Can You Fix This?

by **Azmere** on April 26th, 2016, 1:30 am

Azmere had been beaten, tortured, exhausted, dehydrated and blessed by a god. Yet he was still breathing. Hephiestian was gone and that pain was so large that the Drykas could barely feel his own wounds. Time was lost. He had no idea what day it was or what time of day for that matter. Bells, days, seasons; none of it mattered. The swollen face turned to the dim light masked by clouds in the east.

East.

Home.

What was Azmere without his strider? Would he still be accepted? Surely, but would the stares and questions mount further onto the shadow of his character?
Azmere had been friends with a scourge known as Wikus. The man had betrayed his people or the god of disease and corruption. He had betrayed his friend, too. Friend. Azmere scoffed a moment but then the hard lines of his face softened. As a young lad, the scarred boy had killed a man to defend Wikus. Wikus, in turn, had protected Azmere from the retaliation of an angry clan. The two young men got into more trouble than could be recorded in the woven scarves of their families. As a means to facilitate his escape, Wikus betrayed Azmere to a worthless pavilion who left him for dead. Ever the tough bastard, the Stormblood survived a strange set of days in the grass.

Once again, the Stormblood found himself wandering around the Sea of Grass with more than enough pain and anguish to pass around. He broke down his camp with the practiced ease of a seasoned traveler but chunks of flesh missing from his chest and several holes and gashes around his midsection. Over the next bell or so, he was able to wrap up the supplies he had managed to salvage and load them onto the broken mixed breed he had dubbed as Horse. The Drykas mounted the steed and pushed him towards the city’s trajectory. He had no idea how long it was going to take but he wasn’t going to give up. His new lord had made it very clear that faithfulness was not an easy road. Azmere’s head lolled a bit and he struggled to get a drink. It was going to be a long day.

by **Waisana** on May 28th, 2016, 11:50 am

When the Watch burst into the River Flower, they very nearly bumped into Waisana. The teen let out a small shriek of surprise, hand flying to her chest to rest over her wildly beating heart. Given that Waisana was the nearest medical professional at hand and had announced her presence so shrilly, their attention immediately settled on her and the leader of the trio of Watchmen began talking rapidly to her, his hands flying through various gestures.

"We have found one who needs help." Urgent. Terrible wounds. Man-made. "You will come? You can help? Now!" the man asked urgently, his haste so great that he seemed ready to grab her and drag her out through the tent flap. The news was shocking to the young woman who found herself stunned by the man's obvious agitation and the news that someone had inflicted wounds on the person he wished her to treat.

One moment. I come, she signed quickly and went running for her bag. She didn't know what she might need so she brought herbs to stanch bleeding, herbs to use to pack wounds and bandages, as well as a needle and gut thread. It was all stuffed messily inside before she hurried outside with them. The man who had talked with her had waited within the tent but his companions had vanished. He went outside with her and quickly threw himself onto his Strider's back. The blonde hurried over to Drusine, securing her bag to the yvas as she murmured quick, sweet words to the horse.

She launched herself upwards, gripping the yvas to help her vault upwards onto the horse's back. She lifted and rolled her leg over to the other side so she sat astride the mare. She applied pressure to one of her mount's flanks to get her to wheel around and follow the Watchman. They picked their way around pavilions, heading for the edge of the city so they could speed up. Her guide broke into a gallop and the teen followed suit, rushing out into the grasses. They travelled for some chimes at that speed before she spotted a gathering of people and horses ahead.

They slowed as they approached them, the blonde looked over the group in search of the injured party. She slid from her horse and detached her bag of supplies, standing ready to follow her guide.

by **Azmere** on September 15th, 2016, 2:27 am

A party of hunters had discovered Azmere riding parallel to the run. Headed the wrong way and oblivious to the game his clumsy riding had frightened away, the hunters had deemed the injured man a walahk then discussed whether or not they should kill him. A vote won by a very slim margin of one elected to capture and question the stranger. This was how they discovered that the bumbling idiot was actually a Drykas. The wound pattern as well as the dehydrated and weakened state of the scarred man sent two hunters riding like the wind back to Endrykas. Their goal was to alert the watch and return with some help; either from a healer or a doctor. The rest convinced Azmere that he was close to his home and he needed to keep riding.

The archer had no strength to fight. He turned the old busted horse to follow the hunters which he found were of the Emerald clan. The contrasting eyes tried to focus on faces but his pain was so great and his reserves were tapped. Azmere had nothing to draw from to replenish himself. Several times, a member of the hunters would try and engage him in conversation but it never took very long for the injured warrior to fade off or half-slip from his yvas. Had he been able to pay attention, he might have heard that the three vultures circling overhead already believe the Drykas to be a lost cause. Azmere wanted to sleep but the burning of his chest and the shooting pain from his stab wounds refused to allow such a thing.

The man’s leather breeches were soaked with blood. His torso was caked with it and his yvas smelled of blood, both man and beast turned sour in the warmth of Syna’s rays. Azmere’s face was a horrid sight. He had been doused in chicken blood, sprayed with the blood of his strider and beaten to a point that a third of his face was swollen and discolored. When one takes that into account with scar tissues that already covers half of his face and neck, it made for one miserable and terrifying countenance. Despite his turmoil and against the whispers that beckoned him to join the web, Azmere kept repeating a phrase in his mind. It was a simple mantra: ‘you have a purpose’.

Horse stepped down in a crevice that jarred the yvas to the left. The rider reacted as any with experience would. His thighs clamped down against the beast and he kept his weight above the horse and not over the ground by flexing his obliques and abdominal muscles. This tore open one of the festered scabs and a mix of blood, water and puss began to run once more. Azmere made several jerking motions with his hips to readjust and set the yvas; eyes clinched tight and teeth locked in a grimace of pain. When all was back to normal (as normal can be in such a dire situation), Azmere opened the gold eye and forced the swollen blue eye open just a smidge. He stared around and realized that his starbursts had come to life. The swirls of color and various chunks of paths flooded his mind, each one like a needle into his brain. He squeezed his eyes shut again and struggled to focus. He could feel the twinkle from the djed in his irises and prayed to his gods to make it stop. The simple pooling of his inborn magic sucked even more strength from him. As he felt his body sway and go weightless in a fall to the ground, Azmere called out “I will not fail.” In a raspy voice. He slumped into a pile and the hunters gathered round to tend to him. It was sometime later when the doctor arrived with several Watch members. Everyone moved aside to allow her passage but not without giving the young girl a curious or perverted glance.

by **Waisana** on October 3rd, 2016, 9:58 pm

OOCI'm so sorry for taking so long to get back to this. I appreciate your patience.

The crowd of horsemen moved aside as she entered their ranks, parting to lead her to where her patient lay. Waisana stopped in her tracks as she caught sight of the bloody mess that she was meant to treat. When she'd been told that her patient had been hurt by someone, she hadn't envisioned damage on such a scale. The teen approached him and knelt down beside him, trying to assess what could be done for him. She was conscious of the eyes on her as she set about her work but she did her best to ignore them, focusing instead on her careful examination of the man before her.

For the moment, he appeared to be out of it and she waved a hand lightly before his eyes to see if she could get any response from him, even a flicker of an eyelid as she spoke to him. "Hello? Can you hear me?" she asked, not expecting an answer given his condition. Judging by blood that saturated his clothing and stuck to his body, he'd lost an awful lot of his life fluid and thus he would be very weak. Unconsciousness could occur before the point of danger to life was reached so she couldn't be sure just how much danger he was in. The blood that was on him wouldn't be all of what he'd lost because blood should have splattered on his surroundings wherever he he had been hurt. The doctor would just have to do her best and hope that the man would pull through after she'd completed her ministrations.

Taking a blade from her bag, she carefully cut away his breeches, a fact that earned quite a few sniggers from onlookers. The girl's face flushed despite herself but she carried on regardless. Once the cloth was removed, she pulled some clean material from her bag, wet it and began to wash his skin, clearing the blood away so that she could see the extent of his wounds. As she took in all of the damage, she was able to forget about those watching her and just see the wounds as tasks to be completed. He had bruising and swelling from where he'd been beaten and he had cuts and stab wounds, some scabbed over and some a partially clotted mess. The wounds that were currently bleeding freely would need to be seen to first. However, there was always the possibility that there might be internal bleeding and while she'd be loathe to cut into him and make him lose more blood, she'd have no choice.

As soon as his skin was cleaned, she had a better notion of what she was looking at and so she searched its surface for signs of unusually dark bruising that would indicate the loss of blood underneath the dermis. First, she checked areas under his ribs, gently probing the skin as she searched for anything unusual. She checked higher on his torso, checking for signs of breakages as a splinter from a rib could puncture the soft organs beneath. His breathing sounded all right and his skin didn't have the odd bubbly quality that accompanied a punctured lung but that didn't mean that there wasn't a shard threatening to pierce it. Once she'd gone over the dangerous areas, her gentle fingers moved over his various wounds, carefully judging their depths, if they were infected and the best mode of treatment for each. The stab wounds would have to be cleaned out and given the pus that came out of some of them, the flesh within was probably putrefying; it might prove necessary to cut out some of the unhealthy tissue. Ideally, if she was going to stick sharp things into a patient, she liked them to be conscious or at least know that they weren't going to jolt upwards and complicate matters.

If he should wake up then she would offer him some water and try to explain the situation depending on how coherent he was. If he was still pretty out of it then she'd merely reassure him that he was all right in a soothing voice and urge him to be quiet and still. If she met no resistance then she would begin work on the deepest wounds, pressing firmly on the flesh to purge any pus, gently cleaning it away as she worked. She'd have quite a bit of cleaning to get done before she could pack the wounds with herbs and cloth and bind them up.

by **Azmere** on December 11th, 2016, 4:51 am

Azmere remained unconscious for most of the examination. There was a swirling blackness that held his firmly as if to claim ownership of his spirit. Within the confines of his mental cage, the Drykas felt no pain which was something his awareness recognized. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism of his subconscious life force or maybe he was just lucky enough for fate to work his magic but the fact remained that Azmere found himself in the web.

The archer looked around with great confusion at first but he was not scared. Being afraid was not something that came naturally to the man so his failure to act displayed a paralysis of decision-making skills. The young man pegged this to be a major problem given what he planned to do in Endyrkas. A lack of self-confidence wasn’t the issue at present, however and Azmere needed to focus. He moved around to study the woman fetched by the hunters. She had taken off his pants! Azmere shook his head and waited for the burning to rise into his cheeks but it never came.

The web was funny in that way. No one could feel pain… or wind or touch. The separation from these things allowed Azmere to look around and study the form in which he normally resided. This transition from experience to observation left the Drykas feeling disconnected from what was going on to his body and the hum of the web took his interest.

Azmere moved away from the commotion that surrounded his sleeping form. His gaze trailed the flickering strands to the nearest major knot. He firmly grasped the dancing blue light, dimmed over time and slipped along the cord of djed to the target he had recently acquired. Once he was there, the young man simply studied the masterful work of the old webbers. The original web mages were not only trailblazers and innovators but they were artists of the discipline. Nothing was more beautiful than finding an untouched binding. The archer’s grandfather said some were as old as the Drykas themselves. True, there were several cairns of note scattered across the Sea of Grass but those were just the largest and most valuable. These substations were monitored on a regular basis to ensure the stability of regions. More detailed work was done as Endrykas traveled along the Run which is part of the reason it varies from year to year though there is a pattern in the variations.

Asmodeus had shown his grandson the mysteries of the Web. The old stormwarden had explained the basics but had also coached the young man through a few difficult situations. Now, standing so near to a historic marker of the Drykas’ unseen grid, Azmere felt very small and knew what he must do. The man found the end of two strands within the knot. Rather than form his own strands and expand the existing tie-off, the Watchman took the index and middle fingers from both hands and pressed them together while bending back the rest. He placed one pair on the end of each cord then relaxed by taking a few deep breaths and concentrated on maintaining even contact. Azmere used the calming meditation to push djed from his body into the existing knot. As long as he held steady, no new strands would form and none of the current ones would distort. He was, in essence, recharging the web in such a way as to preserve the artistry of the magic’s founders.