Numb me up baby

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Aetu
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:27 pm
Race: Human
Renown: 0
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Numb me up baby

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Cylus 2, 719 11:00


The recent mornings had been rough ones. Aetu had been feeling her control over her magic slowly slipping away. It wasn’t always bad, but when it was it was unbearable. Images would creep into her mind telling her to do terrible things and making her remember all the times she’d hurt things under the spark’s influence. On top of that there was a constant urge to use her magic to a point of exhaustion. It was becoming quite a miserable existence. The worst part was realizing that it was never going to get better and that she would likely lose every bit of her original personality.

Aetu left her tent dejected. She was scared of what she had gone through but even that was nothing compared to the overwhelming desire to curse someone. She was lucky that umbral runes were, at their core, rather harmless. They took away senses and could even cause fatigue but they didn’t cause pain in their own right. “Did I just think that cursing people isn’t that bad,” she thought as she gritted her teeth. She wasn’t even sure if that’s how she really felt or if she was just trying to cope.

Soon the rune wright arrived at a familiar medical hut. She had come here on a couple of occasions in the past and had learned that this medic was absolute garbage. If there was anyone here that she could burn her ether on it was going to be here. Her mind wandered to the pile of dead bodies she had found here and wondered if she was in any position to bring it up. “He might be able to get away with improper burial rights for a little longer,” she thought with a frown.

There were cries of the wounded that made it hard for Aetu not know where to go. She snuck around the rear of the hut where there were ten beds, all filled with patients. Some of the wounds looked pretty major and Aetu seriously doubted the shitty medic’s ability to keep most of these people from recovering properly. They

“Are you spying on my pristine medical techniques again,” the medic roared, “get out of here or I’m dueling you until you end up in one of these beds!”

“I promise I wasn’t,” Aetu said with a sob. She was still pretty choked up. She didn’t want to have to argue her way into helping someone.

“Aww come on just let her help,” cried one of the wounded, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

“I have magic,” Aetu started but was cut off pretty quickly. This was getting annoying fast.

“I don’t trust magic healing and I’ll not have my reputation tarnished if you mess up!”

“I will not heal,” Aetu said with great effort. “I have another magic. It will ease their pain so they will stop screaming so much. Wouldn’t that help you out?” She tried to ignore the spark in her head telling her to chop the medic’s head off. She had to grab her wrist to stop herself from holding onto her hilt.

“I suppose that’s alright,” the medic said suspiciously, “but I’m keeping my eye on you so don’t try anything funny.”

After all this waiting Aetu finally let herself release her ether. She felt like a carbonated drink that had been shaken and needed to explode. She had surprised herself at how well she had resisted using magic so far but it was time. Touching a man’s bleeding arm, she focused a heavy dose of energy into it. Everyone including the medic watched as the rune formed and the arm relaxed. Aetu had put such a powerful numbing rune on the man’s arm that he probably wouldn’t be feeling it for most of the remainder of the day.

“This is incredible!” the man shouted as he started poking his wound with a finger.

“You idiot just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean you can just make it worse!” the medic shouted as he ran over with a needle and string. He did his best to block Aetu’s view but she was able to easily step to the side and see how he stabbed into the arm and sewed up the wound. It was a useful skill to have, she was sure, not that she thought she would ever need it. She took that back. If she ever needed to heal and couldn’t use her magic then she would have to resort to the more mundane forms of healing. Not that she expected to ever be in a situation where her magic would be unavailable to her, but still.

“Do me next,” shouted another man.

“No way, come do me I’ve been suffering for weeks!” shouted another.

Aetu shrugged and ignored them both. She made her way down the line of beds and numbed them up one at a time as her spark danced around in happiness. It certainly didn’t enjoy making people feel better, it wanted to harm. But it reveled in every single opportunity it had to spend ether. Cursing someone to help them was a much better alternative to simply not using magic. Each time she used the rune of numbing she felt herself using more ether than necessary, as if she was mentally fatigued from constantly battling with her spark. She was just letting the spark do as it pleased now.

Aetu numbed up people so much that the first signs of overstepping hadn’t even been noticed by her. It was far too easy to overdo it with magic, especially with a weak will. The first symptom she experienced was fatigue which was quickly confused with just general shitiness due to the day she’d been through. It was a very subtle form of overstepping which could be ignored very easily. How was a combatant supposed to know if his fatigue was coming from his physical exertion or his magical exertion?

By the time she figured out that she was numb at her fingertips she also started noticing she was bleeding out of her nose. Now was definitely the time to stop before she got another needless mutation. Her spark was happy, she was happy, and all these people were happy. There was never a more perfect time to stop, so she did.

“Sorry I couldn’t get to the rest of you,” she sighed as a couple people groaned in disappointment, “there’s only so much I can do before I start bleeding you see?” She pointed to her nose and suddenly everyone was concerned with her health.

“Take it easy there miss,” the medic said as he laid her down onto a small cot on the floor, “you helped these people out so much that now you need treatment. What do mages need to treat their injuries? I know some of you lot lose out on your human anatomy.” The medic was a lot more laid back now that he didn’t see Aetu as a threat. He was actually quite intrigued as he had never seen a magic that could just numb someone up. He gave Aetu a good lookover and couldn’t see anything wrong with her except for her blindfold scar that he assumed made her blind. “For a blind girl you really know how to handle yourself. Is that also magic?”

“I don’t think there’s a cure,” Aetu said with a small cough, “to be honest I think all magic is a disease. It puts a foreign presence inside of you and it sort of eats you from the inside out. I’m not the same as I used to be and I don’t think there’s any going back. The really fucked up part is that I don’t think I want to go back either. And yea, I guess you can say it’s magic,” Aetu said with a hint of sadness.

“Ah, well that’s sad to hear,” the medic said as he wiped away her blood and gave her something to drink. “I might not know too much about medicine but I know a little something that might be able to take your mind off of it all if you know what I mean.”

If Aetu could open her eyes in this brightness she would have given him a puzzled look. “I don’t think I’m understanding what you’re saying.”

“Drugs girl, drugs!” the man said as he pulled out a small bag. “This stuff is pretty light and will ease your pain. Just don’t get addicted alright? Just cook a bit,” he accentuated ‘a bit’, “into your meals and see what that does for you.”

Aetu grabbed the bag and saw that it was labeled ‘marijuana’. She didn’t know the first thing about drugs but if the medic sincerely thought it might help then she might as well try it out. “Thanks,” she said as she rolled over. She would take a nap over the next several hours. With any luck she would fill with a bit more ether and the overstepping penalties would ease down a little.

word count: 1561
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