( closed; quest ) the long and winding road

[sorser]

WHO: Stephen, Thancred, & Yennefer
WHAT: Three individuals go on a quest to help perpetuate better magical monitoring of the Singularity!
WHERE: ALL OVER THORNE
WHEN: End of March into mid-April.
WARNINGS: Some eventual monster-related violence and injury! But nothing else for now; will add as needed.



(( quest info here ))

Comments

[vixening]

[ yennefer isn’t sure if she’s thankful that thancred doesn’t react to her confession, or if she should be more worried about how well she’d kept it a secret as well. thankfully, the closing in of the remainders of the pack close in on them. she watches as his gun blade (she thinks he called it that some time ago, back during their conversation around the fire) explodes out into one of the creatures, as his attention immediately turns to the next. it’s a small comfort (a comfort she’s not sure she’s felt in a long time) knowing she can turn her eyes away from the creatures, return her focus to stephen, and the blood on her hands.

yennefer breathes, forces the panic and the swell of everything else to settle back inside again. stephen has, thankfully, stopped fighting her to sit up which allows her a chance to really look at the wound, at the open flesh, the bite marks left behind. it’s not lethal, at least not on its own, from what she can tell. when thancred approaches a few moments later, the chaos around them finally settled and his question asked, yennefer shoots a look to stephen’s answer. curious, in a way - he knows of healing, too, then? of course he would. (even if that reassurance does calm a bit of her fluttered nerves.)

she shifts her hands slightly, reapplying the pressure to keep the blood loss as bay. to still her hands. when she looks to thancred, a moment to make sure he hadn’t also been harmed in any way, she nods once. ]

I have potions - some that will keep the infection from setting in and something for the pain. Thancred- can you grab my bag?

[ the device has been all but forgotten, at this point, and will most likely remain that way until they get stephen patched up. ]

[funbreaker]

[ Stephen is confident in his assurance that he will not be bleeding out any time soon, at least not with their help. The fact that he's alert and speaking so clearly means that it must not be so bad, at least not yet. Thancred would rather not see what happens if the wound goes untended, however, well aware of how it might fester if left alone.

When Yennefer addresses him, he's quick to nod and jump back to his feet. As he turns to the horses he can see they've been well and truly spooked by everything that just took place, but thankfully they'd tied them up prior to being ambushed by the wolves, so they haven't scattered.

Thancred approaches, hands lifted in front of him to assure them that no harm is meant, and he takes care to make sure that Yennefer's horse has calmed down and isn't going to reflexively kick out at him before he ventures too close. He steps near enough to access Yennfer's pack where it's saddled on the horse and slide it free, before returning to the pair.

For all that Stephen is keeping his head during this (he's been badly injured before, hasn't he? Something to do with his hands...), there is a paleness in his face, the blood having all rushed out. His clothes are stained and while it is likely not as bad as it looks, they need to stabilize him quickly before some other denizen of the forest decides to take advantage of the situation.

Thancred kneels next to Yennefer, nodding to her as he sets the pack on the ground between them. ] Do what you must. I'll apply the pressure to his wounds. [ He leans forward to do just that, placing his gloved hands to where Yennefer's had just been to ensure that the blood flow is stemmed. He sends Stephen a weary smile in the process. ] Hang in there. We can't count you out just yet.

[sorser]

[Stephen huffs out air, though it’s difficult to say whether or not it’s from Thancred’s applied pressure to his middle or his comment. He mutters something half-heartedly, but does little more than that. He doesn’t want to waste the effort — and oddly, knowing that the two of them are here, to take care of his wound to the best of their abilities, gives him just enough leeway to let the the exhaustion set in, the adrenaline dissipated and making him feel wrung dry.

He remains that way through the initial cleaning process; that part is easy. But the bleeding won’t stop eking on its own, and when the cauterization happens—courtesy of one of Yennefer’s potions that feels like acid fire—it’s all he can do to not scream. Maybe he does, at some point, the pain nearly as bad as the wolf’s jaws. He bites down on something hard. Feels hands against his body, holding down wayward movement, and for a moment curses the fact that they hadn’t brought some miracle, magical anesthetic with them during their journey.

It’s over, at least, blessedly quick. Between the process and the pain inherent in it, it doesn’t take long for him to drift off before either can even wrap bandages across his middle. The world fades at the edges, then blacks out.

He wakes up with a start sometime later, lain down across makeshift outdoor bedding, staring up at the swaying branches of an overhead tree. Disorientation flickers across his face before he remembers where he is — what had just happened, and he tries to sit up. He’s awarded with his efforts with a dull throb across his middle, and he curses.]

Agh. Shit…

[He presses a hand to his newly-tended wound, which feels taut from a clean set of bandages. His clothing is still stained from his own blood, but at least he’s not actively bleeding any longer. Small mercies.]

[vixening]

[ with thancred off to grab her bag, yennefer also manages to reach over and pull one of her still enchanted daggers out of the hind of the now-dead creature, keeping on hand on the bleeding as best she can. what comes over her is a kind of clinical calm, after everything - moving through steps she has seen, biology she'd been taught. she won't admit it, but it is a help that stephen is still conscious and apparently has some extensive knowledge of bodies, with how he can help direct her even while lying flat, even while slowly bleeding through, though she can see the way the exhaustion creeps up on him. or, perhaps more accurately, how it overtakes him.

thancred returns not too long after with her bag, and that seems to set her off in another direction - the steps to cleaning, to working back together, to fixing this. thancred takes over applying pressure and yennefer - though not exactly chatty, she does seem to be talking to herself a bit through the process. which potions she made, which will be most useful, what her process had been. she takes out one for cleaning, washing her hands and the dagger place and then she turns to the wound itself. at some point stephen winces, his body trying to pull away from the pain of it, and yennefer quickly turns to thancred - catching his eyes from across stephen's body. ]

Can you...? [ with a nod, yennefer assumes thancred understands what she means - hold him down, keep him steady, as it's about to get worse.

first, it is one of her potions - a concoction of her own making. stephen, as expected, tenses. she glances to thancred again, sets one of her own hands against one of stephen's shoulders, and then applies the red hot dagger that stephen had enchanted himself, the smell of burning flesh and blood and the ingredients of her own potion filling the air. then - as soon as it had started - it's over, and she pulls away from him and tosses the dagger aside just in time to watch his eyes roll back into his head and his body go limp.

yennefer sits back on her knees, then, lets out a breath as her own amount of adrenline rushes out of her. it's over, he's going to be fine, now, and there is almost a small smile gracing her lips when she thinks about it. as she rips her forehead with the back of her wrist. ]

Well- that's one way to keep things interesting. [ there is no small amount of sarcasm wrapped up in the words as she looks over to thancred, then back out to the clearing around them, at the dead bodies of these plant-like wolves. ] He'll be out for a bit longer, I suspect. Should we...?

[ make him comfortable? set up the thaumometer? either way, yennefer gets to her feet and back to work - wrapping the wound with clean bandages, moving stephen away from the device, setting him up back near the horses and a makeshift bed, and then turning their attention back to the device. both she and thancred are moving a bit more slowly than before, their own levels of exhaustion and various smaller level cuts and bruises making themselves known. yennefer isn't exactly chatty as they work (clearing a small space for stephen, getting rid of some of the corpses of the creatures, calming their horses, and then of course the device itself), but she does notice what feels like a strange lack of...worry. or concern. they know about her magic now, in more definite terms. know that she's been without it this entire time.

and yet - it doesn't feel nearly as exposed as she might have thought. if thancred wants to speak about it, she won't cut him off entirely, but she is also okay to work in relative silence as they set up the device and calibrate it.

stephen was just as she and thancred have finished with the device and started back over to where they left him. ]

Don't mess with that. [ she says, watching his hand go to the bandages. ] We're low on bandages, I'll have to get more once we make it back to Nott, so we'll need to make those last. { and then she's at her bag, pulling out another potion and handing it off to stephen. ] For the pain, if you want it.

[funbreaker]

[ As soon as Thancred catches sight of that searing dagger-blade along with the resolute expression on Yennefer's face, he understands what she plans to do. Her verbal request is hardly necessary as Thancred pulls one hand back from Stephen's middle to pull his own belt free. He shoves the leather between Stephen's teeth before Yennefer does what she has to do, cauterizing the wound and then following it up with her potions and remedies.

It's a mercy that Stephen loses consciousness after all that, and Thancred nods to Yennefer, in agreement that they need to secure the area and finish what they came here to do in the process. ] All in a day's work, I suppose. [ He murmurs the words as he helps Yennefer, giving her what she needs to further stabilize Stephen, calming the horses further, and even dragging some of the wolves' corpses away so that they don't attract any scavengers too close to their makeshift camp.

He takes point with the device as well, finishing up Stephen's work with calibrating it. As soon as the thaumametor (not so different from an aetherometer, he thinks for not the first time) is rotating the way it should be and the watch is set, he returns to where Yennefer's seated and Stephen is laid out. ]

That was close. We'll need to be more careful while in this area. [ He draws a hand across his face, the exhaustion finally beginning to set in after that fight. There's a moment of silence then, a moment where he could broach the subject of Yennefer's magick, but it's around then that Stephen comes to. Yennefer is quick to scold him and hand him something for the pain. ]

The wolves are all dead or gone, the device has been set up. [ And again, Thancred sends Stephen a crooked smile. ] You're lucky you have us.