodloss. Again. Still.

(no subject)

u_can_have_it_4_a_song - 2016-02-14 15:24 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only