Just a Scratch [TW: Blood]

[ixis]

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."

Comments

[u_can_have_it_4_a_song]

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.

[ixis]

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.)

[u_can_have_it_4_a_song]

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."

[ixis]

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

[u_can_have_it_4_a_song]

"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?"

[ixis]

"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."

[u_can_have_it_4_a_song]

"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.

[ixis]

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.

[u_can_have_it_4_a_song]

"Oh, indeed. As agreed, one favor."