The Fix [Open]

[Kutlin]

Kutlin didn't really understand at the time what was coursing through his veins. All he knew, was that someone had drugged him. He knew what a contact high felt like, and this rush of feelings had sped up since leaving the place too fast and way too strong.

He kept walking, if he could get into to town he could find a place to sleep for the night, sure Daq would have to postpone the retrieval of his equipment, but it would be better if Kutlin could regain his strength. So he kept on, kept walking he even kept pace with the other two....for a while.

His vision was the first thing to go, his eyes felt to heavy all he wanted to do was sleep. He tripped over a naked tree's root. A root that the others seen and walked over perfectly, but it was as if his legs were made of stone, he fell.

"Ugh." He gasped as the air escaped from his lungs as the full weight of his body collapsed on top of itself.

He tried to push himself up, he even got his arms underneath of him trying to brace himself and push up with his arms directly under his shoulders for maximum effort.

It was all in vain, his arms collapsed as had his body and he fell back down. His mind and body had collapsed under the strength of the drug. Whatever it was, it wasn't a contact high. Someone had done this to him specifically.

[Daq Bekkar]

Put on edge from his approach to the city, Daq snapped around nervously at the sound of a body hitting in the ground. He turned just in time to see the assassin's arms give out on him as he tried to push himself up. He rushed over immediately.

He was unconscious. His breathing was somewhat irregular. Daq felt his wrists for a pulse but couldn't get a good feel for it.

"Shit," he muttered. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"

He felt the assassin's throat and found a pulse, much too rapid to be healthy. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

He kept murmuring 'Okay' to himself as he stooped in the dry leaves and felt around in his bag. After awhile, he pulled out a bottle and began to uncork it.

"Belladonna.." he muttered. "No.. not belladonna. That's the opposite of what I want.."

He put the bottle back. Daq wanted to keep digging around, hoping for a drug that would do the trick, but he knew that time was of the essence. He shuffled around so that he was kneeling over the assassin and pressed his thumbs firmly onto his closed eyes. After a few moments, Daq checked again at the pulse, but the only change was that it was a bit weaker.

Daq hit his head with the flat of his hand a few times and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force himself to think harder.

"Okay," he said. "Yes. Okay."

He felt along the assassin's neck for a bulge in his carotid, and he found it nestled near the jaw. Carefully he began to massage it.

With his other hand, he checked on the heart, which continued to beat fast.

"Wait. His right or my right? My right.. right?" Daq kept massaging as he thought. "Right."

Soon, he noticed a change. The heart had slowed, seeming to return to a normal rhythm, but the assassin remained unconscious. Daq wasn't entirely sure what had knocked him out, whether it was the drugs or the weakened blood flow or something else unaccounted for, so he decided not to take any chances.

He grabbed the boy's ankles and, with some effort, stood up with them, holding them at his sides, hoping that more of the boy's blood would drain back to the core and help wake him up, but the process was taking longer than he wanted, and they were wasting time sitting around. He dropped the boy's legs to the ground and turned to Pagusel.

"Look," he said, finally calm again after the previous tension. "I've not been completely honest with you."

He motioned her over and flopped to the ground next to the unconscious assassin.

"The truth is," he continued, "that it's more for my sake that I have everyone going back to the city. I'd like the equipment I have there; it's worth more than everything else that I own."

Then he paused. So far, he hadn't said anything too bad. Selfishness people could deal with. He wondered for a moment if he should continue, but when he looked at Pagusel's aristocratic face, under her cloak and past her bleary-eyed expression, there was something that reminded him strongly of a woman he had once cared for, many years before coming to Marn. Perhaps that was why he had been so taken by her. Ultimately, his conscience claimed a tenuous hold over him once again.

"And another truth is that I am not just expecting, but rather anticipating trouble when we get there," he said, pausing to sigh. "I'm somewhat of a wanted man. That is, not in the common sense of being chased around by guards. This probably sounds silly, but I have a seven-odd foot tall giant who is after me, presumably hot on my trail, presumably a step ahead, lying in wait because he knows that I am coming back for my things. And I've been selfish in duping you into thinking that this was just a harmless trick so that you wouldn't desert me. Because I like your company--really. And I hired this assassin thinking that he could deal with the giant if he showed up, but now look at him.."

He patted the assassin's chest a few times, in a manner similar to how one might touch an old tree or a familiar rock.

"So then I got the idea that maybe he could fight the giant while I made my escape. He'd be done for, but he would serve his purpose. But that kind of plan wouldn't work in the daytime, where the giant could simply see me flitting away. And in this condition... Well.. He wouldn't even be good for that. Which is why I want to bring him back to consciousness, maybe even give him a few other drugs to even him out a bit before he comes-to.. make him feel normal at least."

He got up again, went to his pack and pulled out a blanket, which he positioned under the assassin's head and shoulders.

"I know it sounds awful, so I'd understand if you don't want any part in it, but I am hoping you will decide to help. If we can keep moving with him, legs elevated for the blood to come back to his head, we might reach my lab before daybreak, and we might have a shot at this."

He picked up one of the assassin's legs and gestured to the other one. "So I'd appreciate it if you'd like to come along and ... yes.. well... like I said, help."

[Pagusel]

Pagusel turned as well when she heard Kutlin fall, but it was a slow and poised move, the way one might turn to view a bride's entrance onto the aisle: it was something worth seeing, but certainly not unexpected. The man was going to collapse sooner or later, in his state. Her arms stiffened briefly as Daq rushed from beside her to deal with Kutlin, but relaxed again as she gazed upon the proceedings from a short distance.

Then Daq turned to look at her and claimed her had been dishonest. Pagusel lifted the hood from her head to reveal the soft line of her frown, but heeded his gesture and drew closer to hear him speak.

As Daq's harried speech went on, Pagusel's frown deepened visibly in both her lips and brow. When he finished on an entreaty, she paused and her gaze dropped to the side. She blinked soft charcoal lashes a few times and looked back at him levelly.

"I mistakenly thought this man had hired you," she said finally. She looked at the deadweight length of Kutlin's leg in Daq's arms and then at her own uncalloused, tawny hands.

"I'll agree to take this assassin to the city with you." Pagusel's tone was cordial, almost kind, in a distant sort of way. Her voice was chalky, like a pinch of cornstarch. She knelt to take Kutlin's ankle in her hands and rose again. She twisted so she held his left ankle under her right arm and supported it with both hands.

"While I don't fault you for your dishonesty," she began, "--for business is a game which frequently requires its players who wish success to hide their motives--I do consider it a favor to you, that I will help you transport your hired hand. We will go to the city, then, and hope he is of use to you."

Pagusel looked back at Kutlin's head and shoulders, held off the ground on Daq's blanket. "I think your blanket will be left behind unless you secure it to him somehow." She faced forward again and rolled her neck around once on her shoulders, and she appeared ready to set forth.

[Daq Bekkar]

"Oh. Right," Daq replied. He dropped Kutlin's ankle unceremoniously to the ground. It kicked up a few dried leaves as it hit.

Digging around in his bag, he found a couple of pins, which he used to fasten the blanket to Kutlin's clothes. He did this efficiently, without a word, then he moved back to Kutlin's leg and hoisted it up again.

"Shall we, then?" He asked, with a guilty, furtive glance at Pagusel, who seemed ready. He began to pull. It was hard at first--the assassin was heavier than he looked, but after a few trudging steps, dragging him became easier.

The cold air burned like fire in his lungs as he began to breathe heavily. Daq kept his mind to the task, placing one foot in front of the other, trying to pick smooth ground, so that his cargo wouldn't snag. Most of all, he tried to distract himself from thinking about the distance he had heard in Pagusel's voice, and the familiar, collapsed feeling of disappointment that had lodged itself in his chest.

However, as with the other mindless tasks most of his days were filled with, the dragging proved to be little distraction. He found his thoughts drifting along a tally he secretly kept of missed opportunities and sadnesses. A ledger filled with his life's failures, that summed-up, cryptically, to where he was now.

Under the guise of wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked at Pagusel, but couldn't make anything of her out. She was obscured totally from him by her thick black hood.

[Pagusel]

"We shall," Pagusel had replied to Daq as they set off with their strange cargo in tow. She did not seem to take to the labor particularly naturally, but she carried on without complaint and while upholding her austere brand of grace. She followed Daq's lead in his continual evaluation of the terrain, sidestepping as he did the small obstacles that came up. She hardly gave him a sideways look, not obviously uncomfortable with the silence.

The tattoos encircling Pagusel's thighs were speckled with goosebumps. Fine hairs, nearly white in their translucence, prickled perpendicular to her skin along her arms and legs in response to the cold. When Daq stopped to wipe his forehead, she paused too and took the opportunity to raise one sandaled foot and scratch at the mild discomfort of tight gooseflesh on the back of her calf. Gazing down upon her foot, she caught sight of Daq's face in her periphery.

"Yes?" she said and lifted her head sharply. The hood fell back from her forehead and slid off her crown to her back. She did not lower her foot from scratching her leg, but rather lifted her toes somewhat and pressed them firmly into the hollow behind her knee. She stood this way, storklike, with no difficulty, as Kutlin's leg in her hands served as a prop for balance.

"I'm beginning to feel anxious," she added. "I don't mean to be brusque." With the last sentence, her speech resumed its previous languid timbre, but her eyes seemed more alert than before. She stared at Daq, silent and very slightly swaying where she stood on one foot.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq met Pagusel's stare for as long as he felt he could before clearing his throat and turning away. He faced the gates of Marn, which loomed closely, though he continued to study her, standing with her unique brand of awkward grace, out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah," he said. "You know the stakes, so I guess that's the right emotion to be feeling."

He set Kutlin's leg down carefully and scratched at his scalp around the goggles that sat nestled in his hair. The night was quiet. It had dragged on too long, and soon it would be time for its shift to end. Still, Daq estimated he could make it on his own.

"Listen, like I said before, you don't have any obligation to me. If you want to go, then go. It's not too much further now, and I think I can handle the rest of it by myself."

He looked back at Pagusel, not expecting to see much change. He had already resigned himself to the fact that she would leave him. It was only a matter, in his mind, of when. Better sooner than later, he told himself. No point in entertaining false hope. For now, he just wanted a quick last look at her--white tattoos, dark hair, shapely legs, exotic grace--before she was gone.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel's brown eyes grew wider than they had all night as she watched Daq lower Kutlin's foot. She followed his face with her gaze as he stood back up. When he scratched around his goggles, her eyebrows rose. She hadn't even noticed those goggles before. She relaxed her gaze and tipped her head thoughtfully as he spoke, her irises shifting up and down ever so slightly as she watched the puffs of steam from his mouth dissolve into the night air.

When he finished she looked down at Kutlin's leg in her hands and shifted her feet. She apparently decided against taking the effort it would take to change position and lower this foot as well. She shook her head as if to clear her crown of some sort of dust.

"You misunderstand my meaning," she spoke softly and quickly. "I am made anxious within myself." Pagusel glanced up again and looked at once somewhat sheepish and sharp. The goosebumps on her arms intensified as a single shiver flowed from her shoulders. She pursed her lips over the shiver in her teeth.

"If you are concerned--" her glance flitted sidelong toward the city "--that I worry for my own safety, you must not be so. I have no fears about handling myself safely and removing myself from harm's way if the need arises."

"I am growing anxious, however. I think perhaps it would be best if I consumed the product you made for me now. And then we should continue on our way immediately." Pagusel lifted her chin with resolve and took a deep breath in an effort to steady her nerves. "Do you feel the need to advise on the matter?"

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq was lost somewhere between the reflexive tense of her anxiety and the ambiguity of her looks. He couldn't tell what, exactly, was making her 'anxious,' and he couldn't tell if this was a confrontation or an apology. Just as he had begun to puzzle out her look of apologetic sharpness, she pursed her lips, changing the features of her subtle face just enough to throw him off again. She played the line too closely.

So when she put forward that she ought to consume 'the product' he had made (which he could only assume to be the drug that he had already handed over to her, which he had, in turn, assumed to have been already consumed), he decided the best answer to her question would be no. If his years of working in a 'scientific' field that so frequently bordered on the magical or, at least, the incomprehensible had taught him anything, it was not to get mixed up in things he didn't rightly understand.

"No," he said. "I suppose you know yourself better than I."

He put down his pack as well and sat on it, so that he could catch his breath while waiting for her to 'consume the product.'

A feeling of unease crept over him as he tried to surreptitiously continue observing Pagusel. It had happened again--something she said hinted at a hidden element of her character... the element from which all of her strange confidence must come. That she had no fears about her safety troubled him. Nothing from her behavior suggested that Pagusel would have a brazen or reckless attitude. To the contrary, she seemed to be more of the calculating, cautious type. What was it that gave her such surety then? Undoubtedly something rather dangerous.

His left hand twitched in a brief show of insistence. Though it was oftentimes very concerned with his 'progress,' it usually balanced this with a concern for his well-being. Daq didn't anticipate the twitch coming until it was too late, and it resulted in a violent jerking motion, which he tried to cover up by standing up abruptly.

"You.. uhh. You can put his leg down. I'll check on him. See if he's still breathing and all," he said quickly, moving over to Kutlin.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel's grip on Kutlin's leg tightened. She had noticed the unusual movement of Daq's hand, and just as her gaze had been drawn to focus there, he stood abruptly, startling her. She stared at him for a moment, then raised her eyebrows once to as if shrug the notion of the startle off her very forehead. It was absolutely nothing.

Her back straight, she knelt and deposited Kutlin's leg on the cold ground. She rose again and her hands disappeared beneath her cloak. Pagusel gave Daq a long, somber-faced look and lowered her eyelashes as she did. It was one of the more overtly feminine gestures she had made thus far, a gesture indicating at once a strong request one's modesty not be compromised and an acknowledgment of one's own helplessness in the situation. She then turned away from him.

"I will take it now," she said quietly, and the dip of the back hem of her cloak would suggest she lifted the front. She apparently had tucked the parcel into the waist of her short pants, for a moment later she had plucked something from the area of her navel and lifted it to her mouth. She did so with both hands, although it was a small parcel. The manner in which she ducked her head over both hands to consume what they held was like that of a squirrel or raccoon.

The brown paper in which the drug had been wrapped fluttered to the ground, and Pagusel looked back over her shoulder to Daq, hands tucked away again. Her mouth was open slightly, her tongue arched over the small quantity of powder now rapidly dissolving therein. She closed her lips and swallowed some of the saliva that was produced by the introduction of the drug.

With little else to do while Daq checked up on Kutlin, Pagusel lowered herself gently to a sitting position where she appeared to ruminate over the drug's initial effects as she stroked her throat with the fingers of one hand. Finally she spoke, lifting her fingers to cover her lips modestly. Her speech was impeded by the necessity to hold the body of her tongue against the floor of her mouth, and this was a slight embarrassment. "You're not going to die, are you?" she said, casting Daq a look over her shoulder. "I do very much want to do business with you."

That her anxiety had seemed to dissipate already was indication enough Pagusel found Daq's product worthwhile.

[Devon]

Kutlin lay there beside the two adventurers, oblivious to them and everything else, aside from what was currently playing inside his mind. He seen death in everything that he had ever done, no matter how small or how large, death was always present. It was always present and it came from his hands. He realised this in the dream, and the offspring of this revelation was not despair, or glory, it was pure lack of care.

To him death was a tool, a tool he used quite often among his set of other tools, but this one seemed to be the sharpest it seemed to be the most cared for. The site of death or the memory of a deceased family member brought waves of feelings to the persons involved. Different waves for the different individuals. The same tool.

There were other tools ofcourse that he employed. The fear of one coming into your home when you are asleep, and only realising the intrusion when it was brought before you. There was the tool of hatred or anger, when you force your opponet to be so blindsided by his own fury that the fight was over as soon as it began. He always went back to the same tool though, he kept it sharp and clean with only the memories of blood and past lives to show its use, death.

Kutlin came to the conclusion that since his rebirth as Kutlin, after the somewhat death of Marc Corliss, that he had been given these bag of tools and had learned to use them in his trade . And use them well he did, but every craftsman or tradesman has his favored tool. Kutlin's was ofcourse death.

In this dream, he was killing everyone that he had ever killed before. His dreams usually consisted of such things, as the dead make no sound than the screams in one's dreams. He was silencing them as he had done before and almost every night since then. He didn't like the dreams, they seemed to be a weakness to him, but for the death of his soul, he could not recall any other dreams he may have ever had.

As in the dream state in which he currently dwelled his pulled his crossbow and fired, he swung his lean sword and cut, he flew out punches which landed home with a crunch.

That was in the dream state that he resided, to the onlookers nearby though the only thing they might see was his hand twitch and his breath quicken and his eyes floating and dancing behind their lids. He was coming out of the drug induced murderous slumber.

[Daq Bekkar]

Moved by some remnant of politeness left over from long-gone domestic days, Daq turned his focus to Kutlin as Pagusel consumed the drugs. Something about her furtive movements made it seem like she would be embarrassed if he watched.

He pressed his fingers on the vein where he had found Kutlin's pulse before. At first, his concentration was not turned to it fully, but after a few minutes of focus, what he found surprised him. The pulse had begun to quicken, and there was a rush of pressure, like that of a man on the edge of waking.

Daq stood back and observed, attention fully diverted to the young man. For awhile, he thought the pulse might have been imagined, nothing more than a bout of wishful thinking. But it was clear to him that it wasn't when he noticed the twitch of the young man's hand.

Fumbling for his bag, Daq stretched out to where he had been sitting. He pulled it close to him and dug through it until he found a vial labeled 'Spirit of Hartshorn.' He uncapped it, held it just under his face, and wafted a bit up to his nose. His eyes watered with the stinging sensation of the irritant, and he barely resisted the urge to inhale sharply.

With one hand, he held it just under Kutlin's nose. The other hand he clapped over Kutlin's mouth to prevent him from breathing through it.

Part of him worried about how an assassin would react to snapping awake to the burning of a strong smelling salt with a man's hand pressed tightly over his mouth, but Daq, perhaps wrongly, dismissed this as unnecessary nervousness.

The other part of him was distracted by something he only half-heard through his occupations. Finishing up the drug, Pagusel had asked him if he was going to die. He jerked around at this and raised his eyebrows. It was such an odd question. What had prompted her to ask?

He was crestfallen when she tacked on that she would very much like to do business with him. He tried his best to pass of the double-take he had just made as something more casual, but he imagined that the outward sings of his change in mood were probably quite noticeable. He consoled himself with the thought that of the two who might have seen it, one was pseudo-unconscious and the other was on her way toward a drug-high.

"No," he said rather tersely. "I don't intend on dying."

He turned his attention back to Kutlin, making sure his hand was firmly clamped across his mouth.

[Pagusel]

A breath of wind from the west picked up the scrap of brown paper that had protected Pagusel's little dose of the drug during travel. The wind was dry and almost imperceptible but for the visual effect it presented. Pagusel rolled her gaze up to watch the paper be whisked away with the breeze and disappear into the darkness provided by the woods.

Her gaze dropped again when Daq's voice reminded her she had asked a question. There was a smile in the way she raised her eyebrows at him, though her lips remained neutral. Something about the way she tipped her head or how her heavy eyelids turned up at just at the outer corners seemed to signal friendliness. Pagusel put her hand on her throat as her muscles there visibly flexed. She swallowed the last of the drug-laced saliva pooled beneath her tongue and spoke.

"I like this thing you've made," she said. She did not avoid his gaze, but did let her eyes wander to observe the progress of Kutlin's rising consciousness. Her eyes flitted back and forth beneath her lowered eyelashes as she watched his do the same.

"I like it," she repeated, coming back from her brief reverie with a resolute tensing of her brow. "I thought perhaps you felt you were in danger of dying, but if you do not die, then I would like to have more of your wares. What do you call it?" She fluttered her fingertips in the direction of her face and then her torso, indicating the drug that was now coursing through her system.

Pagusel looked at Daq's hand over Kutlin's mouth and seemed about to say something, but instead closed her mouth again and pulled her knees up to her chest. She put her hands on her knees and sat patiently for what was to transpire.

[Kutlin]

Kutlin was stirring in his sleep, dreaming his dreams of death when voices erupted inside of them. His dreams seemed to portray what the words had in store for him.

They were Daq's words, and the sentence they formed was death for Kutlin. If not death, serious injury. He was to use him as fodder. Kutlin saw this now in his dreams, he walked into a very sterile looking lab. As soon as he picked up a box of equipment, a sword plunged through his chest from behind. He saw Daq in front of him, telling him that he shouldn't have brought him here, that he knew what was going to happen.

Daq dropped the box and started to fall, as he did he turned and seen a man. He had removed the bloody sword from Kutlin's back. He was wearing a mask which was also bloody. It was Kutlin's blood! Kutlin looked the man up and down as he sat on his knees breathing through closing lungs.

The man's body was now covered in Kutlin's blood. The man slowly moved the sword to his side and reached his hand up to the mask. It was skin tight on his face, and already Kutlin could see that he was smiling. He started to remove his mask and as it parted it's way up his face, Kutlin could indeed see he was smiling.

The man was enjoying the fact the Kutlin was dying, on his knees, in front of him.
As he finished taking off his mask, he was finally able to the face of his murderer.

DAQ!

Kutlin popped out of his dream, eyes wide open, and full of anger. He couldn't speak or stand, let alone slice the man's throat where he stood over him, but his eyes spoke words his mouth could never.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq watched Pagusel greedily as the breeze flirted with her, snatching the brown wrapper from her hand. He could just make out how her hair stirred ever so lightly at its touch.

She looked down at him unexpectedly, face full of ambiguous emotion, dark eyes perhaps happy, lips impassive. There was something disarmingly friendly about her look. Her eyes looked at him with uncharacteristic steadiness. Daq struggled to suppress a blush.

"It's called Zilkanum," he said. He opted not to tell her how he had come up with the name for it, or how he was so much more familiar with it than with the other drugs he had been ordered to make.

Following her gaze, Daq turned his attention back to the boy and was startled when the his eyes opened so abruptly. He jerked his hand back and capped the bottle of smelling salts. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a somewhat grimy handkerchief and dabbed at Kutlin's forehead and temples.

"It's alright," he whispered in a low voice. "Just had a bit of a scare.."

He put away the handkerchief and continued to crouch over Kutlin for a moment, looking into his wild eyes. They looked full of rage, but Daq was unsure. The evening's subtlety had far exceeded his ability to interpret people. Perhaps the boy was afraid?

He scuttled to Kutlin's side and sat in the grass near his head, which he propped up with the blanket he had pinned to Kutlin's shoulders.

"Don't try to sit just yet; you might pass out again. Just take it easy for a bit. When you're ready, we'll get moving, pick up my equipment from my lab, and then you can get your sedative gel and be on your way.."

[Pagusel]

Pagusel's grip on her knees slipped down as she watched Daq tend to the stirring Kutlin. Her chin bobbed down momentarily, and she jerked it back up and resumed her grip. The effects of the drug called Zilkanum were new to her, and she was learning to cope. A thoughtful squint of her eyes into the empty air above Kutlin's face processed an awareness of her slight impairment, but her brow was slack and her mouth remained free of emotion. Pagusel did not seem troubled.

Kutlin presently opened his eyes, and Pagusel blinked a few times slowly at the sight of Daq fussing over the reclined assassin. She murmured very quietly something in echo to Daq's comment--

"Just had a bit of a scare.."

--something, which, like some words uttered earlier, sounded not foreign, not unlike the common tongue, but not exactly intelligible. "Afwee-fwee ting kim oh we," said Pagusel through drowsily parted lips.

She rocked forward on her haunches and rose to stand in one swooping movement. Daq was moving around, apparently trying to make the other man comfortable, and Pagusel spoke finally with a longing gaze in the direction of the gates. "Does he stand?"