datadiving | into the woods

"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."

"That's fair, I suppose," he says, a slight, amused smile coming to his face. He has the air of someone who's not used to being thanked. "Go to sleep, then. You look like you need it."

Darkness stretches out in all directions, filling his lungs when he breathes, pressing in on him from all sides. One by one, little glass bottles roll in to settle beside him, piling up and forming walls to bury him.

He tries to move, to pull himself free, to get some air, but hands with bleached, greying skin stretched tight over their bones hold him in place, dragging, dragging, drowning...

Someone laughs. Another joins them. One by one they grow louder and louder until it becomes a veritable chorus of mockery.

"Stop..."

Avery tosses and turns fitfully in his sleep, hair stuck to his sweat slick face.

The funeral shroud is tossed. His body dumped. Forgotten.

"No!"

Ekkehardt tinkers with bottles and powders, watching the flame as it swirls in the jar, slowly burning orange again as it feeds off the poison it's collected. It's not a common poison, and it's a nasty one, but it's nothing he can't create a treatment for.

The shout is what brings him into the room. He's certain Avery is in no danger - not immediately, at least - but there's no knowing what kind of effects the poison might leave his patient with.

Rather than watch him toss and turn, he shakes him awake in an attempt to free him from whatever he's dreaming of - clearly not something pleasant.

Avery gasps for breath as he jolts awake, instinctively reaching out to shove Ekkehardt away from him. His wild eyes dart around the room, searching for any sign of the vials from the dream, waiting to cough up the darkness that filled his lungs.

But nothing comes up. And little by little he starts to come back to reality.

"Sorry," he says after a moment, heel of his palm pressed to his eye.

He steps back, not wanting to disturb him unduly.

"No need to apologise," he says, a little wry. "After the amount of poison you were dosed with, I'm not surprised there might be some residual effects. People have died from far less than what you ingested, you know."

He laughs bitterly. "I'm aware." He draws the word out, the syllables like venom and bile on his tongue. "It's not like I'm their first victim anyway. Truly they are the pinnacle of leadership."

He sits on, apparently, nothing, though if Avery is paying attention even in a dimly-lit room, his cloak swirls around him to create a kind of makeshift seat. He crosses his legs, propping his chin up on a hand.

"Then it's very personal for you." Even more so than just being poisoned himself, which anyone would hold a grudge against; this injury runs deeper than even that.

He debates saying anything, then ultimately decides there'd be no harm in it. "I don't suppose you heard about the queen's death?" he asks, propping up the pillow behind him and folding his arms to lay against it.

"It was a tragedy, but hardly an accident. The second I was old enough I took measures to ensure it wouldn't happen again."

Some job he did.

"I do remember a funeral," he says, after a moment. "My mother took me, when I was fairly young."

He frowns, slightly, but it can't hurt to tell him. "The land mourned for her as well." His voice is quiet. "She must have been an exceptional person."

(The land had become still; it had rained for days on end until the rivers swelled and threatened to burst their banks. He had cried, then, during those days of endless rain, though he wasn't entirely sure who or what he was crying for.

Those days had been a blur. There had been an overwhelming, suffocating sadness in the forest, then, that his mother had to fortify him against; she had often said he was a little too sensitive for such work, that she worried for him. But she had taught him regardless, as was his desire.)

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