Existentially Bound: Part 5
Resuscitation
A vile putrid tar-like substance suddenly erupted from Shiera's mouth splattering onto the floor to which she promptly collapsed. Tahlia dropped to the floor, lifted the woman's lifeless body from drowning in her own bile. Paige covered her mouth from both shock and disgust at the unexpected upheaval. Jinx made a comment about how long it would take to clean the lab, and Mister Cluckles seemed to agree.
Ember, however, was a statue. The blackness was of a thick viscus, swirling ink, and Ember stared at it, immediately brought back to the Djinn's vault. A similar putridness was expunged from her as the Djinn pulled the darkness from within her, ensuring it was no longer present before bestowing their artifact: the vessel which was the sword of flames. Yet this particular necrotic substance was akin to something Valandra knew, and it sickened them both.
Palawa Joko, the undying lich, had rescued Valandra from death using the very same substance. Her shoulder, impaled by her very own manifested ice stalagmite, would have killed the young woman. It was Joko which brought her into his palace of bones and performed his ancient death magics to preserve her body… for a price. The same necrotic mending allowed the lich to influence his control over Valandra's unwilling body… and as time passed, her very mind. The ice queen had almost convinced herself that she was an extension of Joko's will and carried out his plans for the betterment of those he would enslave. After all this time, and now free from the monster's influence, she knew this was a lie. But in the black abyss of the fluid below her, Valandra could see the reflection of her tormentor.
"She needs help!" Tahlia screamed, demanding everyone's attention.
Paige shook her head. "There's are beds upstairs. Can we get her up there?"
Emily pushed back the experiences from both women's pasts, brought herself to the present at the Whisper's concern. She knelt down to help brace the woman when a spider-webbed vein-like necrotic darkness caught her eye. "There's something wrong with her. Look at her neck. There's somethin-"
Jinx suddenly screamed with an incredibly delayed reaction, which scared Mister Cluckles beside her. "Don't do that! Do you have any idea how much coffee Mister Cluckles and I have consumed?"
Ember's nose crinkled. "If you don't want to eat that coffee, come and help!"
"Ember!" Paige scolded, but it was clearly only a reactionary scolding as her eyes dropped to Jinx inquisitively. "Can you?"
Both Jinx and her chicken waddled over to Shiera, taking care to tiptoe around the slimy liquid which coated the floor. "Hmmm. Oh this isn't good. She's very pale!"
"She's always been pale!" Ember barked.
"Perhaps. But.. Yes, Mister Cluckles I'm getting to that! And yes, I agree. No we shouldn't recommend a total makeover!"
Paige stepped forward. She felt helpless, but used her noble training to help the process as best she could. "Jinx… What should we do to help her?"
Jinx nodded, began to poke at the armor in various places. "Well, a makeover, indeed! We gotta get her out of this getup! It's not just a cool outfit purchased from the Black Lion Company or something! This thing has a purpose. If I know Kievaa (Which I really don't!) or Lennk, this suit has a purpose. Right Miss Fire and Ice?"
Emily nodded. "Extraction and Accumulation suits, we believe she said."
Mister Cluckles bawked his agreement as Jinx continued, "Yes! Exactly! So, what's this one for? Some kind of weapons system or an invisibility- (No, wait, that's a cloak that does that…)"
Paige wanted to pace, but the small loft had very little room to do so. "Must we know what it's purpose is in order to get it off her? We should remove it so we can heal her, shouldn't we? There are menders in Garenhoff that can help with whatever sickness-"
"Well, who knows? Kablooie! Kablam! Boom!" Jinx made the motions. "Not saying it will. It probably will. Maybe it will. Nah, it's almost a 55.578 chance it won't. Well, maybe it-"
Paige blanched at the thought, the recent explosion of the mansion predominate in her mind, but as the woman watched Shiera struggled to breathe, then saw a sympathetic look up from Ember, she knew there was little choice. She nodded. "Just do it, Jinx, please. We… We trust you."
With a quick nod, Jinx was already head deep in her toolbox, while Mister Cluckles seemed to suggest various equipment for her to get. Tools, golem parts, electronics, a few books, a grenade and an old shoe were all flung from the equipment box as the small asura quickly went about her selections. What was produced, however, was a rather plain looking screwdriver. Seeing Paige's disenchantment brought about an explanation. "Oh, don't worry. It's a sonic screwdriver!"
"Whatever that means," Ember grumbled.
"She does not have much longer, I'm afraid." Tahlia said worriedly. She had no idea why fate brought Shiera to her care, but was quickly aligned with the woman's plight. It was almost as though her very spirit was fighting to hold onto the body -opposite to the norm, where release is usually welcomed.
"You okay?" Emily whispered.
"Weak," came a barely auditable voice.
Jinx clomped over with her screwdriver, again reiterating its name at Mister Cluckles insistence. "Yes well I dont know if it'll work. I mean it might work. (Not that we'll know if it doesn't! I wonder if it stings to be vaporized?) The last word bung in the air for a bit and may have been the last word Jinx said as her mind trailed off, if not for the insistence of a chicken. "Ouch! Can you not peck me while I'm postulating?"
"Jinx please focus!" Paige pleaded.
Shiera coughed weakly, more blackness seeping from the mouth.
"Hold her still Mister Cluckles!" Jinx commanded the chicken.
Mister Cluckles seemed to look at his wings trying to figure out just how to do such a thing.
Jinx hummed a melody as she inserted her screwdriver and pressed a few buttons on the handle. A high-pitched whirling sound could be heard as the tool expanded, grasped around the crystal and retracted to disconnect it. A low omnipresent hum wound down as the last of the suit's internal circuitry lost the remaining power.
Nobody in the room breathed until Jinx suddenly blurted, "By the numbers in pie, we are not dead!" All eyes glowered at the asura for the loud outburst.
"Unless the mists look like my home, then no. I think we're not dead." Paige had to hand it to her small friend. Daft as she may be, Jinx always did come through when the pot fell into the fire.
Panels and pieces of the suit systematically fell away, prompting Jinx to leap from her mount. She slipped in the congealed goo and regarded her blacked foot with a look of disgust. "Okay, for the record, I am not cleaning this up!"
"What's happening?" Tahlia asked at the strange sounds. She looked around to see a spectral aura growing large over Shiera's limp form. "I do not think we saved her; I believe we released her…"
"Ah! So the suit have a purpose! It's not for extraction or accumulation… it's a resuscitation suit!" Jinx nodded as though the greatest mystery had been solved.
Paige rubbed her chin. "Whisperer Talhia, what do you mean?"
Somberly, Talhia's unseeing gaze turned to Paige. "She is dying."
Ember gasped. "No! Not after all this!"
All remaining pieces of the armored magitech suit unceremoniously lost cohesion and fell off, clanking as various panels fell to the floor. What was left was a shell of a stark white nude woman, completely thin, completely decrepit. Her malnourished feeble body collapsed onto the floor with a light thud.
Paige knelt down, helping all the others prop the frail woman up. "Kormir's veil! How could anyone- What a monster! How could she do this?"
Shiera spoke with a raspy whisper, taking breaths between words, her mouth was parched and void of saliva. "I… can't… leave…"
"Leave? No, you're going to stay here! We got you. I promised you, remember? We're going to help you!" Ember implored, her eyes glossy.
Taliha watched as Shiera's aura grew more dense above her form. "I'm sorry Emily. I… I don't think she can stay."
"But I was supposed to save her... I promised..." Ember said almost in tears.
"But we did save her," Valandra whispered. "I know of monsters, and freedom from such is worth dying to obtain. I know this of this personally..."
Shiera's head lifted only slightly for her dark eyes to look directly at Emily. A meek smile came from weak ink-stained lips. "I… knew… we were… friends…"
Ember frowned, darted her eyes to Jinx. "You're the genius! Can't you do anything to save her?"
"The Fizzlesprings are experts in many fields, including circuitry and mechanics and algorithmic magitech, not flesh and bone. We're not necromancers!"
Paige clenched her fists, took in a deep breath. "No… but I am." She rose to her feet with a frown. "Mother's magic… it can send the departed on their way. I've used it to create temporary minions of flesh and bone. Maybe using a similar process, and combining that with my blood pact spells, I could transfer life force into her…"
"From what I've seen, something like this would likely kill you." Tahlia stated.
The Lady took in a deep breath. "Then we'll just have to hope it doesn't!" Paige said in an attempt to convince herself than anyone else. She clenched her fist resolutely, staring at her wrist, then glanced to Jinx. "Do you have a knife?" she asked with a confidence even Jinx found alarming.
"I'd recommend doing so from another room... with a different floor and without... well without any of my equipment in it!" The asura colorfully suggested as she handed Lady Paige the knife with an unusually stern and serious expression. "Farid will be very sad if you kill yourself. Don't make him sad; don't die Miss Paige."
Mister Cluckles suddenly clucked what almost everyone thought sounded like "Sad!" But upon reflection everyone was probably wrong.
Paige pulled a scroll from behind the equipment that cluttered the room, a spell she had been researching and one she had utilized at the battle with Kievaa. The spell which her very own mother once had written: the spell of reanimation.
Growing up Paige obeyed her father's wishes and stayed clear of the necromatic spells which would have come so easily for her. Vivian, Paige's mother, had an innate gift for the deathly arts just as Paige had learned in secret of her own abilities with blood magic. It was only recently that something inside the woman pulled her to the same magics Vivian once used. And, if not for Paige's relentless quest for Demitra and handling the shipping operations, she would have certainly enjoyed diving into it more. It didn't take one long to feel the allure of power such magics yielded; one could easily succumb to its temptation. Harid was fearful of this; fearful of losing yet another loved one to the icy grip of the dark arts. Paige only hoped she had enough willpower to resist allowing the enhanced combination of blood magic and death magic to drain her and kill her.
Paige nodded to Jinx (and inadvertantly, the chicken) then scrambled up the stairs to join the others.
"We got you. You're going to be fine," Ember's voice tried to sound as reassuring as possible.
Tahlia gently laid the frail woman onto the bed, but as Shiera's weight shifted, a bone seemed to crack. Shiera barely flinched. Paige arrived to see both women's horrific expressions.
"Am I… Is it too late?"
Tahlia used her powers to observe the Shiera's aura now almost the shape of her form below. Her spirit was barely holding onto what was almost a lifeless corpse. "You must hurry. She has almost passed."
Without hesitation or reservation, Paige dug the knife into the palm of her hand, running the blade along a crease until she hit her wrist, stopping just short of an artery. Blood immediately flowed from the wound, would have splattered on the floor, but stopped in mid-air at Paige's whispered incantation. It collected in a free-flowing mass, twisting and turning as it listened and waited for its master's command. Paige's other hand quickly dropped the knife and clasped onto her mother's scroll, allowing the sigils of the inscription she had memorized to travel up her arm and infuse her words with their magic of death and reanimation.
Ember took a step back as the scene unfolded, unsure if the process was working.
"Oh no. She can't hold on! We're losing her!" Taliha rushed to the foot of the bed, held both arms outward and began to wade them through invisible waters, calling forth her own spiritual magic. At once mystical chains grabbed hold of Shiera's free spirit, creating a connection to the lifeless body. "Quickly now! Not… much… longer!"
Paige squeezed her hand, felt her fingers tremble and knuckles lighten in color as the spell continued to transfer blood and lifeforce into Shiera.
"Hear me, spirit, for I am Whisperer Talhia. I know you wish to stay. I can feel you seek retribution before passing. Stay then; accept this woman's essence to hold onto this mortality for a bit longer!"
Paige's knees began to go weak. Valandra hugged Ember as the floor around their feet was covered in ice.
"It is working!" Taliha finally said in what seemed like an eternity to everyone involved. "Her spirit has stopped its ascent, and she is returning…"
Shiera's color slowly appeared more fleshed out, as did the muscle and bone beneath her skin. The magic filled her core, pulsating new life into her, magically replacing her hollow veins with the blood, power and strength of her donor. She took in a wheezing breath, promptly began to cough and choke and grasp for air, trying to make sense of where she was.
"Shhh. It's okay. You're okay now. I told you I would save you. Took some time, but you are free now!" Ember held the woman's hand as her black eyes closed to rest and regain her strength.
"Thank you for your help," Paige's voice came weaker than she expected it to.
Talhia nodded, then replaced Ember's position to watch over Shiera. "It was mostly you Lady Paige. I simply… bought you more time."
"Oh I'm not so-" Paige suddenly fainted, sliding down the nearby wall, where she remained. Her skin was its normal mocha hue but now tinged with a grayness from the blood loss."Lady Paige!"
Emily was already at Paige's side, with Valandra prompting their body's movements. She lifted her friend up, who smiled weakly. "Lad- Paige," the voice was unmistakably the ice queen's own. "That was… Thank you. It means a lot to Ember, and I feel the relief of burden she feels from it."
"T-Thank you Ember," Paige said forgetting herself due to her condition.
"And?" Valandra said with a slight smirk.
Ember mumbled, "Thank your sister, too, Paige."
"And thank you, Valandra," Paige said as she leaned on her, and ever-so-slightly grinned.
The two began walking to the nearby bedroom. "You know… You could have just saved time by saying, 'Thank you Emily.'"
Paige coughed a slight laugh. "I never know what to call you!"
"She's Ember, and she's Valandra," both voices said in unison. "But you may call us Emily."
"Two become one, huh?" Paige said with another cough and a grin.
"Almost," Emily replied.
[To Be Continued...]
