Healer Heart Attack #923

[wrecking_yard]

We came out of the tree-portal right in the courtyard of our keep, startling several guards who turn fast with weapons drawn - and light stones attached to gauntlets and armor. The captain is blinking at us.

"If we're still under arrest that's fine, we'll go to our rooms ourselves until Whitestone can get word here." As Vax is tiredly speaking and raising both empty hands, there's a creak from the gate doors.

The captain shakes his head, and the guard are putting their weapons away. "No need. We've gotten a couple of Sendings from Whitestone alerting us, and the Sovereign snapped out of the vampire's domination yesterday."

There's running feet, and I turn just in time to see Pike wrap her arms around Grog's leg. "GROG! Everyone, you're all back! Man, I was so worried after I got cut off - the messages from Whitestone helped but it's not the same as seeing everyone again!" Before anyone can say anything else, Grog's hoisted her in the air happily, spinning and laughing.

"Have you all had a chance to rest?" The captain is looking us over with clear worry. "You all look like Hell."

"Sort of. Whitestone is starting to rebuild, and we wanted to clear our names before we were tracked down as fugitives." I pull the sheaf of papers Cassandra found for proof out of my coat and pass it to the captain; he glances over them, eyes widening.

"Right. Well, you don't need to worry about that; we'll let you get settled back home and I'll make sure this gets to the Sovereign. I'll leave someone posted in case you need anything."

The guards file out. The one that stays stops by the gate's guardhouse slumping back against the wall in relief; I have the feeling that, after so many of their comrades were wiped out before, they weren't going to relax and accept that it was safe again until we were back to confirm it was clear.

"Oh, Pike! I hate to bother you, but there's something I wondered if you could take a look at?"

She looks over and down; Grog is holding her up so they can talk eye to eye. "Right! Percy blew a hole in his hand!", Grog cheerfully fills in, and Pike's expression goes from curiously calm to blinking alarm as Grog sets her down. She's running over as soon as her feet touch ground.

"What - you did what?"

I'm unwrapping the binding around it carefully, sitting on a rock where she can get a better look. Her expression of frustrated distress deepens as I set the binding aside, and turns entirely disbelieving when I pull Keyleth's packing out of the wound; it's an almost two inch hole, with bits of bone poking out on either side where it took out the center part of my hand.

"EVERLIGHT'S BLAZING TITS, PERCY, WHAT THE FUCK?!" She looks at me, and back to it. "The fuck did you DO?!"

I mime the hand over the muzzle of the pepperbox where Orthax was fighting me for control and pulling the trigger.

"Why - What - THE FUCK?!"

"Ah, I was trying to-" I shift the miming to aiming under my chin and somehow, her expression manages to get even more spectacular. "But Orthax didn't agree with that."

"ORTHAX?!" She blinks. "IT HAD A - how - HOW LONG DID YOU KNOW -"

"I only know its name because it dropped the act and took over when it wasn't getting what it wanted. It's gone now - Scanlan made sure its last foothold was gone." I really don’t want to talk about the actual history with the thing, and after years of dodging notice, lying about it comes easily.

She's just staring at me, as I'm trying not to lapse into slightly cracked nervous laughter, for a few long seconds.

"It was trying to use him to kill all of us and his sister," Vax drily adds from where the twins are curled up with Trinket.

Pike's face is still frozen but there's a little twitch. Then she closes her eyes, covering her face with both hands, voice muffled. "Dawnflower's everloving mercy, I can't leave these people alone for five minutes, fucking DEMON, how the Hell, why is this a normal day, Saranrae help me for fuck's sakes..." There's a strangled noise of despairing frustration, then she scrubs her face, clears her throat, straightens, and adjusts her holy symbol. "Right. Let's get inside and get a proper look at that."

She herds me into the kitchen - the nearest room with a table - and pulls a chair next to mine to stand on, on the side of the injury. I rest my hand on the table in front of her, and she studies the hole for a minute.

"Okay. I'm gonna guess you don't still have the rest of it."

"Black mist. At least it meant there weren't many stray bone fragments to pick out."

"Right. Of course." She sighs, leaning in for a closer look; some of it's sluggishly dripping blood now that the packing's removed. I pull out a magnifier and hand it to her. "Thanks." As she's working to get a better look at the damage, I find the fabric pack with my fine-work tools, laying it open in her reach so she has a few more things to help with getting a better idea what she's dealing with.

She's checking tendons and nudging things with a pair of tweezers. It doesn't hurt mostly but does get some stray pins and needles sensation. One of the fingers curls a little when she tugs on a larger tendon. "Has anyone else looked at it?"

"Keeper Rennan did, when we made it back to the surface - she said it was resisting healing, but admitted she was exhausted with everything going on. Keyleth took a crack at it without much more luck, before she did the binding and dressing."

"Resisting healing...huh." There's a faint golden glow from the holy symbol and her eyes, and she frowns deeply - then turns to give me a closer look before she dismisses the spell. "Well, it looks like the demon’s gone, but I kinda want to drag you to the temple anyway to make sure - it's hidden from me before." All the time I've been with them, she used magic to look for things many times, and only saw Orthax when it was active and agitated outside Ripley's cell. "Uh - how long had it been there?"

"Since before I made the pepperbox originally." Which was a good while before I met any of them.

She pinches the bridge of her nose with a groan. "Definitely taking you to the temple to make sure it's gone." There's a slow headshake before she focuses her attention back on the hand injury. "Well, it did fuck you up good, and I probably can't even see the full extent of it. I don't know if I can get this to heal, but I'm well rested and ready and have nothing else to burn energy on, so!"

The first few attempts are more basic healing magic; there's warmth and the sluggish bleeding stops for a few seconds, but not much more than that. There's some tingling as she ramps up - uncomfortable tingling - and then she growls at it and channels something big.

Pain lances up the arm, and I double over onto the table; she stops, and the injured hand is twitching as the energy and pain fades.

Pike looks between the injury, her hands, and me. "Hoooookay. It really fucked you up good." She pauses. "You feeling up to a trip to the temple? Like, now?"

"Sure," I mumble, still face-down on the table.

Within an hour, the wound is repacked and bound, and we're heading out the gate; Pike's let the others know with a yell of "Hey, taking Percy to the temple to make sure the demon can't come back!" that nobody questions.

It's a calm, sunny day, wind blowing through the fields; everything is peaceful and calm, and after Whitestone, it's surreal.

"So Percy."

"Hm?"

"Can you start from the beginning with everything you know about this demon and how it got to you?"

Fun subject. "I'm not sure of the details. I had nightmares every night after I escaped them; I know sometimes there was a voice - but it wasn't always distinct, and I couldn't even say reliably what was the voice and what was parts of the dream sometimes, because I know now it could use other voices. I remember wanting revenge, to do something about them, but I was ... scared, powerless, and I'd always been the least suited of my siblings to combat.” Truth. It’d caught me disoriented and in a very low place, without any good knowledge of what I was dealing with.

“I think I was awake when I had the idea to engineer weapons to level the playing field, but it was very slow work until a dream where I actually saw it - a creature of living smoke that promised to help me get my revenge. I'd been earning food and shelter helping out at a tinker's shop, and had enough free run to spend nights in the shop working on it. I knew it ended up with some kind of enchantment, but little about it." It’s a lot of background packed into a small space, with some things glossed over, but mostly true. "I didn't care about what happened to me as long as they were destroyed."

"And this all seemed normal to you?" Pike is giving me an incredulous look; she knows I’m smarter than that.

I shove both hands into my coat pockets, hunching my shoulders as we walk. "It never occurred to me to question it. On some level I knew it was part of getting revenge, and there were always more important things to focus on. In retrospect, it's been interfering with my judgment for a very long time." Partial lie; I had clues now and then to what it was, but investigating it wasn’t really on the table. I had argued with it often enough.

"So the bargain was your revenge in exchange for you."

I nod, and she shakes her head, whistling faintly through her teeth. "How old were you when this happened?"

I frown; it's hard to pin down. "I think...not that long after I escaped? Maybe sixteen, seventeen?"

Pike shudders with a full-body wince. "Fuck... you were still practically a kid."

I nod.

"The part that bothers me is - how did it find you? It normally takes some nasty magic or exposure to flag down a demon like that. They don't just trip over scared traumatized kids randomly, thank Saranrae." If they did, there’d be a lot more demons like Orthax running rampant.

I inhale, watching the pebbles on the road as we pass them. "Probably something the Briarwoods did to me. I know Delilah tested a few ideas on me before I escaped, and they tried using magic to find out what I knew about what they wanted - which was nothing." I ruffle my good hand through white hair. "This used to be the same color as Cassandra's."

"Do you think they summoned it to you?"

That takes thought, but I shake my head. "They hadn't realized I survived. If she'd summoned it, she would've been able to track it. She also had no control or influence over it, although they did use it deciding Cass belonged on the list for getting in my way while they had her dominated to keep it busy."

"Oof. Well, that does fill in a lot of blanks at least. What the fuck happened back there?"

There's large chunks of things that are blurry and patchy. "Well, the domination on Cass broke when Sylas died, which made it easier to stop it from going after her - but it also meant Delilah was helpless after that ritual got interrupted. It moved to finish her off while the others got Keyleth revived; Scanlan noticed 'I' was acting bizarre and downright sadistic, and it took over completely when they tried to get 'me' to back off. I don't remember much for part of it," which is a partial lie, but it was covering so much with hallucinations and waking nightmares that my memory of it's useless, "But someone figured out that it was so determined to kill Delilah because that would complete the main focus of the bargain, and they couldn't let me kill her. I know there was a fight. It dropped all pretenses and tried to kill everyone for getting in its way, but Cass and Vex managed to get through to me enough to help me fight with it for control and see through some of the waking nightmare it had me in. That's when this happened."

I raise the injured hand; the only fingers I can move on it are the thumb and forefinger. "I tried to kill myself to stop it, and it was fighting me. I didn't get control back until I gave up on revenge completely and denied it." Anything that it could use for leverage would let it back in. I laugh bitterly. "I actually tried to talk sense into Delilah - held out a hand to her, undid her bonds, offered a chance to try and heal instead of continuing what she was doing... because - I realized I actually had a reason to want to live again, and if saving Delilah would mean protecting that... then it was more important than retribution for my family."

For a moment, the only sound is the wind rustling the fields. "Of course, Delilah was having none of it, swearing she'd destroy us all for killing Sylas, and Cass lunged in to kill her before she could cast anything."

Pike reaches up to catch my wrist, stopping me and nudging a little off the side of the road. "Percy? That ... you have no idea how difficult something like that is, for people that're clear headed and haven't had a demon pushing hate for so much of their lives...." She almost sounds choked up, and the next thing I know, she's hugging my legs. "I'm so proud of you."

"I still hate her. She was a wretched, horrible woman who reveled in cruelty." Referring to her in past tense is both freeing and unreal. "She just...wasn't worth my life and everyone else's." I sigh. "Also hearing her rant about killing us for what we did to Sylas was uncomfortably familiar, and I hate her enough to do anything to be less like her." Even if that might have meant letting her live and try to not be a danger to others, somewhere far, FAR away from me and mine.

Pike squeezes my knees. "That's how forgiveness works. It's not about liking someone or not holding them accountable for their actions. It's having compassion for suffering and wanting to stop the cycles of hurt." She lets go, stepping back with a shrug. "And sometimes it's rejected or someone tries to take advantage of it, so all you can do is smash their face in 'cuz they can't hurt anyone if they're dead."

I have definitely seen her smash someone's face in. "...Noted."

"Anyway, we're almost there, and I know She'll help you." She grabs my wrist again and tugs, breaking into a jog toward the temple entrance in the side of the old wall.

The old priestess meets us at the door. "Trickfoot? Is everything alright? We weren't expecting you back so soon."

Pike steps to the side so she's not in front of me, as if a gnome was any cover for a grown human. "Remember the one I mentioned worrying about because of the clouded soul thing? Yeah. It was a demon, he got kinda possessed but fought it off, and now there's an injury that won't heal and we want to make sure it can't come back."

The priestess smiles faintly and mutters something about "Never a dull moment", then looks me over and motions for me to come closer. "Let me get a better look at you, - " She pauses; it was a breathless introduction and Pike apparently didn't give names clearly with whatever she told the temple.

"Percy." I am not dealing with my full name and title right now.

She frowns, and I can see the signs of a basic detection spell go off, then a different spell, then she puts a hand on my shoulder and casts something that feels like an electric shock running through me almost - I wince and hiss in pain.

She steps back, studying me again with a deeper frown. "I've never seen anything like this."

"Always good to hear," I quip.

"I'm not even sure how you're alive. It looks like you must've been under its influence for years, and usually such a pact ends badly within months."

I give her a weak, broken smile and a shrug; there's several years of chickening out on giving it a chance to fulfill its side of the bargain.

"There's pieces of other old curses as well, and - it looks like it had all but devoured you and you were pulled out of its jaws at the last possible moment."

"That's about right, yes." I laugh nervously, and Pike snickers something about me being demon barf.

The old priestess looks deeply concerned and very alarmed. "How did it stay hidden for so long?" She looks to Pike with a raised eyebrow; there's no reproach, just looking for any input Pike has.

"It was hiding pretty deep and not doing anything I could sense until we ran into the people that killed his family."

She nods, then there's a few seconds with all the little expression shifts of adding things up, and she glances sideways at me with a clear moment of noting the crest on my coat buttons. "A revenge pact?"

I nod, shifting awkwardly. "It was in dreams; I had no idea what it really was until it was almost too late." I doubt she has anything running to catch a lie; it’s less self-preservation and more just not wanting to have that conversation right that moment.

She answers that with a sad, quiet nod. "Come with me - we will do what we can, although I have to warn you, it may hurt."

"I can guarantee I've had worse." It's easy to have chipper confidence about that, after everything, even if she just looks more sadly concerned about that.