The Awakening: Hospitalization

The nuisance of muted vocals crying out for definition prodded at his slumber. A slumber thought to be eternal, interrupted by the return of the obstructive voices from all around. They were, almost in chorus, haunting him, even summoning light to his perception. Vriskol winced at the blinding light, it’s burning brightness subsided to reveal a wooden interior.

He wasn’t outside anymore, and from the looks of the many faces that looked over him, eyes and heads shifting their attention constantly in a trance that left one to wonder, Vriskol could only assume that he was taken in. To where? I hadn’t a clue…
Almost as though to answer his question, the voices learned to define themselves through the muted filter that once was Vriskol’s ears.

No longer did they blare subtly, but actual hold meaning to him, leading him to listen.
The voices, they spoke of injury- Of irreversible damage- Of…. Amputation.
By now, he was conscious, yet the men and women above him lack knowledge of his awareness.

”His left arm should be stable. Although it’ll have to be bandaged until the healing process is complete, his right arm isn’t necessarily so lucky.” The speech paused, and the sensation on a hand pressing against his mid-bicep ignited it once more.
“The damage inflicted is likely permanent, and to prevent infection, it will have to be removed.”

His eyes shot open, pupils dilating and flickering nigh-frantically. Finally, setting upon one whom faced others, his back turned to Vriskol’s face. The stroke of fingers trailed his decimated arm, passing over the tattered flesh, and bare-bone left exposed near the joint region. In time, it carelessly lead to that of his open hand, resting there as though hoping to hold it throughout the operation.

The Malpercian, having manifested the terror of loss, flinched. The movement captured the attention of the doctor, surprised of the patient’s remarkable ability to shift so quickly in his condition. However, before a reaction could truly take place, instinct took up Vriskol’s form.

As though he was to cling on for dear life, his right hand’s fingers clutched tightly at the hand placed in it’s palm. Resistance was proven futile, for his grip did not falter. It locked in, powered by the Magi’s naturally enhanced strength, just in time for a crimson glow took up the contact between flesh!

The fingers caught in his hold, bent at the crushing fist’s mercy, browning on contact. The frightened doctor turned to face Vriskol, whom returned his fearful gaze with one of malice. Defeat and injury, accompanied only with potential loss at the hands of -this- man? To think the girl he proclaimed himself superior to, would leave him beaten and in such a condition. The fury festered, in an internal cesspool of regret, disappointment, diminished pride. He failed himself, Kenkaku, and his bloodline in the moment he was granted… Now, he was left with those that would finish the job. ”To be the potential subject to amputation practices?...” He spoke in a grave yet tired tone.
The torchlight bounced off his lavender pupils with a lick of maroon, an appropriate view for one deprived of his opportunity to prove himself to not only a potential teacher, and his clansmen… But himself.
The fore fingers rotted away, siphoned out of existence through a touch that was most-certainly riddled with occultism.

The man lashed away, cuffing his injured hand in his other, bringing it close to his chest in hopes of comfort. The pain that would follow the destruction of the man’s fingers left him to cry out in anguish, leaving another woman in the room petrified for what was to follow. As though witnessing death itself, she let loose an ear-cringing scream, leaving Vriskol to turn bewildered, yet disorientated on the scenario. As of now, the others that made their short distance from his operation bed meant nothing to him, for only the ‘siren’ of the group proved to be the absolute center of his attention.

He flipped himself over to his side, using his left arm to catch himself on his descent for the hardwood floor. Hitting the ground, sent a shock up his arm, leaving the shoulder to ache and the collarbone to shift ever so slightly. He couldn’t breath. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even move the middle fingers of the fallen arm, but other arm could easily move from the shoulder point. He didn’t leave much more time to examine his capabilities and charged out of instinct for the woman.

She ran for the room’s corner, throwing her arms for a door’s handle, whipping her body back only to fail opening it. To her misfortune, someone took up the deed of locking the door. Although the task of unlocking it, even in her panic wouldn’t take long, the sound of boots against the flooring from the ‘patient’ turned her around. Her time, had run out…
A hand came to silence her, cuffing over her lips.
Although it was limp from the bicep down, the shoulder brought rise to the right hand, and pressed it with his body-weight to keep her from speaking.

The bone was pushed further out of place, leaving blood to squirt for the door itself. Streams of blood-ruby light seeped down his right arm, up the dried linings of blood that tainted the flesh earlier. With such contact, the fingers themselves latched for her face, as though to lock the contact between them.
Her retaliation was fierce at first, starting with slaps for his face and chestal region, all of which super-effective in earning his reaction. However, the flames of the occultistic aura that took up shape, flayed at her hands, discouraging further voluntary strikes against his person.

It didn’t matter for much longer, for the vitality of her being drained past her very lips. Once an alarm for help- Now, her own damnation. The mana circuit stretched through her body, although lacking manipulative practice, was siphoned from her system. Was this mere occultistic absorption?

The woman’s flesh began to gray, eyelids blackening, and body growing frail…
The very breath from his lungs was pulled away, leaving her to fall prey to Sacrifice.
Yet, just as he gave in to the impulse to lurch for her, it vanished, leaving him to regain some sort of control.
His arm fell, as the woman did, sliding against the door to rest on the floor in a slouching sit. She rested… Motionless, leaving Vriskol to return to his senses…

The remaining three in the room, still on their feet kept their eyes on Vriskol, turning his attention to both them and the few other patients that idled on their own beds further down the room. One of the two handle-able doctors stood armed with a scalpel to his defense, whilst another stood with Vriskol’s own longsword, confiscated during his period of unconsciousness.

“What did you do to her?!” asked the scalpel wielder, responded to by the sword-thief, ”He’s an occultist, likely beaten for assault. Would explain what we just saw..”
The wounded doctor’s attention left his removed fingers, and unto Vriskol once more- Voice quivering and body falling into shock, he reacted with ecstatic fear.

”T- T- Take him down! B- Before he hurts someone else!”
As though to defy his statement, the drained woman that laid upon the door coughed! The noise, beckoned Vriskol’s attention to his side in realization, only to turn back to the immediate charge of the man with his sword. It turned out that he was aiming to take Vriskol down before he had the chance to finish the job!

To his defense, he swatted his left arm across his body. The blade was risen in an attempt to slam over his head, overly dramatized by a person lacking warriorship qualities. Within the palm of his left palm, manifested a small sphere of ebonic presence juxtaposed with ashen linings of static, midnight blue at it’s core!

Jabbed into the left side of the attacking doctor’s mid-abdomen, it combusted into a fine gray smoke. The shockwave itself, was strong enough to only leave the man scooted over by mere feet. Luckily for Vriskol, it was enough to leave him unscaved by the blade’s descent, and send shreds of clothing into the generated smoke with a hint of blood in the air.

He made his dash for the opposing wall, eyes squinted to seek out the closest opening. Pupils flickered about to no avail. Coughing, scampering and shouting was all he could hear. Apparently, the woman was not dead, for her voice made it through the sounds of disarray in the form of said coughing. The final doctor armed with the scalpel refused to give chase, likely taking second thoughts on the idea of attempting to take down the magi by himself.

Vriskol himself, found himself running straight out of the disipating fog, and for a dead-end.

Without time to think, he allowed his jaws to give slack, revealing a manifesting sphere of occultistic energy on the verge of bursting. Once prepared to use it on the people before, he took the new focus of aiming for the supposed dead-end he charged straight for.
His legs gave halt, and after a swift inhale, a belch of occultistic power left through his lips in a single inflated blast that ruptured the very room upon release.

It crashed into the wooden wall, eating it away, and inevitably growing obese over it’s own mass. The collection resulted in critical mass, an explosion that left the room blitzed with splinters and woodchips. An assault upon all that proved unprepared for the outburst, forced to shield their eyes and brace for the coming ‘storm’.
Vriskol closed his eyes as he charged into his own creation, and took a leap into the pouring light that would follow the combustion… Escape.


Now freed, he found himself falling… Falling to land upon an unfortunate orphan whom stood -just- under his escape from Nostvale’s hospital, and not too far from the orphanage nearby. The kid fell to the ground, and moved not an inch more- likely knocked unconscious from the blow. As for Vriskol, he had time and light to take further inspection of his arms…

His left, was in bandages; Wrapped from the shoulder-line down to the palm itself. The movement from before forced blood to irritate their white color, leaving it a weak pink towards the bicep region. However, his left was in shambles.. The Radius of his right arm was splayed from the rest of the arm, and the joint up was beginning to flay apart, slicing into the muscular flesh. The flesh had shifted to a sickened pale, blackened with exposed flesh was idled. Perhaps, an infection…

The aching was indeed leaving him irritable, but he couldn't stop now, he had to get away from this place, before guards could arrived… And thus, he did.
He ran, leaving the boy he fell upon to lay unconscious where he landed, likely to be accused of the happening of this situation. Guards were close, and he was taking no chances…
(Vriskol Malpercius)

 As he made his distance from the hospital, knowing full and well that guards have likely swarmed the place. Slowing down, he found himself lost to his thoughts… Or so he thought.
They were like whispers at first, such that he chose to ignore, but now? They taunted him viciously. It started to act up only now… Only after the impulsive moment he took up on the woman earlier.

He knew far and well of what it was, but much like one is introduced to puberty’s effects, he remained surprised. He picked up his right arm, finding that the pain it sustained had withered away to one that was dull and everlasting. It was reduced to that of a mere ache that proved too stubborn to surrender.

...Nothing out of the ordinary.

He bore no strange formations upon his damaged arm, with the exception of the black meat. His lack of medical expertise left him without knowledge of what it meant, and thus he wasn’t hard-pressed to find attention on it. Even if it required medical attention, he refused to take up the horrifying deed of amputation.

He hobbled for the nearest house, some distance from the hospital and Orphanage alike, to tiredly knock on the door. To his luck, it opened with time…
A younger woman looked unto his stature with surprise, breath-taken at the sight of his mangled arm.
“H-... Help?”

The woman turned out to lack much nursing skill, however did offer to cover his right arm in bandages. He was invited in, and allowed to rest for the night. Vriskol’s right arm, was now shrouded in layers of wrapping bandages, finished with a sling over his shoulder. It’d be some time before the collarbone healed up, thus, he suffered immense aching in the chestal region.
As night gave in to day, Vriskol took up his leave unannounced, commencing his departure from the city altogether.
(Vriskol Malpercius)