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Darchala

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re: [Interlude] Quel'lithien at Dusk

((Written in the interest of filling things in after the company departed from the old elven lodge. He'll be back with them by morning.))

--

Pinpricks of pale green light were scattered through the evening gloom like stars. Some stared back at him, suspicious and fierce; the rest seemed to drift about in a haze of pain.

Ismial stood outside the lodge, looking over his degenerate kin in a sort of Kevorkian triage that made his stomach turn. The autumn air had a taste to it, a smell of sickness and impending death so thick that he dared not breathe it in without the veil over his mouth and nose.

His fingers curled around the syringe in his hand as one of the Wretched seemed to notice it at last, enthralled by the soft blue glow of its contents. The urge to roll down his own glove and drain the cartridge into his arm came and went with merciful speed, and he took a slow breath to steady himself.

The priest made his way down from the path, dead grass whispering underfoot. The ranger’s gaze darted from him to the needle and back again, and if he could have eaten the damned thing with his eyes, he surely would have.

“It is for you,” Ismial murmured as he crouched down next to the man. “Give me your arm, brother.”

The ranger hesitated at first, eyeing him as though trying to gauge how difficult it would be to wrest the syringe from him—and then held up his arm and lowered his eyes as he slumped against the rotted tree stump behind him.

Ismial rolled up the archer’s sleeve just past the elbow, his throat tightening. The flesh of his arm was marred with crystalline cysts, the skin around them red and swollen.

“It is a transitional form, brother! A chrysalis! Imagine what we might aspire to, if only we stopped balking at its ugliness and pushed through it to our next form, if I took one and flooded it with so much magical energy that it ceased to be Wretched and became something else entirely. And who should mind such experimentation, when we have all decided that they are no longer people?”

He shook off his thoughts, glancing up to find the ranger watching him with a lucidity that he did not expect. He had seen similar expressions on badly wounded soldiers in every company he’d ever served with, as though they all found some rallying point on the far side of suffering.

“Easy, now. You will feel a pinch, but taking this directly into the bloodstream will ease the pain the fastest.” He never stopped talking as he picked out a vein and administered as much of the potion as he could spare; he was fairly certain that the inane ramblings of a cleric weren’t going to do any further harm. It seemed to kick in quickly, and within a minute’s time, the ranger wore half-lidded eyes and a delirious smile.

Ismial waited for a long moment, shivering as a gust of cold autumn air blew down the back of his neck. When the ranger’s eyes closed in some semblance of blissful sleep, he placed his hand over them and began to sing a hymn under his breath—the sort that blanketed the mind with dark clouds and told it that, yes, it was time to rest at last.

He fell silent as he placed two fingertips on the ranger’s throat. With a slight nod, he stood and walked down the old path, praying that the second one would be easier.

--

Some tried to fight; whether it was out of fear or the desire to steal his supplies, he found it difficult to say. A few gave their names, which he wrote down without having the faintest idea what he was going to do with them. Most simply lay down and died.

It was nearing midnight by the time Ismial returned to Northpass Tower, his robes covered with grime and his face with smudges of dirt and scratches from Wretched fingernails. With naught but a weary nod of greeting to those still awake, he headed up the stairs in search of rest.


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