Erika felt the blackness of the poison flowing through the red blood underneath her hands, it wasn't blackness of course it was just how her mind saw the poison through her magic, but that didn’t matter, what mattered was the faint gold that tinted the black in Erikas galdr granted sight, the flickering glitter like a dozen melted coins shot through the mass of the poison, it should have looked pure, gold on black like that, but in Erikas eyes that gold sang with hatred and venom and death.
“It’s not a poison,” Erika whispered to Sigurn pulling the taller woman down so her ear was right at her mouth, she knew they couldn’t let this information spread. “It’s a divine art and one I’ve never seen before, that means… that means it’s one of the bringers of twilight, maybe Jörmungandr?”
Sigurn’s face twisted instantly into a snarl her eyes seemed to dull as her fingers twitched towards her axe’s handle shear hatred rising from her skin.
Erika meanwhile felt more fear that anger, the harbingers of twilight had ended the old world even as they had killed innumerable Aesir, of course that wasn't the bad part, after all she’d fought a divine art using Warg just a bit earlier, blessed by Loki and cunning in its way. But the known Loki arts didn’t include a magical poison like this, that meant it wasn't a skin changed or intangible warg that had poisoned their supplies, Jörmungandr or not none of the other twilight bringers granted skin changing arts so said Erika’s library back home at least, if nobody noticed a lurking poison spewing Warg that meant…
“Cultists.” Hissed Sigurn causing Erika to flinch and Kara to begin to mutter a prayer. Despite ending the old world their power was real each of the bringers of Twilight Fenris wolf, Nidhogg, Loki and Jörmungandr, could grant incredible power to a faithful follower, to one willing to sate their dark desires for dishonourable deaths and terrible torments, to burn halls and salt fields and break all the oaths of civilisation.
Kara’s hand fell heavy on Erika’s shoulder and she realised she'd been both wool gathering and getting overly poetic instead of actually helping snapping herself out of the thought spiral and bending down Erika focused her task, the bringers were bad but they weren’t her problem her problem was saving these lives, let Sigurn deal with the other stuff.
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“We need to lock down Losthope! Check everyone for evidence of…” Helga trailed off as Sigurn raised a hand.
“We’ve been hunting their kind since Ragnarök ended. All the dumb ones are already dead, only the subtle and cunning survived to taint and teach till today…. If only Alvis was here, I was never any good at shadow work.” Sigurn said honestly tapping the flat of her axe idly as if in thought.
“If we go tell the other groups maybe we can organise something.” Ammeris said from where she rested on her haunches next to the most injured delver, she was scowling at the wounds with a mixture of fear and affront on her face, alchemy as a mundane science didn’t affect the powers of the Aesir, even the bringers of twilight were above the material, her efforts in total had just barely been to dilute her patient’s blood with alchemical tonics.
Erika meanwhile was able to do far more, her galdr enhancing the patients’ bodies gave her time to plan and, with her flesh shaping arts, a way to deal with the venom. Even a shadow of a shadow of the world serpents’ venom like this one wouldn’t be easily cured or counteracted but it could be simple… removed, it wouldn’t be pretty but it was better than dying.
Her fingers drumming a nervous rhythm on her thigh Erika nodded to herself and raised both hands like she was readying herself to conduct a symphony, the sickly endless shifting hue of the poison pulsed below her and she swooped down upon it like divine hawk. Flesh twisted and veins decoupled, not grotesque as one would expect but instead in an oddly boring, clean, and clinical way, flesh simple sectioning itself without fuss and moving upwards or downwards as if pulled by invisible hooks, as the flesh moved the blood didn’t, leaving it to fall to the ground behind.
The spreading pool of blood below her soaked into the hem of her mantle but Erika barely noticed, her focus was entirely on the body floating into pieces beneath her fingers, she wished she could take her time and ensure what she was doing was safe but she couldn’t, she didn’t know an art to create new blood yet meaning that she was on a time.
Skin moved back, muscle uncoiled, bones floated away almost playfully until finally she had isolated the most affected sections of the first patient, with a snap of her fingers Erika peeled the tainted flesh away and dumped it on the floor before sealing back the skin and realigning the bones until the only evidence of the galdr was a series of odd depressions on the delvers body.