(closed)

[magequit]

[One would think that the second trip down through the dungeon would be easier than the first. They knew the route, they knew what monsters they'd be facing... they'd killed much of what was in their way, and it would take a while before new monsters came to roost in their place. They had a more solid plan (one that Marcille and Laius didn't particularly want to go through), they were better prepared and equipped... it should've been a cakewalk.

The trip down into the depths was easy, yes. But their goal... their goal had been the hard part. Fight the Sorcerer, free Farlyn from their control wasn't an easy task no matter how confident Laius had been, no matter how determined they were to save the girl that meant so much to them. And boy, did it take a lot out of them. The Sorcerer and the possessed Farlyn were a terrible combination, and the fight had very nearly cost them their lives...but they managed. Somehow, but some miracle, their little jumbled-together group had succeeded.

But Farlyn had died once again.

This time. This time tough, it would be different. Marcille knew it would! They still needed parts from the dragon Farlyn had grown into, because they needed something to fix her lower body. But fixing her legs was a lot easier than having to rebuild her entire body from the skeletal system up. And if she made a few changes to the runes of her magic circle, spoke a few words differently, than maybe...

She couldn't think of much else after that, because the flashing light and the surge of magic as she poured as much mana as she could into the circle knocked her clear off her feet. She stayed like that, waiting out the surge until it all ebbed, and then ever so cautiously she looked up, to where her friend had been laid out.

Ohhhh no. No no no....Something.... something was already wrong.]

Fa.... Farlyn...?

Comments

[clericalerror]

[Waking up from death was not unlike being roused out of a deep and dreamless sleep. Sometimes consciousness reasserted itself all at once, snapping into place with stark and sudden clarity. At other times, the outside world intruded by degrees, in brief flashes of awareness that grew stronger and more frequent as the seconds ticked by. Marcille's voice is a light in that darkness, that black ocean of insensate oblivion, so compelling as to be almost hypnotic; a siren's song for a wounded soul.

Farlyn opens her eyes and slowly, slowly manages to turn her head despite the exhaustion weighing on her like miasma, like stone.]

....Marcille? What...

[She tries to sit up, more out of unthinking instinct than any clear and decided thought, but doesn't get even halfway there before falling over. Her sense of balance is more than off-kilter — it feels nonexistent, a nothing-place where equilibrium once resided. And it's no wonder, considering that she now weighs maybe a tenth of what she did before. The mountain of flesh and muscle belonging to her dragon half has been stripped away entirely, reduced to a pair of slender human legs blighted in several places by uneven patches of blood-red scales. The immense, powerful wings are gone as well, diminished and reproportioned for a human's frame; in lieu of a monster's sinewy hindquarters, they've sprouted from between Farlyn's shoulderblades, curling helplessly around the rest of her form in a self-protective gesture that hides most of her nudity but not the full extent to which feathers still gild her upper torso: the curve of her spine, the sweep of her collarbone, the swell of her stomach, tracing ribcaging and the hollow of her back.

A weak, startled noise echoes faintly off the walls as Farlyn collapses to the floor, more surprised than pained but still carrying a note of genuine discomfort. A wing is caught beneath her at a bad angle, adding to the disorientation flooding her senses. Farlyn struggles to get up again, to turn over, to move, to do anything besides make hurt, helpless sounds under her breath, body racing ahead of a mind still dazed and confused from unorthodox revival magic.]

[magequit]

[Even as Marcille stares in muted shock, her brain is running a mile a minute in several directions; how did this happen? Where did her magic go wrong? Were there parts there that she shouldn't have used? Even with the Sorcerer dead, will Farlyn still feel some vestiges of their control? Is this really Farlyn or is it that thing they fought just now?

It's too much all at once, and it makes her head hurt, but she can push all of that aside the moment she sees Farlyn struggling. She doesn't even bother glancing at the others - at Chilchak protesting from a distance or Senshi's worried glances as he tends to an unconscious Laius - before she runs over to Farlyn, one hand gripping her staff so hard her knuckles are going white while the other reaches out to her friend. She doesn't touch her just yet, not wanting to make the disorientation any worse, but gods, does she want to...]

I-It's me, Farlyn. You... you're going to be okay, I promise, just let me help you...!

[clericalerror]

[It takes a minute, two minutes, three, each moment seeming to stretch out forever, but somehow Farlyn relaxes. A little. The feathers scattered all over her upper body begin to smooth down; Farlyn goes more or less still, save for the helpless twitching of her wings. Marcille's presence is something to focus on, to cling to and absorb herself in. Her best friend's distress, her anxiety and fear, these things make it easier for Farlyn to try and push aside her own.]

...Okay. [Her voice is soft, her breathing losing its ragged edge as she tries to ignore the bizarre, uncomfortable, and (if only for the moment) alien stimuli of a crumpled wing and ruffled feathers and open air on smooth, hard scales. An attempt is made to take Marcille's hand.] I-I don't think I can move....sorry.

[She's so tired, so weak, her mana levels dangerously depleted. It's frightening, in ways that Farlyn would struggle to articulate even in her most lucid of moments, to be like this. To lack power when she's most in need of it to fix whatever has gone awry.

She looks away, an ashamed smile playing around her mouth, and finally becomes at least dimly aware of the rest of the group, if not the totality of her own predicament.]

Laius? ....everyone?

[magequit]

[Of course. Of course Farlyn is worried about everyone but herself. Marcille can't blame her, because it was a tough battle with a lot of close calls, and they both know Laius has a habit of just charging straight in. But it frustrates Marcille as much as it impresses her that Farlyn never once stops to think of herself for once, even as she's currently stuck as some sort of... strange humanoid chimera? Draconic human??? She's not even sure what she can call this...]

In rough shape, but fine. Senshi's patching Laius up now.

[She tugs at the cloak wrapped around her, a bit tattered after the recent battle but still intact, and pulls it off so she can offer Farlyn at least some kind of modesty before the boys drum up the courage to approach. As she does, she gently tries to help Farlyn into a more comfortable upright position, or at least tries to get most of her weight off those odd new wings of hers.]

Where does it hurt most? I... I don't know how much mana I have left, but I can heal you up enough to get you standing. I think...

[clericalerror]

[Farlyn almost seems not to hear, or even notice Marcille's aid at all, despite how obediently she moves into each gentle, guiding touch of the elf's hands, the dazed look in her eyes sharpening as she watches the dwarf tend to Laius. Her brother, one of her best friends, for whom in her right mind Farlyn would die a thousand deaths if that was required. What fate saw fit to demand of them.

Protective instincts rise up to steady her, slowing the whirling cartwheel of half-formed thoughts still sloshing blindly through dark waters, and then briefly overwhelm her. Without speaking, without hesitating, Farlyn reaches out again, this time toward her unconscious sibling with desperate purpose. Thinking about nothing more and nothing less than reaching Laius with a healing spell, something to wake him and mend his hurts and make sure he was okay, still okay, still—

.....

Nothing happens, of course. Not without enough mana to afford the expenditure, or a staff to guide it, or an incantation to give it form. The purging of the mad sorcerer's influence, however incomplete in the physical sense, had nevertheless been indiscriminate. Overwhelming power had vanished alongside control and domination, and now Farlyn winces as her body protests the reckless move, feeling the stress flash through her nerve endings like the sparking circuits of an overclocked machine. She curls against Marcille, visibly unhappy....and yet soothed, just a little, by their closeness.

It had to be taken on faith that Laius was warm, alive, safe. At least Marcille was close enough to reaffirm such a truth through touch.]

Nothing really hurts, I guess. I'm just.....tired. I don't think I have any mana left either.

[She will, in time, become aware of a light ache between her shoulderblades where the wings broke skin and fused to bone, a faint itching sensation all around the seams of her scales. For now it's miracle enough that Farlyn, forced to consider other things, at last glances down and finally sees those changes. Sees herself.

A gasp—

(A memory blooms in the frozen stillness between heartbeats, sudden and awful as a knife-stab in the dark: crushing one of Sureau's troupe beneath a massive taloned foot, holding another aloft and helpless, feeling nothing while she did either except savage triumph and territorial rage and the slavish obedience of a fiercely loyal pet.)

—and then Farlyn clenches her eyes shut against the memory, against the horror, biting her lower lip until the skin splits open.]

[magequit]

Hey, wait--!

[Of course. Of course one of Farlyn's first semi-coherent thoughts would be to try to help Laius. Marcille isn't angry, nor would she really scold Farlyn for it, but she just... part of her wishes that Farlyn would think about herself for once. Even after being brought back to life for the second time in only a few weeks, she's still trying to push all of that aside. Another part of Marcille hates thinking that, because that's what makes Farlyn Farlyn. It's just... one out of many things about her that drew her towards the human.

Still, she was planning to scold Farlyn just a little, because no matter what she was trying to do, moving around too much so soon after a revival (and one Marcille still isn't sure has any kind of less-obvious side effects than what she can already see), but when she sees the pained look crossing her friend's face, her ears droop and something in her chest clenches.

Marcille shuffles a little, so that she can sit in front of Farlyn, to give her something more than just her brother's unconscious body to focus on.]

Farlyn, what's wrong? Is something hurting? Where, can you let me see?? [She reaches out, brushing back some of Farlyn's hair from her face.] Is it your head?

[clericalerror]

[At first, the motion sparks to life the sudden (and ridiculous, not to mention selfish) worry that Marcille is stepping back to reclaim some distance, out of fear or revulsion or wary suspicion. Or all three. The idea alone is like salt rubbed into that ugly memory — a twisting blade in Farlyn's gut. But instead Marcille is somehow still here, offering a concern that Farlyn is finding more and more undeserved with each passing second as the haze inside her skull continues to dissipate. Offering kindness, despite everything.

(There's something.....something under the surface of her skin, her soul, like shrapnel stitched up inside a wound but so warm—)

So Farlyn tilts her head into Marcille's fingers, instinctively drawing comfort from the gesture despite a divided heart. But she doesn't open her eyes.]

....I remember hurting people. [Her breathing hitches as she remembers, in flash of pain and sound and surprise mingled with predatory rage, being stabbed from behind by a dark-haired man and then splitting his head open. Attacking Laius. Almost skewering Marcille with a powerful incantation.] I hurt everyone before.....before I woke up....and for a long time before that. Didn't I?

[It's not the wings that bother her. Not the feathers, nor the scales, and certainly not the bloody lip. The quiet but unmistakable dread in Farlyn's voice, the deepening sense of guilt and shame, makes it clear where such priorities lie.]

[magequit]

You... it wasn't...

[Marcille wants to lie. She wants to try and say no nothing happened this is just a weird side-effect of your revival, but... she can't hide it. Laius might want to hide it, but Chilchak may say something, Senshi might say something... anyone in any of the other groups might say something, and then Farlyn would have to deal with that knowledge coming from someone who is likely much less forgiving]

You weren't yourself. [She doesn't move her hand, giving Farlyn another point to focus on and steady herself with.] The sorcerer... they were controlling you. What you did wasn't your fault at all.

[clericalerror]

.....

[Farlyn says nothing to that, as though perhaps waiting for a happier answer. Or maybe just a convenient pit to swallow her whole and lock her away. She's tensed up again before Marcille has finished speaking, so tightly wound that she's trembling, with stiff wings and bristled feathers. Another memory flashes across her mind — violence dealt out by her hand, blind hate and savage bloodlust, the inescapable sensation of having her base awareness steadily devoured by a secondary conscious — followed by another, then another.

They rain down upon her like a flurry of blows. Farlyn winces at each one, enduring them without complaint, muttering something under her breath in a low, flat voice too soft to be heard.

"What I did. Yes."

Expression strained but in control, Farlyn forces herself to lift her head and look at the damage around them. Inhale, exhale. Put on a brave face and swallow the pain, because — because she had no right to fall apart just yet.]

Are they still here? The sorcerer, I mean.

[Traces of Marcille's runic circle still remain, already faded and spent. Burnt out like an overloaded light bulb. Farlyn stares at the markings sketched over stone with undisguised disquiet, feeling the fine hairs on the back of her neck stick up. What she's really asking is if that sorcerer is still alive.]