Buy a Little Mercy [Open; Potentially Graphic Material]

[cityship]

Less than an hour after the ship leaves Agrestic's orbit, an announcement is broadcast throughout Stacy.

|| Attention, crew. Your crewmates, Howard Bassem and Charles Merriman, have been apprehended attempting to desert. They will now be given Punishment. According to established guidelines, you are all requested to report to the Observation to witness the Punishment. Attendance is not mandatory, but highly suggested. This will serve as a reminder of the consequences of treason and desertion. ||

On the observation deck, Archon Yavek, Archite Rekkti, two other Daligig and a handful of Kessek soldiers stand outside a spherical force field. Inside the bubble, Orc and Howard are suspended by tentacles looping around their wrists. Orc's ceased thrashing around and struggling against his restraints; rust-colored fissures have developed around his shoulders and forearms from the strain, but now he simply hangs there, looking defeated. Howard's nose is bleeding, and every time a drop falls to the bottom of the forcefield there's a small sizzle. He's weeping and begging the Daligig with every plea possible, but they act as if they aren't listening. Instead, they wait for an audience.

Comments

[couldputitback]

Faiza shook herself and smiled, nodding to Billy. She was fine. No worries at all.

Then she turned to Morgan. "My apologies, Mr. Solus. You're safe to do what you need to, now. I would like Mr. Goliath to be seen to in the medical bay as well, but anything we can do to help now would be best." After all, the gargoyle had lost a lot of blood. Her own powers couldn't change that.

[morganknight]

"Solus?" Morgan said with a distracted nod as he stepped forward, reaching one hand out to hover half an inch from Goliath's chest.

"Don't worry," he said with a reassuring smile. "Believe it or not, I've actually done this sort of work on a gargoyle before. I lived in a pretty weird place for a while."

All the meridians he expected were in place, along with some extra ones he immediately identified as ones related to the wings, and thus academically interesting but irrelevant for his purposes. He half-lidded his eyes, attention split between his vision and his other senses, then tapped a spot on Goliath's chest a couple of inches to the right of his breastbone. Before the sensation of the tap could fade, he quickly and painlessly inserted the first of his acupuncture needles. It was a diversion from his usual methods, but he figured that a patient not expecting acupuncture needed a little extra buffer of tolerance for the procedure.

So on he went, inserting needles down that line of the body for a foot or so before moving to the other side of his chest to complete the symmetry. Through the acupuncture, he manipulated Goliath's chi -- not a transfusion so much as a hyperacceleration of the gargoyle's natural replenishment of blood, with Morgan's own chi taking the place of the matter and energy Goliath's body ought to need to sustain the pace.

While he had that in hand, he also tweaked the meridians to flush out accumulated waste and toxins from the bloodstream, stabilize his cardiopulmonary functions, and generally clean up the resulting mess.

(Of course, if one really wanted to be technical, all Morgan was actually doing was imposing a reality more to his liking over the one everyone else had agreed on through sheer force of will. Everything else, right down to the underlying philosophy, was just trappings and props. But why overcomplicate by thinking in those terms?)

Satisfied at last with his work, he removed the needles swiftly and surely, replacing them in the acupuncture case, which he then flicked a little tab on the outside of so that a bright-red slash now showed when he closed it. A reminder to disinfect.

"I wouldn't advise donating blood for a couple of days, but I think you can safely be sanguine about your chances," he said wickedly.

[not_the_philistine]

"I meant it," Goliath went on, still focused on Elisa as Faiza worked her magic on his hand. He exhaled in a near-laugh. "But I am not showing it well."

He gazed in dazed wonder at his restored hand, frowning at the scar that encircled his wrist. Would stone sleep take care of that?

He frowned briefly as Morgan began his work, mulling over his words. "You have met my kind before - ?" before the magic took effect, restoring much of Goliath's sense of wellbeing, if not removing the shock from his system.

He didn't have time to thank them. With one last glance at his scarred wrist, the gargoyle turned suddenly to stone, though the sun was still set in the City.

[night_shift]

It was a strange sight, but Elisa tried to focus on Goliath’s face rather than Faiza’s actions. She was too worried to dwell on the impressive magic that the healer was using to help him, although she did react to Morgan’s comment on gargoyles, looking up with some surprise when he stepped forward. He’d met them before?

Whether he had or not, his work with the needles did the trick. Even before the stone sleep claimed him, Goliath had started to look better and, since he was in no position to thank them, Elisa did it for him.

“Thank you,” she said, speaking quietly and then repeating it more loudly, “All of you.”

She didn’t doubt that they’d saved his life as well as his hand. Without their efforts, he might not have survived long enough to get to sleep.