Agio, Wednesday Afternoon [Fandom time]
Karla leaned against the door of the community center and gratefully took the mug of coffee one of Mari's helpers passed to her. It tasted rough and muddy. She didn't care. At that moment, she might have drunk sewer water as long as it was hot. She closed her eyes and tried to absorb a little of the rising's sun's warmth. The predawn air was chilly, but clear. She needed a few moments to clear her head of the scent of pain and blood and fear. She couldn't find enough energy to produce more body heat, so she wrapped her hands around the warm mug and pretended that was enough.
The hours had passed in a blur of of blood and Craft and work. First, they needed to triage the patients, to decide who needed to be brought upstairs with Jaenelle's giant Healing web and who could survive downstairs. Once someone was found with a wound that would prove fatal if left alone, Jaenelle would cocoon that person in Craft and gently bring them up to the second floor, where the web could stabilize them for a short time. Almost two hundred people were suffering from mortal injuries; their only luck coming from the fact that the Jhinka preferred to play with their victims first, causing them agony before they died. There were several people suffering from the same kind of gut wound that the maenad had inflicted on her.
Karla also spent some time treating the wounds of the least injured, stitching and splinting and setting. Mari needed more help in the kitchen and people who remained downstairs needed tending, too. She couldn't use Craft of them, Jaenelle's interdiction had been firm: Craft enough only to Heal the most life-threatening injuries and not a jot more. The only exception to that rule were the children. Neither Karla or Jaenelle could bear to see them bleeding or in pain, so after they had taken the last of the mortally wounded upstairs, Karla sat down in the middle of the open hall and began Healing every child she could find.
There were less than fifty. Mari had done an excellent job of getting the ones she could behind the shield without too much damage, but, in the end, not even fifty children made it through. Not quite fifty out of a village of two thousand people. Too few. Mother Night, too few.
Lucivar coughed roughly, breaking the brief moment of quiet. He hadn't spent an easier night than she had. The Jhinka had attacked through the night--sometimes small parties striking the shield and then fleeing, sometimes a couple hundred battering at the shield while he sliced them apart. There had been no sleep, no rest. Just a steadily increasing fatigue and physical drain of channeling the power stored in the Jewels as well as the steady drain of that power--a more rapid drain than he had anticipated, if Karla was any judge of things.
Because the shield hadn't extended more than a couple of inches below the ground, he'd discovered, too late, that the Jhinka had been using the piles of bodies for cover while they dug under the shield. Lucivar's mental shout had brought Karla dashing out from the building and together they'd held off that incursion--until Lucivar, acting more on instinct than anything else, left her to finish off the invasion on the south side of the shield while he raced to the north side. He rounded the corner just as one of the Jhinka crawled up through the ground and dashed towards the building's well. The earthenware jar the Jhinka had carried had contained enough concentrated poison to destroy their only water supply. So now the well had a separate Ebon-gray shield over it, just as the outer shield now went down five feet before turning inward and running underground until it reached the building's foundation.
She was going to have to send a fruit basket to Kerrigan and Hawkeye when she got back to Fandom. If she got back to Fandom.
Karla was exhausted, Lucivar's normally golden-brown skin was a sickly gray. The bones in Jaenelle's face and hands were beginning to protrude, sharp and stark. The Jhinka, the constant Healing, and the extra shielding were enough to wear them all down even had they come fresh and cheerful from the Keep that very day. Doing all this after several days of unrelenting physical exertion, well, was it any wonder they were already close to the end of their rope?
Lucivar was getting drained almost to his breaking point. He wasn't even bothering to fight off the Jhinka anymore, reserving all his power for the shield. Karla guessed it would take him another day, maybe two, before he was tapped out. After that, weak spots would appear in the shield--spots the witch storm could penetrate to entangle already exhausted minds, spots the Jhinka could break through to attack already exhausted bodies.
Karla had thought about insisting Jaenelle return to the Keep for help--Lucivar couldn't leave and keep the shield up and Karla herself was the weakest of the three. Her carefully husbanded power was already on the ebb. Brief snatches of rest and the occasional bite to eat were helping, but without more food than they had available and several hours of deep sleep, Karla was fighting a losing battle. By herself, she didn't think she'd make it out of the village. If the Jhinka didn't get her, the witch storm would. Jaenelle was the only one who could go.
But she'd dismissed the idea almost as quickly as she'd conceived it. Until the most desperate of the healings were done, nothing and no one would convince her to leave. If they admitted Lucivar's shield might fail, more than likely she would just throw a Black shield around the building, straining a body already overtaxed by the Healing web. Totally focused on the Healing, she wouldn't give a second thought to driving her body that much further beyond its limits. And Karla already knew what Jaenelle would say if she argued with her about the damage she was doing to herself: everything has a price.
So she held her tongue and her temper and pretended to believe they could hold out until someone from the Hall or the Keep came to look for them.
Too bad no one would.
Draining the dregs of her coffee, Karla turned to go back inside. They still hadn't even made it through half of the mortally wounded and Jaenelle needed her help. The Healing web stabilized them for a time, but the faster they could Heal the worst of their injuries, the better it would be for everyone.
Assuming any of them survived.
[NFI, NFB, leaving OOC increases your odds of winning the lottery. Events and some bits of text adapted from Chapter Thirteen of Heir to the Shadows. Hey look, no warnings needed! Part 6 (out of roughly eleventy-billion, damn you LJ post limits) of plot. ( I, II, III, and IV, V). Tomorrow, all Hell breaks loose.]
The hours had passed in a blur of of blood and Craft and work. First, they needed to triage the patients, to decide who needed to be brought upstairs with Jaenelle's giant Healing web and who could survive downstairs. Once someone was found with a wound that would prove fatal if left alone, Jaenelle would cocoon that person in Craft and gently bring them up to the second floor, where the web could stabilize them for a short time. Almost two hundred people were suffering from mortal injuries; their only luck coming from the fact that the Jhinka preferred to play with their victims first, causing them agony before they died. There were several people suffering from the same kind of gut wound that the maenad had inflicted on her.
Karla also spent some time treating the wounds of the least injured, stitching and splinting and setting. Mari needed more help in the kitchen and people who remained downstairs needed tending, too. She couldn't use Craft of them, Jaenelle's interdiction had been firm: Craft enough only to Heal the most life-threatening injuries and not a jot more. The only exception to that rule were the children. Neither Karla or Jaenelle could bear to see them bleeding or in pain, so after they had taken the last of the mortally wounded upstairs, Karla sat down in the middle of the open hall and began Healing every child she could find.
There were less than fifty. Mari had done an excellent job of getting the ones she could behind the shield without too much damage, but, in the end, not even fifty children made it through. Not quite fifty out of a village of two thousand people. Too few. Mother Night, too few.
Lucivar coughed roughly, breaking the brief moment of quiet. He hadn't spent an easier night than she had. The Jhinka had attacked through the night--sometimes small parties striking the shield and then fleeing, sometimes a couple hundred battering at the shield while he sliced them apart. There had been no sleep, no rest. Just a steadily increasing fatigue and physical drain of channeling the power stored in the Jewels as well as the steady drain of that power--a more rapid drain than he had anticipated, if Karla was any judge of things.
Because the shield hadn't extended more than a couple of inches below the ground, he'd discovered, too late, that the Jhinka had been using the piles of bodies for cover while they dug under the shield. Lucivar's mental shout had brought Karla dashing out from the building and together they'd held off that incursion--until Lucivar, acting more on instinct than anything else, left her to finish off the invasion on the south side of the shield while he raced to the north side. He rounded the corner just as one of the Jhinka crawled up through the ground and dashed towards the building's well. The earthenware jar the Jhinka had carried had contained enough concentrated poison to destroy their only water supply. So now the well had a separate Ebon-gray shield over it, just as the outer shield now went down five feet before turning inward and running underground until it reached the building's foundation.
She was going to have to send a fruit basket to Kerrigan and Hawkeye when she got back to Fandom. If she got back to Fandom.
Karla was exhausted, Lucivar's normally golden-brown skin was a sickly gray. The bones in Jaenelle's face and hands were beginning to protrude, sharp and stark. The Jhinka, the constant Healing, and the extra shielding were enough to wear them all down even had they come fresh and cheerful from the Keep that very day. Doing all this after several days of unrelenting physical exertion, well, was it any wonder they were already close to the end of their rope?
Lucivar was getting drained almost to his breaking point. He wasn't even bothering to fight off the Jhinka anymore, reserving all his power for the shield. Karla guessed it would take him another day, maybe two, before he was tapped out. After that, weak spots would appear in the shield--spots the witch storm could penetrate to entangle already exhausted minds, spots the Jhinka could break through to attack already exhausted bodies.
Karla had thought about insisting Jaenelle return to the Keep for help--Lucivar couldn't leave and keep the shield up and Karla herself was the weakest of the three. Her carefully husbanded power was already on the ebb. Brief snatches of rest and the occasional bite to eat were helping, but without more food than they had available and several hours of deep sleep, Karla was fighting a losing battle. By herself, she didn't think she'd make it out of the village. If the Jhinka didn't get her, the witch storm would. Jaenelle was the only one who could go.
But she'd dismissed the idea almost as quickly as she'd conceived it. Until the most desperate of the healings were done, nothing and no one would convince her to leave. If they admitted Lucivar's shield might fail, more than likely she would just throw a Black shield around the building, straining a body already overtaxed by the Healing web. Totally focused on the Healing, she wouldn't give a second thought to driving her body that much further beyond its limits. And Karla already knew what Jaenelle would say if she argued with her about the damage she was doing to herself: everything has a price.
So she held her tongue and her temper and pretended to believe they could hold out until someone from the Hall or the Keep came to look for them.
Too bad no one would.
Draining the dregs of her coffee, Karla turned to go back inside. They still hadn't even made it through half of the mortally wounded and Jaenelle needed her help. The Healing web stabilized them for a time, but the faster they could Heal the worst of their injuries, the better it would be for everyone.
Assuming any of them survived.
[NFI, NFB, leaving OOC increases your odds of winning the lottery. Events and some bits of text adapted from Chapter Thirteen of Heir to the Shadows. Hey look, no warnings needed! Part 6 (out of roughly eleventy-billion, damn you LJ post limits) of plot. ( I, II, III, and IV, V). Tomorrow, all Hell breaks loose.]