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WHO: Cassian and Sanzo in one, Cassian and Amberdrake in another
WHAT: DINNER TIME and A brief material run
WHEN: Shortly after Christmas, before the shops in Fayren close.
WHERE: Everglade and Fayren
WARNINGS: Gore, violence, mentions of cannibalism

4 SANZO
He'd gone too long. He knew he'd over extended himself, the gift he got from Tannusen could only last so long. Wheezing, stiff, the faint sound of flutes beginning to sound in the back of his mind, tonight had to be the night. He wasn't going to risk it all again, he couldn't. He couldn't keep relying on someone else here to patch him up every time he fell into shit.

He was a grown man. He could take care of this.

As it had been for two thousand years, the hunt was on. As it had been for two thousand years, the iron dagger found its mark, the husk soulless yes, but oh how they screamed like any real living thing would. Once, perhaps, he would have shrunk away from the sound. A long time ago, he'd be frantic to silence them, clumsily slashing at vocal cords and sobbing in fear and horror-

He knew how to work now, and the screaming was quickly silenced to pathetic, wet gurgling as the cloaked man snapped ribs with ease, feeling the rippling sensation of that thing pulsing in the back of his head, feeding his meager strength. Peeling the membrane off the heart. Sinking his teeth in and silencing the husk forever.

Blood everywhere. It stank of it, but the pain in his body and his lungs faded with every bite, even if it couldn't fully sate the beast. Just another bandaid.

But for now, it would do.
4 Amberdrake

Of course, Everglade wouldn't have the materials he needed. No one would stock in the type of silver he required, and he didn't even ask any shops there. Seemed like a good way to get a lot of unwanted attention. So, wrapped up in fleece and wool, cranky and miserable and cold, headed for Fayren.

They'd have what he needed, or at least part of it. He could always return home and finish blessing it all later. He had some energy in his step now, so the little man was going to be quite the obnoxious terror in Fayren, picky and fussy with everything he picked up, viciously haggling every single object down.

"I'll only be takin' pure silver, and not anything else. I don't want any steel or nickle in any of this- What else is in this mirror? Oi! Tis a real question, does it look like I'm foolin' with ye?"

Yeah. Not a good day for Fayren.

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... Welp.

THe trigger was pulled, and the full force of that specially modified elephant hunting rifle was released, just as the priest was hurled back by the magic of the sutra.

Driven into the dirt, bleeding, hacking, coughing, bones broken and utterly baffled as to what just happened, getting up wasn't going to happen so quickly.

He uh.... had to make sure he was still alive first. As for the 'foul magic', don't worry.

His little compass spell is really really gone.

Really.

And so was the sutra, retracted in an instant as the focus of its Sanzo was broken. Miraculously, Sanzo was still standing in the midst of the torn up ground, the corpse had been flung off somewhere into the woods, and swayed there, a steady stain of red spreading across the lower right of his robes. He swayed just too far one way and his injured leg gave out and he crashed to the ground into an undignified lump of swearwords and bloody clothing.

With effort and spite, he pushed himself up onto one elbow, somehow getting a hand on his gun during this. It was pointed again at Cassian. If he dared attack, Sanzo would make sure he'd stay still.

The battered priest in black stares back, barely propped up against a tree stump. Seems like one shot was enough to.... stop whatever that was. Good. He shifted one leg, and then the other, wheezing as a strange, but not entirely unfamiliar static like pain laced it's way up his ribs.

Broke a few, though by the sheer fact that he was still breathing, nothing had been punctured.

As for Sanzo, however, that bloody mess taking over his hips was proof enough his elephant shot had... done it's work.

And done it well.

There's no mockery this time, the smaller man trying to stumble to his feet and put away the shot gun.

"Put it down, ye stubborn git."

Sanzo's eyes narrowed to slits, he didn't trust this freak. Yet- Sanzo could still kill him and it still wouldn't matter in the end. By experience, too much experience, he knew his own life was at risk if he didn't handle the new holes he had in his leg and hip. It was agony, as many wounds he'd taken over the past few years had been, but, as always, he hid his pain in anger and a fierce scowl.

"Back," he commanded, the pain, if anything, deepened the haughty growl in his voice. He lowered the gun but didn't drop it. It could be fired too fast for Cassian to see it coming, if it came to that.

"Yer pelvis is shattered, ye stupid arse." He knew what that shot could do, he saw the blood. "If it hit any organs down there you'll be dead before mornin', ain't no place richer in vessels and sepsis isn't very kind."

But he stopped, wheezing and reeling.

"If ye don't want me draggin' yer ungrateful arse back to town, I suggest findin' someone who will come out here and stick ye back together again."

"I can handle myself." Full of bravado for someone already reaching around his sleeve for his phone. Goddamnit this was Everglade. Drake would be unhappy enough that he was here, even worse that now Sanzo couldn't walk. Not that he wouldn't try, if Cassian would just leave! Damnit man, it's embarrassing to have to call your "roommate" for help as it without you wheezing over there.

If he stayed and Drake wanted to help him too that was acceptable but he wasn't going to suggest it.

He pulled out the phone, leaving a smear of dirt on the screen as he unlocked it. Looking between the phone and Cassian, he typed a quick message with one hand.

"That better feckin' be whatever passes for an ambulance around here, mate." Issuing a final, painful wheeze, he slowly sits on the stump, spitting out what looked to be a single clot of blood.

"Handle yerself indeed, ye even know how to use that thing ye got there?" Oh. Well at least he knew that Sanzo had about a quarter of an idea of what he was holding.

"I'd sooner trust that paper with an actual donkey."

"Fuck off." Sore spot, maybe? Sanzo barely knew how to use the sutra. For basic things, yet, but nothing past that, nothing like what Koumyou or Sharak could pull off, much to his annoyance and shame. Cassian didn't need to know that, he could still kill him with it!

"Linger if you damn well please, I have this handled." By means of asking to be scrapped off the ground. He'd give a couple of fingers to be able to walk over to Cassian and push him off that stupid stump.

"Nae, I'm gonna sit here an' make sure ye don't get eaten by a zombie. Not cos I like ye." A pause.

"Cos it's pissin' ye off an' ye can't do shite about it."

The first clue for who Sanzo had messaged came in the form of several small, colorful birds who zipped in around the downed trees and seemed to just get a look at things before zipping off and away again. Only one lingered, coming to a landing on Sanzo. Thankfully, the little bird weighed about as much as a dust-bunny.

"Fuck!" Yep, it was Red.

Sanzo lowered the gun from his last round of gunfire to assault the unfortunate stump Cassian sat on at the sight of the birds. He lowered himself back down to the ground with a grunt, some of the fight bleeding out of him along with some blood that was still bleeding out of him too. There was a lot of blood at this point, he was sick and pale and completely determined to still be an asshole despite that.

"There. Handled." See, his healer is here. No need to worry.

He didn't flinch. Must be due to the pain. Fishing around in a pocket just turned up a rosary, something tactile to roll around in his fingers to ignore the pain radiating in his chest.

"... I've seen that bird before." He's heard that bird before.

There's no alarm, but... curiosity, looking from Sanzo, to the little fluffy beast, and back again.

"... Well.

Convenient."

Amberdrake finally arrived with the rest of the flock to guide him, and he spared Cassian a single glance -- his eyes were strangely unfocused -- before bee-lining for Sanzo. Sanzo was bleeding out. Cassian was, essentially, regulated to 'walking wounded' status. That. Fast.

Drake slid to a halt by the downed Sanzo, and knelt down, setting his hands over the worst of the wounds and threading in the Gift to assess the damage. And the bleeding immediately slowed to a crawl.

He was in all his usual kestra'chern finery, but there was no smiling or artful elegance. Right now, Amberdrake k'Leshya was a war-Healer and trained chirurgeon in a therapist's garb. All efficiency and no hesitation. Kneeling in blood in the middle of zombie-infested woods? Whatever. Must be Tuesday.

For a moment Sanzo considered a snitty comment. Even Drake wasn't spared that but with Drake finally here, the anger he'd been clinging to to stay conscious slipped and the pain smacked him right back down to grunts as communication. That hurt a hell of a lot more than he'd been expecting.

There were two wounds through his thigh, thankfully missing the bone there. The right side of his pelvis was less fortunate, especially as the silver ball was still lodge there, making that terrible pain all the more agonizing. The best Sanzo could do was lay still and narrow his eyes at Cassian, as if daring him to say or do anything that would warrant getting shot.

He hadn't been kidding about the shot. He meets Sanzo's glare back directly, but he knows better. Don't open his mouth, healer is at work. The last thing that should be done during a doctors visit is annoying the doctor.

However, that's not going to stop him from hacking every so often, spitting up clear and reddish fluid every now and again. His lungs never were any good after all.

Drake had grabbed the small roll of emergency supplies he kept for exactly this sort of situation, though it remained tucked into his open-cut, feather-patterned robe for the moment. So did the thermos of tea, herbs hastily poured in before the hot water he always had on hand at the office. Why was that important? Because it took multiple Velgarthian Healers to fix what one stupid Velgarthian Healer did to himself, and Amberdrake was the only one in this place.

He didn't pay their audience any mind, pushing the lower half of Sanzo's robe open to find the bloodsoaked holes in his jeans. A quick snip with his belt-knife gave him enough room to get skin contact beside the wounds themselves, threading the Gift in directly through his fingertips. He could work through cloth, but it took more energy, and he didn't know how much he would need for this... situation.

Meat was easier than bone, and either was easier than extracting foreign objects. So he'd start here, the wounds growing closed at their deepest points and spreading out back toward the skin. Stitched back together, vein by vein, muscle fiber by muscle fiber. Fluid buildup was pushed away, energy funneled in through his fingertips. Any sign of infection was purged before it could even begin. His eyes remained unfocused, seeing everything he was doing with detail that modern medical machines could only aspire to one day achieve in even still imagery, let alone in real time.

The birds were restless, hopping from stump to stump to tree to rock. Vigilant. Spread out. It wouldn't take someone super observant to know they were making sure nothing snuck up on the distracted Healer or his patients. Garth seemed to be in charge of the flock, doing the most flittering from spot to spot as though checking on the others.

Only Red remained where he was, perched on Sanzo, out of Drake's way. The foul-mouthed little bird offered a few small noises at the blond priest.

"...Silver buckshot," Amberdrake finally said aloud, without looking up at Cassian. He'd also noticed the signature way trees and the ground had been sliced to shit by indestructible paper, but Cassian wasn't missing limbs. Sanzo, meanwhile, had buckshot in his bones.

His tone was mild, like it was just a dry observation. But in reality, oh, the doctor was already annoyed.

Edited 2016-12-29 11:25 (UTC)

Sanzo kept as still and quiet as he could as Drake worked. He wanted to hide his pain completely, so Cassian would have no reason to look down on him other than the fact that Sanzo was literally on the ground. He totally wasn't in severe pain, look, he barely winced! There was some wearing but otherwise he was a good patient. For him.

When Amberdrake mentioned the buckshot he muttered something unintelligible, undoubtedly something scathing about Cassian. This was all totally Cassian's fault. Sanzo picked a fight, sure, but Cassian was here eating people! How was Sanzo to resist that bait?

He felt mildly guilty, but only Drake could tell that.

It was hard not to miss the clinical interest he showed at the process. Two things had always been of the utmost interest to the priest, one being weapons, and the other, magic. And there was magic here, wasn't there? He watched carefully, another unsightly clot of blood managing to ooze past his lips before he wiped it away.

Indeed, not a scratch on him, just the concussive hit from the sutra had damaged him. Wasn't sure what to make of that. Either Sanzo had terrible aim or he'd been trying not to slice him. There wasn't, however, any nice way to hit a man with buckshot though.

Not a hint of shame from him, he snorted, more blood beginning to bubble from that. He was sure nothing had been punctured but-

"Aye. Silver buckshot." More of a hissing wheeze than a brash statement.

"Ye expected a BB?"

Was Amberdrake a happy guy? Why no, no he was not. He finished enough of the wounds on Sanzo's thigh that they were merely gouges now, and not tunnels through his leg, and reached into his own robe to produce the leather roll he'd snatched up on the way out of his office. It opened on the ground with a practiced snap of Drake's wrist, revealing several rolls of bandages and surgical instruments, each kept in place with tiny elastic straps.

Drake said a few things to his current patient in one of those other languages, speaking slow and quiet, ending with a question. While he spoke, he smoothed Sanzo's hair back from his forehead and laid his hand over it in the same motion. The gesture was professional, clean, precise. The Gift threaded in, and the pain eased, though it didn't stop completely. He didn't dare numb Sanzo's pain receptors completely; he needed every bit of information he could get from the remaining wound, and unfortunately some of that was coming from the sense of pain.

"I expect someone with so many broken bones to know better than to ask stupid questions," Amberdrake said to Cassian, moving to the worst of Sanzo's wounds accordingly. He shoved the robe out of the way, making good use of the way it was split down the side and folded over itself under that narrow sash. He knew his way around Sanzo garb, to be sure. "Your lungs are being crushed, so you should probably conserve your breath until I can get to you. And keep that left arm supported, your collar bone is broken."

And here came the belt knife again, slitting open the hole in Sanzo's blood-soaked jeans to give him better access to the wound below. Drake reached over to his roll of tools without even looking, plucking a pair of thin, blunt-nosed forceps from it. That ball had to come out, first and foremost.

Edited 2016-12-29 22:43 (UTC)

Sanzo couldn't help the sigh of relief as the pain eased. As skilled as he was at hiding it, he still felt it and his stamina was fading fast. He especially appreciated the relief before he saw the tool Drake had. Fuck that was going to hurt like hell. His dignity hurt enough already! Thankfully Drake was kind enough to not undress him more than he had to around this asshole.

He answered Drake in a rough, tired voice. It was the same language but stiffer, awkward. When he wasn't being put back together he could use it better. Until then, that was the best he could do.

Sanzo ignored Cassian for now.

Another indignant snort at the suggestion that he not run his mouth. The wheeze suggested he had taken a breath of air to stubbornly and less than intelligently shoot his mouth off anyway, but the wet hack that followed it was indication enough he wasn't really in any state to be being such a pecker head.

So the answer ended up being a wet gurgle and another spit, before he propped his left arm up as requested and tried to find a position to take the pressure off of his rib cage. He looked like, eventually, he was just trying to hook a thumb under the most pressing broken rib, another unattractive gurgle heard as he forced the bone to sit a little nicer.

Hurt like fuck.

But hey at least he could get some more air.

Drake held the wound open as best he could from the surface, one hand splayed out around it and providing pressure out. Then came the forceps, expertly wielded. It was almost like he'd had full-on surgical training, before the Gift had ever been trained! Which, of course, he had. And he'd been a prodigy even then.

Thus the tool was used with utmost precision, no scraping against the narrow wound as he went. Through his other hand, the Gift slid in and reduced inflammation, funneling building fluids away from the wound to make the passage stay open and clear. Even the remaining trickle of blood was siphoned out and away, keeping the hole clear.

He got 'hold of the silver ball and carefully eased it free of the bones it had shattered, then drew it out in one smooth, well-practiced motion. Drake wasn't two thousand years old, but most of his life had been dedicated to medicine in one form or another, and his longest experience was as a regular surgeon with no Gift to assist him. The Gift, now fully-trained, was another tool in his arsenal.

"Alright ves'tacha, you're familiar with the bone process." It was going to feel weird, but he was precise, setting the bloodied tool and the buckshot aside to be sterilized later. Bone fragments began to shift inside the wound, guided by the Gift now inundating the wound site. Sharp edges were taken with extra care, to not slice up the tissue around it further as his pelvis was essentially re-built from the inside, and splinted together with a complex web of Amberdrake's own life energy.

Then came the soft tissue, and the process was mostly the same as the wounds on his thigh, regrowing and stitching together meat and vein and muscle and tendon bit by bit from the inside up toward the surface.

"Don't you dare try to walk on this yet," Drake added to Sanzo in the common tongue, once his hip was completely repaired, right up to the skin patching over with fresh growth. "Or I'll paralyze the whole thing. And you know the disclaimers about bones."

His energy would hold it together, but it wasn't as strong as properly solid bone. Bones would need to knit over time, or they'd become fragile. The best he could do was hold it all together in proper alignment against a reasonable level of force. Sanzo would probably have a cane for a while, after this. He finished with wrapping Sanzo's thigh with one of the rolls of bandages, offering some compression support for the remaining gouges over the top of the priest's jeans.

Next, would be Cassian, but Drake paused while he was still kneeling on the blood-soaked dirt to produce that small thermos from in his robes and take a pull of the too-hot liquid. It burned his mouth and throat something fierce, but it was best to start getting the herbs into him sooner rather than later. He could not afford to over-extend, especially in Goddess-damned Everglade.

Edited 2016-12-29 23:47 (UTC)

Spite compelled Sanzo to sit up but the very real threat of being paralyzed for hurting himself further kept him in place. For now. His glare turned back to Cassian now. It was too much to ask to get Drake to leave him in that state. Even if he told Drake what the man did he wouldn't stop helping him. Soft hearted ass.

"It's his fault," he growled in Cassian's direction. It was totally his fault. Completely.

Sanzo was still lightheaded and too weak from blood loss and pain to do much other than lay there, but he was healed just enough to be a petulant ass.

"The devil it was-" Came the hissing, gurgling answer, followed up by the ever poignant wad of spit and blood that seemed to be punctuating all his sentences lately.

"Ye kept walkin' nothin' would have happened at all, mind yer own business, donkey."

Amberdrake sighed into his thermos, not bothering to hide the reaction. He lowered it and capped it; tucked it back away again, and rolled up his tools to tuck away as well. "Your personalities are so alike, it's like being in an echo chamber," he informed both of the cranky, gun-toting priests.

He didn't mind Sanzo sitting up; would have helped him, had they not had an audience.

Drake got up and approached Cassian, next, his vivid blue eyes still unfocused in that weird way that said he wasn't seeing the surface of much of anything. They focused just long enough for him to assess the other priest's clothing, and then he was reaching to hike the bottom of Cassian's shirt up just enough to reach his ribs with one hand. "This isn't entirely from the Sutra," he noted. What the hell had these two idiots done?

If the Gift was interesting to watch, now Cassian got to experience it himself. It was like the tingle of walking under powerful electrical lines, only it spread out from Drake's fingertips and sank in as he took a closer 'look' at the damage. Not painful, but certainly noticeable to anyone with a lick of magical senses.