• PM To Join • And It All Came Crashing Down

[Max]

5 Ashan 718


If it weren't for her obvious injuries, Max might've doubted any of it had been real. The kidnappings, the battle, and the collapse of the docks. All of it felt like a distant, albeit powerful nightmare she'd woken up from. Memories of the incident played vividly in her head as though they were happening in the here and now. Usually she could shut everything off, tuck her emotions away somewhere deep, deep down until they were all but forgotten. She could drink. She could smoke. She'd go on. This time, however, this experience just wouldn't let her go. Rather than run from it another trial, she elected to let this reality slap her in the face like it wanted to.

Each step that brought her closer to the docks came with a dark foreboding she could feel. Anxiety's grip on her gradually became tighter. Her heart raced just a bit faster in her chest. She could see the devastation and grief on the faces of people she passed long before she reached her destination. Maxine thought she clearly remembered the destruction. When her journey came to a halt she realized just how wrong she'd been about that. The scene that opened up before her made her jaw unhinge.

Five trials later, and the place was still full of chaos. Rubble and debris expanded across the region that once held humble homes and small businesses. Dirt and dust swirled with each gust of wind, and with it the putrid scent of the death from bodies likely still crushed somewhere deep within the folded structures. There was no need to imagine the weight of this horror. Any seeing eye could gather just how much whole lives had been either taken or uttered ruined. It wasn't all doom and gloom though. Within this mess there were the helpers. Apparently some benevolent force had organized an effort to bring relief to Scalvoris Town, hoisting tents and scattering themselves about to both clean up and give aid to those that desperately required it.

Maxine pressed her lips together and slowly shook her head. Before she really knew what she was doing, her feet were moving again. Using her single crutch, something she still toted along for the moments she inevitably strained her healing foot, the Rusalka navigated down into the wreckage. She approached a diligently working crew in the center of the ruins. One man had managed to clear away a hole in one wounded building, and while he haphazardly maneuvered his body through the tight squeeze, another prepared to hand a lit lantern through. Max's brow furrowed with curiosity before her attention found a familiar face.

"Hey, healer," she called out benevolently toward Faith before making her approach. She might've been out of it when Mercedes dragged her out of the collapsing warehouse, but she very much remembered this woman to be instrumental to her current ability to walk at all. If she had anything to do with the relief effort on the ground, lending a hand would be the first step in paying off that debt. "How can I help?"

[Faith Augustin]

Faith was exhausted. There were no two ways about it, she was. In the time since the collapse of the Docks, she had slept not at all and eaten not very much. Yet, she had continued on and she had persevered. Not because she wanted to, no. Because she needed to. Something fundamental drove her and she had an overwhelming need to help; this coupled with her own determined endurance and her abilities in endurance granted by her Zuuda mark meant that she could push herself and then push herself more. Because there were people and they were injured and trapped and dying and she could not rest while that was true. So, she worked.

At the council meeting, Faith had been given the job of organising the relief effort and she had overseen it in the trials since. It was why she was so tired, but she was pleased, more pleased than she could say, for every person they had saved. Equally, there was each individual they had pulled out and had not been able to save. Each one of them, she found out their name, she told their family and she gave prayers over them to Famula and Vri. Because each one of them was a failure. A failure to save them all, to get there in time, to do enough.

Each one.

But that was the nature of the woman she was. Her childhood, maybe - or lack thereof - was the reason for it. Perhaps it was because it was just who she was - to Faith's mind that was not important and it really didn't matter. What she did, she did in service to Famula, to Vri and Moseke and it was all she could do. So, they were trying to get Charles into this building right now. No one was sure if there was anyone in there, but Faith had thought she'd heard faint cries. So, they'd identified the safest place to get in and then worked together to lower Charles in there.

Glancing up, Faith saw a familiar face and she smiled in pleasure at the sight of her. "Maxine. How are you feeling?" Faith asked, looking critically down at the foot. "I'm glad to see you up and using it. How's the pain?" It would very quickly become obvious, judging by the way that other people referred and deferred to her that Faith was someone in some position of authority in the whole relief effort. "We've got a few places that you can help out and sit, if you'd rather. What would be your preference?" The young human woman was very much of the belief that Max was a grown up - she could make her own decisions. "Or, we're just lowering Charles down, because I think I heard a noise and we're making a sweep." They were pulling out fewer and fewer survivors now, more and more corpses. Still. They weren't done yet.

From down in that building came three sharp blows on a whistle. Max might notice that Faith wore one round her neck and a small glowing stone, too. "Three whistles means survivors. Look lively, lets get someone else down!" She shouted and looked at Max with a question in her eyes. "Feel up to being a strong pair of arms, anchoring someone as they go down there?"

[Max]

The Rusalka navigated her way down toward where Faith was standing like a strong rock in a stream, evidently in charge by the way other relief workers rushed about her like busy bees. Always the healer, the other woman immediately opened up with questions about her well-being. Maxine's brow furrowed for but a trill. She was still very much coming to grips with what had happened in Scalvoris Town. Her injury slowing her down did little to ease the transition either. She'd been left feeling slow and vulnerable. Weak. Those conditions were not ones that could be allowed to remain.


"I manage," the Rusalka brushed off the benevolent line of questions with a shrug. Her attention quickly turned to the destruction around her. While the relief effort had made noticeable headway, it was clear that there was still much left to do. "I'm tired of sitting." Her eyes darted toward Charles, the man making his way into the precariously standing building. Her head tilted slightly at the whistling that followed soon after. She turned to Faith, who had accurately read her confusion and briefly explained the meaning behind the sound.

Survivors?

While Faith returned to start barking necessary orders, Max found herself eyeing the rubble with bewilderment. It had been trials since the collapse. If anyone had indeed survived up until now down beneath that mess, they were a blessed lot indeed. "Alright then," she said with a nod. She wished not to see another soul suffocated and left to die beneath the surface. "Let's do this." Max moved toward the spot she watched Charles disappear. She couldn't trust her bad foot to hold much weight should she need it to. That wouldn't stop her commitment to this task.

Dropping the crutch beside her, Max eased down so that she sat parallel to the opening in the building. Her bad foot extended outward to rest on the ground. The other was braced up on what looked to be a stable part of the wall, her knee bent and ready to use her leg strength as additional leverage. After a few breaths to steady herself, she turned to look over her shoulder. A hand beckoned the approaching relief worker following Faith's instructions over. The woman was a little more petite than Charles. The look in her eyes as she approached, however, was anything but. There was a sense of purpose. Her focus unwavering like a soldier living and dying by Faith's orders. Max faintly wondered what her motivation was, though she thought it safe to assume it was both personal and strong.

The Rusalka extended her stronger, dominate right hand outward toward the woman. She seized Max's grip and wasted no time shimmying herself to the edge of the hole. Max's grip tightened the moment the worker committed to the task. She drove the heel of her foot against the wall, the muscles in her arm straining as they worked to help slow the worker's descent into the dark. In a couple trills the woman's feet had apparently hit the ground. Her grip on Max's hand relinquished willingly, and the Rusalka leaned over to peer curiously into the depths of the hole.

"Is this rare?" Max dared to ask the healer carefully. "To find survivors?" So much needless death had come from the events of what started as a fun party. When she'd escaped the warehouse behind Sephira, Kura, Lavana, and Vega she had thought that would've been the end of the killings. What she hadn't expected was for the disturbance of the docks' support by a portal to send the city into turmoil. The aftermath had been overwhelming, she'd remembered. Max could only imagine the things Faith had seen and pulled from beneath this chaos. Surely this had been no easy undertaking.

[Faith Augustin]

She managed and she was tired of sitting? Faith glanced at Maxine and nodded, saying no more about the woman's injury. Evidently, she was someone who did not enjoy it, did not embrace the sick role and most certainly did not wish to dwell on what made her physically less strong. Faith could understand that, it very much was her own way of being, too, and so she inclined her head once, and then let the matter drop. That she was not wishing to sit was a good thing as far as Faith was concerned; the more that she moved, the better she'd get.

But then, just before they got to have any further discussion, there were three blasts of the whistle. They moved, all of them, and Faith too lay down next to the hole. The relief worker went down and Maxine might notice that there was a biqaj close by. A woman who kept her eye on Faith at all times. Faith lay, though, and looked down there. "Keep us informed!" She called down. Then Max asked a question and Faith gave a half shrug. "Not as common as I'd like. At first, we were pulling out people who'd died immediately, and survivors." How many days ago was it? Faith realised that she wasn't entirely sure unless she focused on it. "My Moseke blessing allows me to summon spirits to help and they've been finding people. Then, it's a case of getting water to them. We've been dousing areas, in the hope..." Looking at Max, the young woman who was not yet twenty looked all of her arcs and all of them again. "But we're finding people who have died from starvation, dehydration." Faith's face was a study in discipline, in calm control. No emotions showed, none at all. Padraig, were he here, would recognise the look and where it originated from.

"Every one of them a failure." Faith said and then she breathed in. "And I will mourn them each, do my best to care for their families and ensure they are buried with full adherence to ceremony. After the last living person has been rescued and not before." Not one trill before.

"Two of them! One's in a bad way! Charles is bringing the first one up!"

Faith turned and blew, twice, on her whistle, then turned back to the hole. "We're here!" She called down. Soon, the man Charles came into view carrying a dirt covered woman. She was painfully thin and her face was hollowed in a way that someone who has experienced rapid weight loss tended to be. She was covered in cuts and bruises, but there was the strange clear bandage over those. "I'll go opposite you, we have this contraption." Faith said, and indeed the two blows of the whistle had brought a... strange contraption made up largely of cloth and leather. Faith moved to opposite Maxine and then two relief workers dropped the majority of it down, but Max and Faith, acting as anchors, also got some straps and so on. If Max would let them, then they'd strap the harness to her, if not, they'd let her do it herself. They did the same with Faith and then attached the harness to a deep driven peg in the ground, which one of them worked to embed as soon as the whistle blew. "It means that we're more secure and if one of us drop our end, the patient doesn't get as rocked or rocketed." Faith said. Then, she shot Maxine a tired grin. "I have no idea how it works. My husband is a physicist."

The woman, the patient, was a dead weight and the bits dropped down to Charles allowed him to put her, strapped, into a sort of sling-thing which attached to Max's harness. It would be hard work, there was no doubt and would require Maxine to use her strength and endurance. Faith, meanwhile, was attached to the second of them, a man who was pale and barely breathing, a deep gash on his forehead. His skin was a strange colour and he looked a lot worse. They'd need to pull together, to bring both of the patients up simultaneously, and Faith looked at Max with a serious expression. "You want to count us? Help us keep a rhythm?"

Hand over hand, over hand over hand. Slowly, oh so slowly would be how they had to work, both of them, and it was hard, physical work that was demanding of them. But two people might well live because of it.

[Max]

Max frowned at Faith's answer. It hadn't been very surprising to hear that more corpses than survivors had been pulled out of the rubble. She'd been shocked enough that Vega's man, Arlo, had managed to rescue a baby from the collapse and return it to its mothers arms. The state of the docks wasn't one that read for much optimism. It was a shame though, that those lucky enough to outlast the initial collapse would perish where they'd been trapped. It seemed that these deaths were those that bothered the healer most. By the way the relief workers eagerly moved at Faith's every command, it was safe to assume this effort was likely organized by the woman. Her job had been to make sure any that could be saved were. Every starved and dehydrated body they plucked from the earth only served to suggest the workers could never quite do enough. This burden Faith bore was not one Maxine envied.

"You are not responsible for their deaths," she assured the healer, her tone growing tight. "The ones that are will get what they deserve. Sooner or later." Her eyes had turned from a light caramel to a deeper brown. Sephira might've been partially to blame for the destruction here, but it had been the cultists within the Element ranks who had truly made this place a graveyard. Her mind began to slip toward dark places. "Moseke has chosen well at least. You put your abilities to good use. People will be grateful and most won't forget." A shout ended their brief exchange, minds shifting toward the next task.

Maxine peered down to spy Charles toting a beat-up looking survivor in his arms. Rough as she looked, she was alive. The Rusalka tore her eyes from the miraculous scene down below to focus on Faith's instructions. A hammer began driving a peg into the ground nearby just as a pair of workers hustled into view with a strange device. Her brow furrowed at the mess of straps, but made no protest when a pair of hands set to attaching her to the contraption.

"As long as your husband's invention doesn't strangle me with all this leather," she teased dryly while the patients were attached to the other end of the contraption. Her brow furrowed as she watched the process, ignorant thoughts filling her head. She didn't know how this system worked any more than she really knew what a physicist did. All she understood in that moment was that Faith was sure it would work. If she believed in the device, it would have to be enough for Max.

Her hands reached down to get a hold of the contraption in preparation to pull. She adjusted her grip a few times and re-positioned her foot upon the rubble. Breaths came slower, steadier as she visualized this task she was about to undertake. "Ready?" she looked to Faith before nodding. "One. Two. Three!" So began the hard part. The muscles of her arms flexed, hands clenched tight while she began the process of tugging her end. Slowly, slowly the contraption brought the patients to rise from the depths of the hole. Maxine's teeth clenched, sweat beaded her forehead, and her body protested against the continued effort. The burn was starting to take hold in her lightly shaking limbs. Nonetheless, she persisted to keep pulling as in time with Faith as she could muster. It took one final growl of self-defiance before the bodies rose into view.

"Now...what?" Max inquired of the relief effort leader through clenched teeth. Her muscles demanded she let the patients fall loose to spare herself injury. She leaned back, the small gesture going far in her effort to help keep the patients above ground in their slings. All she could focus her entire being on was not letting the cultists claim another pair of lives.

[Faith Augustin]

"Am I not?" Faith asked Maxine, when the woman spoke of the deaths not being her responsibility. "If I am responsible for every life we save here, and quite a number of people have told me I am, then by definition I must be so for every life we fail to save?" Not the ones who could not be saved, Faith explained, but those who could have been, and were not. If her responsibility extended to the living, then it by definition encompassed the dead as far as Faith saw it.

Those who were responsible for the buildings collapsing though? Faith looked at Maxine as she spoke and she saw the anger, the fury and the pain in the woman. Forgiveness was such a difficult thing, but Faith believed more and more that it was necessary; not just for the forgiven but the forgiver. Holding on to hatred was likely to do very little except twist Maxine up inside until hatred and pain and rage was all that fuelled her and when her revenge was done, what then? But that wasn't Faith's to discuss, it wasn't for here and it wasn't for now.

Max's thoughts on Moseke's choice, though, was something they'd have to discuss later. As they moved together, Faith kept one eye on Max's injury, but the woman had a good level of endurance and was working past the pain she must feel. Faith understood that and respected it. So she said nothing just shot a grin to Max when she spoke about the leather strangling her. "Let's hope, yes?" Her smile was genuine as she said it "You and me both. It would be quite the irony." But they got themselves strapped into the contraption and then they worked. Max counted them and the strain on them both was there, evident in the straining of their muscles. "Now we don't drop it and they work quickly. I hope!" Indeed, those off to the side used long hooked poles and after a relatively brief time, but it certainly was a long one for both Max and Faith, the weight came off them.

As soon as she could, Faith moved over to the injured people. To Max she looked up and gestured to the woman's water bottle. "Sips, just wet their lips at first. Not so much they're be sick. Anywhere that's bleeding heavily, put pressure on it." She smiled at Max and lowered her head to the patients, starting to use the healing power which Max had seen when Faith used it on her foot. The issue, of course, was that she could only use it on one person at a time and in the meantime, there was the other.

Either way, these two people had been rescued. As it turned out, they were the last ones to be pulled alive from the rubble. Later, much later, Faith would consider that rather ironic.

[Whisper]

Faith

Awarded Points

15
These points can/cannot be spent in magic

Awarded Knowledge

Caregiving: Sometimes, the best thing to do is act like nothing's wrong
Logistics: Means of communication when out of contact
Logistics: Organising rescues from the rubble
Logistics: Always have a back up where you're lifting people
Surgery: Immobilising the patient for movement
Strength: Slow and steady lifting of a dead weight
Strength: Working in conjunction with another to ensure maximum efficiency
Strength: Holding a rope and using your strength to keep steady

Awarded Extras

Loot & Losses	Injuries
None	None
Renown	Devotion
+15: Relief Effort	None

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Max

Awarded Points

15
These points can/cannot be spent in magic

Awarded Knowledge

Discipline: Not Letting an Injury Slow You Down
Discipline: Mind Over Matter
Endurance: Persisting Despite Inferior Strength
Endurance: Battling Through Burning Muscles
Strength: Use Your Legs
Strength: Controlling Someone's Descent
Strength: Using Arms to Pull
Strength: Keeping Something Heavy Elevated

Awarded Extras

Loot & Losses	Injuries
None	None
Renown	Devotion
+15: Relief Effort	None

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Comments

I love the emotion in this - I became weary just reading it, and I wanted the pair of them to just sit and... stop. Max for keeping on going despite the stress she seemed to feel, and Faith, barely a mother and toiling on! Caring about not only the victims, but the workers! Brilliantly done, both of you.

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Thank ye.