Walking down the hallway, his mind was ablaze with questions and confusion. How his journey had led to this insanity was beyond him- it had just... happened. Perhaps, he thought as he tightened the toga, this was what happened to their kind when they were hunted and forced to band together in tight-knit groups. No- the tower had not been a haven of insanity, it had been as sane as could be... then again, sexuality had never been a topic of discussion amongst the old, holed-up men in the tall towers.
No- one of his associates were still relatively sane and it was the associate that now needed his attention the most. He stepped down the cozy, warm, wooden hallway and forced all mention of the attractive wildling to the back of his mind. With every unnecessary breath, he regained a measure of control over his raging emotions and had finally returned to his foul, sour mood by the time he reached room 4, where either Ellie or Kester and Barrel would be shacked up.
He glanced either way down the dimly lit hallway before tapping the dark, wooden door.
“Hand-status.” Thankfully, Eleanor- as the only of his companions, understood that he cared little for conversation or their commonplace tomfoolery. Her naked feet could be heard tapping over the floor, before the door crept open to make room for the shattered appendage in its matrix of cloth and roadside sticks.
To his dread, the hand had suffered from the poor circulation, the cold and the humidity. Sores reminiscent of chronic ulcers had formed beneath her thumb and on her palm- both of which oozed yellowish fluids to stain the bandages. Looking at the pale, contorted limb made his chest ache with shame, but it had been- and still was, a miracle that it remained where it was. Had he not intervened, it would have been little but a rotten husk, but he had bought enough time for his last-ditch efforts to take effects.
“Are you clothed?” He asked the narrow crack in the door. After a moment’s hesitation, a pained: “N-no, Master...” Sounded from inside. Asrael squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the door open to motion for his form.
“Do this.” Without tarrying, the naked feet disappeared across the floor, where the sounds of sliding covers preceded Ellie’s pained construction of her own toga. He closed the door in his wake and turned around to see her disappear behind the silken sheet. It was impressive to him, how the girl had adjusted not only to what must have been mind-numbing agony and to a life in which she had been reduced to using only one hand.
Her freckled cheeks were, however, bagged with the lack of sleep and with the never-ending pain and as she stepped across the floor with the silken toga shrouding her flat, pale shape, she whimpered. Again, Asrael found himself biting his lower lip with regret of not having removed the appendage when she was still under the effects of stolen opium- it would be far more difficult now, or rather, later, should their foolish plan by some miracle succeed.
When she finally stepped close enough for Asrael to view her, he brushed her hair over her ears to look at her pained expression and noted that she was no more or less pale than usual. She leaned into the hand and courageously spoke: “I-I’m fine... but thank you for checking on me, Master...” Asrael returned to glare his green eyes at the appendage she held tightly to her chest and shook his head.
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“You are not fine. Your hand is ischemic and its condition worsens by the day. I am surprised you can still move at all.” Having him acknowledge her pain only made it worse. She could feel the pain manifest in tears. Her body screamed for her to drop to her knees and beg for his mercy in sobs, but not in front of Asrael- keep yourself together, she continued to command herself.
He reached out to pinch her index fingertip, only to verify that its capillary filled had all but entirely ceased. He grabbed the finger and bled his painful magics into her tissues- snaking them up her well-traversed vasculature to verify that his repairs were no longer adequate to secure that her circulation would continue. It had been a patch-job to begin with, but now, the patches were rapidly falling off and her systems were failing, one-by-one.
“By long, it will be infected, at which point we will have to be quick to remove it.” Asrael muttered as he retracted his hand. Eleanor- his stubborn, intelligent junior, nodded her understanding.
“I-I understand, Master...” She watched as Asrael bent down to rummage through her discarded dress, with extra focus on the fluffed-up cups for her flat breasts, where she had hid several pouches of gold. Shamefully, she watched as he gathered the coins into one pouch and spoke: “No, you do not. You are too young and naïve to understand- you all are.”
She took a step back to sit down on the bed and look at her mangled hand. This was her doing and hers alone- the fact he had yet to kill her for her foolish mistake was beyond her. Asrael glanced over at the girl on the soft, stripped bed, but quickly turned his head on the lazy, red curtains as she let a few tears streak down her cheeks.
“I’m s-sorry... when my hand falls off, I’ll be even more in the way. If-…" She sobbed once and looked down into the warm, oaken floor to gather her strength to say: “W-when it falls off... I don’t wanna be alone again. I don’t want to live without you, s-so... c-could I a-ask you to... kill-” Asrael rolled his eyes, stepped up to the bed and delivered a resounding slap across his apprentice’s cheek. She looked up to see his glowering, low, black brow and his still-wet, black hair nearly shrouding the intense green of his bulbs.
“Foolish girl. I had thought you more reasonable and less prone to dramatics than the wildling, but I see that I have been mistaken.” She raised her left hand to rub her pained cheek and swallowed back her tears as the pain set in. Asrael groaned and turned to swing the toga around and ordered: “Come. Time is running out and we’ve no time to tarry.”
She blinked as Asrael snapped his fingers and motioned for the door. Confused, she rose up from her bed and pondered whether the time had come for him to remove her hand, already, but something about Asrael’s frown was-… different. Far more pained than she surmised it would be, if he were simply removing her hand. She followed after him, out into the dim hallway and whimpered her way over towards the stairs leading down into the mostly-empty tavern below.
There, in between the turned-up chairs and before the crackling fireplace, Asrael stepped up to the beautiful barmaid. She looked up from her dutiful cleaning of the tables with a forced smile and focused her attention on the less-frightening, equally-confused girl as to not look at the gut-churning sight of her ugliest visitor in some time.
“Oh, I suppose you did not have extra clothing with you. I can send for the clothier if you-” She began, as she saw their hastily construed togas.
Asrael slung the thick pouch of golden coins onto the wood and demanded: “No. Take your clothes off.” The barmaid took a cautious step back and looked to his intense, green eyes with dread. He wrinkled his large nose rhythmically- undoubtedly engorging himself on the scent of a fair maiden.
“D-Dad! Dad! Help!” She screamed towards the kitchen beyond the bar. Asrael raised his hand to point at the pouch and continued to demand: “I will pay you. It is more than you deserve, now take them off and let us be-” The large man came out from the kitchen to look at his gaping daughter eyeing the pouch of gold with dread.