[ A roar of suffocating heat obscures his fading world just then. Fire blazes in his punctured armor, lighting blood to blackened gold. The shining-edged blades closing in around him are overtaken in an instant, their holders incinerated. He doesn't hear the screams over the fizzing whistle of red, magical darts piercing the impossible heat, pulling whistling cold air through the inferno. Godfrey comprehends the sudden and howling silence before he puts together the source of this sensory bewilderment.
Gale collapses at his side in the next instant, while Godfrey, trembling, drives his tall shield further into the cold earth, trying to press himself upward. His shoulders are seized and Godfrey exhales, shaking.
Though the downward pressure Godfrey keeps on his shield offers some leverage, he is heavier than he should be with strength made useless by pain. Godfrey's head drops, anticipatory agony sturdying his every muscle, screwing in his nose, furrowing his brow. He resists the pain for as long as he can as he's hauled to his feet, every uncomfortable twinge a hard reminder of the steel lodged in his shoulder, every accommodation his body makes for movement not his own twisting the wood his muscles squeeze and coil around, he cannot resist it all. A particularly sudden jarring of his shoulder wrenches his body around the bodkin-point's invasion, and he cries out, his voice harsh and strangled in his throat, pushed through an iron-set jaw and tightly clenched teeth.
His face is bright with cold sweat when it is wrenched to face Gale's, strands of pale gold plastered to his pallid face. Each breath is a calculated struggle; he can only breathe so deeply before his chest tries to lift the arrows lodged against his collarbone. They come shallow and hard.
It takes a moment for his eyes to regard Gale, gaze drifting and difficult. He knows the face in front of him. Something in him wishes he didn't. Gale Dekarios should not find himself burdened by such weight as his. ]
No.
[ His voice sounds dry, like an intrusion to himself. Weakened and brought low. ]
[It's a very Gale sort of response, all told: defiant, indignant, and at least three words longer than it needed to be. His grip tightens as bodily heaves the paladin's shoulders against him, insistent on keeping him propped up enough to encourage his breathing, his own face pale even in the dim light as he takes in the ghastly state of Godfrey's. He looks but a few heartbeats away from joining the undead that swarm throughout this place, and yet Gale holds onto what little he can, to the fact that he can speak and is cognizant enough to insist he be left behind.
Over Gale's own dead body. Godfrey would never have left one of them to flee the battlefield. Gale himself was no paladin, no soldier, but it would be shameful, not to be willing to offer his companion the same.]
You're not finished yet— it's going to take a great deal more than this to end you!
[They hadn't come this far for him to be slain during a skirmish in the middle of the woods, hadn't survived having these things in their heads this long for him to die now.]
You're going to come through this just fine, Shadowheart can—
[He looks over his shoulder as he speaks, and even as he does so, he realizes that the companions that had previously been fighting alongside of them are nowhere to be seen, lost beyond the darkness.
They've been separated, at best, entirely lost and devoured by the shadows, at worst. Neither is ideal, but the idea that it might be the latter causes his heart to seize, momentarily.]
[ Severely drawn and harsh in the shadow. Cheeks already gone ashy and bright with cold sweat. Dampened golden hair plastered to his forehead, soft waves now slicked flat against his face. Pale lips parted to make way for short, shallow breaths.
He watches the shadow ahead through sweat-heavy strands as Gale drives them through it, his head hanging low. He tries to keep his feet under him, and his wits awake, even as the darkness wheels and clouds what little of the ground the Blood of Lathander grants them.
Gale hardly needs to tell him what edge has cut his voice away. He feels him shift to throw his attention over his shoulder, and even as the pain and warm blood between skin and gambeson conspire to smother his thoughts, Godfrey knows what he's found. Shadowheart could do nothing. Shadowheart couldn't even know that she was so needed. Shadowheart was flung to some other corner of the shadows, or already killed.
Godfrey takes a ragged breath, one that rasps against his throat unwholesomely. ]
Gale.
[ Every shift in posture, every breath a measured agony. ]
You must listen to me. [ Every word comes with a pause and through clenching teeth. ] We shall need a fire. We must find wood enough to burn and to build splints. Cloth to staunch-- the bleeding. To pack into the wounds. And you--
[ He shivers and wilts at his side, fresh blood slowly oozing from the shafts in his shoulder, beneath his layers of failed protection. ]
[Gale Dekarios was many things. Clever, certainly. Dedicated, undoubtedly. A survivalist, he was not, even with all he has learned in their time on the road. He's an adept alchemist, sure enough, but this was not a situation where potions alone were clearly not going to be enough.
Even in the dim light that even now threatens to be choked out by the oppressive shadow, he has gone pale.
He commits each item to memory. A fire, he can certainly do, with greater ease than most. The rest, manageable— though the very last item on the list will be difficult if Godfrey insists that he leave him again.
You must do as I say.]
I will. Don't try to talk too much— not until we've stemmed the tide and stopped the bleeding.
[He'll need to move quickly. With a mere flick of his fingers, a mage hand appears to rummage through his bag where it's been dropped on the ground, dragging his bedroll out so that Gale can grab hold of it and prop it beneath Godfrey's head to keep it elevated while he gets to his feet and quickly gets to work.
Magic, thankfully, makes short work of much of it. Within a few short minutes, branches have been collected and a fire has been set; he calls upon the aid of his mephit friend to request that he continue to collect enough wood to suit their purposes while Gale seeks out the rest. They hardly have an overabundance of cloth— a few bandages among their supplies— but there is clothing in his own pack that he doesn't mind sacrificing, and he begins to roll a shirt tightly into the right shape to staunch the bleeding and apply pressure to the wound, kneeling down to pry Godfrey's gambison from him.]
[ It is a well-placed question. Godfrey's pale, sleeping complexion and still steel chest could just as easily be gone.
He might have been, were he allowed to doze much longer. Rushing feet and a drop at his side stir him, his head moving sluggishly against Gale's bundled bedroll. Sharp pain greets him and he grimaces, eyes cringing open, gauntleted hands opening and closing as the pain radiates toward them.
Gale is above him. Godfrey's throat works as Gale's hands do, peeling back layers to expose his wounds. Thick, throbbing blood glues the layers below his plate together - gambeson to leather, and to linen. The breath is stolen from his chest as an errant move jostles one of the shafts in his shoulders. Hot, numbing agony. Coldness in his fingers. Godfrey screws his wet eyes shut and waits out the pain. ]
The-- [ There is hardness in his voice - brittle and strained, his throat pulled tight around it. ] There is a knife. It is sheathed to one of my boots. Cut the padding away, if need be. Do not jostle the arrows.
[ His eyes open again, and he pins his gaze to the wretched sky - the lances of cold, diminished light struggling against the cloud-cover. ]
The arrows in my shoulders - they must be seen to. I fear the-- the one on the left. It is perilously near to an artery. [ One he'd been taught of, during his training; slide a blade behind the left collarbone, just above the heart, and a man could be exsanguinated in mere minutes. ] I've only so much healing left, but - enough, I think.
[ Enough to stem the tide of one wrong movement. Godfrey masters his throat long enough to swallow. ]
You must cut the shafts with a steady hand. As near to the skin as you can. Leave the rest in place. Pull the left arrowhead out only if you c-cut the artery. Pack and wrap them, and then-- [ His chest raises, shivering, with a long breath, ] my shoulders must be splinted, that I do not move the arrowheads within myself.
[ They could see to his leg once this is done. ]
Edited (dusting this off a lil (befuckered the html)) 2024-05-30 02:48 (UTC)
[The instructions are precise and numerous, but Gale has always been an attentive student, and in this critical moment, he does not allow a single word to escape him. He feels almost numb as he draws the knife from Godfrey's boot, tossing the leather sheath aside with abandon before he carefully takes hold of the padding beneath the paladin's armor and pulls it taut so that it can be cut free. They can only benefit from his having a better view of the injury, and to be able to work without the padding hindering his progress.
He exhales, steeling himself, and even he is surprised by how steady his hands are. They had proven to be so under very different circumstances— cooking, alchemy, various experiments— but never anything like this.
If he slipped even the slightest bit, it could cost Godfrey dearly. His heart is in his stomach as just for a moment, he thinks of the little girl waiting for Godfrey back home.
No— he must focus on the here and now.]
Cut the shafts with a steady hand.
[He repeats the instruction, carefully taking hold of the arrow on the left and holding it still, taking great pains not to jostle it.]
Hold still, my friend.
[He draws in a sharp breath, clenches his jaw, and begins to cut, the flat of the blade against the paladin's skin, the blood beneath it black in the dark of the Shadow-Cursed Lands.]
Edited (my formatting was not dramatique enough) 2024-07-24 00:04 (UTC)
[ Godfrey imparts his instructions - the very essence of too many months of dogged soldiery training and drills - as he feels ice settle beneath his skin. Gale takes each word in attentive, studious silence, commits them to an internal list of priorities. Sorts the words effortlessly.
At least, that is how it feels.
There's little else to be done about it now. He had never known how he might feel, to use what he'd been taught; he'd never liked to indulge the thought very much, and foolishly, he had always imagined that it would be he administering aid whenever it pushed across his thoughts anyway. He'd thought that it would be him in Gale's position - kneeling over a mass of rapidly cooling muscle and blood made suddenly impossibly fragile, trying to school his hands still and regulate the press of his lungs. He thought that he would know how he would feel - rocketing between forcibly imposed calm and numbness, and some panic just below the surface, like a river rushing beneath a thin sheet of ice.
How does he feel now? Hollow.
A cold emptiness spreads beneath his skin. He's done all that he can for now. All he can do is lie there, helpless, and try to stamp out the pain and the panic. It wouldn't do to take in a drowning gasp and thrust his chest into the arrow while Gale held it still.
He's chosen a point to stare at, in the swirling morass of thick shadow. He focuses his every sense to it. Godfrey seeks out his Lord beyond it, but feels too buried in cold darkness to reach Him. He doesn't need to look to know that the arrow is in Gale's hands.
The arrow stills in his grasp, and Godfrey feels the wound come alive as its raw and bloody edges rub against the still object. His throat strains with sound repressed, sweat beading bright on his dirty skin. A slow writhe works through him, heels driving into the blighted dirt, that Godfrey tries to repress as the knife begins to work agonizingly through the shaft. The pain rumbles between his ears. His voice sounds low in his throat, a choking grunt, as a deep breath rushes from him. ]
[Every twitch, every sound, every breath sets Gale on edge; the consequences of fumbling this task are unthinkable, something he does not want to entertain for even a moment. For all the subjects that he has studied over the years, for every book he had read on medicine while following his alchemical pursuits, he had never thought about what it would be like to actually be in such a situation. It was easy to remain disconnected when it was but words on a page, easy to be matter-of-fact and decide that one understood the procedure, but the reality of it was not so neatly resolved. Far from it.
He exhales and remains steady, even as Godfrey's efforts to repress any show of pain beneath him make his stomach turn in on itself, twisted, and though it seems to take near an eternity, at last his blade makes it through to the other side and the shaft comes free.
Mystra's tits. He doesn't allow himself to feel even a moment of relief. Pull the arrowhead out only if you cut an artery. Blessedly, they had not, though he hates the idea of leaving them in place— he knows in practice, that may well save Godfrey's life.]
Splinting next.
[He works quickly, unable to ignore how pale the man beneath him appears, the wax-like pallor he has taken on as he bleeds.
No. No you don't, not tonight.
Gritting his teeth, he presses some of the cut padding to the open wound to stem the bleeding before he sets to immobilizing Godfrey's shoulders. Would that he had even a single healing spell at his disposal. After this, when the man was stable, he could take the time to brew something— but right now, they have minutes, at best. Perhaps even less than that.]
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Gale collapses at his side in the next instant, while Godfrey, trembling, drives his tall shield further into the cold earth, trying to press himself upward. His shoulders are seized and Godfrey exhales, shaking.
Though the downward pressure Godfrey keeps on his shield offers some leverage, he is heavier than he should be with strength made useless by pain. Godfrey's head drops, anticipatory agony sturdying his every muscle, screwing in his nose, furrowing his brow. He resists the pain for as long as he can as he's hauled to his feet, every uncomfortable twinge a hard reminder of the steel lodged in his shoulder, every accommodation his body makes for movement not his own twisting the wood his muscles squeeze and coil around, he cannot resist it all. A particularly sudden jarring of his shoulder wrenches his body around the bodkin-point's invasion, and he cries out, his voice harsh and strangled in his throat, pushed through an iron-set jaw and tightly clenched teeth.
His face is bright with cold sweat when it is wrenched to face Gale's, strands of pale gold plastered to his pallid face. Each breath is a calculated struggle; he can only breathe so deeply before his chest tries to lift the arrows lodged against his collarbone. They come shallow and hard.
It takes a moment for his eyes to regard Gale, gaze drifting and difficult. He knows the face in front of him. Something in him wishes he didn't. Gale Dekarios should not find himself burdened by such weight as his. ]
No.
[ His voice sounds dry, like an intrusion to himself. Weakened and brought low. ]
Go. I am lost.
no subject
[It's a very Gale sort of response, all told: defiant, indignant, and at least three words longer than it needed to be. His grip tightens as bodily heaves the paladin's shoulders against him, insistent on keeping him propped up enough to encourage his breathing, his own face pale even in the dim light as he takes in the ghastly state of Godfrey's. He looks but a few heartbeats away from joining the undead that swarm throughout this place, and yet Gale holds onto what little he can, to the fact that he can speak and is cognizant enough to insist he be left behind.
Over Gale's own dead body. Godfrey would never have left one of them to flee the battlefield. Gale himself was no paladin, no soldier, but it would be shameful, not to be willing to offer his companion the same.]
You're not finished yet— it's going to take a great deal more than this to end you!
[They hadn't come this far for him to be slain during a skirmish in the middle of the woods, hadn't survived having these things in their heads this long for him to die now.]
You're going to come through this just fine, Shadowheart can—
[He looks over his shoulder as he speaks, and even as he does so, he realizes that the companions that had previously been fighting alongside of them are nowhere to be seen, lost beyond the darkness.
They've been separated, at best, entirely lost and devoured by the shadows, at worst. Neither is ideal, but the idea that it might be the latter causes his heart to seize, momentarily.]
no subject
He watches the shadow ahead through sweat-heavy strands as Gale drives them through it, his head hanging low. He tries to keep his feet under him, and his wits awake, even as the darkness wheels and clouds what little of the ground the Blood of Lathander grants them.
Gale hardly needs to tell him what edge has cut his voice away. He feels him shift to throw his attention over his shoulder, and even as the pain and warm blood between skin and gambeson conspire to smother his thoughts, Godfrey knows what he's found. Shadowheart could do nothing. Shadowheart couldn't even know that she was so needed. Shadowheart was flung to some other corner of the shadows, or already killed.
Godfrey takes a ragged breath, one that rasps against his throat unwholesomely. ]
Gale.
[ Every shift in posture, every breath a measured agony. ]
You must listen to me. [ Every word comes with a pause and through clenching teeth. ] We shall need a fire. We must find wood enough to burn and to build splints. Cloth to staunch-- the bleeding. To pack into the wounds. And you--
[ He shivers and wilts at his side, fresh blood slowly oozing from the shafts in his shoulder, beneath his layers of failed protection. ]
You must do as I say.
no subject
Even in the dim light that even now threatens to be choked out by the oppressive shadow, he has gone pale.
He commits each item to memory. A fire, he can certainly do, with greater ease than most. The rest, manageable— though the very last item on the list will be difficult if Godfrey insists that he leave him again.
You must do as I say.]
I will. Don't try to talk too much— not until we've stemmed the tide and stopped the bleeding.
[He'll need to move quickly. With a mere flick of his fingers, a mage hand appears to rummage through his bag where it's been dropped on the ground, dragging his bedroll out so that Gale can grab hold of it and prop it beneath Godfrey's head to keep it elevated while he gets to his feet and quickly gets to work.
Magic, thankfully, makes short work of much of it. Within a few short minutes, branches have been collected and a fire has been set; he calls upon the aid of his mephit friend to request that he continue to collect enough wood to suit their purposes while Gale seeks out the rest. They hardly have an overabundance of cloth— a few bandages among their supplies— but there is clothing in his own pack that he doesn't mind sacrificing, and he begins to roll a shirt tightly into the right shape to staunch the bleeding and apply pressure to the wound, kneeling down to pry Godfrey's gambison from him.]
Hold still. Are you still with me, Godfrey?
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He might have been, were he allowed to doze much longer. Rushing feet and a drop at his side stir him, his head moving sluggishly against Gale's bundled bedroll. Sharp pain greets him and he grimaces, eyes cringing open, gauntleted hands opening and closing as the pain radiates toward them.
Gale is above him. Godfrey's throat works as Gale's hands do, peeling back layers to expose his wounds. Thick, throbbing blood glues the layers below his plate together - gambeson to leather, and to linen. The breath is stolen from his chest as an errant move jostles one of the shafts in his shoulders. Hot, numbing agony. Coldness in his fingers. Godfrey screws his wet eyes shut and waits out the pain. ]
The-- [ There is hardness in his voice - brittle and strained, his throat pulled tight around it. ] There is a knife. It is sheathed to one of my boots. Cut the padding away, if need be. Do not jostle the arrows.
[ His eyes open again, and he pins his gaze to the wretched sky - the lances of cold, diminished light struggling against the cloud-cover. ]
The arrows in my shoulders - they must be seen to. I fear the-- the one on the left. It is perilously near to an artery. [ One he'd been taught of, during his training; slide a blade behind the left collarbone, just above the heart, and a man could be exsanguinated in mere minutes. ] I've only so much healing left, but - enough, I think.
[ Enough to stem the tide of one wrong movement. Godfrey masters his throat long enough to swallow. ]
You must cut the shafts with a steady hand. As near to the skin as you can. Leave the rest in place. Pull the left arrowhead out only if you c-cut the artery. Pack and wrap them, and then-- [ His chest raises, shivering, with a long breath, ] my shoulders must be splinted, that I do not move the arrowheads within myself.
[ They could see to his leg once this is done. ]
dusts this off, dusts Gale off, dusts myself off
He exhales, steeling himself, and even he is surprised by how steady his hands are. They had proven to be so under very different circumstances— cooking, alchemy, various experiments— but never anything like this.
If he slipped even the slightest bit, it could cost Godfrey dearly. His heart is in his stomach as just for a moment, he thinks of the little girl waiting for Godfrey back home.
No— he must focus on the here and now.]
Cut the shafts with a steady hand.
[He repeats the instruction, carefully taking hold of the arrow on the left and holding it still, taking great pains not to jostle it.]
Hold still, my friend.
[He draws in a sharp breath, clenches his jaw, and begins to cut, the flat of the blade against the paladin's skin, the blood beneath it black in the dark of the Shadow-Cursed Lands.]
is it finally my turn to do the same for real
At least, that is how it feels.
There's little else to be done about it now. He had never known how he might feel, to use what he'd been taught; he'd never liked to indulge the thought very much, and foolishly, he had always imagined that it would be he administering aid whenever it pushed across his thoughts anyway. He'd thought that it would be him in Gale's position - kneeling over a mass of rapidly cooling muscle and blood made suddenly impossibly fragile, trying to school his hands still and regulate the press of his lungs. He thought that he would know how he would feel - rocketing between forcibly imposed calm and numbness, and some panic just below the surface, like a river rushing beneath a thin sheet of ice.
How does he feel now? Hollow.
A cold emptiness spreads beneath his skin. He's done all that he can for now. All he can do is lie there, helpless, and try to stamp out the pain and the panic. It wouldn't do to take in a drowning gasp and thrust his chest into the arrow while Gale held it still.
He's chosen a point to stare at, in the swirling morass of thick shadow. He focuses his every sense to it. Godfrey seeks out his Lord beyond it, but feels too buried in cold darkness to reach Him. He doesn't need to look to know that the arrow is in Gale's hands.
The arrow stills in his grasp, and Godfrey feels the wound come alive as its raw and bloody edges rub against the still object. His throat strains with sound repressed, sweat beading bright on his dirty skin. A slow writhe works through him, heels driving into the blighted dirt, that Godfrey tries to repress as the knife begins to work agonizingly through the shaft. The pain rumbles between his ears. His voice sounds low in his throat, a choking grunt, as a deep breath rushes from him. ]
no subject
He exhales and remains steady, even as Godfrey's efforts to repress any show of pain beneath him make his stomach turn in on itself, twisted, and though it seems to take near an eternity, at last his blade makes it through to the other side and the shaft comes free.
Mystra's tits. He doesn't allow himself to feel even a moment of relief. Pull the arrowhead out only if you cut an artery. Blessedly, they had not, though he hates the idea of leaving them in place— he knows in practice, that may well save Godfrey's life.]
Splinting next.
[He works quickly, unable to ignore how pale the man beneath him appears, the wax-like pallor he has taken on as he bleeds.
No. No you don't, not tonight.
Gritting his teeth, he presses some of the cut padding to the open wound to stem the bleeding before he sets to immobilizing Godfrey's shoulders. Would that he had even a single healing spell at his disposal. After this, when the man was stable, he could take the time to brew something— but right now, they have minutes, at best. Perhaps even less than that.]
Speak to let me know that you remain with me.