Flashback butcher the lamb.

[Caelum]

PermissionsSundry granted by Ravok's own Lazybones. *Sequel to and all our orisons and stir with mighty song. Beloved, There are over many branches in time's river. I imagine Tanroa's mighty waters surge at the corners and crossroads and there are no bridges and no boats, no reeds with grasping roots clutching at the bogs. You made me a creature of this river, thieved me straight from fate with a word to Yshul only later to cast me down. I rise up from the forgotten depths, mouth gulping at brine like that which scoured me off the seas of Black Rock when I fell. But my eyes, my eyes are alien now to You who would be ever vigilant, guarding the back of your true love due to a blow delivered after I left what I thought to be my last step on earth. My eyes have been made blind in these post apocalyptic giant's currents, puddled with pitch. There is not a single man or woman who stood with me in that once upon a time, nor one who has stood with me thereafter in acts of inevitable violence, who has been capable of putting that violence away. There are men who have laid aside their swords and taken up a pen, or a scalpel, or a bottle, and they tell themselves that what is past is past; but, Syna, history breathes. The world was near ended to the best of our knowledge. Humanity hangs by its toe nails within the torture chambers of mankind. Slavery is rampant. Yet this entire universe and all who dwell here know one thing and one thing alone: violence. We were born in violence, bred in violence, and millions of us have died in it from the front line soldier who tallies his kills to the teacher who counts heads. It was violence that brought the current leaders of this outpost together, and violence that cemented both their loyalties and their still inevitable betrayals. I am a man of violence. Violence was what spat me out of the sky. Violence was what decided that my heart ought continue to beat. Violence is what I was thrown in, and violence does not so much as litter the path of my life as it has blazed its trail. I have taken up the chalice, laid down my arms in bids for peace, and pulled up chairs to tables of men whom once I would have but spat upon. I am educated. I am driven. I am one of the faithful. I have wheeled and dealed with some of the most vicious and clever sharks of the recovering era and I have dug my hands into the flesh of the dying to stand down Dira on Her own doorway. I know things beyond violence, but its shadow is long, and it is winding, and it does not disappear beneath the beat of Your sun. I know, very well, that I will die in that shadow. I have before, and I will again, and should I rise but one more time, I know that the rising too will come in that same shade. Will it be around the river's bend? Or have we more depths to swim? - - - I'm going to be released from behind these lines and I don't care whether I live or die I'm losing blood, I'm gonna leave my bones and I don't want your heart it leaves me cold I don't want no future I don't want no past one bright moment is all I ask gonna leave my body (moving up to higher ground) gonna lose my, lose my mind (history keeps pulling me down) pulling me pulling pulling me down - florence + the machine - Timestamp: 3 Summer 509 AV "Get it out of her," Caius Delucia demanded. The mattress creaked beneath the thrash of the woman ebon skinned Gibran had just laid upon it. The scars on his arms shone in the dull slats of daylight daring through the window. Gibran skidded backwards, too large a man to show such fear before the elegance of Delucia; all the same, the slave cowered, pressing himself as he had time and again into the farthest of corners. A door slammed down the hall, water light playing off the array of glass vials lining the shelves of the room. Caelum flinched, a hand rising to rub down the side of his nose, shoulders hunching against the idea of it all while he squinted at the bed and the woman, presumably now his patient, sweating upon it. "I don't --" The ethaefal began, but his words were cut off by a cry. Delucia flung out his arms, the tails of his long coat flaring, still stained with water and blood. He turned from the bed to his long prisoner, spit shined boots clunking against the floorboards. "I don't," he hissed back, soft mockery metallic as he leaned in. "I don't. It's all you say. You do know, and you do it now." Caelum rolled around the captain, head ducked in a fall of ember littered hair and eyes at the corners of things until they came to rest on the familiar woman clutching now at the bed sheets with desperation. "Get it out, get it out, get it out," Bridget Angelou gasped. The swell of her pregnant belly, bared by a shift torn clearly by a knife's edge, rippled with visible contraction.

[Caelum]

"We live on a lake!" The captain exploded from behind Caelum, standing in a square of daylight with arms out flung. The questions to match his answers kept slipping from his grasp. "Time is stagnant. Tanroa shits in Rhysol's shadow, you selfish fuck. Get it out of her." Caelum shook his head, clearing it of the expected shock Caius' rage cast over him. "Boil water," he ordered Caius or Gibran, whomsoever might follow. "And fetch the kit from the still room, both the leather and the ashwood. Bridget," and here he dropped, touching a knee to the floorboards in unasked genuflection. It was so he could lean over the low bed, shoving up his sleeves and moving apart the torn edges of her shift to bare her pregnant belly. Pallid, thin stretched flesh rippled as he watched and Bridget groaned, fluttering hands cupping the lower curve of her belly at such dramatic angles it was impossible to tell if she were trying to cradle her child or claw it out. "Bridget," Caelum repeated, voice controlled, tempered by calm as he spread calloused palms across her flesh and eased them in a widening gyre. He was feeling for the shape of the child within her, attempting to locate those most identifiable marks of feet and head. "Breathe. In," and he sucked in his breath, holding it in demonstration while one hand found the orb of skull through quivering tissue. "Out," he exhaled. "Here," Caius said, dropping the requested kits with a careful clatter to the floor beside where Caelum knelt. His face was strained, dark eyes moving between his lover and his prisoner -- his physician? It was days such as this one they all forgot the difference. "Open it," Caelum directed his jailer, each words clipped. They might yet fly, there was enough desperation being bred in Caius' eyes. The ethaefal slid both hands down Bridget's tense thighs, curving long fingers against knee joints and mentally reciting in a sort of sing song the names of all those bones. "And can you hold her hand or something? Hell, mate," he swore and parted Bridget's legs and hunkered down. The hem of her shift was caught and flipped up while his patient kept muttering, over and over, get it out. "Shh," he murmured wordlessly while holding her knees back. It was an hour in which kindness was answered with speed.

[Caelum]

The bowl of water arrived and Caelum reached down to dip one hand into it, breaking his mind into several pieces so that he could focus on the divine spark he wished to have housed within him by Rak'keli. There was no gnosis mark to flare, however, nothing holy to curl around the back of his hand and over the strong bones of his wrist, setting the water in the bowl to shimmering with golden opalescence. Nothing shone and all of him was dull, forcing him to collect up the carbolic and use it instead. He did so without so much as a pause of acknowledgement to what he had lost. Caius didn't know the half of it yet -- his long sought prisoner and culmination of every increasing ambition was long lost. And it was all his fault. Caelum took the towel Gibran silently held out to him to dry off his hand and then pulled a jar of lubricating ointment out of his kit. It was used to coat his hand. “Relax, Bridget,” the ethaefal muttered, his clean hand gripping the back of her knee tighter. “If you can.” “Get it out, get it out,” the girl continued to gasp. One narrow hand flailed upward and was caught by Caius who, at last, sank to a seat at Bridget’s bedside. “Why did you wait so long?” Caelum muttered at the captain, mouth twisted with grim annoyance. He received no answer, but in a way was grateful for that as instead Caius was murmuring things down to Bridget, black rain hair half veiling his face. He with utmost care slid his fingers and slowly the rest of his hand into Bridget’s vaginal opening. He monitored the duration of her prior contractions and waited for the rippling to slow and then cease before seeking to discover how readied the mother’s cervix was. If Bridget’s cervical opening was too small compared to the timing of her contractions, then Caelum knew this birth was going to be a great deal more risky than he already feared. After all, when spanning his hands over the breadth of Bridget’s swollen belly earlier, he had learned that the baby’s head was in the wrong position. At the moment, he was trying to find out not only how far dilated she was, but also more information on the exact position of the child. If the child was facing butt down, its legs straight in front of it with feet near its head then it would be a frank breech. Frank breeches were typically easier to manipulate and deliver than their counterparts where the child’s knees were tucked up so that its feet were by its butt or, worse yet, when one of the child’s legs was up and the other was facing down. Caelum let his eyes half close while his fingers felt around the ridge of muscle and located Bridget’s cervical opening. Before him, she tensed and muttered, but fortunately Caius seemed to be doing his job with keeping her distracted and relatively calm. Relief trickled through Caelum – she was well dilated. That meant he might not have to perform the incredibly risky cesarean, the surgical removal of the child. Such procedures could potentially save the child, but they often forfeited the mother’s life.

[Caelum]

With swift but careful efficiency, Caelum withdrew his hand from Bridget and rocked back on his heels. The soap and water Gibran had placed on the small, short table beside him was put to use as Caelum’s eyebrows drew together with contemplation. Once his hands were dry, he unraveled to his full height and lifted two of the pillows scattered over the side of the bed. “Captain,” he muttered, catching Delucia’s black regard. Bridget lie still, breathing shallow but steadily. She had Caius’ hand in a death grip, knucklewhites bleeding out from beneath delicate fingers. Caius nodded to him and shifted, smoothing a hand that to Caelum seemed absurdly gentle over Bridget’s brow before laying the cool cloth prepared by Gibran there. Caelum took this opportunity to gently boost up Bridget’s hips and stack the pillows beneath her back and shoulders, propping her up so that gravity could do some of the work. She did not open her eyes to look at him, but then in all of their cold, cruel acquaintance Caelum expected nothing less. “Bridget,” he said. There was an element of compassion in his voice, words gentled as he attempted to gain his patient’s attention. “Get it the hell out of me, Caelum,” Bridget hissed without bothering to open her eyes. Caelum exhaled through his nose. Days and days, weeks and weeks, long ago with she had first come to him, worried she was pregnant with Delucia’s child, he had told her of the ways to be rid of it before it could threaten her ambitions. It had grated at his healer’s soul, holding all life sacred, but his soul had become a twisted and scarred thing in this dark place. Since the hour Delucia had peered down at his bleeding body on the deck of the Hanged Fate, he had been doomed. No, earlier than that, when the fire and the ashes blazed in his throat, tearing up his lungs while Lillis screamed and screamed against the curve of the sky and Captain Bruin and his left hand Bodei stole him what home he had left this side of the Ukalas and salted the earth behind them. Nothing had much been alleviated since. Cora had helped for a while, the cat who had bonded to him in the murky water light of Ravok; but she too was dead. Dead and gone and at least partially due to Bridget godsbedamned Angelou lying before him now. “I’m afraid it’s not so easy as all that, my dear,” Caelum heard himself drawl, the shadow of compassion fleeing from his voice as it grew brittle and hard in his mouth. “The child’s a frank breech. It means its facing the wrong way and you’re not going to be able to deliver without help.” “Can’t you cut it out, Caelum?” Delucia sighed. Caelum blinked at him, long and slow. “I could.” Delucia raised his eyebrows, that unearthly face guarded. “Bridget isn’t terribly likely to survive it,” Caelum added. “Get it out!” She shrieked, back bowing beneath the pain of a new contraction.

[Caelum]

"What are you waiting for, sunlord?" Alander Jin inquired from the doorway. Caelum briefly closed his eyes. It was only for a moment, a chime in a day full of their ringing, but it was enough. That was the most telling detail of the debacle that was about to splash innocent blood over his hands, onto the floor, against the hems of white bed sheets. Alander was the man who had pried Caelum's soul out of its shell during a sun down almost a year gone. He was also the man who had given a piece of it back to Caelum with the hope of an eventual escape, just enough hope in fact to make the ethaefal quite murderous. He rubbed his tongue against the backs of his teeth, still tasting the ambrosia of the celestial language and the solitary syllable that had poured into his mouth and been unable to be uttered. Even his hands trembled, remembering the writing of it, the slow scrape of quill to page and finally the entire journal thrown into the flames for Bridget Angelou to bemoan. It had happened in the next room, and Cora's ghost was still there. He heard her sometimes, creeping after him, sticking to the busted yawn of his shadow. Her yowl blended with the scent of smoke in the theatre of his mind. It was a tragic comedy he imagined Ifran of the Northwinds might appreciate and he made a mental note to tell him the story should their paths cross again. The scalpel was turned in his fingers, an expert's grasp balancing it with strength at his fingertips as he set a knee to the mattress. It dipped slightly, just enough for Bridget to turn frantic eyes towards him and relinquish her death hold on Delucia's hand. "Out?" She whispered. It sounded like a prayer. Maybe that's what ethaefal had fallen back to the earth to answer. Some seemed to think, at least, but then mortals had a strange habit of trying to apply order to chaos. "Out?" He challenged. Do you want to be put out? "Get it.. Get it out. Caelum, get it --" She gulped, fury narrowing hazel eyes. "Caius make him get it out!" "Bridget --" Delucia began. "Sir," Gibran's deep voice attempted to interject. "This isn't really the time to play games, Caelum," Alander's words held a quickening note of wariness. Eyes fixated on Bridget's face, the force of will built up behind them too magnetic for the woman to look away from; and slowly, emptily, understanding slid into the line of her ultimate smile. "That won't work on me." He looked back at her, the voices of the others humming down, Delucia's jagging back up again. "Caelum, do it already." "Very well." His smile was full of teeth. It took an inch exactly of Caelum's scalpel across the bottom of Bridget's belly for her to begin screaming. The screaming lasted for six and a half more inches worth of incision while the sun grew heavy and the sky darkened beyond the window.

[Caelum]

It was as he had imagined, blood begetting blood over steady hands, white sheets, cold light. The incision was gorgeous, as perfect as any surgery Caelum had performed. He imagined his lost mentor from Captain Rezar’s recruits would have approved, even been impressed. His blade had gone through skin and tissue and slipped right under the stretch of abdominal muscles, the curve of his fingers lifting them out of the way even as he gave a calm order for light, more light, through the whimper of Bridget’s anguish. The work he made was fast, well aware of how precious these moments were in Tanroa’s eyes, and among them he gave especial heed to the pulsing tangle of intestines. He considered. Later he would claim otherwise, but for the bare space between heartbeats, he imagined a soft slip of a finger and a nick to the bowels that would take days and days to spread and infect, make septic and kill. It would be an excruciating end and woudn’t Tyveth call it fair? Wouldn’t he just. Only Caelum’s scalpel did not stray, but rather split through the thickened walls of Bridget’s uterus so fast that the child all but slid into his waiting hand. There was a glance spared the pitiful thing, noting the twist of umbilical cord about starfish fingers and a neck never given a chance not to be strung, and then he passed the infant to its father’s waiting hands and reached for the curved bone needle and lines of catgut prepared in the ashwood case. “Cut the cord from his throat,” he answered the ricochet of questions, dismay, and accusations that flooded over and around where he knelt on the bed. They were moving and uncertain, afraid and enraged. Caelum understood what they were. He had felt it himself, the desire to at once strangle and plead, beg for answers to questions that were hard enough to form. “Clear the mucus from his mouth.” Afterbirth was scooped out by hand, plopping into the bucket provided. Strange, but these three pressed into Caelum’s service had been so before. His jailers and his assistants. Roles rotated and reversed in the slow trudge of years. Common cause could be a bitch of a thing. He didn’t look to see if it was the cursed one or the slave, the exile or the spy who followed through, entirely too occupied as he was with sewing Bridget’s flesh back together again. The first layer of stitches was fast, sealing off blood vessels with delicate crosshatch work before he began pulling at the skin. Blood loss and infection, he knew, were bound to kill her. And he was bound to save her, wasn’t he? “Caelum, he’s not breathing,” Cauis said. “Clear his mouth, blow in to it.” The sharp scrape of his tone said the obvious: he was busy. “Caelum –“ “You picked, captain.”

[Caelum]

"Caelum." His name was snapped off of Delucia's tongue, shoved out through teeth, and Caelum's shoulders tensed in expectation of the blow. The captain closed a hand over his arm, fingers curving like Caelum's bone needle in the blaze of lantern light increasing in direct proportion to the slow death of day. In another beat of the heart, Caelum knew he would be pulled back to stare into the shadows cluttering Delucia's eyes. He had been here before, many times, these souls standing by while water ran past the windows, interminable and deep. Caelum dropped a hand to the ashwood kit Gibran had snapped open on the edge of the bed. From it, he lifted the sickle moon glitter of a scalpel by feel. Bridget's blood on it was not yet dry and Alander shifted out of his slouch by the door to creep closer, turning from a darker blot of shadow to take the shape of memory in the light. The physician saw him around Delucia's arm where the infant, delivered too early to survive, already more than half strangled by the sins of its mother in the womb, was shivering out what little life it had been given. "You have to fix them both, damnit," Delucia said and shoved at Caelum's arm. "How do I save him too, Caelum." From the corners of his eyes, Caelum saw Alander move, darting with the quickening of revelation; but he was too late. The scalpel was flipped deftly in Caelum's hand and plunged with exquisite precision through the infant's paper thin skin, under the abbreviation of a ribcage, and straight into a heart. "Get it out," Caelum said, and he turned back to the unconscious Bridget to finish saving her life. * * * I am a man of violence, Syna. Perhaps our hope has always been that we can survive ourselves in stagnancy. I remain, nameless.

[Abstract]

Grade Awarded!

Caelum

Skills

~ Leadership - 2
~ Observation - 1
~ Medicine - 2
~ Intimidation - 1

Lores

~ Medicine: Predicting Challenges of a Birth
~ Birth: Choosing Between Mother and Baby
~ Medicine: Ceasarion Procedure

Other

N/A

Notes

That... that... ending. Wow. Just... I did not expect Caelum to do that o.O

I couldn't really find all of your requested skills in the thread, so you know