[Medieval Roleplay] The Power of an Archmage

[Shinko]

((Roleplay with Tiger))

When a rash of unexplained deaths occurred in the Corvid capital of Solis, initially most of the mages had assumed it was some rogue beast or spirit. Such things turned up occasionally, drawn by the magic that oozed from every brick of the city. Nothing but a nuisance that would be found and rooted out in due time.

Yet one month turned into two, and then three, and still they did not find the killer. More people turned up dead, but whatever was killing them was clearly very intelligent, because it evaded all attempts to pin it down. Worse still, the methods of killing were bizarre and grotesque, and didn't match up with anything that was familiar to the mages. Eventually, they sent word to the elven knights in Nid'aigle. Elves lived for many centuries, after all, so maybe their long memories would have record of something like this happening before.

The elves dutifully sent two squads, fourteen of their knights, to Solis' aid. However, when they examined the evidence with their own eyes, they were equally baffled. They had never seen anything like this either. The only thing that was crystal clear to them was that the killing was being done with some sort of magic.

However, the whole truth had turned out to be much, much worse. With the help of the elves, Solis' knights were finally able to track down the murderer, who turned out not to be a monster all all, but a human man. A puny human mage had been outfoxing the Corvid mages and using magic none of them recognized to brutally slaughter people?

Yes, he had- and when the knights moved to apprehend him, they realized how. He was trying to cast some odd new spell, one he had been perfecting for months, when one of the knights made the mistake of hitting him. The pain of the blow, the panic of knowing he was caught, and the sheer cheated rage came together in his soul, blasting open the wall he'd built around his own brain and setting loose a flood of power even he hadn't been aware of. It siphoned into the spell he'd been casting, and every knight in the room was flung back as the power settled under their skin.

The sociopathic murder was an archmage.

Fortunately, in that casting he had pulled himself badly, leaving him unconscious and easily captured for later execution. But the damage was done. The spell he'd cast was in fact a curse, and it had hit every knight who'd been in the room trying to apprehend him. Wherever the knight had been hurt in the fight, and wherever they had scars from old battle wounds, now they had deep, horrific injuries that absolutely refused to even begin healing. They did not respond to any sort of magic either, and in fact when a few healers tried to work on the cursed wounds, they found themselves locked into the futile casting. Power was pulled out of them trying to heal wounds that would not be fixed, and someone else was forced to knock the healers out lest they be pulled to death.

Desperate, the Solis mages had sent for the only person likely to be able to help- Leif Jade, the archmage who lived in Medieville. In the meantime, they just tried to help the wounded knights cling to life.

While salve to stave off infection and pressure to keep back bleeding was doing some good, it could only slow the inevitable. Two of the knights, one human from the Jades and one an elf from Nid'aigle, had already died. The wounds that the curse had restored on them were deep, and had almost proved fatal the first time around. Upon regaining them, the two hadn't stood a chance.

Now, the one who looked the most likely to fall next was the half-human, half-elf knight from Nid'aigle, Sieg Braham. For reasons of his own, he had spent over a decade refusing any and all magical healing, and his body was almost more scar tissue then healthy skin. Now he was lying on a cot in the Jade manor in Solis, covered in oozing burns that only the near-constant application of salve prevented from becoming infected. When he spoke, his voice emerged as barely more then a whisper because of the deep laceration in his neck.

In spite of the obvious pain he was in, he seemed oddly determined to be optimistic. He trusted the Jade archmage, with whom he had forged an odd personal friendship many years ago, and he knew that Leif would do everything in his power to set this right.

SPOILER: Click to show

A sociopathic archmage cast a curse on several knights from Solis and Nid'aigle that turns all of their old battle scars back into real, deadly wounds that refuse to heal. Desperate for answers to this curse, the mages of Solis send for Leif to see if he can somehow help. Also Sieg is dying, yay! 8D

[Tiger]

It had been so urgent they’d sent phoenixes.

The two huge raptors had landed on the lawn of Marson manor late in the morning. They weren’t merely messenger phoenixes, either - that would have been worrying enough. The emerald-green birds, the edges of their feathers shimmering iridescent gold, were fully-grown war phoenixes. The riderless bird was able to look Leif straight in the eye, and the other towered a full head over him. The taller phoenix’s rider - one of the fireknights, the lightly-armoured Corvid warriors who rode phoenixes - explained that there was a crisis in Solis requiring an archmage’s assistance. The phoenix with no rider but a saddle was meant for Leif to ride back to Solis.

After the requisite bow and introduction to make sure the phoenix approved of carrying Leif, the archmage was given an hour to pack his things and make arrangements for while he was gone. The fireknight followed Leif around Marson Manor as the mage gathered supplies and books, and explained as much as he could about the situation. A curse, non-healing injuries, re-opened injuries, a cruel trap woven into the spell to overpull the mages who tried to assist...and an archmage.

Another archmage - ‘Woo above, another archmage. Leif had dealt with many strange magics and perversions of magic over the past few years in Medieville, but another archmage’s curse was a possibility he hadn’t even considered - and it was a terrifying one. This was going to test all of his knowledge and skill and magical strength.

The fireknight told him the man was dead, which meant at least that Leif wouldn’t have to fight him in an inevitable escape from confinement - but it also meant they couldn’t try to get information from the man about how to undo the spell.

Then the fireknight explained that they probably couldn’t have gotten much information about it anyway, and proceeded to stammer through an explanation the mages had clearly tried to give him - it took a few minutes but Leif eventually saw around the confused relays of jargon. “You - you triggered his powers to release?” A cold fear had gripped his stomach - Leif’s freshly-released magic had healed the wounds of an eagle’s attack in a method he still didn’t understand and probably couldn’t undo, leaving the tattoo-looking scars on his face and upper arm. What had this mage’s magic done, wild and unrestrained and by all accounts limitless in power and ingenuity?

But he understood why they had sent for him, at least...if anyone had a chance at breaking an archmage’s curse, it was another archmage.

Leif had prepared to pen a letter to Kirin explaining where he was going, but it turned out he didn’t have to - Kirin came to the manor. There were two Corvus phoenixes on the lawn of the manor, preening their feathers and piping phoenix song at curious children. It wouldn’t take much time for such news to spread, even at this relatively early hour, and Kirin knew enough about phoenixes to guess that something was wrong. It was a short farewell, but at least it was in person.

The letter Leif ended up writing was to Morgaine Braham. The fireknight’s comment about the Nid’aigle knights might have been offhand to him, but Leif pounced on the mention like a cat after a feather. The fact that the fireknight recognized Sieg Braham’s name when Leif asked it, and the grim set of his face, were not good signs. Leif tried to be reassuring in his letter to Morgaine, but he didn’t have the time to proofread it, certainly not as much time as he would need to check for tone, before sending it off with a messenger.

Leif had always wondered what it would be like to ride a phoenix, but these were not the circumstances under which he’d wanted to find out. The fireknight helped him figure out the surprisingly few straps and hooks that made up the phoenix’s saddle, and gave him a quick tutorial in the use of phoenix-reins, which were secured to a strip of material at the base of the neck rather than at the base of the beak. Phoenixes had much longer necks than horses or gryphons, after all, and managing the slack of reins over that much distance was detrimental to both raptor and rider. Leif was told - very sternly - that the phoenix would handle most of the flying itself, and follow the fireknight’s lead, so he shouldn’t tug on the reins unnecessarily.

Once the takeoff was done, it was...surprisingly uneventful. The phoenixes were fast but incredibly smooth flyers, and in the clear skies of Medieville there was not much to complain about. Leif kept his eyes forward instead of looking down too often; his stomach was twisting enough with worry without being aggravated by active reminders of just how high up they were. As promised, the phoenix did pretty much all of the work; every so often, it glanced back at Leif and chirruped, as if it sensed his gloomy mood.

They stopped for a night at the Corvus border - even the phoenixes needed their rest - but they weren’t able to sleep for long before the fireknight insisted they get up and ride the rest of the way to Solis. There was a thunderstorm bearing down on them already. They made it into the city just minutes before the rain hit. The rainfall was faster and heavier than anything Leif had seen in Medieville, but it was about average for Corvus. He could already hear thunder growling, and flashes of lightning made the already-damp white-stone buildings and the the colorful mosaic murals gleam. Leif had only been back to Solis a few times since leaving for the funeral of King Starmey all those years ago - each time felt strange and almost surreal, but today, Leif had too much to worry about to focus on that weird nostalgia.

The fireknight led Leif through the familiar Jade Manor halls; they now smelled heavily of smoke and brewing potions. The smell was strong enough that Leif could pick out a few individual ingredients as they burned. None of the church memories they brought back were pleasant - lots of pain potions and strengthening draughts for people on their last breaths. Leif had brought his own satchel of potions, but he doubted they would be more than a temporary boost in stock for the healers at this point.

Outside of a heavy door, the fireknight paused. Speaking just loud enough to be heard over the rain that pattered at the windows, he said, “I’m going to take you to our most injured knight first, Archmage.”

“I can’t do much for him without looking at the spell first,” Leif warned.

“Very well, but I think you’ll want to see him regardless. Before I take you to him...Archmage, you haven’t seen much war, correct?”

“I fought in and served triage at the Bloody Coronation.” Leif, guessing what the man was trying to warn him of, added, “I had seminarian training in Our Woo of Charity, so I’ve seen my share of injuries.”

The fireknight gave Leif a look he couldn’t quite read. Skepticism, maybe, or disapproval? “I still doubt you’ve seen a man this badly wounded, Master Leif. All of the knights’ old wounds returned.”

“Yes, you told me that.” Leif couldn’t keep a bite of impatience out of his voice - he understood that this wasn’t a schoolyard infirmary, and the longer they stood out here, the closer people came to dying.

“You asked about Sir Braham,” the fireknight said. “If you know him, then - “

Leif suddenly understood - the knight had spent years refusing magical treatment; according to both the knight and his mother, Sieg was a mess of old scars. “Take me to him,” Leif ordered. “Now.”

The fireknight edged back slightly, maybe at the hostility of Leif’s tone, but he straightened his shoulders as he reached for the door handle. “Do not try healing magic, Archmage, unless it would work differently for you. I know I told you already - but we need your help. Don’t force us to knock you unconscious so it doesn’t kill you.”

Leif nodded impatiently, and the fireknight finally pushed open the door. A long hallway stretched before them, all cool tile floor and walls unadorned but for a painting of Lord Woo in gold at the hallway’s end. This part of the manor had been used as an emergency infirmary before. Leif could smell the blood and the healing salves already. He forced himself to take a deep breath despite the smells; this was just like the church, just like the triage - he had done this before, and he could do it again. There wasn’t much time to brace himself, as Sieg was in the nearest room to the door. The fireknight opened the door for him, but let Leif enter alone.

For a moment, the room was silent except for the distant sound of rain hammering the manor’s exterior and Sieg’s breathing. Once, Morgaine had asked Leif if he’d ever seen Sieg’s many scars. The mage had not; the one opportunity he’d had would have been at the coronation’s triage, and by the time Leif had been free of running around taking care of others’ injuries, he’d been half-conscious from blood loss and the pull; noticing that Sieg was shirtless and scarred had been beyond his faculties at that point. He wasn’t pulled or woozy from blood loss this time.

To the fireknight, Leif said, “I’ll need someone to get my books and the rest of my paper. I have some with me, I can get started now, but I’ll need those references and more writing space. …Send someone later to get books from the library for me, too. I’ll write the titles down.”

He pulled up a chair and sat next to Sieg, careful to avoid blocking the path of the healer in attendance. There were so many burns and so much blood...Leif had known Sieg refused magical healing for a long time, but seeing that in evidence…Woo, I don’t know how he’s lasted this long already…

“Hail, Sir Sieg,” Leif said quietly, drawing his wand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you in better shape."

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif leaves Medieville via phoenix and arrives in Corvus. He’s taken to Sieg, who’s not doing well. There, Leif, it took you three pages to say all that and I summed it up in two sentences.

[Shinko]

Sieg had been in and out of consciousness for most of the time since the mage's spell had hit him initially. His entire body hurt, and the more time passed the worse his condition got. It didn't help in the least that the burns covering most of his body had been the result of a battle he still hadn't fully recovered from the trauma of.

Occasionally the healers would come in, and though they tried to feign optimism he had been a knight for over a decade. He knew battle wounds, and he knew that he was losing way, way too much of his body's fluids between the oozing of his burns and the blood loss. If they couldn't find a way to undo whatever the sociopath had done, Sieg knew he was going to die. His time was probably measured in hours at best. But he'd been told that the Jades were sending for Leif, and he hung on to the hope that the archmage would have some way of undoing this nightmare.

In spite of the fact that he had been lying on a bed not moving for some time, he was panting as if he'd run a marathon. His heartbeat fluttered in his chest, trying to oxygenate his body with an increasingly low amount of blood to work with. Worsening the dehydration from his wounds was the cold sweat that his body broke out in. The rain hammering on the window felt like some sort of tease, because no matter how much water he drank his tongue still felt dry and cottony in his mouth.

When the door open, Sieg turned his head to see who was coming in this time. To his surprise and pleasure, it seemed that someone had finally managed to get Leif down to Solis. The distress on the archmage's face was obvious, though he gave orders to the Corvid knight coherently enough.

"Hail, Sir Sieg," he said quietly, drawing his wand. "I’m sorry I couldn’t find you in better shape."

The knight laughed, though with his neck wound it emerged more as a wet, ragged cough. Speaking in a voice that was barely more then a whisper, he said, "Least I'm still breathing, for the moment. Can't say the same for the 'Pit spawn that pulled this." He winced as the words made his dry lips crack, and he tasted blood. Only a few drops, but it wasn't like he had a lot to spare at this point.

"Y'know, usually when someone hits a mage it breaks their concentration and stops the magic. None of us was really expecting that to... blow up in our faces like it did. And it was so strange, I've been attacked by magic before and usually I feel the affects, but not the actual magic. But... I felt this. It kinda reminded me of the thing you did at the coronation, with that healing spell that was cold. But it wasn't cold, it was... Sticky. Like tar. And then it just ripped me open, like someone yanked the sticky off too fast."

His eyes suddenly took on a light of worry, and he asked softly, "Does Mother know?"

SPOILER: Click to show

Long story short, the most immediate threat to Sieg's life is dehydration from blood and fluid loss from his wounds and burns. He greets Leif with a quip, as per usual form, then because he's a bit confused from the blood loss and dehydration rambles a bit unprompted about the actual fight with the mage. Then he asks if Morgaine knows what's happened.

[Tiger]

Leif understood why he’d been brought to see Sieg first. The knight was not doing well - Leif was surprised he was conscious and speaking rationally - and he would need the curse broken first. It was also evident that Leif didn’t have much time to figure this out. The reopened and unhealing burns alone were probably enough to kill the half-elf, but with all the other wounds piled atop them...Again, Leif was amazed he’d lasted this long.

Sieg made a sound that might have been a laugh had it come from a healthier throat, and gave a whispery greeting. His voice sounded so dry...Leif wondered if there was a way to circumvent the healing trap and at least rehydrate Sieg, but he’d better not try it until he had a better idea of how the spell was built.

He was suddenly very, fiercely glad the archmage who had done this was dead. Seeing Sieg this badly hurt, knowing the other knights and protectors of Corvus couldn’t be much better off… And while they’d set camp, the fireknight had explained to Leif the grisly and mysterious murders that this archmage had committed. Leif had initially thought the magic the knights had inadvertently unleashed was aimless, directionless; now he was positive malice had guided its path, just as pain and fear had guided Leif’s toward healing his wounds. Malice...or outright evil. ‘Pit-spawned might just be a literal description in this case.

Leif listened to Sieg’s explanation of how the spell had been cast and how it had felt with a growing frown. “Usually hurting him would have stopped it - but that must have been his power’s...there’s not a good term for it, I guess it would still be a Release, even if it comes late... Anyway, If it was like mine, the magic wasn’t under his control at that point. Even knocking him out wouldn’t have stopped it.” The healer had stiffened for some reason; Leif glanced up but didn’t see anything to be alarmed by, so he moved on.

“It felt like episky? Maybe the spells are similar...” That wouldn’t be so bad - Episky was a relatively simple spell. Granted, it was an active spell, not a stationary one like this curse was, and so Leif had never tried to break it before...but maybe there was an episky-like series of runes in the spell somewhere, and perhaps if that could be broken, the rest of the curse would lose stability and collapse. “Whatever it is - I’ll fix it,” Leif promised.

“I sent a note to your mother before I left Medieville,” he told the half-elf in an equally quiet voice. “She should have gotten it by now. I didn’t have much to tell her at the time other than that you were hurt, but I thought she ought to know. So,” Leif said with a forced attempt at humor, “now I have twice the motivation to break this curse; she has time to plan and chose the best way to kill me if I don’t manage it.”

He wasn’t entirely lying about it being good motivation; not that he thought Morgaine would kill him, and he would have wanted to help Sieg regardless - but the very thought of having to deliver such news to Morgaine was heart-wrenching.

“Go ahead and get some more rest, Sieg. I’m going to get started figuring this out - don’t mind me if I start babbling.” Leif took a deep breath, and tapped his wand to the air above Sieg, a familiar set of runestones in his mind. A green, mist-like light flooded from his wand, and gathered...gathered...gathered…Leif’s brow furrowed.

The mist finally stopped - there was a lot of it now, casting a faint emerald light on the walls. The healer had frozen in place, staring at the fog. Leif’s stomach tossed and swooped like a bird caught in a tornado as the mist started to fade from sight. That was too much - this isn’t just a little cantrip, this is…

In the air over the knight, the runes started to appear. A line here, a chunk there, a fork that fed into two different sections, borders wrapping sections of other runes, chains of unfinished bits of spellwork spiraling off the main chunk of the spell like the broken roots of uprooted plants, knotted chunks of runes that shouldn’t be bound together and physically hurt a little to look at, pieces that lay atop other pieces…

Leif slowly stood up as the spell grew larger and larger. It was enormous. It was a mess - it was the sloppiest, most hectic spell Leif had ever seen, and he couldn’t believe it was staying together. Staring at the spell, his eyes darting over the dozens of rune combinations, Leif realized there was a deep, pounding sound in his ears. Not his heartbeat - but something pulsing, just...out of synch with something about the spell...something coiled under the runes… He could feel the same asynchronous throb under the scar beneath his eye. The white-hot wrath that rose to the fore when Leif needed to protect somebody or cast an incredibly powerful spell battered at his chest...

Leif looked away from the spell. A cold sweat was running down his back and he felt sicker than ever. ’Woo help me - this is huge...what is this? He felt a slight splitting sensation under his eye; Leif put a finger to the mark and found a tint of blood. He checked his arm, but the skin there felt fine. Hopefully it would stay that way. Our archmage magics clashing? Is that what this is?

The archmage opened his satchel, removing the paper, quill, and ink inside. He had a lot of work to do - but where to even start?

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif doesn’t realize that the knights haven’t been informed that socioarchmage is an archmage, and accidently gives a hint that Sieg may or may not pick up on. He also lets Sieg know that Morgaine is aware he’s hurt, but that she doesn’t know the details. Leif casts a spell to see the runes behind the curse and wow it’s a lot worse than he was thinking. The magics of the two archmages involved also seem to be clashing a bit, causing the scar under Leif’s eye to open and start bleeding a little. It’s time for some nerdmagery - you take the heck out of those notes, Leiflet!

[Shinko]

Sieg frowned. "Release? What do you mean? I thought mages just had their power, and if he was already using magic for those murders what was there to release?" He looked at the healer. "What exactly aren't you telling us?"

"Nothing that's particularly relevant to you anyway," the woman said hastily. "It's all esoteric and most of it would probably fly over your head."

The half elf sighed. He was accustomed to this attitude- mages generally seemed to think knights were idiots and couldn't possibly understand anything more complicated than "stick pointy thing in bad guy." Woo only knew who they thought came up with the strategies that won life and death battles if not knights.

By this point, Leif had started doing... something, Sieg couldn't be sure what. The knight presumed he didn't need to contribute to whatever it was or Leif would have asked him to, so he simply watched with a distant sort of interest as brilliant green light gathered over his prone from. Eventually Sieg's dry mouth overruled his curiosity, however, and he painfully reached beside the bed for the glass of water the healer had left there for him. As he got the cup in his hands, Leif was standing up, and Sieg become aware of an odd throbbing sensation in the air above him. Like a pounding of some kind. He glanced around, and saw Leif touch his face just under his eye-

The sound of shattering glass filled the room as the cup fell from his fingers. Every wound on his body felt like it was being inflicted upon him anew. He could feel the cold, sharp knife across his neck as a Courdonian slaver came upon him from behind, the blade of a spear being driven through his leg, gryphonic talons picking him up by the shoulders, and worst of all, every inch of skin on his arms, back and torso was on fire. He lurched upright, hugging himself as if to hold his body together when all it seemed to want to do was fly apart.

If it weren't for the laceration on his throat he would have been screaming in agony; as it was, a prolonged, half strangled noise filled the room. It was a high-pitched wheezing, like nothing that should ever have come from a human throat. He was blind and deaf to the room, images of battles long ago flashing in his mind's eye as the pain of his injuries exploded through the pain medicines he'd been taking.

SPOILER: Click to show

Sieg doesn't really know the mechanics of archmagery, but he does realize something was weird about this mage that people are not telling him.

Then when Leif looks at the spell, it's counter-reaction to Leif's archmage powers suddenly burn off all of the pain medicine Sieg's been taking and fire off his nerves so that he is filled with the sensations of getting those wounds originally. It gets so bad that after a point he literally starts hallucinating back to those old battles- not something the magic is doing mind, just a reaction Sieg's rather traumatized psyche has to the pain.

[Tiger]

Leif glanced up again at Sieg’s outburst; he expected to just explain that archmages could have blocks on their full potential - he thought he’d mentioned this to Sieg at one point, but maybe he was misremembering or the half-elf was too tired from his blood loss. However, the half-elf then looked to the healer, who gave a rushed non-explanation, and Leif understood what was going on.

He was angry for a moment, though it occurred to him that maybe it was better for morale not to tell someone that an archmage had cast a curse on them. But Leif was an archmage, too, so there was at least the assurance that someone qualified was taking care of things, and anyway, what if there was something the knights could piece together and tell him with that information?

“There’s nothing esoteric about it, unless you want to get into magical theory.” Leif had started casting his spell by this point. “He…”

Then came the overabundance of mist, the too-long spell, the bleeding under his eye -

A glass shattered as Sieg dropped it and lurched upright with a sound of agony. Leif practically jumped in surprise, but was weighted down by a lurch of horror in his stomach. What had happened?! What had he done!?

Oh ‘Woo, another trap?

Leif snapped to the healer, “Hold his wounds together, as best you can!”

He raised his wand and his eyes to the spell, and with his teeth gritted so tightly he felt his jaw strain, he started parsing it. He moved the runes around with jabs of his wands, yanked and tugged them closer, searching for anything that might explain this - runes for pain, force, slashing, something that would draw blood or remove potion effects, or something that would cause panic or hallucinations…

The spell was a mess, a complete wreck, and the only thing keeping it together was that out-of-synch pulsing - there were hooks that connected to nothing, or hooks that had been forced into other parts of the spell, as if someone had hammered a square peg into a round hole and then fused the pieces together into that mangled state - a solid third of the phrases were completely useless and just served to clutter the spell, but were so knotted into it was impossible to just remove them - another chunk of the runes only seemed irrelevant until you found another set that called for them in another part of the spell, and there was a hook connecting those pieces together, but also hanging from that hook was another entire chain of runes - and there were snares. Snares everywhere.

But he hadn’t set anything off - the only thing that was different was that he’d poked his magic into things - so that must be it. Why was the asynchronous pounding hitting Sieg when Sieg had no magic? Leif didn’t feel any physical pain except the splitting skin, and even that was technically magical.

His magic had been acting up ever since he’d revealed the spell-glyphs. The clash - the clash had to be it. And it was hitting Sieg because...because the archmage’s magic was woven into a spell that was woven into Sieg...and it wasn’t hurting Leif because Leif’s magic was holding its own. The clash was hitting Sieg because Sieg had no magic to fight it back with.

Leif couldn’t give the knight magic...but...could he somehow shield him anyway?

Leif tugged at the spell again, searching for a particular bit of runes - and finally he found it, nestled like a cave spider in the middle of completely unrelated spellwork. This piece was full of hooks, but they were already ensnared on Sieg - curses had to hook in somewhere. The latching chain. There was one in every curse, and they were almost always too strong and resistant to break themselves; a mage had to go after other parts of the spell and destabilize it. This latch was strong, too, but Leif didn’t need to break it just yet. Instead, he sniped at a few nearby patches of runes, hastily hooking them to other parts of the spell via short bits of junk runes to keep them from destabilizing the entire spell, and then forced his own magic into the vacant spaces left behind.

At first, he was concentrating on flooding the spots with runes for protection spells and barriers and wards, but gradually, the deeper Leif reached into his magic, the less he thought about runes and the more he felt he was building a shape - something that wrapped around the clashing magics like a wing, curling around the point where the archmage’s magic wove into Sieg via the curse. The other archmage’s magic leaped for the curl of Leif’s magic - Leif felt the slight rebound as his magic held.

That’s right - I’m a trained archmage, you ‘Pit-spawn of a sorcerer! Leif thought savagely.

He sealed the base of the spell-wing as tightly as he could - he couldn’t unhook the latching chain’s hooks, but he could pry the other archmage’s magic up and away from them, and from Sieg. The magics could clash all they liked - but if they weren’t touching Sieg, if Leif’s magic was enveloping the clash, that might stop...whatever was happening.

Leif pulled back from the spell for a moment, suddenly dizzy. He stepped back, spreading his feet wide apart until he got his balance. “Did that work? If it worked - get him more pain potion,” Leif told the healer.

“He’s taking as many as he - “

“They’re not working anymore - obviously - it’s not a pain rune - the clash might’ve done something - you need to give him the potion!”

The healer’s brow pinched, but she reached for a potion. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t - it’s our two magics, mine and the other archmage’s - they’re fighting.” Leif stepped back toward the cot. “Give him the potion,” Leif urged.

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif spends too many words basically going ‘oh no what’d i do what’d i do’ before realizing the clashing magics are the problem, and that while his own magic is providing him with some protection, Sieg doesn’t have the same luxury. He finds the part of the spell that’s directly latched to Sieg, and manages to put a shield of his own magic around it to try and block the clashing magics from affecting Sieg. Hopefully that doesn’t lead to any consequences later =D Oh, and he tells unnamed healer to give Sieg another pain-killing potion if it worked, and gives a curt explanation of what happened.

[Shinko]

Gradually, the pain that was lashing at every open wound in Sieg's body ebbed. The injuries still felt raw, and ached horribly, but at least they no longer screamed with the sensation of healthy flesh being damaged anymore.

Sieg realized he could still feel that sensation of stickiness. It wasn't as strong as when the spell hit him initially, but it was definitely there. And something else too- something that was coming between him and the stickiness, something almost soft... feathers?

As Leif worked, the half elf's muscles relaxed one by one. Finally he slumped over forward, shaking horribly but no longer caught in the throws of a horrific pain-enduced fever dream.

He could hear Leif talking to the healer, though he was still too dazed with pain and fatigue to really make out what was being said. Then he felt a bottle being held up to his mouth, and obediently he tilted his head back to accept whatever it was. It had a syrupy consistency, and a vaguely nutty taste he recognized as being a poppy-based pain potion. Once he'd taken as much as the healer wanted him to, he let her gently lay him down on his back again. She started to peel back his bandages, which had become nearly saturated when his heart rate jumped while he was hallucinating.

He opened his mouth, intending to ask what had happened, but found he could not get a single sound out. Between the dehydration and the shouting he'd just been doing, his throat refused to produce anything louder then a whisper.

The healer noticed this, and asked, "Can you write?" When he nodded, she held out a notepad, and gave him a pen. He took both, and quickly scribbled a simple inquiry. What happened?

"According to Master Archmage, the collision of his magic with the magic in the curse rebounded somehow and you got hit in the crossfire. But he seems to have alleviated it, at least for now."

Sieg huffed softly, hoping they would interpret that as a noise of understanding and not frustration. The healer kept working to change the bandages, tutting softly to herself at the state of his wounds. To the eye of anyone who knew anything about healing, the fact that they still looked exactly as raw as they had when he'd first been brought in no doubt gave off a wrongness that she could sense even without using her powers. The pain potion was starting to work again, and it had taken the edge off of his aching wounds. But he wondered if whatever it was that Leif had done to protect him would hold in the face of more probes into the spell. Sieg didn't want to go through that again, but if whatever Leif had done slowed his progress...

He hastily scribbled on the notepad, and offered his message this time to the archmage. Thank you. That was not my idea of fun. But if you need to take down whatever you did later because it's in the way, go ahead and do it. I can handle it, and I don't want to be the reason the men in the other rooms die.

He pulled back the notepad, and scribbled under this, Have you learned anything you can use to break the curse? If there's anything you need me to do or tell you, just say it and I'll do my best to help. As a somewhat frustrated afterthought he added, I write very slowly, I hope my voice comes back soon.

SPOILER: Click to show

Sieg recovers somewhat, though he blew out what little voice he had left. He's given some paper and a pen, and asks what happened, which the healer answers. He then asserts to Leif that if the shield is in any way a hindrance to breaking the curse he can take it down and Sieg will deal with the resulting pain as best he can. He also asks if there's anything Leif needs him to do or any information he can give to help.

Sieg does not usually write much so he is slow at it. XD

[Tiger]

While the healer helped Sieg recover - as much as he could like this - Leif tried to get his own bearings. The dizziness had faded, to his relief, and he hadn’t yet worked himself into the pull - though given the mess the curse was, Leif was not optimistic that he’d break it before feeling its ache. He was still incredibly daunted by the size and sloppiness of the spell before him. If only Leif had time to reorganize it...but that could take hours, and Sieg didn’t have that long, especially not after the strike from the clashing magics. But did Leif have the time it would take to parse through this tangled and thorn-ridden spell as it was?

At least the shield had worked - Leif could still feel, faintly, the rebound of the other archmage’s magic within his spellcraft. ...Should he still be able to feel that? He knew next to nothing about archmages that wasn’t from his own experience - maybe it was completely normal.

Sieg tried to speak, but couldn’t though the wounds on his throat; the healer offered him a notepad and Sieg scribbled what must have been a question, as the healer responded with an explanation. It wasn’t complete, but it was adequate, and Leif didn’t feel the need to fill in the details at this point.

Seig started writing something else as the healer continued to fret at the bandages. Leif gripped his wand tightly, wishing he could just use one of his usual healing spells and fix the damage. He hadn’t been able to examine the healing trap yet, and he almost wondered if, maybe, if someone could hold out long enough, the magic would start to work…

No. That was stupidity beyond optimism. Leif banished the thought from his head. He needed to break the curse - other mages could heal the wounds when that had been done.

Sieg offered the notepad to Leif; it took the mage a few seconds to switch fully back to processing Kythian letters rather than runes. “I shouldn’t need to take the shield down,” Leif assured the knight when he’d finished reading. “It’s on a piece of the spell I can’t break, so there shouldn’t be any need for me to poke around it.” He personally wasn’t so sure Sieg could handle another attack like that one. The fresh burst of blood loss that must have come with lurching upright while already dangerously low on blood…well, Leif could see that in the soaked bandages.

After another round of writing, Sieg held out the notepad again. Leif answered, “I haven’t figured out much, except that this spell is...it’s a mess. It’s like someone took a book, ripped the pages apart, and then glued them together in the wrong order. With bits of other books mixed in. Also out of order.

“It’s also full of little traps and snares - I didn’t see the one that’s grabbing the healers, but if it’s like the ones I did see, it’s hooked into a whole tangle of spellwork, so I don’t know what’s safe to cut and what’s going to set the spell devolving - which is not a good thing, despite how it sounds.” Leif frustratedly swept some of the blood trailing from his eye scar off with his palm. “There has to be a solid chain running through this…thing...if I can find it, I can focus on taking that apart. I’d at least be able split off some of these bigger junk pieces. Maybe find where it loops into the healer-trap and get that out, so someone can heal you while I finish breaking the rest of it.”

He looked up at the cloud of glowing runes. “You said you felt something sticky when the spell hit you...but it was like the healing spell I used on you?” Leif carefully read through some of the runes before pushing them away and trying another chain. “I didn’t see anything like episky here...but that stickiness...was there anything else you felt, Seig? It wasn’t cold, you said - but did it have a temperature? Was there a particular sort of feel when it was pulled away - did it feel like there were multiple points or did it come all at once, did it peel? What about how it settled?” Leif forced himself to stop - he needed to take this more slowly.

“Take your time - but if there’s anything you can remember, as small or meaningless as it sounds, it could help. I need to find the main rune chain, and if you can help walk me through how the spell works, I might be able to hunt it down and start pruning this.”

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif reassures Sieg that he shouldn’t need to remove the shield. He frets about the sheer size and mess of the spell, knowing he needs to cut as much of the filler as he can in order to work at the main runes of the spell instead of the spell, rather than the garbage thrown in by the rampant magic. Leif asks Sieg if he can help walk him through some of the details of how the spell felt, in the hopes that he can pick out a few spells that will help him narrow down a place on the rune chain to start tracking from.

[Shinko]

The knight frowned a bit, scribbling, I didn't mean it felt LIKE the healing spell. It just reminded me of it because that was the only other spell that had a physical sensation I could recall. Like, when you used the spell to pull me up after I fell over the cliff, I didn't actually feel anything then. Or when you used the spell on my ribs.

He was cut off from his scribbling as the healer made an impatient gesture at him, and he obediently titled his head back so she could get at the bandage on his neck. Taking advantage of the enforced stop, Sieg tried to gather his thoughts to better answer Leif's question. Everything had been extremely confused once the magic was set off, and it was hard to pin down any precise memories through the general agony of every wound he'd never had healed bursting open on him.

Once the healer had finished with his neck, he started scribbling again. My memory of the details is fuzzy, but I'll try to tell you what I can recall. When we found the mage, he was holed up in a room with papers scattered all over the floors and pinned to the walls. They all had various runes on them, some scratched out, others that were painted over like he'd gotten them wrong and tried to fix the shape. More papers were crumpled up, which probably had runes on them too. My guess was that they were from experiments where he tried to do this curse or some form of it before and couldn't get it right.

Anyway, when we cornered him he started chanting something, and we knew he was going to try and get away with magic. One of the Jade knights snuck up behind him and hit him on the back to break his concentration. That's where it gets confusing.

He had reached the end of his paper, so he ripped the page out and placed it on the bed where Leif could pick it up and read it. Meanwhile, Sieg continued to scribble an explanation.

I remember a flash of light, and I think the papers got kicked up and started flying around the room because I heard them flapping and rustling, but there was no wind. Then I felt something physical hit me, but I couldn't actually see anything there. Like I told you earlier, it was like tar- sticky. Now that you mention, it might have also felt hot, but I can't say for sure because that could just be from the burns coming back.

Seig stopped, leaning back into the pillow as he tried to figure out a way to frame what had happened next in a coherent way. It was all visceral past this point, just confused sensations and impressions. His next real, lucid memory had been when he was picked up out of a pool of his own blood by the knights who'd been waiting outside as backup. Even that was feverish and muddled by pain.

The drifting of his thoughts alerted him to the fact that he was falling asleep, and he promptly shook his head to snap himself back awake. The sudden attack when Leif had probed the spell took more out of Sieg then he realized. He gave an apologetic smile to Leif, then kept writing.

I don't think peeling is the right word. It was more like my skin exploded off in all directions, yanked loose by the stickiness pulling away. After that I can't really remember anything except that I hurt too much to move.

He ripped the paper off again and passed it to Leif. Finishing off the last question, he wrote, I don't know what you mean by "settle." How it felt after the casting was over maybe? Like I said I don't really remember. But if it helps, when you did whatever you did just now, I felt the sticky feeling again. And then I felt something soft come between me and it.

A thought suddenly struck him, and he added, There is something else though- I was one of the ones the healers tried to fix. I remember as soon as they started my entire body felt heavy and sticky, and I almost immediately fell asleep. I don't know if that happened to anyone else, but I didn't wake back up again until someone stopped the healer.

SPOILER: Click to show

Sieg dumps a lot of exposition. Hopefully some of it is stuff Leif can use.

Also Sieg is on the edge of passing out, just FYI Leiflet.

[Tiger]

Leif read through each sheet of paper as Sieg handed it to him, and read them all through again when he had finished. It was good to have some way of getting information that didn’t involve straining Sieg’s wounds, at least.

He really didn’t like the news that the mage had been experimenting. That might explain where all of the extraneous garble had come from; the wild magic not merely brute-forcing a solution, but actually pulling together all the many ideas the archmage had garnered while working on this monstrosity. If he’d actually started speaking the curse, that seemed even more likely.

Over and over again - sticky. Leif had never heard of a spell feeling that way before. When a spell grabbed something, it did it with hooks, but rune hooks, a sort of magic you couldn’t actually feel. Episky was a notable exception, as Sieg had pointed out - the brief feeling of cold was caused by the adjacency of two particular runes. Normally that combination was found only in spells like glacius, which were meant to be cold, but in episky’s case, the combination was a sort of cheat that made the spell cheaper and easier to cast.

So...a different rune combination might be the cause of the sticky-feeling. And - Leif reread one of the sheets to make sure he was remembering correctly - Sieg had felt the stickiness when the magics had clashed. Leif guessed his shield must have been the soft thing that had come between the knight and the sticky feeling. ...Although, that brought up its own questions, especially when combined with what had happened when a healer had tried to intervene.

“So you can feel the stickiness in this spell when somebody tries to tamper with it - whether it’s me or another mage. But you can feel my magic...I guess that’s because I tied it into the spell at the latch...but healing magic is being cast on you, not the latch, why does that feel heavy?” He frowned at the spellwork for a moment. “Maybe…oh, that might work…”

He raised his wand to the runes and pulled them forward a bit. Using his left hand, too, he pulled at some of the rune chains to widen them and make the glyphs more visible. He could feel the pounding hassling his magic, but it all seemed to be catching within the shield, so hopefully that wouldn’t pass to Sieg. After a moment, Leif muttered a curse, having found what he was looking for. Two small hooks, searching for the runes that invoked healing. One was remarkably complex and by the look of it, would have caught a number of healing spells all on its own.

“The snare grabbing the healers is near the latch,” Leif explained. “So that’s why you’re felt it reacting. I’m just not sure where the weight was coming from, or why it made you fall asleep.”

For that, he’d have to know what the snares had done to the spells when they caught it. Leif studied them more closely, examining the short tail of runes that spurted off from each hook...only to find that the tail ended not in a finishing rune, but a very thin coil of archmage magic. That coil led back to the rune chain above that of the hooks.

Leif ran his fingers along those runes, his heartbeat pounding hard - and out-of-synch with the other archmage’s magic, of course - as he pieced the spellwork together. “It’s taking the healing magic - there’s a summoning charm here, and when a healing spell gets caught - it throws the spell right at it. The healing magic isn’t working because it’s not getting to you at all.”

Leif pushed the snare runes aside, following the branch of the summoning charm; he occasionally tapped his wand, starting or ending a mist of gold that remained hovering atop the runes he’d passed. It didn’t take too long for Leif to reach the latching chain again. The runes were still too strong here for Leif to break apart and rid the spell of its healer-snare - but that wasn’t even the worst news.

A particularly wide strip of the other archmage’s magic lay at the intersection of latch and snare-branch; from it trailed a number of incredibly thin streams of magic, and Leif recognized some of the runework here - spells for sleep. They disappeared into the runes of the latch, carefully woven into a spot where their final rune matched that of the latch pattern.

The magic stolen from the healers had been drawn onto the archmage’s magic - and since it was nowhere to be found now, Leif could only assume that clash had not ended nearly so well for the healer mage. The magic probably triggered the sleeping spell - knocking Sieg unconscious. “I think...I think this was supposed to be a siphoning spell.” The repulsion at the thought was more than evident in Leif’s tone. “A way to absorb more magic - and it would trigger a sleeping spell so whoever was being drained wouldn’t know it. He must have changed his mind at some point - maybe trying to take blood instead of magic?”

Leif quickly checked the sleeping spells. One was tied to a mess of scrap runes; it looked like some sort of attempt to tie a paralysis spell into the curse as a whole, but either the archmage had either never worked out the details or he’d just abandoned it. Leif slipped another shield between the wide tongue of archmage magic and the sleeping spells, and swiftly cut them away. The runes flickered, then faded away; the failed paralysis spell had been a decent-sized piece of garble, so at least that was gone now. Leif pulled at his shield to draw it away.

The shield didn’t move.

Leif tried to pull at it again - this time, he felt the stickiness.

He almost cursed aloud, but restrained himself despite the panic trying to build in his chest. The archmage’s magic was the stickiness - it was holding the spell together and it was holding onto any magic that tried to tamper with it - there really was no danger of dropping the shield Leif had conjured for Sieg - he physically couldn’t. But Leif didn’t want to worry the knight or the healer - and he definitely didn’t want to be knocked out by overzealous knights trying to prevent him from pulling himself. His magic wasn’t being absorbed by the other archmage’s - he wasn’t in the same danger.

So...maybe…

“Let me try something, Sieg.” Leif returned to the hooks, eyeing them carefully. He sliced away the top runes of each, quickly replacing them before the spell could start destabilizing, using the same rune but infusing it with his own magic. Between the two new runes, Leif wove a thick blanket of scrap-spell, using bits of the wooparo spell to bind the two hooks more tightly. He left a narrow gap between the hooktips and his blanket of garbage runes, suspending the shield by the thinnest of spell-threads.

Leif shifted his wand to Sieg; he didn’t aim for a wound in particular, thinking that at this point, a little healing for as many wounds as possible was better than only treating one. “I know what I’m doing - so don’t try to knock me out. I’ve gummed up the trap and I think it’ll give me enough time for at least one healing spell without getting caught on it myself.”

He didn’t give them a chance to object. Watching the runes, he cast the spell. ”Vulnera Sanwootur!”

The runes wobbled, but Leif felt more than saw the strike of his shield hitting the other archmage’s strip of magic. Leif cringed - it was sticky and uncomfortably hot and the asynchronous pounding beat at his head and there was a terrible feeling like the pull but not exactly the pull - a painful tugging but at the shield, not in his body at all.

But it wasn’t getting at the real magic, the healing spell, at least not at this junction - that magic was on the hooks, but was protected from being absorbed by the blanket. Leif held the healing spell until he could tell the shield was reaching magical-threadbare, and he cut the magic off sharply.

The hooks struck the absorbing magic, and sprang back. A fresh gush of blood poured from the scar under Leif’s eye, and his hands shook, but he felt nothing tugging at his magic anymore. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good news - the spell had absorbed his shield, and he could feel the slight but heightened strength as it crackled against the shield still in place at the latch. He probably couldn’t do that a second time, or the curse would become even stronger.

He turned to Sieg, hoping to see that his spell had done at least a small amount of good.

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif figures out some stuff! \ o / Namely that the sticky stuff is the other archmage’s magic, so Leif is sort of trapped in the curse as well, though it isn’t pulling at him. He finds the snare grabbing the healers, and manages to block the trap long enough to get a healing spell done on Sieg.

[Shinko]

Sieg was honestly trying to absorb what Leif was saying- the healer seemed to be- but he was no mage, and his grasp of the particulars of magical theory was patchy at best. This really was bleeding into the realms of what the healer would call esoteric. After not very long his general exhaustion, the pain potion, and Leif's occasional soft muttering lulled Sieg into a light doze.

For a while he let himself drift, not quite asleep but certainly nothing resembling conscious. He was jostled back to wakefulness when he noticed a shift in Leif's tone. It sounded less like he was talking to himself and more like a command, and Sieg dredged his mind blearily back into wakefulness to try and figure out what it was Leif needed him to do.

He didn't catch the words, he hadn't been awake enough, but when he opened his eyes he could see Leif making an odd slicing motion into the shimmering space in the air. After several minutes, during which Sieg almost gave up and went back to sleep, Leif then pointed his wand at he knight's prone body.

"I know what I’m doing - so don’t try to knock me out. I’ve gummed up the trap and I think it’ll give me enough time for at least one healing spell without getting caught on it myself."

Wait, he wasn't going to-

"Vulnera Sanwootur!"

He was, apparently. Before either Sieg or the healer could object, threads of brilliant emerald energy shot from Leif's wand. Unlike the previous time this spell had been cast, however, Sieg found he was able to stay conscious, and he wasn't hit with that weight or the horrible sensation of having rolled in hot tar. As the spell threads slipped under Sieg's bandages he felt the pain receding slightly, and his amber eyes widened with surprise. Had the archmage done it?

Leif cut off the spell abruptly compared to the other times Sieg had watched the archmage cast it, and to his horror the knight realized that the mark under Leif's eye was bleeding. In a harsh whisper he said, "Leif, what's happening to your fa- ugh!"

There it was again, that heat and stickiness, and a split second later the awful sensation of his skin being ripped away. Sieg clutched at his chest with a wince- it wasn't as bad as the last time, presumably because the wounds had only been partially healed, but he was fairly certain whatever Leif had done had just been completely undone.

"Master Archmage," the healer said sternly. "The snare was a cruel trap none of us expected, but it was only part of the problem that's killing these men. The basic point of the curse is to keep the injuries from healing. Weren't you informed of that before you got here? If not I really need to give the idiot fireknight who flew up to fetch you a piece of my mind, we told him to tell you that!"

Sieg shook his head, "Stop yelling at him, I'm fine. I can-"

"No, you most certainly cannot handle it, and you need to stop pretending you can!" The healer interrupted. "You are dying, and I'm pretty sure you know it. The fact that you're able to stay lucid in the face of so much pain is probably only because of all those years you apparently went without magical intervention; except that's no blessing because your foolhardiness is what caused you to be such a mess in the first place."

The knight's mouth opened and closed, but he didn't seem able to form a coherent reply. There was very evident hurt and guilt in his face. After a moment he looked away, his hands clenching on the bedsheets.

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif's magic seems to work at first, but the basic makeup of the curse causes the healing to completely unravel as soon as Leif stops casting. The healer, who is frantic, stressed, and probably operating on very little sleep, reams out Leif for forgetting about the point of the curse. Sieg tries to interupt, but only draws her venting on himself. She inadvertently strikes a very tender nerve when she basically tells him his bad condition is his own stupid fault for refusing magic healing for so long. And she's not really wrong, but given what we know about why Sieg did it...

[Tiger]

“Leave him alone - it’s my fault, and Sieg can’t do anything about his old wounds now,” Leif told the healer, wiping some of the blood from his face. Frustration boiled in his gut - it hadn’t worked - it should have worked but it hadn’t. “The fireknight told me that was what the spell was doing - but there is a siphoning spell and a trap for healer’s magic in this thing!” Leif waved vaguely at the mass of glyphs. “As far as I know, nobody else has looked at the runework - I thought effect was being confused with motivation. If you have something to prove the later, I’d very much like to see it,” he added, just barely restraining the sarcasm he badly wanted to inject into his voice. They probably didn’t have anything solid, or they would have given it to him by now. Proof of intent or not, however, it was clear there was something more than the siphon and trap going on here.

He rubbed at his temples and turned to Sieg. “I’m sorry - I was hoping that would give you a buffer, not make things worse.” He noticed the expression on Sieg’s face, and for once could read the guilt there. “Sieg -
that was a long time ago. You couldn’t have predicted this was going to happen.” He didn’t know all the details behind Sieg’s old practice of refusing magical healing, but he did know it had been a grief-inspired self-punishment, not acts of foolhardiness or recklessness.

Leif wondered if he should try to say more, but even if he had been a good motivational speaker, this was not really the time. He had to undo this curse, properly and as soon as possible, or all the pep talks in the world were going to be very useless to Sieg. He turned his eyes and wand back to the spell.

So this wasn’t a siphoning spell gone horribly wrong and overcomplex - fine. But the spell was definitely there…maybe it was wrong to think of it as the only spell within this curse. The siphoning spell was probably just one part of the curse - a sort of...stomach for the spell as a whole. And you just fed it - well done, ‘Archmage’. Leif shook off the self-criticism. Not the time.

What did he know for sure? That the spell’s purpose was to keep wounds from healing - that the other archmage’s magic was sticky and capable of absorbing magic in places - that at least one snare was meant to feed the curse…And not much else.

Warily, Leif drew back to the runes of the main branch. He hadn’t even made it out of the range of the latching runes. Time to move up the chain, find the next thicket of spell and snare...here was one. Leif traced the runes to a hook for episky - not that any fool would waste time on light healing spells for wounds like these. Leif was able to snip a few loose bits of garble from the edge of the hook and its anchors. That unknotted a bit of another trap farther down the spell...Leif followed it a ways, and found a second version of the episky-trap hook attempting to weave into the first - it was joined to a counter-spell laced with very nasty pain runes. Leif was tempted to cut this piece, too, but a tendril of the other archmage’s magic was woven through the runes Leif would need to split. Instead, he snipped at a few individual runes, and again filled the empty spaces, this time with runes that swallowed the pain spells and then dissipated against one another. The remaining runes blackened, and though they still hovered in the air, it was clear this was now a branch of dead magic. The other archmage’s energy pulsed more quickly and Leif swore he saw it actually move. He grimaced, and added a little more strength to the shield at the latch.

“How’re you doing, Sieg?” he asked, working his way back to the main branch. “Is the shield still working?”

SPOILER: Click to show

Leif snaps back at the healer a bit, but admits it was his fault for trying the first solution he found and kind of disregarding what he’d been told about the spell. He now thinks the siphoning spell may just be part of the spell as a whole, feeding it power but not composing the entire spell itself. Yaaay magic!

Noticing Sieg’s guilty expression, Leif tries to reassure him that it isn’t his fault. Leif starts picking at the spell again, removing a bit of useless garble attached to an episky snare and killing off a branch of pain runes, the later causing some agitation in the other archmage’s magic, causing Leif to ask Sieg if the shield’s still working. Not as much magic textwalling this time because Tiger needs to go to bed soon BD

[Shinko]

The healer didn't respond to Leif's question, though it was clear from the angry set of her mouth that she wasn't entirely mollified by his explanation. With an exasperated sigh, she said, "I'm going to get some more water, and a broom to sweep up the broken glass. I'll be back shortly."

Sieg watched her go, despair gnawing at his spirit almost as much as the evil magic was. "I'm sorry," he muttered inaudibly.

The archmage rubbed his temples as the door shut behind the healer. "I’m sorry - I was hoping that would give you a buffer, not make things worse." Leif seemed to notice the knight's expression, because he added, "Sieg - that was a long time ago. You couldn’t have predicted this was going to happen."

Sieg shook his head, but didn't reply. After his conversation with Alain Stallion before the Bloody Coronation, he had spent several years working to overcome the guilt and self-accusation he had stubbornly clung to for twelve years. To some degree it had worked. But occasionally something happened that shoved it all back to the forefront, and he wondered if he'd ever really be free of the shadow of his past mistakes.

"How’re you doing, Sieg?" Leif asked, breaking the silence. "Is the shield still working?"

"I don't feel anything unusual, if that's what you mean," the knight replied softly. He lapsed back into silence for a time, hoping to sleep again, but he felt as if something painful was knoted in his chest, and he knew rest would not come any time soon.

"I never really told you, did I?" he said suddenly, looking up at Lief. "Why I let myself get like this. I mean I sort of did, but it wasn't a proper explanation. I guess the circumstances didn't really leave us much of an opening for it, and we'd only just met at the time. But it's been years..."

He let his head rest against the pillow behind him, his amber eyes distant. "You might remember the incident, or at least have heard of it- you'd probably have been twelve or thirteen at the time. There was a dragon that had gone mad, and it was destroying villages all over Corvus and eating people. The Jades called on us- the Nid'aigle knights- to assist them."

He laughed bitterly, though again the noise sounded more like a dry hacking. "I had just been made a squire. It was my very first battle. I was excited, y'know? How many knights can say their first action was to fight a dragon? I wasn't actually supposed to fight the thing, of course, just hang back a ways and watch how it was done. Obviously," he added, sweeping his hand over the burns on his chest and arms, "Things did not quite go to plan."

He gritted his teeth. "Even all these years later I still dream about it. Not as often as I used to, but often enough that none of the details have ever faded from my memory, much though I wish they would. The infernal thing set a barn on fire, and blew it up. I was caught in the explosion, and pinned under some burning debris. It was... I can't even begin to describe the pain. Just lying there, crushed under a wooden beam that weighs almost as much as you do is, only the beam is on fire and it's turning your armor into a metal oven that sears every inch of your skin..."

"But that's not really the point," he said, his voice very soft now. "The point is that there was another knight at that battle, one who saw all of the people who'd been caught in the explosion, and saw the dragon bearing down on us to finish us off. He threw a javelin at the monster, distracting it and drawing it away. And he paid for his heroism, incinerated by the dragon's flame breath until there was nothing left of him but ashes and melted armor."

"That man... was my father. I survived that day, because he died in my place."

The half elf covered his face. "I hated myself for so long for that. For all the pain it caused my mother, for the way it tore our family apart. I thought... I thought that letting my injuries heal naturally, slowly, was the only way I could really atone for what I'd done. You have to understand, I still hear him screaming in my nightmares. It wasn't a quick end, it just went on, and on, and on... what was a few lacerations to that? How could it ever possibly be so bad?"

He didn't sob or shout. He didn't have the energy, for one thing, and he'd already moved past the personal guilt he'd once felt for what happened. But it didn't make the pain of the memory go away, nor did it negate the fact that he was responsible for his condition, at least in part.

"I just... I'm sorry, for this. You shouldn't have to push yourself so hard to figure this out in such a time crunch, just because I was an idiot and couldn't see past my own guilt for so long. I'm sorry, Leif. I'm so, so sorry."

SPOILER: Click to show

Sieg is frustrated and feels guilty, so he starts unloading to Leif, in an attempt to sort of explain why his body is such a mess, and to apologize for burdening his friend so much. So he does so by burdening Leif with his sad, horrible backstory. Sieg you're not very good at this.

[Tiger]

Sieg was clearly still upset, which was no surprise to Leif. The knight fell silent while Leif worked at the spell for a bit, but when Leif paused to ask about the shield, it was clear Sieg still had plenty on his mind. Leif picked at the spell a bit more as Sieg lay back, snipping away a few stray rune chains, but he was careful not to get too invested in the spellwork just yet. Stopping the curse was paramount, no question about that...however, Sieg needed to stay alive until Leif could actually do so, and emotional weariness was draining.

Sure enough, as Leif paused a moment to flex his fingers and wipe a little more blood from his face - the bleeding had slowed back down again, a small piece of decent news in an ocean of bad discoveries - Sieg looked up from the pillow. "I never really told you, did I? Why I let myself get like this.”

Leif eased the chair closer with his foot and sat down as Sieg mentioned the Coronation, where Leif had indeed been given a very brief summary of Sieg’s aversion to magical healing. Leif had never pried for more details, despite the years the two had known each other now; even at the Coronation, Leif had known the story was a tragic one.

To Leif’s surprise, he did know the incident Sieg was talking about - a manic dragon was terrifying news enough, and Leif’s family in particular had been worried it would come north and attack their home city. They must have been afraid for Markus, Leif’s older brother and a knight himself, too. If Leif had been twelve or thirteen, Markus would have been sixteen or seventeen - still a page, but on the verge of becoming a squire and seeing actual battle. Leif couldn’t remember exactly when he’d heard the dragon was no longer a threat...it was possible his parents and eldest siblings had just never said the threat was over.

Or maybe, Leif thought as Sieg went on, describing the horror of the battle, the older Accipiters were trying to shield the younger ones from knowing all the bloody, violent details.

"That man... was my father. I survived that day, because he died in my place."

His father - that was the mysterious ‘someone close’. And, Leif suddenly realized, that was the loss Morgaine spoke of sometimes, too - usually in the context of her reaction to it, and a warning to Leif not to make similar mistakes with his own guilt complex. But it made sense that she’d taken the loss so harshly - it was her equivalent of Leif losing Kirin. It made sense that Sieg had taken the loss so harshly. Even the knight’s refusal of healing had some logic to it, though it was a sick and gnarled sort.

There was no way you could come out of seeing a death like that and be anything remotely close to okay. Just hearing about it was...horrific, there was no other word for it. There had been screams at the Coronation, and even remembering them made Leif’s gut squeeze. But if they’d been from someone he knew, someone he loved...

Leif was jostled out of these thoughts by Sieg’s apology. He was surprised - after Leif had hurt him with his first tamperings, and after he’d failed to make the healing spell work because he’d been rushing, what did the knight have to apologize for?

“Don’t worry about me, Sieg,” Leif said almost automatically. He suppressed the tremor of uncertainty that ran through his stomach. Usually he could say that sort of thing with confidence - he was an archmage, a man who had summoned dragons, fought gryphons, battled Courdonian magic, and safeguarded a spell that could kill with a mere two words and a burst of power. But this curse was the work of someone just as powerful, possibly more so. Even their appalling sloppiness was proving to be a greater strength than weakness. Still, he told Sieg, “I don’t even feel the pull yet, I have plenty of strength left to throw at this thing.” And that was true, at least, so long as he didn’t make a habit of stuffing the traps with his own magic.

“As for the time crunch...” Leif shrugged. “If it weren’t you, it would be another knight I was hovering over, and I couldn’t dawdle then, either. I wish pushing myself harder would get rid of this curse faster - the blighted thing’s just too tangled to go charging in with stronger magic.” He scowled briefly at the runes.

“I stand by what I said - you couldn’t have known this would happen. And at the time you were...you were hurt.” Examining the blood on his glove, finding it awkward to meet the half-elf’s eyes, Leif continued, “It’d be like blaming you for getting hurt because you had a broken arm and couldn’t lift your sword. Er. I guess it would be a shield in that case. Whichever. The point is, just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it’s not just as big a hindrance.”

Forcing himself to look up, Leif added, “You’ve come a long way, though. I’m - I’m sorry about your father. He sounds like he was a brave man and a good knight.”

SPOILER: Click to show

On this episode of Doctor Leif, Sieg’s backstory is revealed. Leif is horrified, as is proper, but tries to reassure Sieg that he shouldn’t worry about Leif and that he doesn’t blame him for the pressure of the time crunch.

[Shinko]

Sieg sighed, exhaustion pulling at his mind again. His entire body was so dry it physically hurt, almost as much as the injuries did.

"Thanks," the knight said softly. "You'll figure this out, Leif. You're resourceful. I just wish you had more time to puzzle through it."

Sieg put a hand to his forehead; his skull was starting to ache which each pulse of his fluttering heartbeat. He shivered a little, the room feeling cold after the heat of the curse.

"I'm afraid," he admitted, his voice emerging as a barely audible rasp. "Not of dying exactly, I made peace with the possibility of my dying back when I was still a squire. But I don't want to leave the people who care about me. I don't want to be the reason other people have to hurt as much as I did for so long."

Why was it so cold in here? He was shivering harder now, and wished he had some sort of blanket to cover up with.

"But that's the same reason I keep doing this; being a knight. Because I put my life at risk, but I help save other lives. If I'm the reason a kid doesn't have to cry because raiders killed his parents, then that's worth the risk I take. But it's s-still," he hugged himself, trying to resist the urge to rub his arms despite the horrific burns just under his bandages. "It's still h-hard. After e-everything my mother's alr-ready been th-through..."

The knight looked up at the shimmering space in the air above his body, an expression of confusion coming over his face. "Leif, are you d-doing something to the magic? I'm f-f-freezing all of a sudden."

SPOILER: Click to show

Sieg has feels some more, but expresses faith that Leif will figure out how to break the curse. Then, he starts to develop some new symptoms, foremost of which being that he's very chilled. Sieg asks if Leif is mucking with the curse again, figuring the temperature drop might be that. But if the archmage is sharp he might remember that critical dehydration can sometimes lead to spiking a fever, as the body runs out of fluids to regulate it's own temperature...