[flashback] blood bets.

[Caelum]

29th Day of Winter, 507 AV

"Hold still. Shyke," Caelum swore. Blades of moonlight cut his face in half. The illuminated eye possessed an impossible delicate tattoo that swirled and spiked like sun rays. He twisted, a heavy coil of bitter bark hair swinging against his spine as he grappled with something in the dim. His other hand remained firmly pressed against the gambler's side, bubbles of blood boiling up to brew with the dark tattoos marking his knuckles. The sought for bandage was located and Caelum shifted back around, heaving the unlucky onto his side so that he could get to the wound.

"This is going to hurt," he muttered. The words were ruined by a strange accent, something terribly foreign that dragged his syllables and crumbled consonants into stardust. It had little to nothing to do with Cyphrus where the remains of his physical form stated he was from. Hot, stinging liquid soaked the muslin before it was swiftly and efficiently packed into the man's knife injury, successfully sanitizing and staunching the flow of blood. A temporary measure, but it would suffice.

Caelum had no intention of rescuing anyone while in Syliras, but the bloody stars had proven their stupidity again. He ought to have just walked by, huddling against the cold, carbolic wind; but something in his gut had wrenched in empathy to see someone so outnumbered, broken and falling. He ought carve his cursed heart out of chest. As it was, the thing was still beating, and so was the gambler's; and there was nowhere to go now but up.

"C'mon." He dragged the stranger's arm over rangy, worn shoulders and shoved them both to their feet, swaying for a moment as he gained a better grip on his patient. A glance up, eying the lay of the constellations against the watchtowers of Stormhold Castle, before broken heels boots scraped against the stones, curving them around in the wanted direction.

[Murdoch]

Murdoch had fully expected the man who'd bent over him while he bled to death in an alleyway to just roll his pockets and leave him be. Not that he had anything in his pockets. And not that he was, like, bleeding to death, but he was stabbed and it hurt and he'd had damn better days than this one. A blackened and swollen eye, a couple'a bruised ribs, and his lip was split enough that it'd probably leave a scar.

But the guy was actually helping, the idiot. Tourist, most like, and the gods bless the petching tourists. They brought gold in their pockets, and they were dumb enough to help a stranger in the street. Morons, the lot of them.

His breath hissed through his teeth when the foul brew was stuffed into his wound, a hitching Atch-cha-cha! But he clamped a hand over it as the stranger dragged his other arm over his shoulders and helped him up.

"Bunch of girls," he muttered, hissing again as he managed to get his feet under him and felt his leg buckle a little until he'd adjusted. They kicked him in his thigh? Low, man, really low. "You know, I'm fine with them beatin' me up a little - I mean, hey, you gotta be willing to get your ass kicked, or you got no business cheatin' at cards. But stabbing was just... too much. Seriously? Buncha whiny little idgets."

All of this was grumbled as he tried to put one foot in front of the other and get... wherever they were going. "Where're we going?"

[Caelum]

Caelum, in what he would consider his better moments viciously aloof, merely cast fractured eyes towards the heavens as his patient berated his attackers in absence. They made decent progress, his narrow frame containing wires of muscle and thus stronger than it appeared, working and winding through back alleys en route to Traveler's Row.

"My place," he muttered, chomping the words out of his mouth. He hated this language, so thin and paltry in comparison to that which glimmered distant and unreachable in his mind. "I've tools there. To stitch you up."

[Murdoch]

Murdoch grunted a laugh at that, maybe because he was just an affable kind of guy. And maybe because the thought of some stranger bringing a thief into his home was hilarious. Whatever kept his guts in his garters, as they said.

"Stitch me up?" he chuckled, and coughed a little as his lungs pressed against his bruised ribs. And then turned his head to spit out the blood that was coating his tongue. "Shyke, you some kind of healer? Imagine that, a healer comin' up on me in my hour of need. Always knew I was lucky," he drawled, a bloody grin stretching until a stab of pain reminded him that his lip was split.

[Caelum]

"This has nothing to do with luck," Caelum mumbled.

The arm about Murdoch's waist tightened, instinctively careful of his injuries, when he coughed up the blood. Caelum watched it splatter like rubies in the starlight. It was terribly bright for this dead hour of the night, pooling shadows where none had any right to be.

He kept walking, the dust of a thousand roads clinging to the worn leather of his split coat. Maybe in another couple days or even hours he would twist and vanish into the wind and be gone again. That depended on whether or not he found what he was looking for this time in Syliras.

He highly doubted he would. He never did.

"Yes, I'll stitch you up, make you sure don't get infected so that you can go forth and cheat some more. Neh?"

[Murdoch]

"Ha-ha! Good man," he laughed, stumbling a little as his hand tightened against the make-shift bandaging. "I'm Doc, by the way. More of a nickname really, but it works. And you, mysterious savior?" he chuckled, glancing over at him from the corner of his eyes.

Muddy hazel, those eyes, and heavy-lidded, giving him the look of a man who never took anything seriously, who lived for pleasure and the wonder of the moment. Mediocre in every way, from his height to the way he moved, though he was a bit stand-alone with all the cuts and bruises.

[Caelum]

A sharp slant of black eyes, ringed at the iris with vanishing gold, took in Doc for a long, weighty moment. "Caelum," he finally said, finding the name as distasteful now as he had when originally choosing it.

Caelum was the name of one of the smallest, dimmest constellations populating the broad bowl of the heavens. It was what he had flung bitterly from his mouth when the name that was truly his proved itself unutterable, a mocking, glowing bead of truth lingering in his consciousness, refusing to expand itself into further existence. It had then and still did cause him to feel as his very self had been hung, dangling on some celestial string, eternally out of reach.

A shoulder scraped the worn stone of his apartment's front on Traveler's Row, slumping both of them there while he fumbled for the key. Warm from his body heat, it felt good gripped in frozen fingers.

Good man, Doc had said. It was almost funny.

The door was shoved open to reveal a simple, single room that felt utterly unlived in. A pair of weathered saddle bags, a stretch of parchment and some ink on the table, and the bed neatly made. Doc was helped inside, Caelum's mouth twisting into a grimace as he helped the man to a chair.

[Murdoch]

He wondered if this guy ever actually managed a complete sentence. Whatever, he was fine yammering on.

"Ah, Traveler's Row," he muttered as he settled into the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him as he grunted and tried to find some comfortable position. "Welcome to our great city," he managed between clenched teeth. "You here for long or just passing through?" he asked, glancing around the room.

[Caelum]

"Do you not shut up?" Caelum finally asked.

An exasperated look was given his patient before he whirled about, struggling out of his jacket to drop it onto a hook drilled into the wall. He stalked to where his saddle bags slouched against the hearth wall and sank into a corbie's crouch. A deft kick was given the banked coals in an attempt to stir them into flame and chase some of the chill from the air. A tiny braid quivered loose from the intricate coil as he rummaged about for his supplies, finally rising with arms full.

The array of items was dumped onto the table beside Doc, little rolls of muslin and jars and vials of varying shapes and sizes. A flask, too, was unearthed from his vest and waggled invitingly.

"Drink some of this," he ordered gruffly and pulled up the other chair.

[Murdoch]

While he puttered around the apartment, Murdoch began to slowly drag his own shirt over his head. Which took the whole time, because he had to use one hand to hold the gauze to his side. When it was off, it revealed a rangy frame, an acrobat's body covered in scars - a dozen or so on each arm, knife fights over the course of a lifetime on the streets; and a long, thick scar beginning in the middle of his chest and arching up his shoulder and just short of his throat.

"You know, I don't think I've ever met a Drykas healer in this town before," he mumbled, taking the bottle from him in a blood-tinged hand. "This isn't gonna make me dizzy, is it? I hate being dizzy," he murmured as he took a swig from the bottle. "Oh, ye-ack, ugh," he coughed.