[His ears tilt forward and his brow furrows. He's only known this man for a month and some change, but he has a feel for his broad strokes, he thinks.]
You done fucked it right up, then?
[Cuz why else would Clive make a move for help that isn't about his brother?]
[ He can't just roll his sleeve up, so instead he takes his shirt off. Will is going to need to see the joint too. He sets the shirt aside and turns the stone arm towards him. It goes all the way up to his shoulder now, flesh ceding way to stone there. ]
I severe miscalculation on my part. I assumed the curse wouldn't actually continue on my use of magic, as it was started by the death. A price had to be claimed, and that's what it took. But I didn't think it took my immunity, merely my sword hand. But... I think it may have actually taken the immunity. I can't check it myself, however.
[ He can look 'inwards' to call upon the forces inside him but that's instinctual, that's his body, it's how he was made. ]
[ He will let himself be manhandled down into a sit, sighing hard. ]
No... it hadn't started until I... demonstrated Ifrit. But the amount it took is too much. Eikons should be able to prime several times, for long periods, before their flesh gives way to the curse. Because it's devouring their aether, burning it off. But I still have more than enough.
[ He can feel them, as healthy as ever. He can call them, without any issues.
[ There's a strange familiarity with this that doesn't speak of anything back home. A vague half-dream feeling. Like this situation has happened before, only with scraps and bruises and not a half petrified body.
It also feels like being scolded by Gav, arguably his best friend, and it hurts a little. But only because he let him down. That Will, someone he barely knows, gets the same level of feeling out of Clive...
He sighs and shifts his arm using his left hand, closing the distance to hold it up for Will, frowning at the book so he doesn't look at the other. ]
I'm sorry. I truly thought it wouldn't do anything.
[He barely needs his magic at all to tell it's hurting]
It's defiantly different from Joshua.
[He stops prodding]
If it didn't LOOK the same I'd wonder if it was something completely different- maybe... maybe it is.
[He closes his eyes, focusing his senses as he once against tries to peer at his aether- SOMETHING is inflicting this, and Will is starting to suspect it isn't just a natural result of burning through aether anymore. His cursebreaking skills hunting down any intent to it.]
It might be. Lithification usually starts internally. But I feel fine.
[ Other than ol' rocky here.
It doesn't seem like anything in Clive is trying to malevolently force it. There's the chaotic swirl of the elements as normal and then there's that alien divinity covering it all, digging roots in. Because it truly all belongs to that alien divinity.
Even Clive. ]
And it's a painful process, agonizingly so, but that's because the living flesh is still ... there, near the rock. But my arm.
[ The agony goes from finger tips he shouldn't feel to his shoulder, and not simply localized around the shoulder where the living flesh is. ]
[His brows furrow. Not what he has hoped (hoped?? isn't that an awful idea. But a horrifying truth is better then a complete mystery) to find but good to know his aether hasn't changed. He sighs, easing some painkilling magic into the stone]
... makes no sense for the death price to be the cause. If it was just the immunity being taken away it should work like Joshua's...
The death, the death... could it- are you sure you're not Corrupted?
So I'm still immune... and I'm not sure, that would mean plants, right? Like the young lady, Nene, or the boy that was there?
[ He pauses for a moment, then sighs heavily and raises his hand a little to hold Will up, even as the numbing spreads through his arm deliciously ugh that's good. ]
Joshua, you might as well come in, or go lay back down.
[His ears perk and swivel towards the door and... yeah now that he's listening for it he can hear Joshua shuffling around and pick up his distinct fire-y scent.]
Well, better you be here for this anyways.
[He turns back to Clive.]
That's what I thought, but that's the only other source of a curse I can think of you've been in contact with.
[And if it IS Suri... he might be fucked. At least Will might not be able to undo it]
[ He gives his brother a little shake of his head but his expression is soft. After the failure of earlier he doesn't blame him. Then he turns his attention back to Will, frowning hard. ]
I'm sure Zahliya would have cleansed it, too, when he cleansed Joshua.
[ He sits back, frowning harder, his hand going to his shoulder. It doesn't hurt now with Wills (and Joshua's earlier easing) numbing, but he rubs at the spot where stone softens back into flesh, thinking. ]
If it was the curse, it would have grown with my attempt to pass the Blessing back to Joshua... Yet it grew with Ifrit, and the minor summoning of Garuda's wind before that.
[ But Garuda had been nothing, while Ifrit had taken his entire arm the rest of the way. He glances up to Joshua and Will, then away. ]
[ Joshua has listened to most of the conversation thus far, through the door so of course it's been a bit muffled. But he's at least caught up on the specifics - and that Will had sounded pretty angry a moment ago.
It reminds him of Tarja
But Clive's question gets a furrowed brow and a soft frown from Joshua, who glances at Will before answering. ]
I'm certain I could with a bit of bending, but I'd rather not have an audience.
[ All right. He nods gently to Joshua, then calls Ifrit's flames to his left hand. It's far different than Phoenix's. Where the Phoenix is warm and orange, the color of fire in an hearth, Ifrits is red and dark. Magma boiling from the earth.
He lets it surge, let it engulf his arm, heat pouring out. Let's it burn aether, then stops it.
The stone on his arm doesn't budge, which makes Clive frown. Then he calls Garuda, and she responds with a whip of the wind into his hand, a soft whirling tornado that - like Ifrits flames - creeps up his arm. It sends papers flying with the force and like with Ifrit he cancels it.
This time the stone reacts violently and Clive grunts in pain as the stone creeps up his shoulder, flesh turning ashen and grey as it solidifies up like small tendrils and into his neck. Reaches across his throat like spidery fingers and suddenly Clive's eyes widen, his left hand reaching up to grab there, his mouth open.
He can't get air past the petrification, and it's still crawling, up his throat to his chin, across his jaw. The look in his eye is very much: I have made a mistake. ]
[ The first spark of aether being used makes Joshua tense, his eyes narrowing. He suspected it would be something like this, but all the same, he doesn't like it. And seeing Ifrit's flame... Ifrit had been the one to make this all worse, hadn't it? His breath catches in his throat, and only releases once the flames extinguish and Ifrit is dismissed.
But then Clive tries Garuda, and all goes wrong.
He can see the tendrils of petrification webbing out and growing, solidifying, going into his throat. Joshua's heart feels as though it's stopping. He can't breathe. Clive can't breathe. The panic in his brother's eyes-- ]
Clive! CLIVE!
[ The Phoenix's flames are there in an instant when he calls for them, surrounding him, setting his skin and hair alight with flickering tendrils of fire-flash, the Phoenix's tail feathers erupting from his back as his eyes turn a solid, glowing blue. It takes a split second for him to be at his brother's side, the healing flames erupting from his hands in a desperate attempt to stem the progression, to do something.
He turns to look at Will, tears sizzling beneath his eyes as soon as they form! ]
[Will leaps to action, terror making his heart and blood run wild. He doesn't even bother trying to heal- he can tell from scent alone that Joshua's healing outpaces his by multitudes. But there is one thing he can do.
Cursework is a delicate thing. Healing is the simplest magic- just urging the body to do what it naturally already wants to do. Cursing is more detailed, methodical. It's why he never tried to flex that skill on either of the brothers- until he knew how the affliction worked he was just as likely to make it worse than ease it. Or even curse them himself. It takes a knowledge of the intent and source of the blighted magic. He doesn't know the terms antibodies or vaccines, but the logic is the same. To fight an infection one must know it.
But there is, always, the sledgehammer of fever. The reason healing magic is rarely used for illness- a purge could kill the body. Or bake it so deeply there was no recovery. With curses the same is true. Instead of plucking the magic strings free like thread from needlework he was going to have to yank it out by the fistful, leaving carnage in his wake.
But right now he doesn't have any other option.]
Josh, keep healing him, he's gonna need it!
[He grabs at Clive, one hand on the shoulder, the other on the back of his quickly stiffening neck. His dull claws dig in, cat-like regardless of how blunt they are. His eyes slit, glimmering with energy as he dips into the aether and starts metaphorically yanking at where his aether flows into the stone. As he does his blunt claws do the same more literally, scratching at the growths.
And as he works he tries, bluntly, to feed his own prana into the magical wounds. Seasons damn him he wishes he got through more of the book!!! But the basics are enough that he knows, in theory, how this should go. Not that Clive NEEDS more aether- but perhaps his own alien energy can dilute whatever curse is causing this.
What should have been surgery is now a back alley chop-job]
[ It's oddly surreal. He knew there was a chance this would happen, but there's a sort of pride in now knowing it's random. The curse will hit him no matter what, whether in little amounts or large amounts, and it doesn't seem like anything is safe. Ifrits fire took nothing, Ifrit himself took his arm, Garuda before took just a wee bit but this Garuda is hungrily consuming him. Probably like she wanted to when they fought.
What does it mean? There's no logic to the punishment. Is it truly just random?
Joshua semi-priming makes him want to make a noise, to shake his head, desperation in his eyes and not from the inability to breathe. No! Stop that! Then the healing rushes into him and the lithification - is it true lithification? - slows. Stemmed by the Phoenix and his eyes water because he wants to beg for his brother not to.
He knows what's going to happen and the guilt is eating away at him. As it should. Tears drip hot from his eyes - he's sorry Joshua - and then there's... agony. It's worse than the petrification was before, as he feels aether yanking, shoved around. It makes him want to black out, be done with it, and his vision dims, sounds pulling away. And something else that makes a portion of him greedy, in the way eating an Eikons aether did. It's not aether but Ifrit? Ultima? the portion of his body that consumes it snacks on it anyways.
And it works. Slowly the combined onslaught forces the petrification back, enough that Clive can finally croak: ]
Joshua, stop-
[ With a voice that sounds like it was dragged through the mud and then a throat filled with gravel. But it doesn't stop there, the petrification crawling back down Clives arm, slowly but sure forcefully relinquishing the hold via Wills sledgehammering and the Phoenix healing the flesh after. Flesh and nerve screams and Clive has to try and push weakly at them both to get them to stop before they hurt themselves. ]
[ Between his healing and whatever Will is doing, it's working. He can see it, the petrification retreating, and hope springs into his heart, swelling in him and giving him the energy to keep going. Tears still spring from his eyes, sizzling into nothing before they're able to track down his cheeks, but Flames, it's working and that's all that he wants.
But Clive is trying to get him to stop, and he refuses. Even the pushing won't make him stop. Until this is finished-- ]
No!
[ It's snarled out, almost in a tone befitting Ifrit rather than the elegant Phoenix. Even though pain lances through his chest, even though he can feel the creeping sensation within him, nothing except death itself can make him stop now. ]
[It's working??! As much as the theory was sound he honestly expected he was going to see his friend die here in this chair today. Drowning in the open air.
As much as he agrees with Clive that Joshua should not be doing this, if they can push it down completely... maybe... just maybe they can kill the curse at it's seed. Even so he keeps his ears focused on the younger brother's breathing. Watching for gasps and gags. His breath is already worrying shallow... but...
Well, it's not like he could stop Joshua if he wanted to.]
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:26 pm (UTC)You done fucked it right up, then?
[Cuz why else would Clive make a move for help that isn't about his brother?]
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:32 pm (UTC)Well.
He clears his throat. ]
Maybe a little.
[ He can't just roll his sleeve up, so instead he takes his shirt off. Will is going to need to see the joint too. He sets the shirt aside and turns the stone arm towards him. It goes all the way up to his shoulder now, flesh ceding way to stone there. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:36 pm (UTC)Fall forgets...
[he breaths out the curse, sounding awed and pained.]
What... what happened?!
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:40 pm (UTC)[ He can look 'inwards' to call upon the forces inside him but that's instinctual, that's his body, it's how he was made. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:42 pm (UTC)[He starts shoving him to sit]
You... you idiot!!
[He sounds a bit heated but more upset than mad]
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:45 pm (UTC)No... it hadn't started until I... demonstrated Ifrit. But the amount it took is too much. Eikons should be able to prime several times, for long periods, before their flesh gives way to the curse. Because it's devouring their aether, burning it off. But I still have more than enough.
[ He can feel them, as healthy as ever. He can call them, without any issues.
Other than the petrification. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:51 pm (UTC)[Oh he's so heated. He stomps over to get his text book and toss it on the other chair]
You havin' way too much was what I was banking on and here you go showing it off. Gods damn you both, I swear.
[Said while picking up the text and flipping through it as he sits in the chair, cursing to himself like a drunk sailor]
Gimme your arm, daft motherfucker-
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:56 pm (UTC)It also feels like being scolded by Gav, arguably his best friend, and it hurts a little. But only because he let him down. That Will, someone he barely knows, gets the same level of feeling out of Clive...
He sighs and shifts his arm using his left hand, closing the distance to hold it up for Will, frowning at the book so he doesn't look at the other. ]
I'm sorry. I truly thought it wouldn't do anything.
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Date: 2025-02-10 02:59 pm (UTC)[He grumbles, prodding the arm with gentle fingertips]
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:06 pm (UTC)[ The prodding makes him wince from the pain. Not from the outward touch but the nerves inside are alight and screaming. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:16 pm (UTC)It's defiantly different from Joshua.
[He stops prodding]
If it didn't LOOK the same I'd wonder if it was something completely different- maybe... maybe it is.
[He closes his eyes, focusing his senses as he once against tries to peer at his aether- SOMETHING is inflicting this, and Will is starting to suspect it isn't just a natural result of burning through aether anymore. His cursebreaking skills hunting down any intent to it.]
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:27 pm (UTC)[ Other than ol' rocky here.
It doesn't seem like anything in Clive is trying to malevolently force it. There's the chaotic swirl of the elements as normal and then there's that alien divinity covering it all, digging roots in. Because it truly all belongs to that alien divinity.
Even Clive. ]
And it's a painful process, agonizingly so, but that's because the living flesh is still ... there, near the rock. But my arm.
[ The agony goes from finger tips he shouldn't feel to his shoulder, and not simply localized around the shoulder where the living flesh is. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:39 pm (UTC)... makes no sense for the death price to be the cause. If it was just the immunity being taken away it should work like Joshua's...
The death, the death... could it- are you sure you're not Corrupted?
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:42 pm (UTC)[ He pauses for a moment, then sighs heavily and raises his hand a little to hold Will up, even as the numbing spreads through his arm deliciously ugh that's good. ]
Joshua, you might as well come in, or go lay back down.
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:56 pm (UTC)... my apologies for the intrusion. I could not rest.
[ He is CONCERNED. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 03:59 pm (UTC)Well, better you be here for this anyways.
[He turns back to Clive.]
That's what I thought, but that's the only other source of a curse I can think of you've been in contact with.
[And if it IS Suri... he might be fucked. At least Will might not be able to undo it]
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Date: 2025-02-10 04:07 pm (UTC)I'm sure Zahliya would have cleansed it, too, when he cleansed Joshua.
[ He sits back, frowning harder, his hand going to his shoulder. It doesn't hurt now with Wills (and Joshua's earlier easing) numbing, but he rubs at the spot where stone softens back into flesh, thinking. ]
If it was the curse, it would have grown with my attempt to pass the Blessing back to Joshua... Yet it grew with Ifrit, and the minor summoning of Garuda's wind before that.
[ But Garuda had been nothing, while Ifrit had taken his entire arm the rest of the way. He glances up to Joshua and Will, then away. ]
Would you two forgive me if I tested something?
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Date: 2025-02-10 04:14 pm (UTC)It reminds him of Tarja
But Clive's question gets a furrowed brow and a soft frown from Joshua, who glances at Will before answering. ]
That depends on what you plan to do.
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Date: 2025-02-10 04:21 pm (UTC)[He leans back, arms crossed. Though the effect is ruined a bit by the textbook still in his lap]
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Date: 2025-02-10 04:39 pm (UTC)[ All right. He nods gently to Joshua, then calls Ifrit's flames to his left hand. It's far different than Phoenix's. Where the Phoenix is warm and orange, the color of fire in an hearth, Ifrits is red and dark. Magma boiling from the earth.
He lets it surge, let it engulf his arm, heat pouring out. Let's it burn aether, then stops it.
The stone on his arm doesn't budge, which makes Clive frown. Then he calls Garuda, and she responds with a whip of the wind into his hand, a soft whirling tornado that - like Ifrits flames - creeps up his arm. It sends papers flying with the force and like with Ifrit he cancels it.
This time the stone reacts violently and Clive grunts in pain as the stone creeps up his shoulder, flesh turning ashen and grey as it solidifies up like small tendrils and into his neck. Reaches across his throat like spidery fingers and suddenly Clive's eyes widen, his left hand reaching up to grab there, his mouth open.
He can't get air past the petrification, and it's still crawling, up his throat to his chin, across his jaw. The look in his eye is very much: I have made a mistake. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 04:49 pm (UTC)But then Clive tries Garuda, and all goes wrong.
He can see the tendrils of petrification webbing out and growing, solidifying, going into his throat. Joshua's heart feels as though it's stopping. He can't breathe. Clive can't breathe. The panic in his brother's eyes-- ]
Clive! CLIVE!
[ The Phoenix's flames are there in an instant when he calls for them, surrounding him, setting his skin and hair alight with flickering tendrils of fire-flash, the Phoenix's tail feathers erupting from his back as his eyes turn a solid, glowing blue. It takes a split second for him to be at his brother's side, the healing flames erupting from his hands in a desperate attempt to stem the progression, to do something.
He turns to look at Will, tears sizzling beneath his eyes as soon as they form! ]
Will--!
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Date: 2025-02-10 05:09 pm (UTC)[Will leaps to action, terror making his heart and blood run wild. He doesn't even bother trying to heal- he can tell from scent alone that Joshua's healing outpaces his by multitudes. But there is one thing he can do.
Cursework is a delicate thing. Healing is the simplest magic- just urging the body to do what it naturally already wants to do. Cursing is more detailed, methodical. It's why he never tried to flex that skill on either of the brothers- until he knew how the affliction worked he was just as likely to make it worse than ease it. Or even curse them himself. It takes a knowledge of the intent and source of the blighted magic. He doesn't know the terms antibodies or vaccines, but the logic is the same. To fight an infection one must know it.
But there is, always, the sledgehammer of fever. The reason healing magic is rarely used for illness- a purge could kill the body. Or bake it so deeply there was no recovery. With curses the same is true. Instead of plucking the magic strings free like thread from needlework he was going to have to yank it out by the fistful, leaving carnage in his wake.
But right now he doesn't have any other option.]
Josh, keep healing him, he's gonna need it!
[He grabs at Clive, one hand on the shoulder, the other on the back of his quickly stiffening neck. His dull claws dig in, cat-like regardless of how blunt they are. His eyes slit, glimmering with energy as he dips into the aether and starts metaphorically yanking at where his aether flows into the stone. As he does his blunt claws do the same more literally, scratching at the growths.
And as he works he tries, bluntly, to feed his own prana into the magical wounds. Seasons damn him he wishes he got through more of the book!!! But the basics are enough that he knows, in theory, how this should go. Not that Clive NEEDS more aether- but perhaps his own alien energy can dilute whatever curse is causing this.
What should have been surgery is now a back alley chop-job]
no subject
Date: 2025-02-10 05:26 pm (UTC)What does it mean? There's no logic to the punishment. Is it truly just random?
Joshua semi-priming makes him want to make a noise, to shake his head, desperation in his eyes and not from the inability to breathe. No! Stop that! Then the healing rushes into him and the lithification - is it true lithification? - slows. Stemmed by the Phoenix and his eyes water because he wants to beg for his brother not to.
He knows what's going to happen and the guilt is eating away at him. As it should. Tears drip hot from his eyes - he's sorry Joshua - and then there's... agony. It's worse than the petrification was before, as he feels aether yanking, shoved around. It makes him want to black out, be done with it, and his vision dims, sounds pulling away. And something else that makes a portion of him greedy, in the way eating an Eikons aether did. It's not aether but Ifrit? Ultima? the portion of his body that consumes it snacks on it anyways.
And it works. Slowly the combined onslaught forces the petrification back, enough that Clive can finally croak: ]
Joshua, stop-
[ With a voice that sounds like it was dragged through the mud and then a throat filled with gravel. But it doesn't stop there, the petrification crawling back down Clives arm, slowly but sure forcefully relinquishing the hold via Wills sledgehammering and the Phoenix healing the flesh after. Flesh and nerve screams and Clive has to try and push weakly at them both to get them to stop before they hurt themselves. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 05:33 pm (UTC)But Clive is trying to get him to stop, and he refuses. Even the pushing won't make him stop. Until this is finished-- ]
No!
[ It's snarled out, almost in a tone befitting Ifrit rather than the elegant Phoenix. Even though pain lances through his chest, even though he can feel the creeping sensation within him, nothing except death itself can make him stop now. ]
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Date: 2025-02-10 05:43 pm (UTC)As much as he agrees with Clive that Joshua should not be doing this, if they can push it down completely... maybe... just maybe they can kill the curse at it's seed. Even so he keeps his ears focused on the younger brother's breathing. Watching for gasps and gags. His breath is already worrying shallow... but...
Well, it's not like he could stop Joshua if he wanted to.]
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