I should probably stop reading anything written in blood.

[upshore]

Characters: Miles Upshur, Raine Sage, Heather Stone
Date: November 20
Location: Healers' Guild
Situation: Oh look, a new guy. Oh look, he's on the verge of death. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?! Alex is mean that's why
Warnings/Rating: Blood, gore, swearing. #horrorgameprotagonistproblems

Oh, God, it hurts.

Whether I escape or die here, I am free.

All things considered, Miles would really, really prefer to escape. He’s not particularly optimistic, though. He’d felt better about it when he’d seen the dawn breaking outside the delivery entrance, but then the Walrider had shown up and the quarantine doors had bolted and it had all gone to hell. Again.

He stumbles and braces himself against a desk, and almost masochistically, he takes an inventory of his injuries. The most obvious ones are his fingers - thanks, Trager, you fucking cock - goodbye, right index and left ring. Sorry, Beyoncé, I guess nobody’s putting a ring on it now, he thinks, a little hysterically. Next up, some ribs that were cracked; no, definitely broken now. The Walrider dropping him twenty feet after impaling him just before it disappeared had definitely broken those ribs, and a leg. Also? The Walrider had impaled him. That wasn’t good.

Way, way, way down the list had to be the broken glass in his scalp, the splinters in his hands, and the stab in his shoulder where Trager had gotten him with his rusty shears. Yeah, I gotta re-up my tetanus shot, he thinks, trying to stay optimistic. He’ll need enough antibiotics to cure every potential bacterial infection he could possibly have gotten after crawling through mold and piss and shit and blood and water so stagnant he’d been surprised everyone in the place hadn’t been dying of malaria. Especially after crawling through all of that with open wounds.

Fuck, he’s dizzy. He could see it. He could see the light of day. Is he outside in the vehicle bay? He can’t tell. He must be. There’s not that cold stone under his hands, it’s something else now. Slightly chilly masonry. He’s breathing fresh air. It’s over. It’s over. He’s won.

He coughs, and dark blood spatters on the ground. He’s seen that before - guys in Afghanistan when they had shrapnel in their gut. Internal bleeding.

He’s going to die. He’s oddly at peace with the fact. At least he’s dying in the sunlight. At least he’s dying outside. Fuck Wernicke. Fuck Father Martin. Fuck Murkoff. Fuck all of them, fuck every single last person who’d tried to trap him and kill him. He’s won.

His vision is swimming; there are people nearby. People? A sign up ahead that he can’t quite read; he tries to focus on it. Healers’...

Doesn’t matter. Just hallucinating now. As long as he’s out and his notes and camcorder are out, there’s half a chance the information will get out to the public. The Last Testament of Miles Upshur. Hah.

He collapses to his knees, and to his side, and everything goes dark.

Comments

later; at the Guild

[ruinsprofessor]

Raine's still around -- she's been spending more of her time at the Guild lately -- when Miles is brought in, and she comes up from her office at a brisk clip. The others have done a good job, naturally, patching him up, but if there's something wrong internally then Raine's artes will likely be faster than a surgery.

Some things she can't fix. She might have been able to reattach his fingers if she were fast enough and if he still had them, but now the best Raine will be able to do is ensure clean healing of what remains.

So she stops at the man's bedside, pausing before casting only to ask. "Have you previously been exposed to magical healing, and have you ever noted any adverse effects if so?" It does pay to ask; some people have, and he doesn't appear to be dying instantly.

[upshore]

It's just as well that Raine's going to heal him non-invasively, because if anyone comes at him with sharp objects - especially medical sharp objects - he is going to lose what little is left of his mind.

When she asks her question, though, he's not at all certain that he hasn't.

"What?" he says hoarsely. After his night, he is disinclined to believe that the supernatural exists as anything other than misunderstood or wildly misappropriated science. "...no...?"

[ruinsprofessor]

That reaction suggests to Raine that she has another one of those who don't like acknowledging magic. Well, that can be helped. She nods to him. "If you experience significant additional pain, yell or nudge me."

She's carrying a staff, a mahogany thing a little shorter than she capped with concentric brass circles. She sets the butt of it on the ground and half-closes her eyes, and white light appears beneath her, forming a circle full of complicated, angular shapes. The most concentrated arte, to compensate for Miles' apparent humanity and lack of other augmentation. "Cure," she says some few seconds later, intent like it's an imperative directed at his body, and warm pale light falls over Miles, sinking toward the worst of his injuries.

[upshore]

Significant additional pain? Yeah, like he'd be able to tell at this point. Someone get this guy a morphine cocktail with crushed xanax around the rim, stat!

He can't see the glowing circle beneath her, but he sure as hell can see the result. The light that settles onto him is making him think that he's hallucinating, which, honestly, isn't beyond the pale, given everything.

But at least it's making him feel better. Maybe someone had hooked him up with morphine after all. Thanks, modern medical science! And opiates!

(Sorry, Raine. You'll get due credit eventually.)

[ruinsprofessor]

"Hm," Raine says, mostly to herself, studying Miles over again. There's a similar brief light show, and-- "Inspect magic," she murmurs, eyes distant as she reaches for a more detailed reading on him. She's looking primarily for any lingering injuries she can't see; if he had that much internal damage she isn't going to trust her eyes alone.

At least there's been progress, and he's certainly not in any danger of dying soon. "How do you feel?"

[upshore]

There's some lingering internal damage, true - but Raine might notice that it's healing a little faster than her arte might account for all on its own. It was happening even faster before the arte was applied, but at least he's not dying anymore.

"...better?" his voice is still hoarse.

[ruinsprofessor]

"Good." Raine studies him with a little more leisure now, taking the measure of him. That's... interesting. "You heal at a slightly accelerated rate compared to most humans. That will make this easier." He's still not at the level of someone equipped with an exsphere, but that's for the best in the long run.

She takes a moment to calculate the length of the day and how many more patients she's likely to see, and if she can spare the energy expenditure before she'll have a chance to eat. After a few seconds Raine nods to herself. "You'll survive; but unless you object, I'd like to heal you the rest of the way. Internal damage can be slightly more finicky."

[upshore]

Miles is vaguely surprised by the remark about accelerated healing, but there's too much going on to pay it much mind. After all...internal injuries, accelerated healing...that's good, right? Maybe it's why he's always been able to get back up after he's been knocked down.

There's something off about this, but he's not sure what.

You know. Aside from the whole 'magic' thing.

"Sure. Why not." After the night he's had, being as hale and whole as possible sounds like a really great prospect.

[ruinsprofessor]

Raine is beginning to suspect he's in some sort of shock or dissociative state; she's getting none of the usual questions she would from a new person. If he was familiar with magic, that would explain some, at least.

She casts once more before speaking again, however, a repeat of the earlier light show and warmth, carried out with an economy to her few gestures that suggests she has done this quite a lot. "There," she says when she's done, focusing on Miles again. "Regrettably, the physical trauma will be all I can heal. I assume you came to us from a violent situation?" She's angling only to ascertain something of his situation, not asking specifics. Yet, at least.

[upshore]

Raine would be correct on that assumption. Being shocked/numb/dissociative is the best that he could hope for right now. That, and he's on the knife's edge of sanity right now, so he's really not about to question anything weird that is not immediately trying to kill him.

When she asks her question, though, he gives her a bit of a look and raises his hands. "Yeah, a little bit." At least he's feeling better now, and not like he's been thrown around by a cloud of death nanites like an orca playing with a seal...for his most recent injuries. He sighs and lowers his hands, looking up at the ceiling. "Not how I wanted to spend my night," he mumbles.

[ruinsprofessor]

"I find that people rarely intend to spend their evenings being injured," Raine says, with a wry little smile. It fades as she looks him over again. "My apologies-- I can't regenerate limbs." And he was brought in without the missing fingers. Still, he should be able to adjust with some practice, even if it alters his grip and writing or typing patterns. "I can leave you to rest if you'd prefer, but I'm assuming you'll have some questions about where you've wound up."

[upshore]

Miles exhales slowly. He'd resigned himself already to never having those fingers again, but...it still hurts to hear, from a...medical?...perspective.

"Yeah. First...where the hell am I? Since you're bothering to keep me alive, I'm guessing you're not with Murkoff."

[ruinsprofessor]

"You're in the Healers' Guild, in the city of Keeliai," Raine explains, drawing up a chair from nearby. She doesn't so much sit in it as perches, one leg tucked up underneath her. "Let me reiterate that you're safe here, and no one will harm you without coming through me, first. This is a different world from the one you're used to. May I assume you're from an Earth?"

It was often a safe enough bet, these days, and people from Earth seemed the most likely to have a disagreement with magic.

[upshore]

"Keeliai," Miles says, sounding it out, trying to determine the word's source. "Southeast Asia?"

The next thing she says, though, makes his brain stop working right for a second. As in, 'auditory_cortex.exe has suffered a fatal error, please see the manual for further instructions'.

"No, uh, we're on Earth. This is Earth." Because if he's suddenly on the fuckin' moon he is going to lose it.

[ruinsprofessor]

Raine shakes her head. "This isn't the world you come from. My apologies. I suppose I shouldn't have sprung this on you so quickly." He did ask, and she's hardly going to lie to him, but it does seem that Miles has had an exceptionally difficult day. Some more discretion may be warranted. "If you'd prefer, I can leave you to rest."

[upshore]

Saying that Miles has had 'an exceptionally difficult day' is like saying that the Atlantic Ocean is big - technically correct, but it fails to capture the scope of it all.

"No, I need to know." He's already losing it. Why not go all the way?

[ruinsprofessor]

Raine is excellent at understatement. She hesitates a moment before nodding and going on.

"The city you're in now is called Keeliai. It sits on the back of a vast turtle known as Tu Vishan, who swims the seas of this world. This world is called Konryu, to the best of my knowledge. While I don't have a map of its landmasses to hand, I've seen maps of Earth recreated. It would require a great deal of continental shift for the two to be the same. You've been temporarily transported from your own world to this one, and at the moment, there is no voluntary way to return." She delivers all this in the same calm, level tone, as though she's reciting facts for a student, listing one after another. "If you require proof, I can take you high enough to see the shape of the turtle when you're feeling up to it."

[upshore]

Yeah, everything sounds insane and made-up, but before last night, the whole thing with the Nazis and human cells generating nanites by being horrified to insanity would have sounded insane and made-up, too.

"I'd like to see that, actually," he says. "I just prefer to check things out with my own eyes. I'm sure you understand that. Not that I don't believe you."

[ruinsprofessor]

She quirks a wry smile, small but genuine. "You're willing to accept it, if given proof. That's a good enough start, for me. I hardly expect you to trust me instantly, after all."

Especially not when he's come to her in that state. "Perhaps tomorrow? You're in good health now, but it would still be best for you to rest and eat."