Scar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
envy_the_sinners) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2012-07-19 01:40 am
envy_the_sinners) wrote in damned_institute2012-07-19 01:40 am
DAY 65: Breakfast
Scar came to slowly, vision blurred and head throbbing. His memory of the previous night was vague and somewhat scattered. What he was most aware of was his renewed and increased hatred for the man called Lingormr. The Ishbalan didn't give a damn if he had been a special counseling patient. That bastard had enjoyed every second of tearing Scar to shreds. What he may or may not have realized was how much it had affected Scar emotionally. He had felt a renewed sense of drive at the start of the night; the disruption on the intercom and the news of the 'cure' had rekindled a fire that fueled Scar to drive forward. To have a little hope.
Lingormr had promptly crushed that.
He was in pain. So much pain. The cut on his hand was only fading scab at this point, but stitches now pulled at the deep gashes in his legs and back. Not only had the nausea not settled, but his stomach was beginning to cramp. The rash on his arm was impossible to hide without the old bandages covering it. It had nearly reached his elbow.
Scar's hazy eyes could make out the nurse, now pushing a wheelchair up to his bedside. This was humiliating. And he was too exhausted and hurting to lash out or become angry. He was just broken. He still tried to take some sort of grudging control, insisting that he didn't need to be pushed around, that he could at least turn the wheels of the damned chair himself. But he didn't make it down the hallway before the pulling and sharp pain in his back became so obvious on his face that the nurse took over.
He entered breakfast with a frustrated, tired, but overall defeated look to him. Scar felt too sick to eat. He sat at the table and brooded, wishing more than anything to simply be left alone.
[For Goku!]
Lingormr had promptly crushed that.
He was in pain. So much pain. The cut on his hand was only fading scab at this point, but stitches now pulled at the deep gashes in his legs and back. Not only had the nausea not settled, but his stomach was beginning to cramp. The rash on his arm was impossible to hide without the old bandages covering it. It had nearly reached his elbow.
Scar's hazy eyes could make out the nurse, now pushing a wheelchair up to his bedside. This was humiliating. And he was too exhausted and hurting to lash out or become angry. He was just broken. He still tried to take some sort of grudging control, insisting that he didn't need to be pushed around, that he could at least turn the wheels of the damned chair himself. But he didn't make it down the hallway before the pulling and sharp pain in his back became so obvious on his face that the nurse took over.
He entered breakfast with a frustrated, tired, but overall defeated look to him. Scar felt too sick to eat. He sat at the table and brooded, wishing more than anything to simply be left alone.
[For Goku!]
no subject
"No," Rita said in response to his question, "The way was blocked." A momentary shudder shook her shoulders as she remembered the feeling of wiry hair brushing against her face and hands. But it passed, and she continued on as if she hadn't been affected by the events. "Whatever that thing was, it probably won't be there again tonight. Something else might get stationed there, though." Especially if Skulduggery's guess was right, and there really was something valuable that abomination had been left to guard.
no subject
It was good to see that Rita was thinking along the same lines as he was, though. Whether that came out of necessity or a simple stubbornness was unclear, but the line between them could often be blurred. "We'll just have to run faster tonight, then," he told her with a blank glance down at his french toast. "Or try and avoid the fight entirely." It was possible that if they waited, or went somewhere else first, then the something else would be preoccupied and they could sneak by. And Skulduggery was still curious about that morgue.
no subject
That meant their main order of business was already resolved, and Rita had only barely started eating. This looked like a chance to get a few questions answered.
"Now that that's out of the way, do you mind telling me more about the kind of magic you use?" she asked, somewhat abruptly. If it was something that could only be used by those with a specific capacity for it, Rita may not have any applications for what she could learn from Skulduggery, but her curiosity as a scholar persisted.
no subject
Skulduggery was more than happy to talk about sorcerers and magic in his own world, if only to use it as an excuse for avoiding the food in front of him. He'd had to explain magic - or at least his particular branch of it - a few times over the years, but this was only the third time in recent memory that he had to do it completely from scratch. Not to mention the first time in a long time that Skulduggery didn't have immediate proof in the form of his skeletal visage.
"Of course not," he answered brightly. "As I said before, I'm an Elemental. It's a longer and somewhat more difficult path of magic to master; most sorcerers become Adepts instead. Adepts work to master a greater variety of abilities that are more immediately powerful."
no subject
"So Elementals use the four primary elements of magic, like you said before. What about Adepts? What sorts of abilities do they have?"
no subject
Skulduggery only knew one Adept who had a leg to stand on when they claimed to be the most powerful sorcerer the world had ever seen. And that one didn't particularly count, seeing as he'd vanished from the world and gone back to being an Elemental.
Explaining Adepts to newcomers was always difficult, just for the sheer amount of tricks they could have up their sleeves. "Anything, really," he began slowly. "I was good friends with someone who could adjust her center of gravity. Others can read minds, see the future, travel through walls and ceilings, become invisible, manipulate lightning. Some can do more than one."
Skulduggery sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember if he'd blinked in the last few minutes or not. "I've always enjoyed fighting Adepts," he informed Rita, his tone cheerful. "They like to keep you in suspense."
no subject
Reading minds and seeing the future? Some of those abilities sounded like the kind of stuff Rita never expected to see outside of fantasy novels. "It's that versatile, huh?" she mused. "I can see why it'd be so popular." While Rita was content with her powerful elemental magic, she could see plenty of appeal in such unique, specific abilities.
There was something else Skulduggery mentioned then that struck Rita as curious, however. "You fight other mages often?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
no subject
One, unfortunately, had. And Skulduggery hadn't even been properly dead at the time - or at least, had never properly moved on. The memory of watching his own skull raised high above the crowds of his fellow soldiers had not faded with the centuries. This time, however, instead of simply forcing anger to rear its ugly head once again, the memory gave Skulduggery an idea. A slim one, but an idea nonetheless. Rita came from a world of mages, and while her type of magic would probably be wildly different from Skulduggery's, maybe there were some basic similarities.
"Tell me," he said, leaning forward with his chin in one hand. "In your world, was there ever anyone who... didn't die when they were supposed to?" An annoyingly simple way of putting it, but it wasn't as if Skulduggery had a lot of practice with encountering alternate realities.
no subject
Skulduggery’s next question was an odd one. The dubious look on Rita’s face made it clear that she thought as much. But, after some consideration, she decided to answer, as she was curious as to where this was going.
“At most, we have some magic-related treatments for conditions that would otherwise be untreatable. For example... some people have had their hearts replaced with blastia after sustaining would-be fatal injuries.” It was far from a perfect solution, but she supposed it was better than dying. “If you’re talking about things like invulnerability, invincibility, or necromancy, then no, we don’t have anything like that.”
no subject
Wherever 'here' was. Skulduggery still wasn't quite clear on that.
"Never mind, then," he spoke up after a moment. The former skeleton's blank expression made it difficult to tell if he would elaborate, but when he sat back a few quiet seconds later to stare up at the ceiling once again, it was as if Rita had ceased to exist.
no subject
“What do you mean, never mind? You’re going to ask something weird like that and then just drop it?” Rita demanded, a flicker of annoyance returning to her face.
no subject
"All right, then," he relented, leaning forward over his forgotten french toast once more. "I didn't die when I was supposed to. Something went wrong, and I... came back, with the unfortunate side effect of my body already being reduced to bones. I thought you might know something that could hint at the cause, but that doesn't look like the case."
no subject
Rita furrowed her brow, trying to process what the man was saying, but… “Th-that’s ridiculous! You’re trying to say you were some kind of… undead skeleton?” She stuttered a bit as she voiced her doubt; her shoulders were tense and she had goosebumps just from thinking about it. But it wasn’t because she found his story disturbing or even scary – not a chance!
“How gullible do you think I look? There’s no way…” Damn it. Between this and that corpse-like girl from last night, Rita couldn’t take much more of these seemingly-supernatural phenomena. ‘Seemingly,’ because supernatural things weren’t real. Absolutely not.
no subject
Skulduggery was used to a whole host of reactions upon being introduced into the world of magic, but skepticism was not one of them. Not as a talking skeleton, when you had all of the proof right there at your fingertips. Sure, there were some who believed they'd gone insane, but that wasn't quite the same thing. Faced with such adamant denial, Skulduggery could do little other than shrug. "You don't look particularly gullible," he replied evenly. "You asked. I answered. That's it."