leareth is captured by Cheliax
+ Show First Post
Total: 3953
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

She has a series of deep self-inflicted burns on her lower arm and her lungs aren't working properly ever since the not-Astral-Plane and it feels like she could maybe fix them by coughing but she can't do that. Presumably the Healer means 'is there anything that needs to be addressed before the interrogation', though, not 'if you were a toddler, would you be complaining about any boo-boos', so she firmly thinks 'no'.

Permalink

Melody, who's a stronger Thoughtsenser, gets this from the prisoner's surface thoughts and relays it. 

"- Randi's going to want us to question her soon. Since we can't ask Leareth anything for, er, probably a while."

Melody would be pretty ticked off with Carissa for getting Leareth badly hurt in her incredibly stupid-sounding escape plan, except that 'desperately trying to avoid the wrath of her evil superiors and the torture god that rules her country' is...kind of a sympathetic motive, as motives for that go. 

Permalink

"Fine, but let me do something about this burn, first. ...Child, what did you do to yourself?" Her tone is disapproving, but the kind of disapproving she would use with a patient who had done something ill-advised, not with a prisoner who's in trouble. 

Permalink

Three, six, eight, and ten minutes of skin contact with a heating-stone rated for heating a four-man tent. If the Star-Eyed objects to scars they should maybe let her heal it though her orders were not to do that until tomorrow.

Permalink

"Can you heal it?" Melody says, startled. "We thought only your priests had healing magic. ...How does it work - could you heal yourself and also Leareth -?" 

A second after she says it, it occurs to her that trusting their prisoner to do magic at all is questionable, and it would be so much work to carve out a single exception from her stupid set-command, they're incredibly not meant for this. 

Permalink

She has one Infernal Healing today and up to eleven tomorrow and every subsequent 24 hours she is conscious and subject to restrictions that permit preparing and casting the spell, subject to her eventually running out of devil's blood but she has a lot on her and it only takes a drop. It heals injuries. It'll work on any injuries Leareth has but not on the fact he is hungry and dehydrated. It is Evil but for the caster, not for the person healed. (Does the Star-Eyed Goddess have a known alignment?)

Permalink

"Gemma, can you go check in on Leareth? I have no idea if backlash counts as an injury - probably not?" She sighs. "And it'll take me a candlemark to redo the set-command with that exception, anyway." 

Permalink

"They're not going to want to wait for that." Gemma sighs as well. "Your set-command should let her cough reflexively, right? I'm honestly not sure what's wrong with her lungs, but that should help." 

Permalink

"- I think it should?" 

Permalink

"Well, help me get her sitting up." 

Melody and Gemma grew up in the same small town; Melody used to help Gemma out in their tiny Healers' centre. The two of them wrestle Carissa into a sitting position. 

Gemma thumps her on the back, while also prodding with her Healing-Gift at her body's reflex-coughing pathway. She's pretty used to doing this with patients too out of it to cough on request. 

Permalink

She coughs! It does make breathing a bit easier. 

Permalink

"Good. Right. Melody, give us ten minutes, I'll send in a trainee to bandage these burns and make sure they're not getting infected, then she'll all yours for questioning." 

Permalink

Melody scowls at that - this is NOT her job - but she does it where Carissa can't see. 

Permalink

"And I'd better go see what's going on with Leareth..." 

Gemma leaves.

About a minute later, a tawny-haired boy who can't be more than fourteen comes in with a basket of cotton bandages and a jar of some kind of salve, and starts dressing her burns while awkwardly avoiding Carissa's eyes. (He's been told that she's a very dangerous prisoner and he mustn't talk to her.) 

Permalink

This is a sensible thing to do even if you're planning to torture her; burns get infected easily. She does not move or do things. Probably the Agreement is the one about her belonging to the Star-Eyed Goddess and is not violated by her checking which sorts of thing she can do but it's hard to know for sure. 

Permalink

Gemma checks on Leareth. 

Permalink

Leareth is in pretty bad shape! It's not clear how much healing of injuries would help; the main problem is that, on top of the backlash shock, he's dehydrated, and also unconscious and thus unable to drink water. 

The Healers are putting their heads together, trying to figure out if there's anything to be done about this other than waiting for him to wake up more and hoping that happens before the dehydration becomes a medical emergency by itself. 

Permalink

After about fifteen minutes later, the Healing-trainee finishes treating Carissa's wounds, ducks out, and speaks to someone in the hallway. 

A woman comes in. She's also dressed in all white; her hair is silver, her eyes piercing blue, and she looks to be in her sixties, or maybe a well-preserved seventy. 

Permalink

A man follows her. 

There's just a hint of similarity in the bone structure of their faces, but they mostly look very unalike. The man is shorter than her, very slim, and almost absurdly pretty. Though the shadows under his eyes detract from that some. His black hair is streaked thickly with white, and his eyes are a startling shade of pale silver. 

"Carissa, right?" he says to her. "Can you understand us? ...My name is Herald Vanyel." 

Permalink

The one Leareth had feelings about! She can see why; he's gorgeous. Why are pretty men always gay. 

She can understand them until Comprehend Languages runs out, which will probably be pretty soon. 

Permalink

Melody bites down on a very inappropriate giggle. She relays the part about Comprehend Languages. Not about Vanyel and Leareth. 

Permalink

"Vanyel, Truth Spell, please," the older woman says. Out loud, because there's no particular reason to keep it secret from the prisoner. "Second-stage, please." Which will force her to answer, whether or not she wants to. 

She waits for a few beats. 

"How were your people able to capture Leareth?" she asks Carissa. 

Permalink

They were in pursuit of a detachment of Iftel's troops who crossed the border; they didn't have authorization to engage Valdemar (Cheliax isn't at war with Valdemar and does not want to be), but there turned out to be camoflaged people on the other side, spying on them and on Iftel's troops. They determined with mindreading that these people worked for Leareth, and assumed that they were mercenaries trying to get information about the war in Iftel so as to decide whether to join in and if so on which side, which turned out not far wrong. Then Vkandis enabled Leareth's capture by causing an earthquake in the underground bunker where he was scrying all of this, prompting him to Gate out to midair, and the First Arcane to geas him, a fourth-circle spell that wouldn't even work on powerful magic-users where Carissa is from but a favorable combination of magic systems, as it turned out. 

Permalink

Melody skims this from Carissa's surface thoughts and translates as clearly as she can. 

"- On reflection, I think I'm going to fiddle with this set-command and let her talk. Give me thirty seconds? This modification's not too hard."

She won't be able to understand the words - whatever translation magic Carissa is using right now only seems to work in one direction, which is honestly bizarre, how does that even make sense... But at least saying words out loud will probably make Carissa's surface thoughts easier to make sense of. 

Permalink

Vanyel and Savil wait, both of them staring coldly at Carissa. 

Total: 3953
Posts Per Page: