Edge Cases

For the umpteenth time, Sev glanced at the notifications hovering at the corner of his eye, even as he stormed closer towards Kestel. The researchers flinched back at his approach, but calmed when they saw his robes and the focus he wore around his neck; he was clearly a cleric.

The notification was distracting and persistent, though. He'd been doing his best to ignore it, with everything else that was going on, but...

No ######s are available for Coalesced Entity to attach to.

Potential substitute found. Allow attachment of ?

ACCEPT / REJECT

Sev's memories of what happened while they were in that not-space were still fuzzy, and while they were slowly becoming clearer, there was too much happening for him to focus on. So he focused his attention on who needed him, instead, promising himself he'd look at it more closely later, when he could discuss what had happened with his team.

And as he approached Kestel and the researchers surrounding him, he realized they were more badly hurt than had been apparent. It wasn't just their health — they had status effects on them that were still ticking away, no doubt from whoever had cast the spells on them in the first place. Sev couldn't tell what those status effects were — not without casting diagnostic spells — but he could tell that they were there. His eyes narrowed.

"Hey!" he shouted, and when everyone turned their attention to him, he glared. "Turn off your damn spells. We're not fighting anymore."

"That's not for you to decide," the one lizardkin researcher muttered, his gaze still hostile — but one of the nearby guards glared at him, and he flinched. He didn't seem quite as brave without the guards on his side. A quick twist of his wrist, and the researchers Sev was near sagged with relief.

"Please," one of them said — a young man, by all accounts. He barely looked eighteen. Sev glanced at him, ready to heal, but he shook his head and pointed to Kestel instead. "Help Kestel. We don't even know if he's..."

Sev glanced over at Kestel and winced.

The man was dead.

Well, no. Not completely. But he was out of health, and the system had stopped his heart, a consequence of its nature; if health was the barrier that kept people in perfect health until their last hitpoint, then running out of health meant...

Well.

Sitting on top of Kestel's chest was a small artifact, pulsing and whirring. Two interlocking bronze and silver rings rotated gently around a grade two mana crystal at its core, and from those rings, three slithering lines of visible mana anchored themselves to Kestel's chest. Sev recognized it; it was a [Resuscitator], an artifact meant to preserve the life of someone that had hit zero health, in the same way that cleric skills like [Gentle Repose] did. It would force Kestel's heart to keep pumping, keeping his blood circulating, but...

That only solved half the problem. The other half was oxygen.

And there was the fact that as long as Kestel remained 'dead', in that his heart wasn't pumping of its own volition, the system wouldn't connect to him, and basic healing skills would have minimal effect. There was already the telltale blue, veinlike effect across his scales that spoke of system-sickness.

Not for the first time, Sev cursed his connection to the system. If he had skills that worked the way Derivan's skills did — if he could just work around the health problem, instead of being forced to work with it...

But there was no time to waste on idle thoughts.

"Vex?" Sev called, and the lizardkin scurried over. "I need a basic wind spell. Something to keep air moving in and out of his lungs."

Vex nodded. Soon enough, a light green rune glowed over Kestel's slack jaw, and air started circulating in and out of his lungs. It wasn't the most ideal way to do things, but it would have to do for now. "How long has Kestel been like this?" Sev asked.

"A little more than half an hour," one of the researchers answered him, looking anxious. "Is— is he okay?"

No he fucking isn't, Sev thought, but he kept that thought to himself; he kept his voice under control when he replied. "He will be."

Healing magic was miraculous, but it couldn't do everything. There was a reason it had taken so many priests to prevent him from dying, back when he'd collapsed in the temple — the system didn't like that people could circumvent the whole zero health thing. It took a lot of healing spells, and powerful healing magic; he had [Divine Inhalation], but...

He glanced at the skill box again, summoning it out of the air. It wasn't a spell he liked using.

[Divine Inhalation] [Active Skill] [Grade: Maxed]

Granted by request. Take in injuries, absorbing them into your psyche. Inhalation limit based on available memory.

He would have called it a cruel skill, were it not for the fact that Onyx had specifically withheld it from him. 'Heal anything' was an ability he wanted — of course it was — and this was the closest skill that came to it. The associated cost, as far as he was concerned, was nothing.

Then again, that was how he'd gotten [Traces of the Lost] to begin with. A class based around sacrifice shouldn't have surprised him, given what he'd been doing with it.

But if ordinary healing skills wouldn't work...

"[Divine Inhalation]," he muttered; not because he had to speak the name of the skill out loud, but because it helped prepare him for the experience.

No matter how much he prepared himself, though, he could never quite be ready.

The skill activated, and he felt what happened more than he saw it.

The first time, in the temple, when his heart had stopped — he'd been thankfully unconscious for most of that experience. Now he couldn't help but be aware, every facet of the experience embedding itself deep into his memory. He felt everything that Kestel would have felt had the lizardkin been awake at this exact moment, multiplied tenfold.

He felt the way his heart refused to beat on its own.

He felt magic threading itself into him like a foreign implement, forcing his heart to pulse, to send blood circulating through his body.

He felt the cold grasp of death approach him, as cold magic threaded its way through his veins. There was a sense of betrayal, and a sense of... anger? Protectiveness. What Kestel had felt in the moments before he'd been attacked, perhaps; Sev had never exactly been clear on how this particular skill worked, especially for injuries such as these.

The skill ended, and he gasped for air, bending over — and he wasn't the only one.

For now, though, his mind was still half-focused on that experience of death, of being dead, and of having nothing but an artifact supporting his continued existence; it sat in his mind, refusing to dislodge itself, and fuck but he'd forgotten how bad this felt.

When he'd cast it on Onyx to try to heal him, while the god was still in his chains... he'd felt something similar. But it hadn't been anything this bad, perhaps because whatever had been done to Onyx was outside the scope of mortal experiences; whatever had happened to him, whatever he'd absorbed, he hadn't quite understood.

"W... what's happening?" Kestel spoke in a voice that lacked the usual exuberance he had when he spoke; the lizardkin spoke with a slight waver, and his frame trembled. He looked around with bleary eyes, and Sev grimaced. Never good signs after a revival like this.

"Hey. It's Sev. Take it easy. You got hit pretty hard back there." Sev kept his voice low and even, gesturing for the other researchers to give him space — they'd crowded around Kestel in relief, which was understandable but patently unhelpful. Vex had cut off the wind spell almost as soon as the other lizardkin started breathing, and he'd taken a few steps back; it wasn't the first time Sev had helped someone that had 'died', though the circumstances were never really quite so... extreme. "Are you doing okay?"

"I... I don't know." Kestel shook his head, still seeming disoriented. He blinked a few times, then stared at something in the air, frowning; the blue veins were retreating, at least, so he was reconnected to the system. Probably some notifications. Sev fired off a few quick, lower-power heals at the man, bringing his health back to full anyway. Just in case. Kestel didn't react; he just continued staring at the air in front of him.

"Take your time," Sev said to him gently, then glanced around at the other researchers. "I don't want to keep him here. We should bring him back to the Guild, if possible; there are more priests there and they'll be better at diagnosing the full suite of status effects he might have. Recovering from this kind of thing isn't easy."

"You can't heal them yourself?" one of the researchers asked, perhaps a bit timidly, and Sev hesitated.

The easy answer was no; he couldn't.

The more complicated answer was that he could, perhaps, but [Divine Inhalation] was not a skill he could use on mental status effects, and the other class skills from [Traces of the Lost] would demand a greater sacrifice from him; some crucial aspect of who he was, perhaps, or yet another treasured memory.

"No," he finally said. "Status effects aren't really my specialty. Other priests will be able to do it better than I can. We'll get Kestel the help he needs, don't worry." Sev tried to offer the researcher a reassuring smile — he was the young man that had spoken earlier — but that lizardkin that was hanging around the guards spoke up again.

This time, at least, he sounded a little guilty. Though not very. "We should bring him back to Elyra. We have better medical facilities there."

"Elyra is much further away, and unless you have a teleport circle handy, it's going to take too long for us to get him there." Sev kept his temper under control, if only barely. The other thing was that Sev simply didn't trust Elyra with this — not after what he'd just heard about how House Varil handled their people. "The Guild is closer, and the temple's priests are good at what they do. We're taking him back to the Guild."

The Guild also had more adventurers, and they'd hopefully be willing to help with the situation. They'd need a few guards to prevent anything from blowing up...

"If you're going to the Guild, then we're going back to Elyra," the lizardkin spat at him, and Sev just stared.

"Okay," he said plainly.

That would solve a lot of problems, actually. He wouldn't have to worry about the Guild housing all of those researchers on top of the villagers, the delvers, and Kestel's little group. And there'd be less of a chance of a fight breaking out.

"Bye?" he tried adding. The lizardkin just stared at him, looking vaguely infuriated, and then stormed off back towards the camp, muttering something about packing. Sev shook his head, turning his attention back to Kestel; the lizardkin still looked a little lost, and was staring listlessly into the air.

"Hey," he said gently. "Do you think you can walk?"

Mutely, Kestel shook his head.

"Alright. We'll carry you." Sev glanced around — Misa and Derivan had approached and were standing by Vex, a respectful distance away; the remaining researchers on Kestel's side were watching with worry, and one or two of the guards had decided to stay instead of accompanying the rest back to Elyra.

Okay. That could work.

It was a far larger troupe than he was used to leading, though.

"Let's get back to the Guild," he said. He glanced at the notification that was still in the corner of his vision.

Was it just him, or was it glowing just a little more urgently?