Solo hour of the wolf.

[Caelum]

PermissionsThe necessary sundry granted by Gossamer. When suddenly, at midnight, you hear an invisible procession going by with exquisite music, voices, don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving. Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say it was a dream, your ears deceived you: don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, as is right for you who were given this kind of city, go firmly to the window and listen with deep emotion, but not with the whining, the pleas of a coward; listen—your final delectation—to the voices, to the exquisite music of that strange procession, and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. - Constantine P. Cavafy - Timestamp: 87 Winter 511 AV Black night blanketed the world but the snow drifts had settled longer, the soft glow of moonlight over them helping to illuminate these deadest hours before dawn. No birdsong hummed from the barren branches of the wintering orchard and the only hymns to haunt the night came from the chop of the wind against the mountain heights and the low, distant thunder of an inbound tide. Cold gripped the air with a cruel fist and sharpened its talons in the lungs of the two men leaving through the kitchen door of the converted clinic. Half a millennium previous the Opal Clinic had been the guard garrison of the military outpost for the Suvan Empire. Since Cian Noc's arrival in Denval a decade ago, the thick walls and sensible layout of the garrison had been shored up and softened with walled herb and vegetable garden. It was through these fallow rows the two men trudged, shoulders hunched against the night and a solitary lantern between them, casting a small but comforting circle of light around them. "You got off easy, sunlord." The taller of the two men broke the quiet. "Ten days is a short amount of time to recover from overgiving with projection." "I felt fine three days ago, Cian," the windmarked Drykas pointed out, muttering as he watched his feet, careful to follow the physician's footsteps down the icy path. "You're the one who insisted we wait to resume my training." Cian Noc's smile was grim in lantern light, soot and caramel eyes straight ahead, watching the mountains through the trees as they made their way toward the sea cliff. "You lost use of half your left side. What you view as pampering I considered necessary. When you came to us, Caelum, you were half dead with wear; and believe me I know how great a feat that is for a son of Syna." "You also know well enough what had me running so hard to reach Denval," Caelum said after a small stretch of silence. His mouth was twisted down, velvet dark eyes far away with a distance that went down to the bottom of him. Cian grunted, a noncommittal noise, and they trudged on. Caelum referenced the brutal and frightening events of the season that had culminated ten days ago with a hostage situation, a mage driven mad with the ancient magic of static, and a holy artifact compelling the attention of far too many gods. He and Cian had both been caught in the middle of the disaster, falling into roles their past lives had laid out for them on the map of destiny Lhex himself had sketched. They both had suffered injuries, a collection of the flesh and of the spirit, the healing of which would undoubtedly yawn across years rather than the comparably abbreviated time allowed for the sewing of skin and bone.

[Caelum]

They reached the end of the orchard and emerged from the skeletal shadows into the more decadent glow of moonlight pouring upon the sea cliff. The roar of the ocean a dizzying drop below grew louder, constrained by the borders of the sky alone. The snow here ought to have been virgin, but instead a trail of paw prints littered the sprawl of land that overlooked the ancient rubble that made mountains to imprison Denval in the age of the Valterrian. The men stopped on the edge of the trees to survey their chosen practice ground and each of their observations came to long pause on those paw prints. Above, Leth's full moon seemed so very distant as to be watching its own eyes, impassive and detached now that his Solduvan Stone was no longer caught in the grip of a madman but instead stored safely in the pocket of one of the healers standing below. Cian sighed and his breath fogged, crystallizing in the eerie light. He lowered the lantern and gestured wordlessly to his companion with his other hand, urging Caelum to sink into a crouch beside him and weave his fingers together for a makeshift step. Cian braced his hand against Caelum's shoulder, slid his boot into his cupped hands, and was boosted up the necessary couple of feet it required for him to hang their lantern on a sturdy branch. He dropped back down, snow crunching, and the two men fanned out in opposite directions, each placing their feet with care not to trample and so ruin the tracks they were studying. "Wolf," Cian declared after a little while. He gestured Caelum over and waited until he had stepped across a knot of tracks to his side before stabbing a finger at the perfect imprint of a wolf's hind paw in the snow. "How can you be sure? It looks like it could belong to a dog," Caelum wondered. He took a knee beside the Opal Order Healer and squinted at the tracks. A shrug rolled through Cian's shoulders. "Dog or coyote," he agreed. "Save for that it's entirely too big. There's not a dog in Denval or in these hills that isn't domesticated and put to use by the captain, and I can promise you none of their tracks would be nearly six and half inches long." He spread his own hand in the air over the track, showing by this method of comparison the great size of the paw print they studied. "And no coyote is that big. Unless we're dealing with a dire coyote, and even that seems implausible." "It does seem particularly large." Caelum frowned. "Is that a usual size for wolves?" "Oh, no," Cian said softly. Their voices were hushed, as if the sheer quiet of the night held an element of sanctity neither of them were quite willing to shatter. "It's a good two inches or more larger than an average wolf. These prints belong to a beast. A dire wolf, would be my bet. There was a pack of them in the hills a few seasons back, discovered by a surveying expedition for the road." Caelum lifted his head, the heavy knot of braids sagging at the nape of his neck and against the turned up collar of his leather coat. His eyes went to the black hills, following the jagged teeth of their heights. "Should we be concerned?" He asked eventually. "I don't think so." Cian looked up at him. "We're removed from city proper here at the clinic, Caelum. They'd never come into the city itself and I imagine the only reason they've ventured so close now is because of what's coming." The healer raised his eyebrows and Caelum grimaced quietly at the end of their speaking glance. Marked so deeply by the gods as both them were, it had been impossible for either men to ignore the building tension in the surrounding world. With the safe reclaiming of the Solduvan Stone, the worst was not passed as all the Denvali had hoped. Rather the weight of the gods regard continued to brood upon them, tightening with every passing hour. Something was coming. Something greater than any of them. Something that in these hours before dawn neither Cian nor Caelum could reconcile within themselves. It was ultimately what had drawn them from the warmth of their beds and seen them dressing in the cool night to go out into the wind, to seek solutions between themselves for individual cures before it grew too late.

[Caelum]

In silent accord, they unwound to their feet and left their fears unvoiced to freeze in the snow. They did not need to speak at length of the turmoil Denval had been in for the breadth of winter, nor of the divine siege laid upon all of its occupants that remained unrelieved to comprehend the gravity of their situation. Captain Astrid and all of the citizens were working tirelessly to prepare Denval for what it did not know, but all the while men such as Cian and Caelum who had been bent and beckoned by the gods all of their lives understood that the avalanche of power cresting on the western horizon was inescapable and sought now to defend themselves. Their chosen methods of defense could seem enigmatic to the uninitiated, but neither Cian or Caelum had it in themselves to fathom a world without hope; and in that figurative circle of Priskil's light, they began to stomp their heavy, winter boots into the snow, flattening a training area on the cliff. They may not survive the coming storm, but if that was truth then they would not lie down to their deaths. The two of them were determined to be buried standing. "Shed your coat, mate," Cian instructed as he circled about the outer edge of their prepared ground. He lifted his hands to the ties of his own jacket and began to undo them, the soft shimmer of Rak'keli's third mark on him bright in the lantern light. "And your sweater." "It's blasted freezing out here, Cian," Caelum replied. He frowned at his companion even while shrugging out of his long, split riding coat. He slung it over a low hanging branch near where their lantern swayed gently in the sea breeze. He had a thick, woolen sweater underneath and shivered despite. "The cold can't hurt you," Cian returned. His mouth spread into a wide, wicked smile, denting the healing gnosis mark that shone on his face. "Not for long. Not with me around, at least. So take it off. Otherwise all you're going to learn is how to block a punch, but not how to control Nikali's grip on you in the midst of a fight." "I have absolutely no intention of ever brawling naked," Caelum remarked dryly. Nevertheless, he gripped the hem of his sweater and pulled it off over his head, leaving him stripped down to a sleeveless, fitted undershirt. The sweater he hung alongside his jacket before making his way to the center of their prepared ground. Despite his protests, he knew very well from experience that a man rarely was in a position to choose the hour of his battles, let alone what he might be wearing at the time. Cian wanted enough of Caelum's skin bared that skin-on-skin contact would be inevitable during the course of his training, thereby rousing the Ranuri gnosis that weighed so heavily upon the ethaefal and forcing him to learn greater control of it. Or, Caelum figured, at the very least how to endure it. Cian wanted him to break apart his mind into pieces, to ingrain defense techniques into muscle memory so that in the future he might not lose a fight because one of his three goddesses called him too loudly in the middle of it. There was a certain art to training any healer marked by Rak'keli, but the ingrained difficulty of that was increased tenfold in Caelum thanks to Nikali's favor. Anyone marked by Rak'keli was intensely compelled to heal without bias and that meant healing even people who were causing them harm. That did not mean they were unable to deliver harm themselves, but it certainly could encourage them toward a pacifist lifestyle. Unfortunately, neither of the healers on the sea cliff tonight had, or ever had, the luxury of pure and strict pacifism. They would have died a dozen times over already. "I want to start with defensive techniques," Cian explained as they came to face each other, the distance between them leaving them just beyond arms reach. "Largely because you're a complete failure at life and seem to constantly be pissing people off." The line of Caelum's mouth sharpened into a smirk and he nodded a little, shoulders rolling back. He could not really argue with that. "Fair enough."

[Caelum]

Cian eyed his pupil in the dim light with a sardonic expression. Having shed his own coat, he stood loose hipped and at apparent ease in the snow. A Priest of Rak'keli was not an expected talent at unarmed combat, but this was no ordinary man. Besides, healers often found themselves in the most dire of situations, working the will of Avalis' dark sister. When Cian rolled forward, it was in a leisurely pace around Caelum. He reached out and poked Caelum in the back, causing the Drykas to twitch with the divine spark it lit. "Straighten your spine," Cian demanded. His next touch was the round of Caelum's shoulder, giving a firm tug. "Put your shoulders back. And, for the love of all our gods, man, your feet need to be farther part." He aimed a light kick to the heel of Caelum's boot. "You want your feet to be in line with your shoulders. You're practically humming with tension, so loosen your joints. You don't want to be so brittle you break." "You keep touching me," Caelum gritted through his teeth. He blinked back the holy film, tinted rose colored like diluted blood, and carefully adjusted his body as demanded. "And you should have had a heavier breakfast. You need some bread or the like. You're low on energy." Cian's grin was wolfish as he swung around to stand in front of Caelum, quite on purpose giving an absent pat to his arm. "Tch, tch," he admonished. "Don't listen to the ranuri, horselord. Listen to your muscles and what they're telling you about your equilibrium standing this way." "But you're making me hungry," Caelum complained. Cian's grin fell away, leaving behind a hardened sobriety in his stare. "This is your lot, Caelum. This is your life. If you cannot learn to function through Nikali's favor, then you are lost. Do you understand me?" "I have no desire to lose myself," Caelum murmured, jaw tight but the expression in his eyes apologetic. Beneath all of the cold and grit of him lurked a growing fear. He had been too long at the whims of the gods, and now he was at the whims of the mortals as well. Fear of losing himself was intense, but in that was also a fear of losing himself to the degree that he was incapable of serving others. It was equally as real. He was a healer, one of the body as well as the heart and mind. If he could not keep himself contained, then he could do very little for anyone else. He closed his eyes to the frost covered world and Cian Noc's thousand league stare and loosened his joints, let his muscles relaxed into the proper alignment of bones. He listened to his body, and used even the borrowed hunger ranuri had given him from Cian to do it. "Maybe it isn't about fighting ranuri," he spoke his thoughts aloud before thinking. "But about using it." "Good. Think of it like pain," Cian suggested. "When teaching people how to withstand torture, they say that you must begin with an understanding that you will ultimately break." Caelum twitched, but Cian went on without hesitation. "You must know this. You must accept this and so focus on delaying that hour for as long as possible. Your soul is not a road, Caelum. It is a map and it is full of holes. There are unmarked game trails in the forest of you and the migratory patterns of your thoughts are not completely charted in the rivers of your reasoning. I am not here to teach you how to read your own map. You know how already. I am trying to teach you how to navigate through it. Do you understand?" "I understand." Caelum's voice was dark music, notes of resignation and determination harmonizing into their own tune. He opened his eyes. "So bloody well teach me, Noc." The punch seemed to come out of nothing, Cian moved so fast, striking Caelum's cheek with the flat of his hand before stepping adroitly back when Caelum bent over, hands flying to his face. "For fuck sake!" Caelum swore. Cian grinned. "You should have moved." "You're too fast," Caelum growled. He wiped his hand down his face and shook himself, recovering his senses from both the physical and divine blur. "And you need to put on your sweater. You're cold." "I'm not too fast if you hadn't been rooting your weight on your heels," Cian replied. "Balls of your feet, keep your bones aligned. You can move faster than you know, and you don't even have to move your feet at all half the time. Or move them more than a few inches." He paused. "Further, you could have blocked that easily. Hands up." Caelum watched him interestedly and shifted his weight to the balls of his toes. He raised his hands, tightening them into fists in front of him, and only grunted his understanding when Cian reached out to simply maneuver his thumbs to settling on the outside of his fist rather than on the inside. The ranuri shivered through him and Caelum knew that things were about to heat quickly if for no other reason than Cian was going to need to move to keep himself warm. And Caelum was too.

[Caelum]

"When it comes to blocking a blow," Cian went on conversationally, dropping his hands once he was satisfied with Caelum's stance. He nodded to this pupil in indication that he wanted him to maintain it. "The goal is to deflect, not to try and absorb. Bring up you arm --" The punch Cian threw this time was slower so that Caelum could watch it happen and have the time to put his forearm into position to block it. When they touched, Cian leaned in, pushing even as Caelum attempted to brace against it. "See? You're not hit, but I've succeeded in putting you off balance, leaving an opening for me to knock you down with a second blow. This time, instead of catching me, try to move me to the side. Like this --" Cian lifted both of his hands and curved in his fingers in a beckoning gesture. "Hit me." Caelum, after delivering his friend a dry look, did not so much as hesitate before throwing a punch at Cian's face. He came around from the side and Cian's hand came up and swept Caelum's blow aside in a quick, simple motion. "And now I'm off balance again," Caelum said with dawning comprehension after being forced to step to the side. "Exactly," Cian agreed. He showed Caelum his hands and then swept them up and out. Without being told, Caelum resettled himself into the defensive stance Cian had already instructed him in and mirrored Cian's motions. After several repetitions, the physician made a slight alteration to the block, displaying to Caelum that there was more than one way to deflect a blow. "Was my punch also just that bad?" Caelum inquired after a few minutes, still keeping his muscles tight and mimicking Cian's motions. His teacher chuckled, dry but decadent in the slow turning night. Morning was a breath on the horizon, little more than a promise just yet. "It was horrible," he admitted. "You came at me from the side. For now, we should focus on teaching you how to punch straight on. You want to move from point A to point B and --" Without warning, Cian's left hand darted out, aiming for Caelum's jaw. Without thinking, Caelum's arm came up in the seem sweeping motion they had been repeating and successfully knocked Cian's fist to the side. Even as Cian crowed his approval, Caelum shuddered beneath the blast of need that reverberated out of Cian and into him. "Open your eyes. Keep moving," Cian instructed quickly, attempting to snag Caelum's attention. "Look at me, keep your stance. That's right. Let is roll through you, but not become you." Caelum gazed at Cian and shifted his hips, keeping his steps small as Cian's as he turned, keeping his circling teacher in front of him and his arms up. He breathed through the ranuri haze. "Your needs become mine, Cian," he confessed, seeking answers rather than offering protest. "It's called endurance, mate," Cian answered grimly. He held up his fist in silent demand and Caelum echoed him, pulling his arm back. "All fighters have to deal with distractions, with weariness and pain on some level or another. This is not so different. It's just harder." "This is more than you needing to have a bigger breakfast or put on your sweater." Caelum swallowed, a piece of him sifting through the multi-layered needs that made up Cian Noc even while keeping the man within his sights. "Come on," Cian dismissed. "A to B. Move your whole body, not just your arm. Strength comes from your hips." He grinned ferociously. "Now hit me."

[Caelum]

Caelum shook loose of the ranuri daze long enough to throw a punch, concentrating on moving his fist in a straight line. Cian easily bobbed out of the way, shaking his head in a splatter of chestnut hair. “No, no. Here,” the physician instructed. He turned sideways so that Caelum could observe him in profile and demonstrated a jab. “You keep this hand up, protecting your face. Syna knows that’s all you’ve got going for you.” A chuckle caught Caelum unaware and he brought his fists back up obediantly. “Chin down,” Cian went on, spinning back around. He clapped a hand against the round of his student’s shoulder. “Keep your center and rotate your shoulder about a quarter of the way. Again.” The two men moved through the black and the snow, weaving around each other at a quickening pace. If Cian was not going to put on his sweater, then Caelum’s was driven to keep him moving in order to beat back the cold. Nikali’s chains continued their soft rustle within him, kept in a constant state of sifting through the needs of his teacher; but as he learned how to jab and how to deflect, his form corrected, it felt more like the background music of his soul than an overly loud and distracting song. Yet as the night began to lessen around them and the tall, long leaf pines standing sentinel along the mountainside started to stir with birdsong, it became increasingly clear that Cian’s need for Caelum to survive, to be capable of protecting himself, had as much if not more to do with the ethaefal’s momentum as his own. There were few souls in the world graced with the Opal Order healer’s capacity for compassion and while they sweated and swore, laughing and doged each others blows, the seed of appreciatioin in Caelum sprouted and grew. There was no hiding from a marked of Nikali, no obfuscation of desire; and the needs of a man revealed the map of his soul. In a round about fashion, Cian was teaching Caelum more than how to navigate his own map, but how to read the maps of others as well. Cian deflected one of Caelum’s jabs and stepped back, falling out of fighting posture to cant his chin toward the eastern sky. “Here she comes, sunlord.” Caelum relaxed back and stretched his arms about his head while lifting his eyes to the dawn, the soft increasing light coursing across his windmarks. A thin film of sweat covered him and he breathed heavily, muscles burning. As Syna ascended at last, the shadows of his Drykas night form were made illuminate and ultimately melted away. Sunfire surrounded him, glaring and bright, and slowly ebbed. It left the ethaefal behind where the drykas had been, taller, brighter, breath taking. Cian watched from a respectful distance, grinning easily in the new dawn light, never failing to wonder at the power these daily transformations.

[Caelum]

The elegant curve of ethaefal's horns glinted in the dawn light which raptured even as it settled over Caelum; but despite his restoration to the light, no smile graced his countenance. In one's place was a worried and confused frown, golden eyes opening to Cian Noc's appreciative grin. He gulped in a breath and will his heart be still so that he could listen to the deeper groan of Nikali's chains as they were tugged upon. The spread of ranuri through him, hot limbed and heavy, had little to do with his teacher who had spent the past while purposefully baiting him. Rather it sprung from the air in his lungs and the glow of the mutilated snow surrounding their make shift practice arena. It rose like steam from Cian's breath and breathed out from the clustered trees at his back. The bedrock beneath him seemed to thrum and the soul of him spun like a weathervane, yanked by a combination of the magical tension fogging Denval and the far more personal binding delivered him by the mirror-masked goddess the night he had washed onto these rocky shores. "Caelum?" Cian's voice seemed to come from a long way off and Caelum struggled to collect the scattered fragments of language in him. The ever unspeakable celestial tongue trembled in the back of his throat. It came out in scrambled Common. "Something's coming," he whispered, words hoarse. "We're going to be too late --" Before the ethaefal could complete his hard fought thought, fresh voices echoed against the cold curve of sky. They were strident with need, shouting their names and coming from the direction of the clinic. Cian's grin performed a lurid transformation, color leeching from his face, and without warning he sprung forward and caught Caelum's shoulder in passing. The ethaefal whirled around, ranuri redirected, and leaped after the physician. They flew through the snow, lantern and coats, sweaters and laughter left behind with the trampled wolf tracks, their boots muffled by the snow. Branches whipped at their faces and chest, but they pushed on, faster and faster, dodging the trunks of spindly birch and sharp pine by scant inches as they raced toward the sound of screaming, toward the cry of their names at the sunrise. Now that Caelum was slid into the skin of his day form, he was easily as tall as Cian. After several months of good food and nourishment, he was strong too. His muscles simmered but were still loose from training, and in truth there was nothing more in all the world he wanted, no needed, to do than reach the clinic in time. Only later would it occur to him that he never wondered in time for what. He had known in the bones of him. It was an Opal Clinic. He and Cian were two of three trained healers in the entire outpost. The answer was simple: In time to save lives. A few yards before the break in the tree line a woman appeared from amid the slow growing green shadows. She startled when she saw them and then rushed toward them, auburn hair spilling in straggles down her back. It was Emma, one of Cian's assistants at the clinic. Cian slowed, stumbling a little, and caught Emma when she spilled into him, eyes wild. "Thank Rak'keli you're here," the woman gulped, struggling to catch her breath, pale hands clutching at Cian's undershirt. "It's Oliver Camlach, Cian. And Jonas. Little Jonas Marx. There were.. Wolves. Or... Something like..." Caelum did not wait to hear more. He bolted past Cian and Emma even while the physician attempted to hustle Emma around, and he broke into the brief clearing before the low walled garden that spread across the back of the clinic. A tall man, narrow man ducked out of the doorway to the kitchens when he saw him coming, one arm raised in desperate beckon, and Caelum slid sweating and breathless into the morning lit halls of the clinic. He required no direction to know that what needed him the most was out into the hall, to the left and a door down in the first unlocked examination room. There were people, too many people, crowding the clinic, trying to hurry him along and when he failed to verbally respond he could hear them catching Cian as he hurried in behind Caelum, half pushed by Emma's terrified hands. "Shit," Caelum heard himself say, ears still ringing with the rattle of chains as he looked upon the broken bodies and tasted snow and the slow coming explosion like one might sense an earthquake before it struck.

[Caelum]

The scene was taken in by stages. There were half a dozen people crowding the surgery and blood splattered the majority of them in varying degrees. Caelum stopped just within the door to survey the situation, calculations of blood loss and pain mounting in his mind toward triage. The hum of voices still splintered and buzzed around him, distracting as a swarm of gnats. He stepped forward, stomping off snow slush, and raised his voice to be heard over the din. “Alex, run to the sea cliff and fetch our lantern and coats. We don’t need to burn the bloody orchard down.” He caught the arm of the young soldier and swung him toward the door before side-stepping around one of the beds, having already visually assessed Camlach’s situation. It was a great deal less concerning than that of the eleven year old Jonas Marx in the far corner, being inexpertly tended to by his blood covered father. “Emma, boil water. Mason, grab two sealed surgical kits from the hall closet.” Caelum continued to delivered commands, and be it good sense or respect for authority, they obeyed. “And Jolan?” He directed this as the red haired child hovering near the window. He looked up, hazel eyes huge in a narrow face. “Fly to Astrid. Report.” The urchin flew out the door even as Cian skidded to a halt beside Camlach’s bed. The old weapons master groaned at priest of Rak’keli even as rolled up his sleeves, but by then Caelum was arrived at Jonas’ bedside and had to move his father out of the way. A jolt of ranuri flushed through him, full of elbows and knees of struggling, desperate terror a father held for his son. “Caelum,” Delano Marx startled and then he hastily moved around to the other side of the bed. It was more of a pained stumble, to be honest, the Denvali lieutenant favoring his right hip. “Can you help him? Please?” On the table, Jonas groaned. Caelum shuddered out a breath and nodded to Delano. He made a study of the child’s injuries while dousing his hands into the bowl of carbolic water Mason had just placed on the table. Claw marks tore down the boy’s torso, curving over his shoulder and leaving gaping wounds across his chest. His left arm dangled, mutilated, and he was littered with the handfuls of gauze Delano had used in an attempt to slow his bleeding. “Mason, douse your hands,” Caelum instructed. “I’m going need an extra pair.” A glass stoppered vial was plucked out of the herbalist kit Mason had brought him along with the surgical tools. Caelum squinted at the excruciatingly neat handwriting on its label, double checking what his memory and the color had told him of its contents. It was chloroform, a necessary poison as the boy was starting to tremble and struggle. “Hold your breath, gentlemen,” Caelum muttered grimly before measuring out a few miserly drops into a wad of gauze. He palmed the back of the boys head, met frightened, pained eyes, and then pressed the damp gauze over his mouth and nose. Jonas’ eyelashes fluttered , breath hitching, but Caelum withdrew his hand before he could pass out. Too much could be deadly when combined with extensive injuries. With his patient no longer rattling his own bed, Caelum looped fine, bleached silk through a suture needle carved from Cian’s collection of ivory and bone, whispered a prayer to sweet Rak’keli, and peeled back the edge of the gauze to reveal the deepest aspect of Jonas’ wounds. Divine power lit him up on the inside, preparing to assist him heal the boy.

[Caelum]

There was an art to channeling Rak’keli’s healing power in tandem with the physical practice of medicine. Being the recipient of only one gnosis mark from the kind hearted goddess allowed Caelum access to great power but with massive limitations. He was of the same mind as the other Denvali physicians in that it was lazy, even negligent, for a follower of Rak’keli to ignore the healing ability mundane medicine and surgery, herbalism and physicking could do. Then again, Caelum was but freshly walked free of a past wherein reliance upon the divine could be deadly. He put faith in his gods, but he was incapable of being a stagnant worshipper and rarely dared to place more in them than he felt they reasonably deserved. The sun would rise, but she wasn’t going to pull you back to the Ukalas. Desire provided direction and revelation, but Nikali would not weigh it against your needs. And the goddess of healing could assist you in healing a person, but it was unlikely she was going to save your life for you. Caelum knew very well all they mortals had to rely on was themselves, and so it was love one another or die. He broke his mind into pieces in order to suture at the same time he healed. The sharp, curve needle was balanced in the pinch of his fingers while he used his other hand to dab at blood and pull flesh together. He had to work quickly and the truth was that never would have worked was he not marked by Rak’keli. Her gnosis was what allowed him to worry about blood loss before infection. Disease could spread easily from even the most shallow scratches from a wolf, but his healing gnosis pumped purifying magic into his patient even as his needle dipped and pulled, sewing up the worst of the boy’s wounds before cross hatching back for the less dangerous areas. Even so, Caelum did not take it for granted. Mason maintained a steady supply of carbolic at his elbow that he used to wipe and pour as he went; and, following his specific instructions, he also brewed a tea of orange root and aldanon with a dose of willow bark for the pain. It was a concoction full of purifying agents to fight any lingering possibility of infection. Long, yawning minutes passed with intensity. Caelum’s focus was centered on his patient and did not leave much room for the outside world. In a dim pocket of him he knew the room hummed with organized activity and that there were more voices echoing from the clinic’s hall, doubtless deep in discussion of the events that led to this catastrophe. But Caelum was busy monitoring Jonas’ heartbeat and redirecting the focus of his gnosis power toward bringing down some of the swelling. He moved on to that mangled arm, taking a long while to study the lay of busted bones and torn tissue before he straightened and reached for his fresh tools. “Delano,” he spoke to his patient’s father in a firm voice. It was suffused with calm, but he meant to catch the man’s attention. When he felt the brush of Delano’s glance where he stood on the other side of the table, holding his son’s good hand, Caelum continued. “Find out if Cian can spare a minute over here.” When the lieutenant hesitated, Caelum lifted his eyes for the first time. “Go on,” he urged. Delano smiled a little weakly and nodded before moving away in search of the other healer. Caelum knew that the probability of him successfully treating Jonas’ arm back to full use was low. It was not life threatening, but he was a boy and would one day be a man who needed to defend himself with a strong, right arm. A Priest of Rak’keli could assure that. Caelum could not.

[Caelum]

Caelum continued his work on Jonas while beyond the window Syna blazed the last of the night from the sky. An ache settled into his muscles, one of weariness and wear. He had trekked out into the snow on too little sleep and proceeded to sweat energy and divinity in equal measure since. His head felt at once sharp and hollow as he palmed the back of his patient’s skull so as to lift his head and dribble the purifying tea down his throat. His hand had to be steady and his eyes like hawks lest negligence allowed Jonas to choke on his medicine. Long minutes passed and then a congregation more before the Priest of Rak’keli appeared at Caelum’s elbow, looking every inch of him as emptied as his pupil and with the lieutenant prowling behind him. Cian raised his hands at Caelum in silent bid and the ethaefal stepped away from the patient bed, grateful that Cian was wise enough not to touch him at this juncture. This might still be a test of his endurance, but it was no longer one in which risks should be taken. Now there were lives at stake. Caelum hastily side stepped in order to avoid brushing arms with Delano when the lieutenant passed him en route to the other side of his son’s bed. Caelum blinked, willing the sunspots floating in his vision to disperse. “The arm,” he told Cian with a beseeching motion of his hands. In their circling, he failed to recognize it was a mimic of the deflecting gestures Cian had been teaching him earlier. An hour? Three? He had lost track of time. He listened to the stamp and shuffle of feet, the rise and fall of voices blanketing the clinic and realized with the piece of his mind he had held in reserve for the outside world – recollecting his first goddess, Syna, and her unending need to be on guard – that a hunting party had been gathered. He stepped through the now mostly cleared lab to the window, tilting his head to get a gander at the angle of the sun. It had been at least three hours. He turned in time to watch the miracle of Cian’s work knit flesh and refit bone, the reformation of his patient’s arm loosening one of the knots in Caelum’s heart. Nikali’s chain sighed somewhere inside him, relinquishing him for the time being. Twisting, he dipped his hand into a leftover basin of clean water and snatched a clean towel on his way out the door, strides loose hipped and long. He left the healing behind him while moving down the corridor, splatters of blood drying on the undershirt he still wore and the bruises laid on him by training before dawn darkened by the passage of hours. As he moved through the clinic toward the front entrance, easing around a scatter of familiar faces, careful not to brush against them, he began to pull the pieces of his divided mind back together. The brief, hot glances of the Denvali caught on him, but in wordless understanding they did not block his progress or call his name. Instead Caelum spilled out the clinic door and onto the weathered porch to drink up the wind unmolested. He pulled in deep breaths and sagged against the post, welcoming the cold embrace of the winter day and Syna’s pallid light spread through the trampled snow. Someone had shoveled the path to the clinic while he had been inside, and snow clumped and heaped along the side of the narrow road. To stop staring at that and at the omen thick sky, at the mountainside and the forests harboring a pack of desperate, vicious wolves, he slid a hand over his eyes and let himself sink to a seat on the porch steps. Laboriously and welcomed, the pieces of Caelum’s mind settled themselves back together. They brought with them the realization that what Cian had been trying to teach him on the sea cliff about the sleeping mind and using distraction to advantage could be just as easily applied to the art of healing. Nonetheless, he had a headache chomping at his temples and the base of his skull. The porch boards creaked behind him. “We got off easy, sunlord,” Cian remarked, fatigue crisping the ends of his words. Caelum lowered his hand from his face to watch the healer drop to a seat on the steps beside him, careful to maintain enough distance that they would not accidentally touch. Caelum’s mouth curved with sardonicism at the echo of his friend’s words and he turned his regard to the sky, the shadow of the mountain and the thick cluster of trees. “I felt fine three hours ago.” A laugh barked out of Cian, tumbling exhaustedly out of his chest. He scraped a hand back through tangled hair and followed Caelum’s gaze. His laughter faded into the lowering wind as they watched the hunting party disappear into the trees. “At least the sun’s up, eh?” He murmured. “And tomorrow she’ll be up again.” “Ah, Cian,” the ethaefal sighed grimly. “I think we both know we’re in the wolf’s hour still.” the end