[citywide storyline] inside of us.

[Caelum]

Timestamp: 28th of Summer, 511 AV It was far, far too late for him to save the child. The little boy's corpse was found not by the Watch, but by the baker's apprentice delivering a box of fresh pastries to the Chapterhouse of the Order of Radiance. Gemma Swyft thought she was dreaming in the light of pallid dawn glowing off the steps of the chapterhouse. She wished she was dreaming as her mind attempted desperately to protect itself by chopping up the gruesome image right before her eyes. Old blood was not bright, crusted and dried like rust over the battered flesh of the naked body. It drizzled and splattered in patterns, swirling and then sharp, detailing the terrible application of glyphs carved into young flesh. There was a tangle of matted hair, its pale hue made dark with dirt and bodily fluids. And the hands, the hands. So small, so perfectly formed, were a mangled ruin with splinters of bone bared to the dawn. The skin was scraped and torn at the palms where the child's hands had been dragged down the Denval wall to leave bloody butterflies behind. This is what was laid at the feet of Hope. They called for the healer after Gemma's hysterical screams drew the attention of the chapterhouse and the Watch. They called for him, knowing it was too late for even a Priest of Rak'keli to do more than mourn. They needed his brain this time, not his healing hands. They needed him to take up that lost child, to clean him and cut him open all over again and try in an autopsy to hunt out clues, any clues, anything at all, to puzzle the pieces of this mystery together into a whole for justice. The sun was lowering now, spreading sinking light across the cliff the Opal Clinic resided upon. The clinic was empty, volunteers gone home for the day, no over night patients resting their way towards healing in the beds. The physician was on his knees in the back garden, the sleeves of his work shirt rolled to his elbows and hands filled with freshly turned earth as he patted the soil around the base of a transplanted rose bush. He had been out here for hours, ever since the temple acolytes had come to collect the child's cleaned corpse for rituals. He sought among the vegetables and herbs and the settling twilight surcease, afraid to find a bottle of degtine in the night alone, though he knew in the pit of an emptied stomach it might well be the only thing that could wash the sights and sounds, the smells and sickness out of his memory. That poor boy's body had conjured ghosts out of the physician, stirring in the mysteries of his unspoken past.

[Tabarnac]

"Copper for your thoughts," came a gentle voice as Justus crouched down beside him in the dirt where a man could dig around for proof of the miracle of renewing life after facing the horrors inflicted by and upon the weak. For this reason, all Denvali considered themselves warriors. The weak, as time and experience taught them, perished. The priest was dressed all in black, in informal mourning, having responded to the needs of Mihai's mother until exhaustion, grief, and a sleeping draught had finally sent her to Nysel's realm for respite. That most intense need seen to, he followed the path of least resistance to the next set of needs, from the ward where the bereaved would remain under observation until the threat of suicide abated to the garden where the other priest tried to bury his heart. Elsewhere the Captain was delegating and strategizing. When Jolan reported the Zith raid on Theo's farm, it was an isolated incident. There were wild Zith out in the Unforgiving, and they could fight them off, but only eternal vigilance was possible when their quarry could fly past the impassable boundaries of the rocks and elude them. But when children went missing, messages were written in blood, and defiled bodies returned to them, that wasn't a Zith encroachment, nor the work of the less civilized Symenestra who haunted the rocky wastes. This was a human evil perpetrated against other humans, and that was the worst sort. And Haimon's acolyte receiving a dire prophecy from the god of blood, one of their most ardent patrons? Trouble. Need. Crisis. But for now, it was just two men in the dirt, one's hazel eyes upon the other, a metaphorical hand reaching out, whether a lifeline thrown to a drowning man or merely an empathetic shoulder upon which to cry.

[Caelum]

"Justus," Cian sighed while looking up, meeting the gentle regard of his friend. Cian had many friends, could laugh and converse with people of all ages, all races without judgement. It was only the more perceptive of them who realized that the healer yet held them at arm's length. "Surely your wonders are more necessary elsewhere tonight." An eyebrow lifted, the line of his mouth shifting with incredible weariness into a faint smile. After a minute he sat back on his heels and stripped the ancient gardening gloves from his hands, revealing the mark of Rak'keli on his right and that of Yahal on his left. The kiss of a third god was upon him, though not visible in the twilight, in fact hardly seen at all when all of the grace of healing marked him so plainly to the world. "How's the mother?" He wanted to know while dropping his gloves into the old wooden pail. Clean sweat caused curls of hair to cling to his temples, the ring of soot surrounding his irises seeming to have grown in direct proportion to the dying day.

[Tabarnac]

"Someone has to heal the healer, my friend," he said, "and we're both of us healers, so unless you want to go to Master Jarret for a valerian cocktail, we're all we've got." His smile was tired, too, his corbie crouch all but a mirror of Cian's. His own chain of gnosis was hidden under his shirt, and his other mark almost always camouflaging itself. There was a long, drawn out silence after the question Cian posed. Healers in a world such as that in which they lived didn't bullshit each other, but offered clinical facts that would bowl over a less hardy soul. They weathered each storm and hoped they could heal fast enough to avoid the death of a thousand cuts. Like most true healers, they suffered through the torments of their patients, and sometimes died of them too. "She's broken," he said dully. "This sort of thing is so delicate at the best of times, and I've half a mind to take her into the Temple until I'm sure she won't kill herself or Krysus won't mark her and send her off into the broken lands seeking the murderer or just her own death." He sighed. "The people are shocked and fearful... They'll need answers or they'll make up their own. Rumors. Prophecies." He shook his head and remained where he was. There had been brief flashes of connection between them over the years, and he knew some of those buried secrets, though not all. Never all. But he knew Cian's needs better than anyone, and a person could know another quite well based solely on their needs. Justus sensed dark things on the horizon himself, wild needs on the edges of his awareness, and he wasn't sleeping well anymore because such things invaded his dreams. He kept all of that to himself for the moment, though, as they were just fragments that would not clarify but obscure the picture as yet. If Cian was going to keep him at arm's length, he would not move in, but wait patiently in his orbit. Eventually the mind betrayed itself, unconsciously recognizing a completion for its needs. Thus all Justus had to do often was be patient with his patients, and he had the patience of a saint. "We'll be needing more of that," he said, nodding to the degtine.

[Caelum]

"You of all people know how high functioning the broken can be," Cian pointed out. Their voices were soft but their words were rough as the hands of man against the hands of time. Time was both an ally and an enemy to Cian. The saying that time healed all wounds he knew was incorrect. There were wounds that not even time could heal, and wounds that a single moment infused with the right ingredient could fully restore. "Take her into the Temple," he advised. "I'll visit her myself. Tomorrow, another day," when the mutilated body of the poor woman's son was no longer the only thing he could see when he closed his eyes. He could be of no help to her until then. A shift backwards had him unraveling to his feet, leaving the gardening gloves and the pail to grab the bottle of degtine and to extend his free hand down to Justus instead. The Priest of Nikali spoke of need in the way of a man for whom meeting them was a way of life. Cian studied him closely before following his gaze to the horizon, toward whatever all waited for them beyond it both literally and in figuratively. What Cian needed at the bottom of the end was a thing that he hid himself from in Denval now for years, building a life that had proved to evolve into a thing not so very different from that he had left when he was still a young man. He needed to go home, but he never would. His only recourse was to make for himself a new one. The problem was that he had left half of his soul in that city and it was in hours like these that he could hear it calling him, making promises that no one yet has known. "He was the same age as another boy," the healer said finally, a self-deprecating smile given back to Justus. "It's as simple as that." Wasn't it? "I've more degtine inside." Something was coming and both could feel it in their bones.

[Tabarnac]

"Yours is a gentler mistress than the one I fear for her," he said, not ignorant of Rak'keli's nature as transmitted from Cian's own experience and that of other blessed healers. Cian knew of Jey, who lived in the Temple, the pale young man who juggled obligations to three goddesses, the kindest of which was Death. Cian had fixed problems for young Jey when his need to cause pain got out of his control and damaged another person. But Jey was coming along, almost thriving more than surviving these days, though Justus was worried that his affinity to death, pain, and need would open him up to untold suffering in the presence of Mihai's mother. There were always needs, the hierarchy of needs to shuffle. He stood alongside his friend and kept a bit of wisdom caged behind his teeth. Cian knew what he would say, and Justus knew he knew. The truth had been heard, but it was up to the healer himself to accept it. There would always be dead little boys in the world, and Cian could only save those it was within his power to save. "Medicinal or palatable?" he asked, an important distinction.

[Caelum]

"Rak'keli wears kindness sewn into her skin," Cian said. It was agreement, but a defined agreement. The visual of his metaphor was not of something kind, but of something painful and patch worked. His goddess was gentle, far more gentle than those deities who both blessed and plagued the troubled Jey. Gentler, too, than She who had marked with crimson chains the aching beauty of the man before Cian now. A tilt of his head left him narrowing his eyes on Justus and, after a moment, he dusted leftover smears of dirt off on his trousers and lifted his hand to tug back the collar of his friend's shirt. "Mmhm," he hummed that knowingly and spread his palm over the contour of Justus' collar bone where a bruise flowered around the rigid scrapes of a needy and over zealous lover. Heat pulsed beneath his hand, near to branding, before it cooled like the sea wind rustling in the orchard's trees and collected all of the injury into itself. Cian blinked heavily at Justus before shaking his head as if to clear it of the sparkling, addictive pull of divine power. An absent pat was given Justus' shoulder, the bruise erased, smooth skin all remaining. "Both. And I know." Knew what Justus did not say, knew that Justus knew he knew, knew that he could break his hands against the sins of the world a hundred times, a million and those he fixed would still be smaller than the numbered dead. Gentle Rak'keli instilled a cruel ambition into her followers. He turned for the ajar door leading back inside, making his way through the rows of the herb garden with slumped shoulders. "There's going to be more," he said without looking up. "You can hear it too, can't you? We need to be ready, you and I."

[Tabarnac]

The chain beneath his palm seemed to flicker, sinuous like a snake, as if daring him to pull it. The sensation of the bruise healing felt almost painfully good. His eyes dilated in response to need, and his lips parted as if to say something, but he mastered himself, nodded his thanks, and followed Cian inside. The smell of turned earth, herbs, and honest sweat were familiar things here and around Cian, who either seemed to be working himself to death or enjoying the fruits of hedonism. Justus understood the needs that were temporarily satiated by each extreme. "My goddess doesn't speak to me so often as Astrid's," he said, "but She whispers to me in the dark, yes. The greater need of Denval... it keeps me up at night, but I fear taking anything... what if She imparts a prophecy unto me the way Viratas did to the Symenestra acolyte and I'm too befuddled to remember?"

[Caelum]

Worn boots scuffed against the floor boards of the clinic’s still room as Cian ambled inside. Stepping backwards, he pressed the door against the wall and proceeded to slump there with the hook of long fingers into the pocket of his trousers while watching the Priest of Nikali walk in. Beneath the calloused flesh of his palm he could still feel the pulse of Nikali’s crimson chains, a coalescent of holy djed smeared on his skin by a combination of goddesses. From that heavens dust an echo of suffering rippled through his soul, calling from the compulsion of needs haunting Justus to crash against the shores of Rak’keli’s empathy housed within Cian and pull at the bones of him like an outbound tide. He blinked, having experienced similar synchronizations in his dealings with Justus before (most notably when they worked in tandem on the needs of a patient. Only never, not once, had it come over him so powerfully. It was with the kiss of steadfast of Yahal, however, that Cian fought his way toward focus and stepped away from the door to allow it to close behind Justus. “And what if it’s exhaustion or over extending that has you befuddled?” He shook his head while going to the still room’s long, smooth grained counter. A few vials and jars were collected from the colorful array and he glanced over his shoulder at his friend. “I’ll make you something. I want you to take it.”

[Tabarnac]

Justus favored him with a withering stare, a man as steeped in the grace of his goddess as the healer was. There were things that a man could mistake for another thing, but a man who had experienced deity could recognize it for what it was, even if it was just the trickle of a tear down one's face compared to the deluge of Presence. But Cian needed him to keep himself together, no less than those in his care, no less than all of Denval, perhaps, who fell into that category too. So he would take the draught and attempt to drown out Nikali's whisper, hoping that She would simply speak up. "Healer," he said with some authority, "heal thyself." One never knew how these occasions would go. A man could be a kaleidoscope of needs, Cian Noc moreso than most. Justus himself was hardly a simple man, made ever more complex by his intimate interactions with those within his sphere. "Degtine and doses, then?" he asked, a wry half-smile daring Cian to turn him down.