Downfallen : Medic
Dramatis Personae
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Dicae Solea
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Astraea Solea
Downfallen : Medic
Continued from Sting : Match
He was rushed not to the medical tent where the average injured participant would be, but through his mother Oria, out of Meld’s Mouth and into a place called Sarn Gwern. It was in the countryside, in South Kargast, and if Danno had known he was traveling backwards to the Gloynbyw Coalfields he would have rescinded their primitive operations.
It was a small surgeon’s office. One or two cots and a wall of materials and weapons. Not the most welcoming. Upon waking up. He was unimpressed with the scent of resin and bare decorations.
A Pompila woman owned the place. A Pompila. Danno groaned. They had the delicacy of a giant and the rumours of cannibalism were not unfounded. Her hair was a bright, fiery red and her face pointed and young, making her seem almost petulant in appearance. She was dressed in surgical clothes, which worried him even more.
“You could have waited until I arrived in Meld’s Mouth,” she said in a high pitched voice, exasperated at Oria and her retinue. “I’m due to leave tomorrow for my qualifying match on Tethera.”
“Danno is a Sinnox King,” Oria said tersely, a snake-like hiss undercurrent to her voice.
The Pompila surgeon whistled sarcastically, whilst dipping her hands in an acrid solution and standing over Danno. She shook her hands off, which were bonier and rougher than Danno had expected for a dainty woman. Then again. She was a Pompila.
“Is it true that you eat your own children?” One of his aunts pressed in such an audacious and tactless way that even Danno wouldn’t have done it.
“Dicae, enough,” Oria snapped.
“Why are you taking him to this butcher?!” Another aunt hissed.
“You expect me to trust the ones in Meld’s Mouth with such a delicate matter, Astraea? Are you serious?”
“Well perhaps little Danno should be treated by the humble,” Dicae replied. “With the way he humiliated us.”
“Truly, humiliating,” Astraea sighed loudly. “And in a mere practice match."
“For shame, Aste! How dare you insult the King!”
“Mother, please," Danno begged weakly, but the words were drowned out by their arguing.
“I know her,” Arnal said in a low and somewhat comforting voice, but no one heard him except for Danno. And Danno didn’t want to deal with the failure of a sibling, and didn't want to even remember he came. “She’s in the guild. Hyxonia Andemona.”
Danno fought back the double vision as he tried to get a glance at the doctor. She didn’t seem to be listening to them, and instead went to grab a wooden broom whose bristles looked to be made of pine needles. Danno sighed as she stopped to put on a dark green mask to match her underclothes and tucked her braids away. She glanced up at the group of six relatives who had crowded in her clinic to watch over Danno.
“This is from his match with Yuli Weducalli of the Leaden Rivers, correct?” Hyxonia asked. “What symptoms did he display right after she pierced his jaw?”
“She lobotomized my son with a bone pick!” Oria exclaimed, motioning with her hand what Yuli had done but with little productivity. The Pompila crossed her arms and seemed a little tired of the drama brought upon her.
“Could he move, did he start convulsing, or what?” Hyxonia specified sternly.
“No! She forced him to take points off himself. She moved his arms, and he stood there drooling like a brain-rotted tool!” Dicae continued to raise tension in the small confines.
“So she targeted his parietal lobe,” Hyxonia said, leaning over and tipping Danno’s chin so she could see the scabbed puncture on his lower jaw. “You really ought to protect yourself from such a cheap move,” Danno stiffened when he realised she was talking to him.
“Mind filtering should be outlawed! It’s completely uncivilized,” Oria said, exhausted. “I’ve a right to have her buried with her head between her ankles.”
Hyxonia paused and then pointed a finger from the hand holding the broom toward Arnal. “How about mind-shaping, or mind-duplicating a Coriniaid? I wonder if you think that should be outlawed too?”
“How dare you! You-”
Hyxonia turned the broomstick upside down and drove the end into the wooden floor with three hard taps. Suddenly through small slots in the floor that Danno had thought were vents, came pinewood walls which created a completely secluded environment and blocked off the rest of the clinic. It immediately fell silent and the air around them relaxed, the yelling and arguing feeling like a distant echo.
Danno gazed up at her and Hyxonia shrugged and shook her head, though behind the mask her expression was unreadable However, her milky blue-white eyes with dark pupils held an empty and contemptuous stare.
“I will perform a surgery on you,” she said, “by injecting pine-solvent into your parietal lobe and nasal cavity while you are under a coma. This should rid any remnants of quicksilver and harden. The scarring will remain but you won’t suffer the volume loss that typically breaks people after mind filtering. If half the brain’s gone, pine sap can only do so much.”
Danno felt nauseous even hearing about it. “Gods alive, why did you have to explain it in such detail.’
Hyxonia glanced around and then back at Danno, as if she wanted this to be private. “You should be more aware of lobotomies in sport. Your aunties are right. For a King, this is an embarrassment.”
“I’d like to see you try and,’ Dano huffed angrily, but he lost his breath halfway. Leaning against the counter, Hyxonia looked down at him like he were a small, irrelevant being, and he hated it. “I didn’t see you… try and…”
“You were beaten by Yuli Widucalli,” Hyxonia bemoaned. “She’s not even a Camula, she’s nothing. Nothing without her mistress.”
Danno’s face scrunched in confusion. “She won every practice match I saw.”
“I fight her in the qualifiers on Tethera,” Hyxonia stopped him, as she readied a needle and syringe. “She’s been in the practices, beating nepotists and braggarts like you, to intimidate everyone else. Because she knows when she gets on the piste with me, I will knock her out in the first five minutes.”
Danno laughed, a weak bark of laughter that he couldn’t keep up the energy for. “That’s what I thought too. Good luck.”
“Your Ambacta,” Hyxonia said, which seemed off topic. “I know him, and I know Yuli, from the guild.”
Your Ambacta. I know him. You should’ve watched his match.
Danno's mouth quivered and he tried to calm himself. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
“I have over 50 wins against Yuli in guild matches. So I think I stand at least a half-yard more of a chance than you. And if you and your harem of abrasive females can keep quiet, perhaps you’ll have healed enough to watch the qualifiers and take some notes.”
The last thing Danno remembered was that despite the rough look of her hands, her grip was firm yet soft as she turned his neck and slid the eye of the needle into his main artery.
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