datadiving | into the woods

In the end, he doesn't even need to pretend to feel sick. The very next day he starts feeling lightheaded a little before lunch, which leads to nausea and awful stomach cramps that left him flushed, sweating, and nearly delirious.

There's something familiar about the symptoms, he can't help but think whenever they start to ease a little, but there's not enough time to dwell on those thoughts. If it's part of the deal he made, then he needs to use these moments of lucidity well, and so he slips away and searches, eventually managing to find his mother's old necklace hidden away somewhere.

The chain is practically glued to his neck up until halfway through the second day, when he finally falls into a deep sleep.

He comes on the third day, as promised, masked and cloaked. A shadow among shadows, a dark figure.

What he doesn't expect to find is that his work is nearly done for him, but in a way that wouldn't spare Avery's life. The tattoo writhes on the prince's skin in a desperate warning; by the time Ekkehardt finds him asleep, it's climbed halfway up his arm in an attempt to stop an invisible, inexorable opponent.

He soothes the spell, and begins his work. His power for such things is strongest of all when the moon turns its face away from the forest and the earth. He can move the earth itself at need, if he needs to, when there's little light.

"You didn't fight it," he mutters, quiet, his expression creased in worry, as he works. "I should have said something."

He doesn't know if Avery is awake. He doesn't know, at this point, if he has the capability to be.

Avery doesn't stir, lost to fevered dreams. He thinks he hears his mother speak to him, saying something he can't quite hear. Sometimes it sounds like she's urging him to wake up, but he feels made of lead and its hard to breathe sometimes, and surely this is all part of the false death, right?

The deal was made. He has to hope. It's all he can do right now.

The spell needs time to work, to create a false self. He doesn't know if Avery will survive to see that self made. It's fortunate, then, that he's a healer as well as a witch, or things would go ill.

But he doesn't have medicine or a proper antidote on hand. Burning out the poison might cause irreversible damage, something he can't afford.

He kneels at the bedside, traces the spiral of the tattoo, and falls into a dark place he knows as well as he knows himself. He's found it many times, guiding people out of it, or those who've forgotten how to die peacefully into it, and so the way is easy.

The tattoo, the mark of their contract, helps him find Avery quickly. Though Ekkehardt is a shadow in the real world, here he's a translucent figure; scarlet light shining through him like water.

He grabs hold of the other man's soul, tying them together through the bond, preventing him from descending any further. "Come back," he says, his voice urgent.

There's something around him. It tugs at his being, anchoring him, and he wonders if this is part of the spell too. And then he turns and sees something strange and translucent and as familiar as a word at the tip of his tongue.

"Come back?" he echoes, and he swears he hears his mother urging him to follow this man.

He trusts her, and so he does as he's told, taking step after step toward the man who bids him to follow.

He listens. That in itself is a relief; not everyone does. (He thinks he can hear another voice, briefly, but he discards it; it's not for him to listen to.) He forges upward, making sure he's still following, pulling him step by step out of the dark.

The poison is still there, working through the other man's system, and he can't afford to split his concentration to treat it while this second spell is active. It's fortuitous, in a way; whoever poisoned him will simply believe that it worked, and not think about it any further.

But he needs to get him out of danger, first. He tugs him back out of the darkness, into consciousness; it's too dangerous for him to sleep right now. Sleeping will send him back, closer to death.

"Wake up," he says, pulling him out of the darkness like hauling an anchor out of water.

It hurts it hurts it hurts.

His eyelids feel as though they have weights tied to them, his stomach twisting, head throbbing, every part of him screaming in pain. It's like being thrown into ice cold water, worse somehow, and he wonders if he would have been better off remaining in that peaceful realm of sleep.

He squints past the pain and at the man at his side, memories slowly filtering in. "You're... Ekkehardt?" Has it been three days already? It was only two before.

"Mm. It's just me."

He keeps focused. He has two things to take care of, now - the spell that will create a convincing simulacrum, and keeping the poison from killing his...patient? Apprentice? Contractee? It's hard to define what their relationship should be, now.

"Try not to move. Just concentrate on staying conscious. Do not fall asleep." Telling him he's been poisoned will just make him more stressed, and that will circulate poison around the body faster, so that can wait until later. Still, he sounds stressed, rather than unflappable.

Something's gone wrong. Ekkehardt doesn't need to say it, Avery can tell by his voice. It's nothing like the calm, self-assured tone he had heard from the man when he went into the forest.

This isn't a false death at all, is it? Which means...

He wants to sleep, but he can't. It's not time to rest yet. Not when he's so close to freedom.

"Should have known," he croaks out. "Nothings ever that easy."

"I wasn't expecting someone to try and kill you within three days. In hindsight, I should have prepared for it."

There's nothing he can do about it now; he pours some of his remaining magic into Avery's veins instead. It's an old trick he learned once, separating poison from blood, holding it away from the body even though that's not how circulation works, even though there shouldn't be room. He doesn't think too hard about it, or it won't work, but it should be just enough.

"I'll take you back and treat you properly, once the spell is complete. So stay awake a little longer. Talk about anything you like."

There's only one thing he can think of.

"Would you be willing to allow an apprentice to kill a few nobles? Hypothetically."

"I'm not responsible for what my apprentice does when he's out of my sight," Ekkehardt says, feeling the spell take shape and finalize itself, "as long as he's careful about it. Hypothetically."

If he ends up living through this, Avery thinks he's going to like working under this man. It helps that the pain is easing up, if only a little.

"I'll be sure to give this thought exercise the careful thought it deserves, then. Hope they don't mind an angry spirit finding his way to their bedside."

"Well, keep yourself warm with those thoughts of strictly hypothetical revenge, then. Can you sit up for me?"

If his patient doesn't have the strength, he'll have to pull him up, but either way, he'll manage. This is the last part of the spell; all the other work is already done. After this, he can easily take the man back to be properly treated.

He nods, even though he's not actually sure. He has to try, has to actually get it done, otherwise...

Well. He doesn't know. It seems right, however, something he needs to prove to himself, and so he tries, slipping first and then trying again, letting out a triumphant little laugh when he finally manages to sit up straight.

He'll feel something tear itself free as he sits up; something that feels like a severing, but not quite. Ekkehardt offers him a hand, bidding him to take it and stand.

If he looks behind him at the vacated bed, he'll see a shadow of himself, eyes closed, face pale. There's an unearthly quality to the copy that begins to fade the longer it's observed, but in all other respects, it might as well be him.

"You have no other unfinished business, I hope," Ekkehardt merely says. "We'll be leaving shortly."

He does, honestly. There were quite a few things that he wanted to do before he left, all abandoned the sicker he became. Truthfully, he'd wanted more than his mother's necklace, but now, with the storm in his head and time so short, it just couldn't be helped.

It really was a clean break.

He looks behind him, stares down at his not-corpse, and scowls. All this time playing nice, all this time trying to be at least something of a good little prince, and this was how they repaid him...

Screw every last one of them.

"I'm ready to go now."

He looks at him for a moment, and then leads him to the window.

"I'd like to take the scenic route, but given your condition, that will have to wait until another time." He shakes out his cloak, and it opens far larger than a normal cloak should have any capacity for, and swallows them both.

There's a disorienting moment of falling, and then he pulls Avery out of the cloak's darkness and into the cottage's sitting room once again. The cloak ruffles, tucking itself away.

"Sit, and don't exert yourself," he says, short and brisk. He practically runs into another room, and when he returns, he's holding a bottle full of what looks like a flame in liquid. It moves on its own, even while being held still.

He holds it out to Avery. "Drink as much of it as you can manage," he instructs. "It will hurt, but it will devour the poison in your body."

Edited 2020-05-05 21:14 (UTC)

He all but falls into one of the chairs, the room spinning, his head only half there. And as he stares down into the flickering flame before him, he grumbles about having to deal with even more pain.

Not that he won't do it. But he isn't going to like it.

He takes the bottle, squeezes his eyes shut, and downs it all as quickly as he can, holding himself back from hacking and choking until the very last of the bottle has seared its way down his throat.

He can feel it surging through his veins, and he fights and fights with teeth clenched to keep from making a sound. He can bear it. He can beat it. Even if the flames coil and dance behind his eyes, even if he can feel the ungodly heat on his skin, even though the corners of his vision blacken, beckoning him back to the abyss of sleep, he will fight it.

He won't show weakness.

He's better than this.

The flame scorches out all poison, all impurity. It senses something within him that resonates with itself, and it leaves part of itself behind in his blood as it finishes the task it was set, a fiery reminder of his struggle.

Ekkehardt holds his hand palm out for the flame to light on; it's turned blue, and is smaller now.

"I'm sorry, for that." He sounds genuinely remorseful. "I didn't think someone would try to kill you, so I didn't prepare any treatment."

He looks him over with a frown. "How do you feel now?" Better, he hopes.

"Ow," he replies simply, cracking open one glowing eye and then the other as he looks up at Ekkehardt, less than impressed.

"But as long as I'm not dying, I'll take it."

"You're well enough to be sharp with me, so that's a good sign." He puts the flame back into its jar, shaking it a little to settle it. He gives him another looking over before he wanders back into the room where he'd gotten the jar from originally.

He pauses on the threshold, as if he's remembered something he wanted to say.

"If you'd like to rest, you can use my bed for now. I've arranged the space where your room will be, but I thought I'd wait until you actually settled in to let you decide on the finer details."

He'd rather stay awake. Unfortunately, between the fire that burned through him and the toll the poison took on him, Avery's body has other ideas. "I think I might take you up on that," he finally concedes with some measure of annoyance.

"And uh..." he looks away, messing with the end of his nightshirt. "Thanks."

"You might want to hold off on your thanks until you understand what it's like to be my apprentice," he says, dryly. There's a pause, and then he glances at him. There's something almost sad about his expression, just for a moment. "And I can't deny the request of someone who wants to be free."

Avery shrugs as he gets to his feet. "You did it anyway. And you saved me from being poisoned to death, too. If that isn't work thanks, I don't know what is."

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