epidemiology | there is no god in heaven; you need to run for cover

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there is no god in heaven; you need to run for cover

CHARACTERS: Koltira + a lot of you I am very sorry
DATE: Oct 10 - onwards
WARNINGS: violence; blood; gore; general depraved thoughts i can't believe y'all are threading this with me
SUMMARY: FRENZY.

[ CLOSED STARTERS BELOW.

QUICK NOTES FOR ALL THREADS (EXCEPT AFTERMATH, WHERE ONLY THE FIRST THING IS TRUE):

KOLTIRA IS: COVERED IN CHAINS AND INJURIES

LARGELY INCOHERENT

DEFINITELY GOING TO FIGHT YOU ]

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[ While imprisoned, Koltira was rarely left alone. Sylvanas kept him in a remote corner of the Apothecarium, but she ensured that he had little time to his own devices. On days when she did not visit him personally, he was left to the tender mercies of the Royal Apothecaries. Mad scientists, really. They fed him potions that twisted his guts, that poisoned him slowly, that slid like fire down his throat and turned his still blood to molten sludge. To them, he was no more than a particularly resilient test subject. The humans they captured—whom Koltira sometimes observed, when he was taken out to one of the main areas—never lasted very long.

The evidence of their work remains on his body still. He is burned and bloody, and not merely from his other encounters in the desert. His wounds ooze as he stalks through the badlands, leaving a trail to find, perhaps to follow. If you're curious. If you're unwise.

If you're a scientist. ]

[They say that the larger the risk the bigger the reward, but Sieglinde had not left the relative safety of her room, (more like her makeshift lab), intending on taking one quite so daunting. In fact, she had no plans at all to engage a blood-frenzied undead- she wasn't that foolish or suicidal, (not anymore).

But she couldn't count on the others on the team to bring her back the samples she needed. People were emotional, not that she could blame them- only her upbringing, years and years of being taught to push aside such distractions and focus on her work, keeps her from dwelling on the pain in Koltira's voice she'd heard on the broadcast, the fact that he had used perhaps all of his remaining faculties to warn people of the dangers he himself presented.

She had to do something, help somehow, but few would wish to think about gathering blood and tissue samples in a time like this.

The Green Witch may have unbound her feet before Zeta-12, but she still couldn't move fast- not with nerves deadened by years of breaking, twisting pressure, leaving her without the ability most had to adjust her weight and how she walked and placed her feet using feedback from senses on soles and heel, so she called Isengrim to her, pulling her tiny frame to straddle the hulking, skull-faced canine's shoulders, putting all the things she'd need in a saddlebag. Vials, needles, gloves, tweezers, gauze.

Isengrim knew the scent of everyone who had spent any amount of time in Sieglinde's company, and he finds the trail of destruction soon enough. There was no way to tell definitively at each scene whether the blood on weapons is Koltira's or his victims, whether the viscera splashed on the ground is, but she takes samples at each location she can find anyway, eventually pulling a leather mask stuffed with sweet smelling herbs out of her satchel and fastening it on her face.

The heat was beginning to bring out the foul smell of blood, and... Other tissue. She hardens her gaze, doesn't let it affect her, doesn't focus on the disgusting things she might see, only on her work.

Crouched over a splash of blood, taking a sample and wondering if it is his, she doesn't consider that Isengrim's strong stride might have caught them up already.

Not until the beast began to growl, a low, rumbling warning as its hackles raised.]

[ Koltira's drawn to the growl before anything else. He'd been wandering again, no fixed direction, no purpose to his steps. He barely understands where he is, though he has all his memories of ALASTAIR restored. Sitting now alongside his memories of the past four torturous years. All of them are nearly impossible to access right now. He understands only two things: he is pain, and he wants it to stop.

He draws his sword as he comes upon Sieglinde and her beast. His eyes have no light of recognition in them; he looks upon her as a stranger. For the present, anyway.

Eyes narrow, he reaches out, trying to grab for her. ]

[There are things beasts sense before their two-legged companions, things about the shift in the wind and earth, and the nature of a man. The nature of a man twisted and warped, and intentions ill- no matter the reason.

The sound of Isengrim's growl brings Sieglinde's mind out of her hyper focus on the blood sample she was taking, about to tuck it in to her satchel before the shadow in the corner of her eye brings her whipping around in a panic- too quickly for her shoddy balance to handle, and though it technically gets her away from that reaching grasp for the moment, she falls back on her rear in a flurry of skirts, hands falling back into the spill of blood with a squelch as she looks up, momentarily frozen.

It was him. It was, but he looked- She felt-]

Kol... tira... ?

[Fear. That's what the feeling was. Fear, to see him so hurt, and so twisted. Healer as she was, stationed off the front lines, she had never seen Koltira fight- not directly. She may remember the fury and fire in his voice once he'd broadcast the video he had found, but she also remembered his touch, cold and soothing after the heat of the Nalawin volcano, and she remembers the way he had patiently submitted to her healing in the aftermath despite how it seemed to pain him.

She struggled to do something more than say his name, to scramble back to her feet, to back away-

But Isengrim answers before she can do a thing, bony jaws opening with a snap as it lunged forward with a snarl, sharp teeth aiming for the hand that reached for its master.]

[ Koltira opens his palm. Shadow energy coalesces into a sphere, then stretches out, flattening into a whip. As Isengrim leaps for him, Koltira casts the whip out, and it lashes 'round the creature's neck, yanking it forcefully down to the ground. Koltira steps on its flank, hard, as rime-coated chains burst from the ground. The chains lock Isengrim in place, yanking on its legs, choking its throat. Koltira stares at the creature for a moment, his eyes unblinking, his mouth a pained grimace. There's something familiar about it, but trying to chase that thought only frustrates him.

So he lets it go. Turns back to her.

When he speaks, his voice is a brittle, agonized whisper. ]

Be still.

Isengrim- !

[Her familiar was a largely silent creature- in fact, Sieglinde had thought it mute for weeks after Masamune had brought it to her, for it never barked in excitement or whined for food or howled in play. But it did cry now, a hellish, strangled sound cut off by the snap of whip, a loud crack as its the exposed bones of teeth and jaw crushed down on nothing but air, yanked down by the pull of shadows and held, scrambling and biting in an impotent explosion of fury and pain.

And she couldn't do anything. Sieglinde tried to scramble back, fear locking up her knees and she couldn't stand back up, dragging skirts and useless feet through mud and the knight's past-spilled blood, trying to force something out- words, actions, anything-]

Koltira, please stop- Do you not know me? It is I, Sieglinde...

[Magic, he said magic wouldn't do much of anything, even if she had spells that were primarily offensive in nature, and she certainly had nothing else... Eyes, pupils mere pinpricks in the center of watery emeralds, cast about helplessly, torn between the death knight's face, his hand, her howling familiar, and the small knife at her chatelaine.

She could only pull her shaking hands from the ground, heedless of the dirt and blood, stumbling through a motion that looks... Almost as if she were tying a knot with no string.]

So soll es sein!

[The shield wasn't obvious, or opaque, but the air around her reflected the light a bit oddly, shone at certain angles. A barrier spell, to prevent physical or magical damage from touching that which was inside... As long as she could maintain the concentration for it. As long as the damage it took didn't go over the threshold and leave it to crack and collapse around her.]

[ He understands that she's afraid. The anxiety resonates in her voice, in the way she stumbles about in the bloody muck, in the miserable, terrified expression on her face. Her fear is palpable to him, something he can pick up and taste. Something he wants.

Koltira leaves the creature bound where it is. Its whimpering offers him nothing; it is suffering, but an animal's pain lacks depth. Animals run on instinct and self-preservation; they are primal from birth to death. A person is not. A person struggles, fights, tries to employ reason in the face of the unreasonable. Sense for the insensible. That layer of desperation, the hopelessness--these things Koltira's cursed body craves.

He grabs for Sieglinde again, but his hand strikes the shield instead.

Confused, he growls low in his throat. He makes another grab, like a confused dog, and finds himself again rebuffed.

Again, he strikes, until the shield begins to crack. ]

[For all that she proudly proclaimed herself to be the Green Witch, for all she spoke of her village, the werewolves, her illustrious bloodline... It's all lies. Almost every bit of it, lent credence only by the fact that even she hadn't known it was all false, believing it all her life- until the day ALASTAIR recruited her, the day her visitors from the Outside World had exposed her magic for science, her spells for chemical reactions, and her Ultimate Magic for a poison gas that could kill thousands, if not more.

She may have struck a deal with ALASTAIR to fill the gaps, to be able to learn and cast with a small font of magic of her very own, but it couldn't compare to the strength of the original teachers, couldn't stand up against a person from a world that lived and breathed what she'd only been raised deceived in.

Her concentration is fierce, nearly unheard of for a normal girl her age, but Isengrim's futile struggles are ringing in her ear, Koltira's furious blows shaking the barrier around her, and her own voice was ringing in the back of her mind nearly muffled by her pounding heartbeat, it's your fault this happened, you don't have a place here, you'd be better off having never unbound your feet or left the village at all.]

Koltira- !

[It seemed useless, that he was too far gone, but she cried out for him anyway, voice breaking pitifully, in the slim chance there might be something of him left to hear her, unable to move far now that she'd activated her spell, struggling to at least get to her feet, wet skirts slick to her thin legs as fingers dug too tight into her palms.]

Are you not the man who saved me from the lava in Nalawi? Are you not the man who told me about your brother? Your family, and your people? Who said you would do everything in your power to control yourself!?

[What could she do? The sound of the cracking barrier heralded only a few more concentrated blows before she couldn't hold it any longer and it collapsed. Isengrim, still struggling, was attempting to claw the dirt out from beneath its body in order to shake the tight bind of chains, but would that even work? She had a spell that could arrest movement, but it required every ounce of her focus, she couldn't cast it until the barrier broke, and even then she'd only have a single second-

Thoughts barreled through her head, too fast, too many, and none of them good enough-]

Answer me, Koltira!

[The sound of the crack suddenly spreading straight down the middle of her barrier spell almost drowned out her desperate cry.]

[ She's screaming, and at first it's still just noise. Incomprehensible static. He can't take meaning from it; he can only process the rising desperation, the fear that tastes like honey on his tongue. But as she cries out, and as he rains fury down on the shield, the veil over his mind thins. Not much. Just a little, just enough.

When she cries out to him about his brother, about their time in Nalawi, about everything he'd said--something breaks the surface. Memories of a lost time. Faltora's face, contorted in terror, spared in one second only to be struck down in the next. Cut in half, gored by an abomination's merciless hook.

Koltira winces. He heaves, his eyes wild. He swallows, his tongue dry and thick in his mouth, and assaults the barrier again. More memories prick at him. Sieglinde leaning against him, exhausted. Their arguments. She was such a brilliant girl--

-- the barrier shatters. A second later, his chains--conjured, and impermanent--shatter, too. The familiar is free.

Koltira hears its angry growl and staggers back, hands over his face. Awful recognition tears at him, and he struggles to hold onto it, to keep himself rooted to where he stands. ]

Sieglinde--Sieglinde--please--

[ He can feel himself slipping again. This moment will end too soon. His eyes burn. He stares at her through his splayed fingers, and he growls like an animal about to turn feral. ]

--run.

[Sieglinde told herself she was ready- that the second the barrier broke, she'd cast the next spell, try to arrest his movement, throw herself into the battle of wills that spell required... But she hadn't counted on two things.

The fact that her barrier spell had never been broken before, not through violence, and her humble source of magic pulled directly from her own energy, not the world around her. She had never experienced it, and so she didn't know, that violent cracking and shattering would echo in her body, not a physical wound but a sudden stab of ache that robbed her of breath.

The fact that he looked at her as if he knew her, that for a moment it seemed like Koltira again, and desperate emotions welled up inside of her, choking her, struggling for words, hands frozen, next spell forgotten. What had been the words to trigger it? The gesture?]

Koltira-

[She can't run. She can't find the words to tell him that, that even if she wanted to, her only recently unbound feet were still too damaged for such a thing, even if the shape now seemed more normal, that she couldn't just leave him here... But her familiar has no such emotional shackles, and the second Isengrim is freed the beast surges up, pushing past injury in a burst of adrenaline to barrel towards its master, too quick, bloodied teeth grabbing her by the cloak and prepared to haul her off bodily.]

Koltira, hang on- !

[Instinctively, she grabs hold of Isengrim's collar to prevent being dragged, her futile efforts to dig her heels in pointless against the hulking creature's intent to get her away from the rampaging Death Knight.]

I will definitely solve this, so-

[She doesn't quite realize she's crying, that fear was spilling off of her in waves, and not just for herself. What if one of the other members killed him? What if-

What she was trying to say died in a helpless sob, I'm sorry lost, burying her face in Isengrim's fur as the familiar barreled out of there as fast as it could, blotting out the sight of Koltira's tortured expression, his tortured wounds. If only she'd been able to isolate the cause sooner... if only she was stronger herself, and able to stand up to him on her own-

If only none of this had ever happened to him at all.]

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there is no god in heaven; you need to run for cover

SIEGLINDE

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