Summary: Yeah, like I'm going to bother with this. l was off in my estimates, combined with the last chapter this would have been over 50,000 words if I hadn't split it up. The warning symbol is being applied rather broadly during the ritual, I might go back and be more specific later, but I'm too lazy to do it right now.
Author's Note: There is a slight difference between an intravenous cannula and a catheter (quick, dirty and slightly inaccurate explanation: Cannulas are short, fairly stiff tubes that have trocars [solid needles of varying size that puncture the skin as the tubing can't do it] inside of them, once the trocar is removed you technically have the injection portal/hub of a catheter, although actual catheter ports and tubes tend to be much more flexible and/or considerably larger than what is typically found with cannulas and are used to withdraw and introduce fluids to the circulatory system while simple cannulas are used for one or the other instead of both.), but for the most part the two can be considered the same for this writing as I don't feel like splitting hairs and cannulas are often used to insert catheters for peripheral IV lines. It's been my experience that when people who are not in the medical field hear the word 'catheter' they think of a urinary catheter, but I'm still going to use the terms 'cannula' and 'catheter' interchangeably, 'cause that's how I roll. Now that I've gotten that announcement out of the way, here's another one: If you are in the medical field or have interests therein know that I'm going to be taking some liberty with a few things despite what is said in the warning and I realize that there are events presented here that are inconsistent with typical expectations and practices, uncommon, dangerous, or even virtually impossible. 'Tis fiction, people.
WARNING: The ritual and the preparation for it is going to be graphic and as true to life as possible. IF BLOOD, THE EFFECTS OF RAPID BLOOD LOSS ON THE BODY AND MIND AND/OR MEDICAL PROCEDURES FREAK YOU THE FUCK OUT DO NOT READ ANYTHING IN THIS CHAPTER THAT IS ITALICIZED AND PRECEDED BY THIS: ~****~ Oh, by the way, don't use the medical techniques described here on anyone unless you've had medical training or are under the supervision of someone in the field. THE SITE APPARENTLY DECIDED TO EAT ALL MY PAGE BREAKS SOMETIME THIS PAST WEEK AND THE ABOVE NO LONGER WORKS. I'M NOT SURE WHEN THEY DECIDED THAT ASTERISKS ARE THE WORK OF THE DEVIL, BUT I WENT BACK AND PUT FORWARD AND BACKSLASHES WHERE THEY USED TO BE. I'M NOT GOING TO WASTE MY TIME FIGHTING WITH THIS SITE FOR A SPECIAL PAGE BREAK TO DENOTE THAT STUFF HERE SO JUST DON'T READ ANY PARAGRAPH THAT'S IN ITALICS IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH ABOUT THE ABOVE, M'KAY? No, I'm not going to use the page breaks that this site provides. I've become way too wordy and they don't break the scene changes well enough for my tastes unless I cheat and stack them and then weird formatting errors start appearing in the site preview. Yeah, this is late because that pissed me off so much that I walked away from it for a couple days.
Disclaimer: Square Enix owns the Star Ocean games and the characters associated with it, I'm just torturing them in my spare time. I make no profit from this that I know of, though I did find a dollar on the sidewalk the other day. Does that count?
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It had been the dragons that noticed first, the tensing of their bodies dragging his attention from Rena and the tea they were bottling to the hallway and the faint bumping noise and footsteps that softly echoed off the stone walls. He'd been wondering when Bowman would show up, it had definitely been more than the ten or fifteen minute timeframe he'd given them. He...he guessed that he should call out, tell him that they were here in the kitchen on the off chance that he was going to his room, but his vocal cords seemed to be paralyzed at the moment, just like the rest of him.
Rena had almost thought he was stretching his side or arm out until he froze and then she realized what had caused that reaction. She reached out to rub his back below Ururun and felt him tense under her hand and pulled it away; it looked like he'd finally gotten too on edge again to stand being touched for the time being. "Bowman, we're in the kitchen." It sounded like he was coming this way but it was better to err on the side of caution, Ashton had become so tense so quickly that she wasn't sure he would be able to stand it if the pharmacist took too long getting here.
"I'm sorry." He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until he said that, barely realized he had tensed up and almost pulled away from her, but her voice had managed to bring him back enough that he could move and speak again. He needed to learn how to stop doing that one day, she had just been trying to help.
She wasn't even going to say anything to that, one of her looks got her point across just fine. Smiling at him when he frowned at her, she turned back to the counter and grabbed his glass and held it out to him. "You should go ahead and sit down before he gets here, get as comfortable as you can." She'd been a mother hen with him all day, there was no sense in stopping now. Besides, he was fun to boss around, it made her wish she really did have a little brother.
He didn't know why the healer and the pharmacist kept trying to get him to drink, the last thing he wanted to do was wet himself later. Unless Bowman had brought one of those urinary catheters and hadn't told him, if that was the case he better be knocked out for the insertion and the bag hidden by the time he woke up. He shouldn't have thought about that around Rena, now he was blushing again. Maybe she hadn't noticed, he had already accepted the glass and was walking away from her and towards the table to sit down.
Ashton blushed at the oddest times, she swore he must make up imaginary reasons embarrassed, it was that or he had somehow managed to hide a mind so dirty it would make even Bowman's face pink if they knew what he was really thinking. Maybe he just needed to spend more time with everyone and get used to being around people again, he hadn't been this self conscious while they were traveling together. Capping off the bottles of tea as the footsteps in the hall grew louder and more distinct, Rena found herself blinking at the bottle in her hands as a second set of footsteps registered. She hoped Bowman knew what he was doing; that definitely wasn't Claude or Dias, the footfalls were too soft and close together and Precis tended to jog, run or stomp more than walk, so it had to be Celine he was bringing with him. It looked like Ashton had come to the same conclusion going by the way he was rubbing at his face and she found herself wondering if she should rush into the hall, turn the mage away and ask the pharmacist if he had lost his mind.
Knowing Claude, Rena was probably still out of the loop regarding the recent drama that had been going on for the past half hour on the other side of the temple, so Bowman wasn't all that surprised by the look on her face as he entered the kitchen with Celine in tow. He wouldn't tell her unless he had to, the last thing he needed was to be on both Claude and Celine's bad sides. His patient wasn't looking very happy either, but the pharmacist hadn't been expecting a positive reaction from the younger brunet even before he'd decided to check on and bring his ex along. It looked like the Nedian had been following his lead and trying to get Ashton to drink judging by the half full glass of water on the table beside him, and Bowman found himself nodding at her in appreciation as he placed his medical bag on the table, started unloading the supplies he would need, and went about cutting a dozen strips of gauze for him to use during this.
Celine was going to hover by the entryway until Bowman was finished, she would rather not have a first row seat to the catheters being inserted, it was nerve-racking enough knowing that she'd be right there in front of them while the incisions were made. Rena was giving her a questioning look from the other end of the room and she nodded lightly before turning her attention to the two brunets at the table. If Ashton wasn't watching Bowman's hands so intently and looking so tense she might have responded verbally, but he didn't seem to be taking her presence or the situation very well and adding her voice to the mix wasn't necessary at the moment. She was rather thankful that Bowman talked her into coming with him, the younger brunet had most definitely convinced himself he had done something he shouldn't have earlier judging by his reaction to her presence.
Ashton had been expecting Celine to start ignoring him or maybe glaring at him if he had managed to make her that angry, but her gaze didn't feel anywhere near as heavy as he'd been expecting it to once she looked at him. It could just be wishful thinking, though, so he didn't glance up at her, choosing instead to watch as Bowman grabbed a long, thin length of blue plastic and stretched it in his hands. Watching this might be a bad idea. He wasn't normally so turned off by medical procedures and the sight of his own blood had never disturbed him before, but given the circumstances he supposed he could forgive himself for being such a coward. Rena was coming forward and he almost hoped she would start hugging him again, but he'd probably scared her off that by tensing up the last time she'd tried to comfort him. That didn't stop him from looking up at her once she came to stand beside him, almost wishing he hadn't when he realized she hadn't blocked his view of Celine completely, but….Maybe it wasn't as bad as he thought; she didn't look angry, she seemed more worried than anything. Tria, he hoped he made through this if just so he could make this up to all of them.
Bowman must have calmed Celine down, she had almost been worried when Ashton's eyes shifted from hers and landed on the mage behind her until an almost relieved expression came over his face and she looked over at her, finding a tight but reassuring smile there. They must have had an argument after Claude left them alone; it was rare but the two of them could butt heads occasionally, though it never lasted for long since Ashton couldn't stay mad at people and Celine had always been the same way when it came to him, at least. She couldn't believe she'd never put all the little things she knew about them together before, if she had they might have been able to get the two of them to admit it. If they had Ashton might have stayed somewhere in Cross or even in Mars and they would have known when Gyoro and Ururun's possession of him started becoming so invasive, unstable and disturbing. He was still looking a little tense, but he also looked like he needed some comforting, so she wrapped her arm around his shoulders and rested her head against Ururun's cool neck, finding herself relieved that the dragon's host was accepting the affection again.
Well, he'd played with the tourniquet enough, it was time to get this show on the road. "Ready?" Bowman glanced at Rena before settling his gaze on his patient, she needed to make sure to steel herself for this so she could reign her powers in again before he started inserting the cannulas and setting the catheters up. It took a second for Ashton to tear his attention away from the healer and the mage, but once he did he managed and affirmative noise before looking away again and shutting his eyes. Apparently he'd become temporarily blood shy, which was another thing the pharmacist couldn't blame him for.
"Put your left arm out toward me with the palm down and hold it there until I tell you to put it down." Oh, this was going to fun. He waited for his patient to comply with his instructions before tying the tourniquet around the middle of his forearm and watching as the veins on the back of his hand started plumping up. "Do me a favor and make a fist and pump it a few times." He didn't really think that Anchors needed to do that, he didn't have much body fat and the veins in the back of his hand were prominent enough now, but he was so used to hearing the doctors he'd worked with request it that it'd become automatic. Holding the other man's hand once he was done and palpitating the veins there, he came to the conclusion that he'd been right about the dorsal medicarpal veins and selected the one that rose up to drain the pinky and ring finger for the insertion. He would normally be going a bit lower for this, but the straps would place too much pressure on the catheter he was setting up for him to want to place it that close to his wrist.
Bowman blink at himself as he looked down at his supplies and grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, realizing that he'd forgotten to wash his hands for this and deciding that it would have to be a good enough sterilizer until he put the gloves on. Ashton didn't need to know that he was stressed enough to forget something like that and Rena's magics would guard against infection, so there wasn't any real need for concern over such a lapse in memory.
Celine knew enough about medicine to know that he'd forgotten that, but she wouldn't say anything for the same reasons. Rena had apparently noticed as well judging by the way her eyebrows drew down and she frowned at the pharmacist slightly, but she doubted the healer would mention it either. Ashton wasn't giving any indication that he realized it, but he might be assuming Bowman had done that before coming here given his personality. She would say that he needed to learn a bit about cynicism, but she was rather found of that trusting nature of his, so she wouldn't encourage such a thing.
Bowman was aware that he'd been caught, but neither of the women would say anything about it, so he was in the clear from what he could tell. The dragons had apparently switched personalities on him, Ururun was watching him with intense, wary interest while Gyoro was doing his best to ignore him from the looks of it. It was nice to know that someone was in the dark; he wasn't sure about their host, he might know or suspect something but be trying to ignore it. Either way he was done with the alcohol, so he shook his hands in the air before him slightly before he selected one of the pieces gauze and soaked it with the alcohol.
This was taking forever, Ashton hadn't realized that it would take so long. He was fairly certain that doctors and nurses tended to wash their hands before doing things like this, but he supposed that Bowman had already done it and even if he hadn't he trusted the man, his knowledge, and judgement enough to entertain the notion that he might be mistaken. It sounded like he had rubbed his hands together while they were wet for a moment and he had felt the air being fanned at his side, so he supposed he had some sort of disinfectant with him that made it unnecessary. Ururun was leaning forward enough that he almost wanted to tell the demon to pull back a little, he was having to resist the urge to shift his shoulder forward in hopes that he would relax or pull back a little and get rid of the tight, pulling sensation it was causing.
Bowman took the now soaked gauze he held and rubbed it over the insertion site with circular movements before discarding it and selecting a fresh piece to get rid of the excess fluid. Removing a pair of gloves from their container once he was done, he put them on and grabbed one of the smaller hypodermic needles he had brought, filled it with the anesthetic and looked up at his patient. "This might sting or burn a bit." He waited for the other brunet to nod before he inserted the needle into the layers of his skin, watching the bubble it created form and withdrew it, giving it some time to take effect as he removed the tourniquet. Judging that enough time had passed, he selected on of the smaller cannulas he had brought and removed it from its wrappings; this one would be used for the saline solution and to drain Ashton of any excess blood if his external jugular was distended or otherwise more prominent than it normally was once they were done. He uncapped it and rested the edge of its needle against the vein at forty-five degree angle. "There might be a slight pinch or you might be able to feel it entering the vein. If you feel any burning or pain I need you to tell me this time." If that happened it meant that he hadn't hit the vein correctly and would need Rena to heal him before he made another attempt, at the very worst it could cause it to blow out if he really messed it up like Dias had the first time he had tried inserting his for him. He still couldn't believe it had perfect his second time around, he'd had practice on the doctors he knew and dummies nearly half a dozen times before he'd found the proper force to apply and speed to advance the cannula at while doing everything else.
Great, now Bowman was giving him a warning again. He wouldn't have done that unless something could go wrong and he found himself hoping that Bowman knew what he was doing. He shouldn't be thinking things like that, the pharmacist had enough experience that he probably wouldn't mess up and if he did it would just be due to nerves. Not that he liked that thought, it would be just be one more piece of evidence he had that indicated to him just how badly this was affecting the older man. Nodding again he tried not wince, tense up, grimace, or give any other indication that the man's words had affected him enough to cause such a response, it was the last thing he needed to do at the moment.
Ashton was going to need to work on ignoring and repressing more than just his libido and more intimate thoughts and emotions for that to work, he was far too expressive for something like that to go unnoticed. Bowman waited a few seconds before he guided the needle in and pushed it forward slowly, blood welling up through the clear bulb at the external end of the cannula. It looked like he had hit the vein if the flashback was any indication, so he guided it forward slightly before gently bringing the cannula down so that it was almost level with the vein and pulled the trocar out slightly, watching as the dark veinous blood became visible in the clear tubing before advancing the cannula in further and withdrawing the trocar completely, setting it aside and removing the now extraneous parts of the catheter along with it, leaving only the hub in place. "I'm going to start dressing it before I flush this with the saline, it might feel a little cold." With his luck Ashton would be the type to feel something like this, so he might as well warn him ahead of time. He removed a long, thin strip of tape from the roll on the table, cut it off and placed it underneath the catheter hub and looped it across the base before crossing the tape so that it formed a 'V' across Ashton's knuckles. Now that the cannula was secured he removed one of the clear bandages from its packaging and removed the strip that protected the sticky, adhesive side of the tegaderm and placed it over the base of the catheter before removing the paper attached to the other side and examined the back of Ashton's hand through the clear bandage to see if the cannula or vein had been disturbed by the placement. Judging that it hadn't he turned back to the table and the bag of saline solution he had used to flush and fill the IV lines that he and Dias now wore and removed the protective cap off of it before taking another syringe, inserting it into the hub at the bottom of the bag and drawing the liquid into it and removing the needle before taking the cap off the hub of the cannula and pressing the base of it into the port. "Here we go."
Bowman's anesthetic was terrible; he could feel every movement the man made and the way that tubbing of the cannula pinched at his skin as it was inserted or when pressure was applied. It was a good thing he hadn't given in to the insistent urge to reconnect with Gyoro and Ururun while he and Rena had been talking, this was weird and uncomfortable enough as it was. The sensation of coldness that emanated from the back of his hand and flashed halfway up his forearm as Bowman flushed catheter was almost enough to make him gasp, blink his eyes open and stare at the pharmacist despite the warning he had given him only seconds ago. As it was he managed to tone down his response to a sharp inhale and waited for the other brunet to take the syringe away and close the port. This was terrible, he was going to have two even bigger ones put in the insides of his elbows and something told him that those would be even worse.
He had a feeling that if he went ahead and told his patient he could put his arm down he would start rubbing or shaking it given that the saline had definitely registered so he wasn't going to until he had rolled the bandages over it a few times to protect and secure it further. "Alright we're done with that one. Go ahead and shake your arm out, but don't get too crazy with it." He might as well give his permission so that Rena didn't try to stop Anchors from warming his arm back up, neither him or Dias had been able to feel it so she hadn't witnessed that response yet and might think something was wrong. "You can go ahead and heal him up, Rena." She might as well do it one at a time, having the trocar removed sometimes caused the catheter to deflate or allowed it shrink and cause a bit of leakage on occasion and there no need to waste any of Ashton's blood at this point.
The pharmacist probably wouldn't have been too happy if he had known about the nosebleed he'd given himself while he was being an idiot with the dragons and Claude, then. It hadn't been that much and it had stopped easily enough, so he supposed that by now whatever he had lost then had been replaced. Thank Tria that Celine was either so used to seeing him in dark colors or liked him in them enough that she hadn't bought him anything that the blood would really show up on. He had already changed into clean boxer and sleeping pants while in the bathroom, so there wasn't any chance he would notice now. It would have been nice if he could have put a shirt or sweater on, but he had a feeling the pharmacist would have told him to take it off so he hadn't bothered. He couldn't wait for this to be over so that he could start covering himself up again; the culture of El wasn't what he would call repressed, they were actually more open and accepting of certain things, but they did tend to cover themselves more fully than the people of either Cross or Lacour just due to the cooler climate and it wasn't normal for people to be underdressed like this unless they were around family. Then again the people around him now were the closest thing he had to family anymore, so maybe it shouldn't matter. Maybe he should tell Bowman to start up again even as he shook his arm out, he was rambling at himself again and he didn't know if was from his nerves or if he was trying to fill the oppressive silence that was in his mind now that the demons' sensations, thoughts and emotions weren't there.
Celine watched the scene unfold as Rena healed Ashton and he shook his arm out, his eyes blinking open as he did so. His gaze was slightly unfocused and faraway and she almost thought he had allowed himself to sink down into himself again, but the animated way that he was shaking his arm out and frowning at the floor discredited that notion quickly enough. Knowing him and his passengers they were probably arguing over whether Gyoro could light the pharmacist's hair on fire like he used to, the red demon was certainly glaring at the man intensely enough now for it to be a possibility. She swore the dragon needed anger management classes, it was that or she would send him in for a lobotomy to see if he would calm down afterwards. That definitely wasn't a good idea and she knew it, far too many people died due to that procedure and she would much rather deal with the dragon herself than put them in danger like that.
Rena had noticed that as well and rewarded the demon for his behavior by tapping his spine and giving him a disapproving look as he turned his attention from the pharmacist to her. "Gyoro, stop being bad and apologize to Bowman."
Bowman had been actively ignoring the hard stare the Gyoro had been giving him, but he looked up just in time to see the demon's reaction to being called out as his host turned his head and scowled at him for the second time today that he was aware of. It was always fun to watch Rena snap that whip of hers at someone that wasn't him and she almost never directed it at the dragons, so he was doing his best to commit this sight to his long term memory. That and he a feeling that Anchors would make a hell of a drill sergeant if he ever figured out how to direct that apparent hardass attitude he could occasionally take with them outward at someone that wasn't the demons. Of course he might have to lose his innocent air, wait a few years to age out of that youthful appearance of his or grow his beard out and cut his hair for anyone to take him seriously, but Celine and Rena obviously weren't fans of that look on him anyway, so that last option probably wouldn't be happening.
Ashton would be in the process of locking the dragon's mind down for that given how many times they had discussed this behavior of his if they had still been mentally connected, and he found himself severely tempted to temporarily reconnect with the brothers if only to punish him until they were ready for the ritual. He didn't know how in the world he would be disciplining the demons if they survived this and they wound up in the golems, but he did know the second he was up and moving again Gyoro was going to find himself wishing he hadn't done that. He watched as the red demon shifted his attention between him, the mage, the healer, and finally the pharmacist before letting out a low growl that slowly morphed into a whine before looking to the wall and grumbling, his mind translating the meaning behind those vocalizations and coming out with actual words this time. "Gyoro says he's sorry, Bowman." The demon hadn't actually said that, hadn't even admitted that he'd done something wrong; he had asked him why he was being singled out when it was the pharmacist that was the one hurting someone, so he was definitely going to be punished later as he wasn't going to explain yet again just why he shouldn't threaten people. He needed Ururun to remember to control his curiosity while he was at it, so he turned his head, made eye contact with the blue dragon and waved the hand that didn't have the catheter in it back towards his shoulders and scratched him on the neck when he moved to a position that didn't pull on his muscles. He knew that favoring one demon above the other wasn't a good or kind thing to do and that it caused friction between them, but Gyoro made it very hard for him sometimes and he was hoping that doing so openly might get something through the demon's thick skull one day.
"All's forgiven, then." The pharmacist wasn't all that confident that Gyoro had said that even though he was nodding, it seemed more likely that his host was apologizing for him given the dragon's prior body language and tone, but even if he hadn't Bowman had a feeling that he would be wishing that he had soon enough going by the expression that was still on Ashton's face. He had won this round this either way so far as he was concerned, so he was ready to move on and start inserting the large-bore catheters into the cubital fossa of the other brunet's arms. "Let's give the arm we just did a break and go for other one." He pulled the now contaminated gloves that he was wearing off and tossed them on top of the pile of trash that was accumulating on the table beside him as Ashton shifting to the side so that he could work on it easier, lifting his right arm, the palm of his hand facing upwards. Bowman was almost surprised, he had been thinking that he would need to direct him to move, but Ashton was either so angry at Gyoro that he had temporarily forgotten his manners, needed to move, or had guessed his next set of instructions and gone ahead and did it to speed things up.
It was a bit of all three at the moment. He wasn't sure if he was remembering correctly, but he was fairly certain that arteries carried blood away from the heart while veins went the other way, so it made sense that he would want the transfusions to travel that way. Besides, it was where Bowman had put the catheter when he had demonstrated for him. "Is this right?" He still didn't to watch this, the second the pharmacist started preparing him he was going to look around or at Rena and Celine, he was tired of staring at the back of his eyelids. That and he might be able to notice if Gyoro did something again if he wasn't actively trying to ignore everything.
"Yep, all you've got to do after that is make a fist," Bowman confirmed, taking a moment to move all the supplies the he would need closer to the edge of the table before placing the tourniquet and tying it around the middle part of his bicep. He wasn't going to have Ashton put on a glove and tell him to give him what he needed, so they might as well be in easy reach since he didn't want to violate his patient's personal space too much. It looked like Rena was going to be looking out for him now, she seemed to be splitting her attention between Gyoro and his host as she put her arm back around his shoulders. Anchors better appreciate the discomfort he and Dias had gone through for this, he was going to be able give him more than the usual dose of anesthetic that people were normally given thanks to their sacrifice.
He definitely appreciated it, having the cannulas inserted was an odd enough sensation to begin with and he knew he would have disliked this situation more than he already did if he had to experience it with a lesser dose. They better have dosed themselves to some degree, if they hadn't and he found out he would feel even worse than he already did. He had to wonder, though, the bottle Bowman was drawing the anesthetic from still looked full or close enough that he didn't like it. Fisting his hand, he idly wondered what type of needle it was that was attached to the new syringe the pharmacist was filling at the moment, he didn't know they came in such a small size. That just brought up another thought, one made that him hope that Rena knew how big the needle of the cannula that was going to placed in his arm was and wish that Celine wasn't in the room, he didn't think the mage would have watched Bowman and Dias get ready. "Have you seen the thing he's getting ready to put in?" He was shifting his gaze between the two women as he asked that even though he was mostly directing it at Celine. Ashton didn't know why it was taking so much for him to look at her for more than a second or two right now, he didn't think she was too angry at him if she was at all, but something about the way she was carrying herself made him feel uncertain.
Oh dear Tria, what was Bowman getting ready to do to him? Celine cut her eyes to Bowman's back, wondering just what it was that he had apparently forgotten to warn her about. Rena was nodding, she could see that from the corner of her eye, so she appeared the only one in the dark about this. "I'm afraid I haven't, no." It didn't look as though her ex-fiancé had been planning to inform her or had only just realized he had forgotten to tell her judging by the way he froze suddenly.
Anchors just had to ask the girls that, didn't he? Bowman compressed the syringe to get the air bubbles out and wondered to himself just what he could compare it with to give the mage an idea of what to expect. It wasn't as though he didn't have extras left over and he'd shown Rena one rather than explain it, so one of those would work. He recapped the syringe and set it down before looking inside the medical bag and removing one of them. Hopefully she didn't get wound up when she saw the size of it, it was the largest he felt he could safely insert in the veins he had considered to be viable candidates.
Ashton had a reference point for this that would give her a very, very clear mental picture of the estimated circumference of the tubing and trocar, though he hated using the example given what it might remind her of. He hoped he didn't blush or stutter when he said this, it might just make both of them uncomfortable and he'd rather Rena, Bowman, and everyone else didn't know or have an idea as to what had happened between them earlier. Tria, he still could believe he had done that. "It's about as wide around as the shaft of the second smallest cresting blade." He almost couldn't believe his face didn't feel warm now, maybe he should just stay angry at Gyoro for the rest of his life, that had to be it, there was nothing else he could pinpoint that would explain it. The pharmacist was removing something from its packaging, so he must have extras or wasn't worried about contaminating the one he was unwrapping for some other reason.
Celine blinked at the reminder, stunned that he was able to reference such a thing when there was company about without blushing, though she supposed he might still be trying to focus himself on Gyoro and his recent behavior. She almost found herself wanting to smile at him again for some reason despite the memories that his description was invoking, perhaps because he had finally brought himself to look at her fully in the eyes again. Still, she couldn't believe something with such a large circumference was going to be inserted into him, and she shifted to gaze to Bowman as he turned and held the cannula up for her to see. Widening her eyes for a second, she took in size of the tube itself and the sharpness of its beveled edge before shaking her head minutely in disbelief. "Something that big is safe?"
"Perfectly fine. It's the same size as what Dias and I have in our arms." Never mind whatever reference might have just flown over his head, Bowman was amazed that his patient's face wasn't the color of an overripe tomato from saying the word 'shaft.' Maybe he had been wrong about Anchors all along; he might just drag him, Claude and Dias out to go girl watching with him when they were stuck in Tenue waiting on the next ship out to see if they could get him to be one the guys with them without the dragons on his back. Even if he just stood there and acted like he wasn't looking like Dias did he would still consider it a success so long as his head didn't explode from him and Claude making comments to each other.
Bowman was being perverted again, Rena could tell that just from the smile he was trying to keep off his face. It took her a second, her mind examining what had been said in the past few moments, blushing lightly, tightening her arm around Ashton's shoulders and shaking her head at him once she realized just what had gotten him started. If he did execute the plan he was forming he better make sure he stationed them somewhere that she wouldn't run into them, she had been offended enough when she had come across him and Claude doing it in Cross and they called her 'a ten' as if she couldn't hear them as she was walking away.
Celine hadn't even needed to rethink the past few turns of their current discussion, she knew exactly what had made the made the man's eyes light up and his lips twitch as he showed off the catheter. She frowned and narrowed his eyes at him, hoping that Ashton thought her expression was due to skepticism and didn't look up at the older man beside him. Really, he best not be planning to corrupt him too much, she was looking forward to doing a bit of that herself and she would already be in competition with Claude. The mage wasn't sure how inexperienced the heraldic swordsman was anymore; the way he had moved his hands and kissed her hadn't been awkward despite the shyness of it, so she would assume that he had done that once or twice before at the very least.
If Ashton had heard Celine's speculation he would have died right there in the kitchen. The current situation was bad enough as it was as he looked between the two women and then up at Bowman and saw the expression he was trying to hide as he turned and put the cannula in the trash pile that was forming. That wasn't good, the pharmacist only got that look when something that could be dirty or sexual came up. He didn't know what it could have be–Oh. He should have come up with a different word, apparently. The hand with the cannula in it flew up to rub at his face and try to hide his expression and the slight blush that was forming as his choice of words and the way Bowman had taken that registered, feeling Ururun curl down around his side as he asked him why everyone was reacting the way they were. "I-it's nothing, Ururun." There really wasn't any need to be embarrassed this time, it wasn't as though it was his fault the pharmacist had chosen to take his words that way, so he pulled his hand away and frowned at the dragon before him when he saw the disbelieving look in the dragon's eyes. "I'll tell you later, okay?" He guessed he might as well teach them some slang and vulgar language that he didn't normally use before they picked it up from someone else and he'd be able stress at the same time just how rarely they should ever use those words around him, the women and youngest member of their group and women and children in general, or anyone else while he was at it.
The pharmacist wasn't going to say anything that wasn't related to the catheters for a few minutes if only to give Celine and Rena some time to calm down. He was going to have to get together with Claude later and start making plans, Anchors definitely had potential if that was all the blushing and stuttering he was going to do in response to that one. Rena could babysit the demons assuming she still doted on them the way she did now once they were full time Ashton impersonators. Rubbing his hands with a bit more of the rubbing alcohol, he studied the veins and palpitated them once his hands were dry. He needed to get this one over with fairly quickly, he'd wasted enough time showing off the catheter and the tourniquet didn't need to be restricting his patient's blood flow for more than a minute or two at most. "We're going to do this one right here." He tapped at skin beside the cephalic vein, nodded to himself and turned to grab the alcohol and gauze. "I'm going to numb the area around it as best I can, be you'll probably still feel it if you felt me putting in the last one. I still need you to tell me if it's painful." The tourniquet might as well come off for a second while he numbed the area around it, It had been at least a minute, maybe two already.
"Right, I'll tell you." He had already gathered that but he still appreciated the warning. Not that he would while Bowman was putting it in, but that was just his nerves acting up and he would rather be testy than crying considering he'd done enough of the latter already and was well practiced at keeping those type of thoughts to himself. The pharmacist was sterilizing the inside of his elbow now, so it was time for him to start looking away again. He still didn't like how any of them looked; it was easy to see how stressed they were, but at least it looked like Celine had managed to get some rest along with Rena. If they were alone he would ask her about it and maybe even whether she had asked Bowman to compound something for her like Rena had, but he was dreading the answer to that question already.
Bowman uncapped the syringe with the anesthetic in it, watching the veins deflate and waiting for them to go back to normal. He probably should have dove on in and continued the insertion without taking the tourniquet off, but he wanted the placement of Ashton's catheters to be as uneventful as he could manage and with the vein engorged the way it had been he might have hit it while injecting the numbing agent. Judging that the cephalic vein had drained to the point that it would be easy enough to work around but still plainly visible, Bowman took hold of the forearm before him and pulled the skin taunt with his thumb before he inserted the needle of the syringe and injected half a milliliter of the anesthetic before withdrawing it slightly, turning it, and making another injection. He was going to wind up using the entire contents of the syringe on this side of the vein and would be doing the same thing to other side once he was done.
The pharmacist must be using a higher grade of anesthetic, he hadn't felt the last one at all but now it almost felt like the man was had attached a lit match to the end of the needle. He wished he would take it all way out when he moved it, it wasn't painful but he could feel it moving underneath his skin. "Uh, how badly is this supposed to burn?" If Rena wasn't holding on to him and Celine wasn't watching his face so intently he'd let himself grimace or even say 'ow' at this point, but he didn't want to agitate them more than he already had.
Bowman repositioned the needle for the last dose to be administered and looked up at him. "Pretty bad from my experience. It's more powerful than what I used last time, so that's why. To me it always feels like it's burning in those spots. Does it feel like that or does it feel different or worse? Is it moving?" If it felt worse or the sensation was shooting up his arm he was going to stop just to see if something had gone wrong somehow, there weren't any signs of it from what he could see but Rena would need to start casting if he was having an allergic reaction or he had pierced the vein without noticing it.
"No, it's not moving. It basically feels just like you said." Ashton almost wanted to laugh at that to try to relieve some of the tension he felt, he might have even done it if Celine wasn't looking so concerned now and Rena wasn't tightening her arm around him. "I'm fine, I guess I just wasn't expecting it." He shouldn't have said anything, he had a feeling that if either of the women in the room started tearing up or even looking like they might he would break down again and he didn't want anyone to see that, he'd come close enough to it earlier with Celine and Claude. Maybe he should be focusing himself on Bowman and what he was doing, it would be harder to watch in its own way but at least he wouldn't have to worry about that until it was time to head to the ceremonial chamber.
The pharmacist nodded at that and looked up at Rena as best he could without moving his head. The Nedian looked a little worried, but he was more concerned about Celine at this point as he couldn't see her unless he turned around again and he wasn't going to do that as it would be too obvious. Finishing up the injection, he withdrew the syringe and removed the hypodermic needle from it before attaching a new one and refilling it, looking over his shoulder at the mage as he did so. It didn't look like she had taken that exchange well going by the way she was holding herself and leaning against the entryway, but she didn't seem to be unstable in the least, so he turned his attention back to what he was doing and removed the excess air in the syringe again. "I'm going to do the same thing on the other side of the vein now."
Ururun was too caught up in his curiosity again, so he shifted his shoulder back slightly and looked up at Gyoro to make sure he was still behaving himself as his brother moved back to a less awkward position. He was fairly certain now that the demons couldn't feel what he felt anymore or if they did it was muted enough that they could ignore it; Gyoro's glaring at the pharmacist had given him pause for a moment, but neither of them were tensing or giving any indication that they were feeling this through him as Bowman started injecting him with the second dose. It was unfortunate for the red demon that he wasn't responding in a way that showed he could, Ashton hated disciplining them despite how often he did it and if he had detected any pain or discomfort coming from either of them he would have seriously considered lessening whatever punishment Gyoro would be facing when he woke up since it would have shown that he had restrained himself from attacking Bowman out of instinct again. Maybe if Gyoro was lucky he would forget this, but if that happened he better never, ever get that memory back or have it mentioned to him because the second he was told about it or remembered he would punish him.
Bowman reapplied the tourniquet and opened the wrapping of the fourteen gauge catheter before putting a fresh pair of sterile gloves on and removing it from its wrappings. "I need you to keep you arm straight as you can now. If you can lock your elbow and keep it that way while I'm working it might make this easier." He watched his patient turn his attention back to him, extended his right arm and make brief eye contact with him before his gaze dropped down to the arm he was holding out. The pharmacist had a feeling he knew how Ashton had gotten over of his case of selective trypanophobia so quickly. He wouldn't want to see Celine's reaction to this either, especially if something went wrong and Ashton proved to be a gusher. Considering the vein he was hitting and apparent fitness level of his patient's cardiovascular system it wasn't outside the realm of possibility.
Ashton hoped that his judgement was better now than it had been earlier today; he didn't feel like having another breakdown and watching this was probably one of the top five things most likely to make him do that, right along with hearing or seeing any of them cry or almost cry, entering the ceremonial chamber again and sitting in the chair, having Bowman cut him, and reciting the incantation. Tria, he hoped none of them cried or at least did it quietly enough that he wouldn't notice, he had a feeling that unless Bowman told him to keep his eyes open he would be shutting them as tightly as he could throughout the whole thing. He almost wanted to do that now as the pharmacist released the tourniquet and then pulled his skin taut with one hand before placing the beveled edge against the vein he was going to hit with the other, but he couldn't feel the cold tip of it against his skin and by the time that thought had occurred to him Bowman was slowly inserting it into him and he stuck staring as it disappeared into his flesh without even the faintest pinching sensation. Recovering enough to blink just in time to see his blood begin to well up in the chamber of the catheter, he briefly entertained the notion that the anesthetic Bowman was using this time was the best substance on the planet before he advanced it slightly and brought it level to his arm and he started feeling it. Inhaling deeply, he restrained himself from making any other noises or pulling his arm away, fighting the urge to just move and vibrate his leg or something for fear that the movement would travel up his arm and disturb the pharmacist. At least Bowman was pausing to pull the 'trocar' or whatever it was called out, even if it did make the dark blood visible in the tubing that wasn't yet inside his vein, but then he shifted his grip on the cannula slightly and started pushing the front chamber away from the main body of it with his index finger, pushing the catheter even deeper into the vein with it and that odd, painful sensation stated up again; part pressure, part pain, part pinch, but mostly scratch in a place that definitely wasn't used to it. He really wanted to ask Bowman if it was supposed to feel like that, but it wasn't painful enough to warrant saying anything, it was just incredibly uncomfortable, strange and foreign.
Bowman looked up from his work to check the other brunet's facial expression to see if he was any pain, but just found a disturbed look on his face. "Does it hurt?" If Ururun moved any closer he would be tempted to either say something to his host or swat at the air between them, the demon was starting to block the light and he needed that to see what he was doing. Rena had apparently just noticed the way he had been glancing at the dragon as he worked judging by the way she frowned and tapped the demon on his spine the same way she had his brother a few minutes ago and motioned for him to move back when he turned his head to look at her.
"A little. It's mostly just–I don't know, scratchy." That was the oddest thing to him, at least. He blinked down at the interior of his elbow again as he noticed the shadows shifting on his arm and looked up as he felt Ururun move back to where he had been last time he had looked at him and shook his head at the dragon. Gyoro seemed to have learned his lesson for now, he was staring resolutely at the wall just like he had been before he turned his attention to his brother, so he guessed they were taking turns trying to see who could drive him up the wall the quickest. If that was the case it was a pointless competition, all they would have to do is ask him and he would openly admit that Gyoro had somehow discovered ways to vex and disturb him that no other being on the planet had ever come across before.
Bowman nodded and looked back down at that and continued the insertion. Considering that the catheter he was now inserting was a gauge most often used in resuscitation settings and the relative size of it to the vein he was using he wasn't surprised by that at all. "That's normal, don't worry about it." Well, the pharmacist thought it was normal; he and Dias had dosed themselves so poorly that it had been more painful than anything and most of the people he had ever put these in had either been unconscious or given much better local anesthetics than he had been able to acquire. Rena's powers would soothe and heal any irritation the catheter insertion was causing the inside of the vein, though, so unless Ashton's luck started affecting him and he somehow managed to tear through the vein without the trocar being present before he finished they should be in the clear. Once the catheter was inserted fully, he turned his attention to securing it, taping it in place and bandaging it with another tegaderm. He wasn't going to bother setting up the external tubing of the catheter, he had already placed those components on the end of the lines that he and Dias wore to minimize the chances of Anchors pulling on them while he situated himself in the chair. Hooking his patient up once they had decided to start working on him might be a bit messy thanks to the saline escaping, but Bowman was hoping that the natural forces pulling their blood through the tubing and Ashton's desanguinated state would allow the transfusions to go smoothly without them having to stand or hold their arms up to force gravity to do its job. "I'm going to flush it again. I don't want you to bend your elbow unless you have to anymore, so try not to move them too much if you want to shake it out once I'm done with the dressing." The catheters were long enough that they traveled through the bend of his elbow and Ashton would definitely feel it if he moved or bent that arm too much now.
He couldn't suppress a flinch as the pharmacist flushed the catheter out, but at least the vein was now large enough that the coolness of the fluid didn't travel quite as far as it had before. Watching the chamber of the catheter shift from being stained almost black from his blood to bright red, pink, and then clear again as the solution Bowman was flushing it with forced the blood that had traveled there during the insertion back into the vein was interesting enough that Ururun was forgetting himself again.
"Ururun, get back." Ashton swore they hadn't been this bad about moving themselves since the first or second day after they had possessed him, it was enough to make him ask someone to blindfold the demon until they were done. Actually, that might not be a bad idea; if Ururun was this curious about the preparation he would probably be even worse while Bowman was cutting him, and he was already dangerously close to pulling one of his back muscles again going by the burning, stretching sensation the demon had been causing before he relaxed himself. "You're not allowed to watch this anymore, so turn your head the other way and look at Rena. If I feel you move again or she tells me you're not looking at her I'm going to have someone blindfold you." He would ask Bowman do it first, the man would probably enjoy it and it looked like there was plenty of gauze and other bandaging materials left over.
Bowman would indeed enjoy that. He'd like the idea even better if it was Gyoro he could do that to, the pharmacist didn't have much of a problem with the ice dragon but he still wasn't fond enough of him that he would balk at the idea. Not bothering to hide his grin as his patient looked back up at him questioningly, Bowman nodded, removed the syringe and recapped the port of the catheter before grabbing a roll of bandages and winding them over Ashton's elbow. He almost hoped that Ururun looked back now, his host had apparently nominated him for the duty and he would fulfill the task with gusto if Anchors gave him the slightest indication that he was going to tell him to do it.
Encouraging Bowman was the last thing that Ashton should be doing at the moment as far as Celine was concerned, but she had to admit that she was relieved to see that assertive side of him come out again even if it was solely from stress and directed at the demon. The mage shook her head at the dragon as he turned his head quickly and blinked at her, apparently hoping that she would say something to persuade his host from his current actions. "You heard him Ururun, look at Rena before you get in trouble again." The Nedian best not budge on this, she was far too lenient with the demons most of the time and it wouldn't be a good idea to undermine Ashton's authority just as they were about to become independent of him.
Rena stared down at Ashton in disbelief and looked up at Celine's words just in time to meet Ururun's pleading gaze. She definitely wasn't going to be able to tattle on the dragon and might just ask Ashton to reconsider if she looked him in the eyes for too long, so she turned her attention back to his host and healed him as Bowman asked her to and the younger brunet attempted to shake his arm out without moving it too much. Ururun better not try to meet her gaze anymore, Rena was well aware that both the dragons knew exactly how to get their way with her and used that ability far too often to guilt trip or win arguments with their host. If Ururun did she might just tell on him for that, though Celine would probably beat her to it if she saw her hesitating too much as she was much less forgiving of the demons when properly provoked.
He felt like an idiot just sitting here and flapping his arm at his side like he was a one-winged bird or something, so he gave up on heating his arm back up and looked to the pharmacist, ignoring the way he could feel the catheter moving as he started to bend his elbow as he wound down. "Do I need to move again or am I fine like this?" Neither dragon needed a chance to start behaving badly again and even if it meant that the ritual would be happening sooner he wanted to get the last catheter done just so he could move again. Ashton figured that if worse came to worst and the others weren't done moving the clay yet he could just stay here in the kitchen and wear a groove in the floor as he paced back and forth.
It looked like someone was ready to get this over with. "You can stay there, just remember to keep that arm straight now." Bowman was severely tempted to tell him to drain the rest of the glass by his side while he still had one fully functional arm, but he didn't need to be stressing his patient more than he already was. Taking the gloves he wore off as Ashton lifted the arm he was going to work on, the pharmacist considered the placement of the equipment on the table and decided to rearrange them a bit before he applied the tourniquet and washed his hands with the alcohol again before grabbing a strip of gauze.
Ashton didn't want to watch this again as doing that might encourage Ururun, but he couldn't close his eyes and try to tune everything out or Gyoro might start glaring at the pharmacist again, so he cast his eyes about the room before shaking his head at himself. He wanted to talk to Celine if only to try to gauge if she was doing well and whether she was angry at him and just doing her best to hide it from him, but Bowman and Rena were here. That didn't make sense when he really thought about it, though; knowing them they had been just as involved as Claude had been in the conspiracy he'd been unaware of until two days ago and he wasn't going to reference anything that intimate while they were here. "You look well. Did you finally get some rest?" Or did Bowman drug you like he did me and Rena? He really, really hoped the pharmacist hadn't, he didn't how he would react to that information at the moment.
There he went surprising her again. He needed to stop doing that until the ritual was over or they were alone at the very least, Celine hadn't been prepared to speak directly to him while they were with the others. "I did, thank you. You're looking quite a bit better yourself." The healer, the pharmacist, and the dragons best behave themselves while they were talking; Gyoro and Ururun had misbehaved enough already and she didn't want to see any indication that Claude had told someone his all too apparent presumptions of what had occurred earlier.
Rena tightened her arm around Ashton's shoulder and looked past Ururun to Bowman and smiled as he looked up from what he was doing to wiggle his eyebrows at her quickly before looking back down. She hoped Celine hadn't caught that, she knew Ashton hadn't since he hadn't tensed up and was still looking past Bowman's side to the mage. She was going to need to leave the room as soon she was done healing Ashton, it looked like he was working himself up to apologizing and he'd be less awkward about it if they weren't here.
He hoped that Rena didn't know what had happened earlier, he didn't know why else she would have hugged him like that other than maybe–Oh, there was the pinch and burn, she must have been warning him about Bowman putting the anesthetic in. "Rena made me get cleaned up." It was a good thing she had, he would have been kicking himself now for not washing and changing into clean clothing considering how close Bowman was and the way she'd been hanging on him since he'd gotten out of the bathroom.
"Made you?" Celine was going to get the two of them if they didn't learn to be less obvious; she didn't much care if Ashton was ignoring them at the moment, it was enough that she had seen their little exchange." Don't tell me we're going to have to send you away for training, I thought you were the one we didn't have to worry about." She may as well tease him a bit, it would reassure him and allow her to release some stress at the same time.
That was a relief. Celine didn't tease him like this when she was really angry at him, so if she was at all it would be easy enough to deal with, even if he did hate it when she was mad at him to any degree and he knew it. "...If I say yes does that mean I'll get a free vacation?" It was too bad they weren't alone, he would have teased her back more directly and asked if that meant he would need to find lodging somewhere other than Mars after this was over. He might have to do something like that anyway, Celine and her parents didn't need to deal with Gyoro and Ururun like that, they might drive the three of them crazy. Maybe they could stay in that shack in the forest for the winter, he'd have to ask the mayor if they could work something out.
"I'm already going to be sending you books, now you want a vacation?" Bowman didn't really care what he was interrupting or that he knew that the taller brunet was joking, he was going to say something to that either way.
"No, I'm going to take him home and retrain him and if he doesn't stop being such a slob." She might as well get that announcement out of the way and Celine needed to know that she was planning to kidnap him for a while if he didn't shape up. Claude would like that, it could be Ashton's birthday present to him.
Rena was going to have a fight on her hands, her mother was looking forward to having a live-in cook and housekeeper for the winter and relaxing for the season. That was what she would tell her, anyway. Their little deal would be common knowledge if she did say that, so she would save it and only bring that up if the younger woman didn't budge. "Bowman's right, you've been spoiled enough already. Rena, darling, are you sure you'd be able to stand having them alone together constantly like that? Knowing them they'll run away and elope and then we'll never see them again."
At least Bowman though that was funny; funny enough lean back and laugh briefly, the catheter in his hand flashing in the corner of Ashton's vision. "W-we–Oh, come on, we're not that bad." Celine just had to make him stutter, didn't she? He was too used to those jokes to blush anymore, so he supposed he could be thankful for that.
Bowman calmed himself down and got back to work, pulling the skin taut and repositioning the cannula over the vein. "Yeah you are. Hold still while I put this in."
Rena smiled and hugged Ashton tighter as she felt him tense up while the cannula was inserted and restrained herself from patting him on the shoulder or head. "I trust them. Besides, I can always chain him to one of the beds in the guest room and lock the door to keep Claude out." Opera really was a bad influence, she had been the one that started the whole thing and Bowman had only made it worse once he had joined their group and picked up on it. Not that Ashton or Claude had done anything to discourage them; the blond had gotten in on the joke instantly and had even gone through a brief spell of calling the brunet his 'boyfriend' in front of everyone and the brunet's blushing, stuttering, and eventual laughter hadn't deterred their teasing at all.
Celine was thankful that Bowman was focusing himself on his work again, if he had seen the expression that had flashed across the other brunet's face briefly at the notion of being tied to a bed by a woman she wasn't quite sure what the pharmacist would had done or said. He was facing away from Rena, so there wasn't any danger there from what she could see. Teasing him had been a very bad idea, she should have known better and kept the discussion serious; it had turned her thoughts in a direction that was completely inappropriate given the situation. Really, the last thing she needed to be considering at the moment were her recollections of the slots in the headboards of the beds in the guest room and her bedroom back in Mars and….Oh, my. Ashton might just be surprising her again once all this was over, it looked to her as though he was having similar thoughts.
"Ah, I-I don't think you'll need to do that." Ashton couldn't help it, he had tried to wipe the look of his face as quickly as he could but apparently Celine had still caught it. He was going to get Claude back for leaving them alone and crushing all of those safe, comforting delusions he used to have, if it wasn't for Rena hugging him and the sensation of the catheter being placed he would be very uncomfortable now; the mage was looking at him with an expression on her face that told him that she thinking some very bad thoughts at the moment. Not that he wasn't too, but at least everything else going on around him was keeping him from focusing on them too much. Time for an abrupt subject change, even with his luck this should suck all the levity out of the room. "Are they done moving the clay or are we going to need to help them?"
He must have missed something, Bowman had been under the impression that everyone was trying to avoid mentioning anything directly related to the ritual. The pharmacist frowned at the catheter and almost raised his head to look at the younger brunet before deciding that he didn't want to know and continuing the insertion. "They should be done by now, but I'll check before I come and get you." Well, the catheter was inserted, time to secure it again and work on the dressing. "I'm going finish this up and then I'll go take a look-see. Rena, there might still be something in Precis' room so can you check on that once you heal him?"
The Nedian nodded as she stared down at the crown of Ashton's head, not bothering to reply out loud as the pharmacist looked at her. It was pretty obvious something had just passed between the mage and the heraldic swordsman from how quickly he had shifted his head to look back to Bowman when he said that, and she was doing her best to not look over at the older woman or think too much about what that might have been because she had a feeling it had been derived from her last comment and she definitely didn't need to be thinking of the two of them like that. Maybe they hadn't fought and she needed to stay and supervise the two of them, it was that or Ashton had just admitted to himself how he felt and if that was the case she needed to leave them alone after all. She guessed that she would leave when it was time for her to; Celine was assertive to the point of being pushy especially once she had set herself on something but Ashton had always managed to stand up to her even in the beginning, so if something happened it would be mutual at the very least. Rena hoped they wouldn't be too noisy, the last thing she needed was to hear that or for them to start giving Claude ideas while Dias was around.
She didn't much care for the way the younger woman was studying Ashton at the moment, it looked to her as though she had realized what had led him to change the subject so quickly. It wasn't an expression that she had ever seen on the healer, but she was familiar enough with it given how often she and Ashton had exchanged that look whenever Rena and Claude had seemed to finally realize what was going on between them only to watch as they did an abrupt about-face moments later. He best not try to pull that on her once they were left alone or after he woke up, it was a bit too late for that and they were both adults.
That wasn't going to happen unless he suffered some serious memory loss despite how unsure he was about how to approach her and this new aspect of their relationship, especially since he had hit her over the head with it the last time he had been alone with her. If he hadn't known better he would say that Bowman suspected something just from the way he was avoiding meeting his eyes or looking over at Celine as he finished the bandages and nodded at Rena. There wasn't any real need to worry about it, he supposed; all of them but Precis had known about this since their moment in the hallway, though he did have to wonder about just how long Dias had known about it since he had apparently been the first according to Claude.
He wasn't going to bother with cleaning up the spent supplies right now, he'd get them after they had stabilized his patient. Sorting through his medical bag, he removed everything he wouldn't need now that the preparation was done; Precis was going to be in charge of the bag and handing him what he needed, so he might as well get all the extra or useless things out of her way before he handed it off to her. "I've got one last question for you."
Bowman better not be getting ready to ask him for a living will or something, that would probably be more than he could handle. He hoped it wasn't something like that, Rena was tightening her hands on him for some reason. "Okay." Depending on what the pharmacist was getting ready to ask he might not want to be looking at anyone given how Rena was already reacting and the way Celine was holding herself and frowning at the pharmacist, so he decided to lower his head and close his eyes for this.
There wasn't any need for that, they were already going to do everything thing they could and Ashton's nerves indicated quite plainly just how badly he didn't want to die. "That anesthetic I just used on you was the best I could get. I've got a couple bottles of it left to take care of the incisions, but I want to know if you want to bother with it now that you've seen how powerful it is." Rena had been done healing him the second she had started casting, but looked like she was going to keep doing it until someone told her to stop. Maybe he should have waited for her to move away from him or leave the room completely.
The pharmacist had a very strange definition of powerful if that was the case. "No, just–Just don't worry about it. I guess I should try not to tense up too much, is that right?"
"You need to try to stay relaxed through it, yeah." He was surprised Ashton had been capable of thinking that far ahead, let alone asking that question out loud, especially in front of Celine and Rena. The blue-haired young woman needed to stop wasting her energy, so he looked at her and shook his head once she meet his eyes, relieved when she took her hands away, however reluctantly. They were really going to have to watch her even with the sedative he had given her judging by how stiffly she moved her hands away and how tight her face was at the moment. He almost wanted to check on Celine too, but he didn't know how she would react to that given the current discussion. Either way they needed to leave and give Ashton some time to stabilize himself again; he definitely wouldn't be able to do that with either him or Rena around, but he wasn't sure about Celine so he'd leave that call up to her.
"I'll try, um…." He really wanted to thank all of them again, tell them just how much he loved them, how much he hated doing this to them, and maybe even apologize for not being able to change the demons' minds about this and being unable to take back control when both of them were actively suppressing his psyche at the same time and not letting him sleep like they had been before they let him takeover again, but doing any of that would lead to things that didn't need to happen at the moment. He sighed and breathed deeply and slowly, trying to relax himself as Bowman patted him on the shoulder and told him he'd be back soon, picked up the bag beside him and moved away from him, Rena following him after a moment. Ashton wasn't sure if Celine was still in the room, she wasn't wearing the high heels she normally wore due to the season, so if she had been quiet about it she might have snuck out without him noticing.
She hadn't, of course. Celine was going to give him a moment to calm himself again before she made her presence known and hope that he didn't start crying if he thought that he was alone. At least Bowman had been able to get Rena to follow him easily enough by motioning at her, the younger woman needed to stay as calm and in control of herself as she could and the mage doubted that would have been possible if she had remained in Ashton's presence given they way he had abruptly started to lose his grip on himself. The dragons were watching her, Gyoro quite intently while Ururun looked between his host and her repeatedly before cocking his head and making an inquisitive noise, and she found herself praying that the demon hadn't told him she was still here before he had composed himself enough to handle her presence.
Well, at least he knew that Celine was still room now, Ururun wasn't the type to make things up so she had to be there. "...I don't know." Why she was just standing there, that is. He had a theory, but he wasn't going to tell him she was probably trying to give him some time to calm down out loud. Ashton had never realized just how convenient having the two of them in his head had been before. He was going to have teach them to hold their comments and questions until they were alone or in a private place if they made it through this; they tended to skirt the edge of indecency at times or involved things that he would rather not be voiced in public. "Do you need help getting the blankets or have you taken care of that already?" If he was going to get up and move he might as well be doing something productive while he did it. He definitely wasn't going to be sitting anymore until he had too, he'd be doing enough of that soon enough.
Someone must have told him about that earlier, they had avoided discussing anything related to the ritual last night once they had decided on a time for the crests to be completed. "I did. We can still go for a bit of a walk if you want to, though." He looked as though he needed to move even as he made to stand, there was something to the way he held himself that gave her the impression that he didn't want to stay stationary much longer. "Not far, of course. Just pacing the hallway a bit, something like that."
"I…yeah, let's." He'd really rather run at the moment. Not away from her or outside the temple or away or anything like that, but just to run and feel active again. Besides, the dragons would team up to stop him if they suspected that he was trying to get away somehow, so there wasn't any point to it. "Can I ask you something?" There were so many question he wanted to ask her now, but the only thing he felt comfortable quizzing her about at the moment was whether Bowman had given her something or not. Just so he could go ahead and calm himself down if the older brunet had.
He best not be getting ready to ask her what she saw in him, she really would become angry at him if he did. She would have to deal with that question one day knowing him, but she was far too worried and anxious at the moment to ask him the same thing in return or even start in on the various qualities he possessed that she was fond of. "As if you ever have to ask that, really now." Smiling gently as he joined her by the entryway, she wrapped her arms around his and leaned into him slightly before leading him out into the hall. It was about time she allowed herself to start doing these things, she had spent far too much time holding herself back and watching Rena hang off him to not take the opportunity presented to her at the moment.
"Um." Great, now he was blinking at himself again. Still, this was...so many things that he couldn't describe now that he knew what was going on, that he could admit why this felt so different from what it was like when Rena did it and why it felt the way it did. Besides the obvious. He hoped the dragons didn't do something again. Actually, he should probably be hoping that he didn't do something again. "Did Bowman make you something? To help you sleep or calm you down?"
She pursed her lip and drew down her eyebrows at that as she studied him, not knowing where that had come from and wondering what could have given him such a worry. "Calm…? Oh dear Tria, don't tell me Rena told you about that." Celine shook her head at that, because really, the younger woman should have known better than to tell him such a thing. Now he was probably going to be checking them as best he could for signs of sedation. "He didn't make me anything, I took my nap while the rest of them were working on the clay and watched it for them once they were done." It hadn't been a particularly peaceful series of naps and she had gone right back to it once she realized that Bowman, Dias, and Precis weren't going to be locking themselves in their rooms and resting like Claude and Rena had, but they had done their job well enough.
He had been holding his breath to keep from doing or saying anything until she had finished that last sentence, and once the meaning of it registered fully he had to restrain himself from exhaling explosively in relief like he wanted. "I was–You have no idea how much I was worried about that. The second she told me I just–I mean, I felt bad enough knowing I'd done to that to her, but once I thought about you it just…." Made him seriously consider tracking down the pharmacist and interrogating him. He had almost done it too, probably would have if it hadn't occurred to him in the bathroom while he was undressed and Rena was guarding the door. He didn't know why that had been his first reaction, it was obvious enough that the two of them loved each other and were very close friends due to their history together and he knew that the pharmacist wouldn't do anything that would hurt her, but something about that had enraged him once that thought came to him. It had probably been anger at himself more than anything; he felt horrible enough about Rena but doing that to her would have been overwhelming considering everything that he'd already put her through.
She hugged his arm and kissed him on the shoulder for that, partially to soothe him but also out of pure affection. It was little things like this that let her know how he felt now that she could see them from a different angle, these worries and admissions of his and the way he could admit to things so openly with her that she knew he would have difficulty discussing with even Claude or Rena. Part of that was that they both held beliefs and understandings of certain things, but it was also just that need to share with each other and be close in some way given how the dragons bothered her, the way she had grown used to holding herself back out of respect for the crush that he'd had on Precis, the innocent way he held himself, and how he seemed to have become convinced that he couldn't be physically close to people after being possessed. That last one brought up something that she was curious about herself, and while she hadn't been expecting to broach that subject for at least a few more days she supposed that she could start pushing him a bit more openly now and make plain her intentions to him on the off chance he still had doubts about her interest. "I have a question of my own at the moment."
Uh-oh. Maybe he shouldn't have turned his head to look at her when she kissed him like that as they walked, the smile that had formed before she said that and way she was looking at him now gave him the feeling that this was going to be something a bit more intimate than he was used to, never mind all the other responses he had to it. "Alright." It had taken him a few seconds to respond to that and it had come with a nervous chuckle, but at least he had gotten it out.
It looked as though he suspected something, but she wasn't going to back off now that she had dedicated herself to the question. She briefly entertained the notion that she might be about to make him faint, well aware that it he wasn't given to it despite all the teasing and jokes that were made about it but unable to help herself. "Have you ever been with someone before?"
Well, now he was blushing again. He hoped this didn't scare her off, she seemed worldly enough that she might not be pleased with the information. "Not...in the way you probably mean. I've never really had what I would consider a girlfriend since my luck and everything else would run them off before we got very far and…." He wasn't going to lower himself to going to a brothel or hiring a lady of the evening off the streets. Even before the dragons had come along and created even more issues and barriers for him he had still had enough pride not to do that.
This was going to be fun. Really, Celine had no idea why that appealed to her so much. She didn't much like that look on his face or how hesitantly he spoke, he seemed to think that she was going think less of him for some bizarre reason. "You know, I had thought that, but then a little something that happened earlier today made me wonder."
She wasn't going to jostle him a bit like Rena would to assure him, but she would kiss his shoulder again and smile at that blush of his. "It's no bother, really, it was just curiosity."
"Um…." She was giving him that smile again, and he suddenly had a feeing that he going to be getting in over his head with her. Not that that was a new revelation, she tended push him ways that left him feeling overwhelmed on a regular basis and forced him to adapt. At least now he knew why he had never minded it and even enjoyed it once he got past the initial discomfort. "I guess I should apologize for that. I wasn't thinking and…."
Whether he had been thinking or not was open to debate; she had feeling that he had been, just not with his brain. "There's no need for that, darling." She might as well admit it to him, it would make him feel much better about it once he got over the shock of it. "I would have done it you hadn't. Besides, I enjoy it when you surprise me." Even if it did leave her wondering whether she would be able stand watching the ritual now that they were acknowledging this.
Well, that was…. "Ah, okay." He was definitely getting in over his head here. Looking over his shoulders for a second as he processed that, he found both the demons on his back ignoring them as best they could. It was just his luck that the second he wouldn't mind the two of them misbehaving somehow if only to correct them and distract himself they would decide to mind their manners. He found himself wanting to tell her now, if only so she knew if something happened to him but he couldn't get the words out. There were still the letters, though, so if something happened to him she'd at least have that and she didn't deserve to have it as a surprise. "I want to tell you something." He needed to work himself up to this, he couldn't just say it.
She just knew she wouldn't be able to stand it he was about to do what she thought he was going to do. "Ashton, don't. Please, I know and…maybe it's selfish of me, I'm well aware that I'm a selfish person, but I don't want it to be like this."
He hadn't been expecting that response at all. "No–It's–I–It's not that. Well, it is but…there's letters. Dias has them and if something happens or even if it doesn't I want you to have yours and know about it." He could be selfish too, she wasn't the only one.
He couldn't listen to her just this once, could he? She let go of him at that and stood there, frozen in shock and staring at him as he turned to face her, the surprised expressing on his face quickly shifting to regret. "You…." He just had to do something like this, something to send her spinning again at the last possible second and not knowing what to do or say, torn between so many things at once.
Tria, he shouldn't have done that. He wanted to move forward and comfort her, but he wasn't sure what her reaction to that would be. "Celine, I'm–"
"Don't." As if she didn't know what was coming. "I'm so tired of hearing you say that, apologizing for things when you don't even need to." She couldn't even bring herself to be as angry with him as she wanted to now despite the volume and tone of her words because really, how could she not have expected him to have done something like that; something that she herself would have done? She should have seen this coming, she didn't know why she hadn't when she had gone through his travel bag and noticed how oddly his sweaters were folded upon themselves, folded as if they were hiding or protecting something.
He didn't know why she was saying that when she was so obviously upset with him. Lowering his head at that he stared down at her feet, not knowing what to do if he couldn't even say that and looking up at her after a few seconds and decided to act on those impulses that he felt around her so often for once.
She wanted to push him away as he came forward, absolutely terrified that he going to kiss her again, but unable to do anything but pull him to her the second he touched her. "I'm going to get you for this one day. For all of it. I swear to…" trailing off at that, she buried her face against his neck and scrabbled at his back lightly for a few seconds, trying to bring him closer before the realization that she might be hurting him came to her and she stilled her motions and just held him against her.
He couldn't do much more than nod at that, even as he did his best to ignore the odd, scratchy feeling the catheters were causing as he hugged her. She wasn't crying and he found himself thankful for that, because if she did he would as well at this point.
/////
By the time Bowman and Rena finally rounded the corner to the ceremonial chamber, they had been done moving the clay for what felt like half an hour but was probably more like five minutes knowing his sense of time. Either way Claude was ready to move again, so he stood from where he had been siting beside Dias and Precis out in the hallway and helped the pharmacist and his fiancée hide the stretcher in the ceremonial storage room as Dias and Precis supervised. He wasn't going to be sending Rena to retrieve Celine, he knew that much just by looking at her and the way she hugged him once the stretcher was hidden. Bowman would be a good choice for it, but he was going over what was in his medical bag with Precis and checking Dias' IV to make sure it hadn't been damaged somehow. Precis might just rile her up like he did earlier by saying the wrong thing. Dias would...he didn't know what would happen if he asked Dias to do it, Claude didn't think his soon to be kinda sorta brother-in-law wouldn't say 'no' to the request, but he just didn't interact with Celine most of the time. It looked like he was going to be the one to search for the mage and try to drag her back here to wait with them until Ashton had calmed himself down again. He could end up in need of some healing if he did, but he doubted it since she'd already gotten to chew him out for awhile and he figured by now she should be calming down. Maybe. It was Celine. They got along well and all, but she tended to do stuff that he just didn't understand at times. Seriously, who offers jewelry to someone saying that it has protective magics and then tells them that they had pilfered it off a dead guy a few seconds later? Stuff like that. "Guess I should go get Celine." Might as well do it now, Ashton was probably going to take a few minutes at the minimum to start making his way here and maybe being around everyone would help her get in the right frame of mind for this. This was going to suck.
Rena didn't think that would be a good idea at the moment. Anything said even slightly above normal speaking volume tended to carry in the halls of the temple and while neither she or Bowman been able to understand what had been said, they had both gathered that Celine was upset about something before they had fallen out of earshot. She hugged Claude tighter and shook her head into his shoulder. "I think we should give them a while." Rena hoped they wouldn't say anything too harsh to each other, it would be terrible feeling that type of tension between the two of them during the ritual and she just knew they would both feel horrible about it afterwards, never mind how Celine would react if they had a fight like that and something did happen to Ashton.
He must have missed something. "Them?…Wait, Celine's with Ashton?" That had to be it, they were the only two that weren't in the storage room. It was official; the mage had absolutely no reason to be angry at him anymore for leaving her alone with the heraldic swordsman earlier if she was going to voluntarily spend time with him when there was no one else around.
That made the inventor look up from the medical equipment and supplies Bowman had been pointing out and explaining to her. "Why's that such a big deal? I mean, she's probably going over the spell with him or whatever." Precis knew for fact at this point that she was being left of the loop about something, but she wouldn't bother anyone about it until after the ritual and everyone was calmed down. She had a pretty good idea what it was, even if the idea of it struck her as weird, but she wanted to hear someone admit it to her and tell her why she hadn't been let in on it. Rena and Claude playing matchmaker with the members of their group was a little creepy so far as she was concerned, but at least she would know why were doing it once she go them talking. That and she would be able to warn them about pulling the same thing with her and Leon or something. It better be Leon if they tried that on her with even if he was four years younger than her, but that probably wouldn't matter to them considering that Ashton was three years younger than Celine and look what they were doing there. Either way she'd be mad enough if they started trying to pull that on her, but she'd sick Bobot on them if they even thought about trying to hook her up with Noel.
Oh, if only he was in the dark about this like Precis was. Bowman couldn't believe it, but he was starting to envy the teenage inventor. "It's nothing," he dismissed and shook his head, unable to gesture as he wanted to considering the way he was holding the bag. Unlike Rena he was hoping that it stayed an argument; he would rather hear that than the other possibility, but he had seen the two of them butt heads enough before to know that the likelihood that they would stay that way for more than two minutes was inversely proportional to whatever other drama was going on around them at the moment. Given that and the situation Bowman was not going walk more than ten feet past the ceremonial chamber now that he'd made it here with his sanity still in one piece even if he had told Ashton he would be back for him. He was going to have to force himself to look over the kitchen before Rena or someone else went in there, if he saw one thing out of place on the table or counters he wasn't going to be eating until they were back in Tenue.
This was a waste if time so far as Dias was concerned, there was no point in holding this off and the longer they waited to begin the more reluctant they would become when the time came. "I'll get them." The sooner this was resolved the sooner he could get the damn cannula out and move as he was accustomed to. If the gods chose to smile on them he might even be able start burning those letters Ashton had given him instead of handing them out. He wouldn't even make it out into the hall, Dias knew that even as he took his first step forward, Claude would stop him and volunteer himself again to keep him from getting in the middle of something.
"No, no. I'll do it." Claude started to separate himself hurriedly from Rena as the taller swordsman began to move toward the hallway, the way his fiancée was frozen in shock making it a bit difficult until she came back to herself and almost pushed him away from her and towards the doorway. It looked like they were on the same page about this one; it was the worst idea ever, who knows what Dias might be walking in on since he wouldn't even make any noise or call out to let them know he was coming.
As if he hadn't expected that to happen. Dias halted mid-stride as the blond hurried past him, watching as the shorter man entered the hallway and disappeared from view. That had worked well enough.
/////
"Marco!"
That wasn't Bowman. Even if the voice that echoed through the halls hadn't given the speaker's identity away, the word would have. It took Ashton a few seconds to respond, searching his mind for what he was supposed to respond to that with as Celine dropped her arms from around him stepped back, putting some space between them. "Ah…. Polo!" He barely remembered what this was; something about an explorer and a tag-like game if he remembered right. Claude really was from a different planet.
The response had been from the northwest by the sound of it, which meant they weren't in the kitchen as that was directly to the east. Celine better appreciate the head's up he had just given them, Dias wouldn't have bothered with it. "Marco!"
These children's games were silly, at twenty-two years old the blond should be well past using such immature means of communication. "Claude, where are you?" Really, there were much better ways of doing this. He was somewhere to the south, but as they had made their way to the public entrance of the temple there wasn't much left that was in another direction. It didn't look as though she had put any marks on Ashton's back earlier, and she couldn't stop herself glancing at the area below the dragons as though scratches or welts would spontaneously appear before her eyes now that she was at an angle she could see it.
Ashton found himself turning his head to blink at the woman beside him, wondering where that exasperated tone had come from. She must be upset with him for leaving them alone earlier, that was the only thing he could think of. He almost wished he could get wound up about that too, but Claude had only been trying to help and he knew it. Not that he wasn't going to get him back somehow for their little talk on the ship to Tenue, but that was a different matter entirely so far as he was concerned. The mage must have thought that she had hurt him earlier, her gaze kept shifting between the hallway before them and the middle of his back. "I'm okay," he near whispered, partly to assure her but also to steel himself for making their way to Claude and the ceremonial chamber.
Oh, yeah, sure, whatever, Celine. He doesn't have his video games and simulations anymore, so he has to do something to make up for it. Making a dozen 'cell phones' and giving them to the different members of their group was one thing, but if he made anything much more advanced than that and the Federation found out about it he'd get arrested and hauled off the planet. "West of the kitchen." Claude would hang out here and let them make their way over, it might calm Celine down and they would be able to straighten themselves up before they joined up with him. It had taken Ashton a couple seconds to respond and he'd sounded a little distracted when he had done it, after all.
Celine couldn't say anything to the quiet reassurances of the man standing to her side, the best she do was smile sadly at him before Claude called back and she responded. "We'll be right there." She reached over at that to take her companion's arm in hers and leaned into him again. "Shall we?"
"Um," he cleared his throat nervously and nodded, feeling something in his mind shift and gently pull at it as he looked at her. It felt like...he didn't really know what it was. He had never felt this before, but if he had to make a guess he would say that Gyoro and Ururun's mind were tugging on his somehow. "Yeah, let's get going."
/////
All the stress had made Bowman more talkative than normal from what Claude could gather as he led Ashton and Celine towards the ceremonial chamber. That wasn't a bad thing on its own but it sounded like he was still going over the contents of his medical bag with Precis and Ashton definitely didn't need to hear that; there was the reason they had hidden the stretcher and everything else Precis had made. Claude called out to the others, announcing that he had found his quarry and began putting more force behind his step to compete against the sound of Bowman's voice as it drifted to them.
Rena had been doing her best to tune out the ongoing discussion as best she could while pacing the platform and was very grateful that Claude had done that, the knowledge of their presence nearby had quieted the pharmacist and the inventor instantaneously. She would have to remember to give him a kiss for that later, now definitely wasn't the right time. It would probably be a good idea if she didn't even look at Ashton or any of the others until they called on her, so she walked to the back of the room and sat down facing one of the far corners there before closing her eyes.
Dias stood from where he had been kneeling beside the ceremonial chair and watched Rena as she situated herself behind him. He would have preferred it if she could be out of the room entirely at this point; Bowman might have given her some sort of anxiety medication but he doubted it would be effective against his surrogate little sister's instincts, and those were far more powerful and dangerous at this point than a simple case of nerves. Shifting his gaze downward and to the other side, he watched as Bowman finally surrendered the bag to Precis before turning his attention to the doorway. It sounded as though Claude had decided to give them a countdown, his footfalls were rather heavy compared to those of Ashton and Celine. The Earthling needed to learn about subtly, he would get in far less trouble if he ever did and something told him that his companions probably weren't appreciating it.
Yeah, it was bad enough that Precis was imagining the sound of a clock ticking in the back of her head, now Claude was doing it for real. She guessed she should try to hide the bag or at put it out of the way until Ashton was sitting and couldn't see it, so she made her way across the platform to the corner opposite of Rena and placed it there. It looked like that would work okay, the bag was black and the light from the lamps they had brought didn't reach this far, so the very worst he'd see of it was the outline of it in the shadows unless he was really looking for it. The inventor was still going to stand in front of it until he turned his back and started wiggling into the chair or whatever before she moved again, though.
Bowman didn't mind the blond's dramatics; it had gotten his point across and the pharmacist trusted Claude's ability to read Anchors well enough to assume that he wasn't putting him on edge by doing it. There wasn't much point in him doing much more than turning around to face the door, he was standing in the lower level of the room and to the side of the chair which was almost exactly where he was going to be standing to cut Ashton. Using a section of the unused block of clay had been a good idea, cut and wrapped in the plastic sheath as it was it wouldn't contaminate the room, was just the right size to not cover the grooves, and would allow Claude to follow them up better than if he had tried to balance himself on the footrests of the chair. It was firm enough that he might just stand on it while cutting Ashton's arms, step off of it to do the bottom of his calves, and then hop right back on it so that the blond could switch positions with him easier.
Celine shook her head at Claude's back as he finally began to soften his footfalls and they approached the door of the ceremonial chamber. Slowing her own step, she shifted to the side and allowed Ashton to pass her, doing her best to smile at him again as he looked up at her questioningly before blinking, nodding his understanding, and continuing on. Someone needed to close the door behind them, there were crests in the back of the door that joined with those on the wall and if it was left open the spell wouldn't be triggered fully.
Ashton couldn't believe that he had forgotten about that even if it had been for only an instant. He was trying to hold on to his memory of Claude's stomping, it had given him something else to focus himself on other than the current situation and the way that Gyoro and Ururun's minds were starting to intertwine with his again. It wasn't intentional; he could feel them pushing against his mind the same way he was theirs now, but he supposed they had been this way for so long that they couldn't separate themselves like this for more than an hour. Maybe if they had tried it before and practiced this it would have lasted longer. It was that or the dragons had been right all along and they were slowly merging to the point that he be would be just like them and unable to filter them out the way he could now. If that was the case then they better be right about this too, otherwise he was going to make the afterlife as unpleasant as he possibly could for them until everyone else showed up and then he'd let them take over for a few hundred years. He was pretty sure most of them would like that or just not care except for Noel, Rena, and maybe Precis, but even if the three of them tried to stop them they could all sit around and argue about it. No matter what happened Bowman would have first dibs on the dragon torture, Gyoro had done enough to him over the past three years that the pharmacist could almost qualify for sainthood so far as Ashton was concerned.
Stopping a few paces past the door, Claude nodded to the others and made a mental note to cuddle with Rena for an hour or two after this was over; she was sitting in the far side of the room, hidden in the shadows with her back to them and she still looked like she needed it. Bowman, Dias, and Precis were looking past him a little oddly, almost like they were studying something, but the only thing he was aware of back there was Celine shutting the door. Turning his head at that, Claude looked behind him and found Ashton standing and staring into space right behind him, the dragons on his back tensed and wearing similar expressions. Okay, so Ashton and the demons had gone bye-bye already and they weren't even in the chair yet. Claude guessed the brunet was still paying attention to something, though, otherwise he would have crashed into his back once he stopped. "Ashton…Ashton, hey." If he had to call his name again the blond was going to start singing it at him the same way Celine had in Mars.
"Ah," Ashton started and blinked a few times before shaking his head at himself. "Sorry, ah–Yeah." He needed to get in the chair now, the longer he just stood around like this the harder it would be for everyone.
Well, at least Anchors was still there; the dragons were moving with him like they normally did as their host ascended the stairs but there was still something faraway in their gaze. "Are they trying to take you over or something?" Bowman would rather be aware of it ahead of time, if Gyoro was the one was attempting it they might need to restrain his host until he could reassert himself.
That made him stop and blink down at the pharmacist as he reached the top of the platform, wondering why in the world he was asking him that when he had been present for their mental separation. "No, um, we separated ourselves earlier for this and it's getting a little hard to keep it that way." Rena was sitting in the corner so he definitely wasn't going to mention the exact when or why of it.
Bowman appreciated it. He didn't get the rest of it, but he did appreciate the other brunet's intentional omission of exactly when he had done that. It explained how oddly they had behaved afterwards as well. "Do you need a minute to fix that or are you okay?"
Ashton's gaze lifted from the pharmacist to linger on Celine as she turned from the now closed door, an anxious expression on her face before Claude started coming forward to follow him and he looked away quickly and started making his way to the chair. "No, I don't–Let's just do this." He needed to sit down and close his eyes, it seemed like the only way he would be able to get through this without breaking down again now that he was in the room and around everyone at the same time.
Claude eyed the straps on the leg and armrests and the modifications Dias had made to them as he came to stand beside a similarly preoccupied Ashton, somewhat confused. He could have sworn the straps that restrained the thighs had been secured the same way the arm and lower leg restraints were. "Did someone undo some of the straps?"
Dias nodded once the blond looked up at him questioningly from across the depression in the platform caused by the chair. He wasn't going to announce to the room at large that he had done so while Claude was off retrieving the heraldic swordsman and the mage even if most of the room's occupants had seen him do it. Bowman's attempts at situating himself in the ceremonial chair had been far too awkward and difficult to justify keeping all of them secured. Ashton didn't need to lift his thighs when Bowman made the incisions, so there wasn't the same need for them to be tightened and buckled quickly.
Dias needed to stop being so considerate of his feelings and comfort all the time, it just made him feel even more horrible about all this than he already did. Ashton knew he had to have been the one to do it, otherwise one of the others would have answered the question and Dias would have looked up from the chair to met their eyes as they stared at him.
Yeah, Dias better go back to normal after this was over, if he didn't Claude was going to start teasing Ashton about how he had apparently dumped him for their taciturn companion. He would tease Dias about it too, but not as much and only after he was officially a member of his unofficial family. Claude figured the odds of the Arlinian killing him for that would be drastically reduced if it meant making Rena a widow. "I'll go down and strap you in the rest of the way up once you're in those." He might as well, he had already spent almost two hours touching Ashton in borderline inappropriate places today, a few more minutes wouldn't kill him. At least the brunet would have pants on this time.
Ashton would say something to that, but Claude was already moving away and if he stood here for too long he might lose control of himself again. He shook his head and breathed deeply before he walked down the reclining back of the chair to its seat and crouched on the balls of his feet before he leaned back and shifted to his left, doing the best he could to insert his right arm into the armrests and their restraints without bending his elbow too much. Closing his eyes, he repeated the process with his left arm and moved his legs out from underneath him to sit in the chair and started inserting his lower legs into their restraints as he felt Claude approaching on his left. Inserting his legs into the straps wasn't too difficult even without looking, so he wasn't going to be opening them again unless Bowman told him to. Tria, he wished he could go away again right now.
"Precis, darling, can you hand me that?" Celine wasn't going to audibly identify the ritual book as she pointed at it for the young inventor, everyone in the room undoubtably realized what she was referring to. She disliked this whole thing so very, very much. Celine really was going to get him for putting her and the rest of them through this, though the mage wished that she could tell herself that she would mete out her revenge in a manner he wouldn't enjoy. He best enjoy it, she would wash her hands of him and send him off to Claude if he didn't.
Nodding at that, Precis left her corner and retrieved the book for the mage before retreating to stand beside Rena. She would have said 'yeah' or something to that, but everyone seemed to have gotten really tense the second Ashton had started getting in the chair and none of her ranting had worked earlier, so she figured she would join in this time. That and she didn't really feel like talking all that much anymore. Precis didn't really know what she was supposed to do right now, so she guessed she would just try to stick close to Rena until Bowman told her to do something.
Rena looked up as Precis leaned against the wall beside her and reached up to take the hairpin out of her hair. Leaning her head against the standing girl's legs, Rena began to toy with the clasp of her hairpin, needing something to distract her from the awful silence that seemed to fallen over everyone. She wished Precis would start rambling again, but she guessed that the inventor had finally gotten to the point that she couldn't hide her nerves anymore. Ashton better make it through this, they still had something very important to ask him and Claude didn't have any other guy friends that he had even considered for being his best man, her fiancé had always insisted that the brunet would be back in time. She didn't know what they would do if he didn't; Bowman, Ernest, Leon, and Noel were his groomsmen already, but their lives were too busy to expect them to drop everything and ask them to handle all those responsibilities, especially considering how short notice it would be now. Maybe Dias could be his best man and Mayor Regis, Alen, or her mother could give her away. Claude and Alen didn't get long very well, though, and her mother had encouraged her to ask Dias when she had hesitated, so if she declined she supposed it would have to be Mayor Regis.
Claude was trying not to think those thoughts at the moment, it was bad enough that he had finished tightening the straps already. All but one, anyway. He was going to leave the one that was supposed to hold Ashton's chest down undone; the brunet would be uncomfortable enough as it was, he didn't need to have the dragon's pressing into his back while this was happening and the shoulder straps were probably making his position uncomfortable already. Claude couldn't tell, Ashton was hiding his face behind his hair again. It probably took longer than it seemed to the blond for him to start moving away from the brunet, but nobody said anything about it and he found himself grateful for that as he ascended the steps and made his way to stand across from Dias on the platform.
Dias couldn't say much about the silence that seemed to have fallen over the room, he had been expecting it. Reaching behind his back, he removed one of the knives Claude had sharpened earlier from where it had been clipped to his belt and held it out to blond. It took a few long seconds for his movement to register, but the younger swordsman looked to him eventually and slowly took the knife by its sheathed blade and hid it in the pocket of his ever present jacket. Dias wasn't worried about Bowman, he would be using the ritual knife when he started cutting the straps. The Arlinian found himself hoping that the thick leather dulled the blade enough to render it unfit for its purpose, but even if did he had a feeling that they wouldn't be leaving this temple without melting it down or destroying it in some other manner. If by some miracle it was still intact before they left he would take it with him and do the job himself.
Precis needed to come forward so she could pull the ropes Dias had used to connect the straps and hold them in place until they were secured, so Bowman motioned her forward until she came to stand beside Claude. He supposed that was good enough. Now it was time to check on his patient one final time before this whole situation turned disturbing. "Do you want something to bite down on? I've still got plenty of gauze."
Ashton shook his head at that, not bothering to lift it and look at the pharmacist. His mouth was dry enough already, he didn't want anything in it that would just dry it up even more and he needed to start reciting the incantation the second the pharmacist placed the knife in his hand. Gyoro and Ururun were still pushing away from his mind and he did his best to focus himself on the feeling of that and force his mind away from theirs at the same time.
"Right." Bowman nodded to himself and motioned for Dias to retrieve the ceremonial knife as he came forward to stand on the clay block placed on the floor below the leg rests. The pharmacist wished this situation was different, considering his position and the way Ashton was reclined before him with his legs splayed to either side of him there would have been plenty of jokes to be made. That wasn't the only reason of course, but thinking on everything else that was wrong with this and just who the other brunet was to him, let alone the others would just distract him and he was trying to distance himself as much as he could from Anchors right now; if he didn't he wouldn't be able to do this. Taking the knife from Dias once he returned to his original position, Bowman waited until Claude moved out of the way for Precis and she and Dias kneeled on either side of Ashton, ready to tighten the remaining loose straps on his arms and legs. "Okay, I need you to lift your arms up facing inwards towards yourself. I'm going to do your right arm first, just remember to stay a relaxed as you can." At that the pharmacist took a penlight from his pocket, turned it on, inserted in into his mouth, and held it in place with his teeth before looking over his shoulder to check on Celine as the other brunet followed his instructions.
She didn't know why he had chosen then to worry about her, not when she was studiously ignoring him and everything else in the room save the blankets she had deposited in the corner created by the side of the platform as it met the wall and the lower level of the room. Celine shook her head at him; no matter what his question was the answer was a very empathic 'no' at the moment and it would be until this was over. Hugging the open book against her stomach, the mage did her best to ignore his gaze and imagined burning the book in her hands, she was certain she would feel much better knowing that no one else would ever be put through something like this again.
She wasn't crying yet, Bowman was relieved to see that. Celine wasn't normally a crier, she was too strong and prideful for that, but something told him she had been doing enough of that ever since Ashton popped up on her doorstep. Considering the circumstances, the responsibilities she had placed on herself, and the way neither of them had talked to anyone but maybe each other about this, he wouldn't be surprised if she did sometime during this. Turning his attention back to his patient, Bowman moved the straps that lay over Ashton's forearm out of the way and held his wrist with his left hand before laying the blade against the line of crests that traced the other man's ulnar artery and tried not to jump as the crests marking the incision point and on the knife flared, not nearly as bright as the mage's when their powers were called upon, but more than enough to explain the lack of lighting in the room. Taking the knife away quickly, Bowman jerked his head roughly to his left, releasing the penlight at the end of his arc; he wouldn't be needing that by the looks of it. This ritual was really starting to piss him off. He hated magic, it didn't make one bit of sense.
Ashton successfully fought off the dual urge to blink his eyes open and flinch, first at the feel of the knife against his skin, then the odd feeling of crests awakening on the outside of his body, and then at the sudden loud crack! and clinking noises that echoed from somewhere to his right. "What happened?"Bowman needed to stop doing whatever he was doing, he really didn't need to be opening his eyes while this was happening.
"Just tossed my penlight." That seemed to have gotten everyone's attention, including Rena and Celine's, though the mage was looking in his direction for a wholly different reason than the rest. Bowman tossed her a scowl over his shoulder; if she had known somehow that the crests would do that then she should have spoken up about it so he wouldn't be surprised when it happened. If that was the case then she should have known better than to leave him in the dark; she knew he couldn't stand magic, it had been one the reasons they had broken off their engagement.
"Oh." Ashton couldn't say much to that, given the pharmacist's obvious dislike of the heraldic arts and the unexpectedness of the crests activating his reaction wasn't much of a surprise. "Um, sorry. We knew they would activate but we both thought it happened after I said the spell."
Well, at least Anchors understood his reaction. Maybe it was because he wasn't technically a mage so he could relate in an odd way, it was that or it was just him being him again. Still, the other brunet's apology and explanation made it very difficult for Bowman to restrain himself from turning to Celine again and giving her a smug look. He'd do it later if she was still upset about his reaction, right after he reminded her that he had absolutely no idea that would happen and paraphrased her beau. "S'alright. Relax your arm again and nod when you're ready for me to start over."
The pharmacist watched as the crests on the blade and Ashton's forearm started to fade, Rena turning back to face the wall as inhaled deeply and Ashton nodded. Returning the knife to its original position, Bowman ignored the crests as they glowed again and forced the tip of the blade into the other man's flesh and drew it down his forearm towards his wrist. He wasn't going to rush this one, Anchors needed at least one working hand to hold the knife. The artery had been hit, that much was obvious as he traced the incision point to its end; arterial, bright red blood pulsed out from behind the blunt edge of the knife in time with Anchor's heartbeat, the loss negligible for an instant before the fluid began surging from beneath the protective tissue above it. Bowman finished as quickly as he could at that, not wanting to waste any of it and motioning for Dias to tighten the strap as he shifted his attention to Ashton's left forearm arm.
It hadn't been bad at first; a slight pinch as the tip of the knife pierced his skin shortly followed by his nerves screaming at him as the pharmacist cut downward and continued, but that wasn't the worst of it. The pain he could handle, he had experienced far worse than that. What made the experience so horrifying was a sudden shift in his awareness, the way he could feel and hear his blood gushing and escaping rhythmically in time with his heart and how as his heartbeat quickened, so too did his awareness of it. Ashton couldn't feel the dragons anymore, and he wasn't sure why. He hadn't gone away again, he was too aware of his body and emotions for that so he supposed it was either the spell or how focused he was on it at the moment. The straps tightening and forcing his right arm and shoulder down and back didn't register, but the sudden coolness of the stone of the armrests did for a split second before it became interlaced with warmth in odd places. That wasn't his blood; his blood was much hotter than that but he could sense the light on his right side intensifying from behind his eyelids so it must be crests on the armrest.
Bowman would say that Anchors needed to calm down but it would be a waste of time at this point. Quickly moving the straps over the other brunet's left arm out of the way and holding onto it with his left hand, the pharmacist squinted to see past the light that emanated from the right as he pressed the edge of the knife against the crest outline with his right and forced the blade in swiftly and pulled back on it, dragging it through the flesh and tightening his grip on Ashton's arm as he gasped and jerked back out of instinct. There wasn't time for verbal warnings anymore, his patient's circulatory system pumped his blood far too effectively for that. Bowman motioned at Precis distractedly as he jumped back and off the platform to take care the incisions in his legs, glad that he didn't have to bend very far to do this. He had forgotten to tell Anchors to raise his calves for him and there wasn't any time to waste, so the pharmacist lifted the man's left leg and turned it forcefully to reveal the incision points.
Bowman manhandling his leg managed to filter through the pain and sensations that were flooding his mind even as someone pulled on the straps and his left arm was forced down into the armrest. Ashton tried to lift his right leg so it would be in place for the pharmacist although he was unsure if he was actually doing it or not. There was too much going on now for that to register, his attention was being consumed by the overwhelming feeling of his blood pumping out his body and the way the side of his left forearm felt like it had been set on fire from the inside. Whether the pharmacist had damaged one of his nerves doing that didn't matter to him, because now the pharmacist was cutting into his left calf, deep enough that he could feel the cool metal inside him warming slowly as it stabbed into and tore through the muscles of his lower calf. Ashton was fairly certain that he tensed and screamed at that, but he couldn't hear anything past his heartbeat and the blood rushing through his ears, nor could he feel himself do it, he was too focused on the pain emanating from his left forearm and leg for something like that to register.
Celine recoiled as best she could without moving as the sound of Bowman practically stabbing the younger brunet bounced about the room, accompanied by Ashton's chocked shriek of pain and subsequent heavy panting. Tightening her arms about herself and the book in her hands, the mage lifted her gaze from the two as a spark of magical energy caught her attention. It looked as though Rena had almost lost control herself before she reigned her powers back in, the young woman now resting her head on her knees as she hugged them and rocked back and forth almost violently. Claude, Dias, and Precis seemed to have noticed as well; the blue-haired swordsman was tensed in a way that said that he had nearly tackled his surrogate little sister from where he stood to interrupt her while his younger companions looked on in shocked concern.
"Hey!" Bowman had caught just enough from the corner of his eye to know that the trio gathered above Ashton were distracted enough that they weren't doing their job. The pharmacist pushed the leg he was holding down into the leg rest below it quickly before turning his attention to his patients' right leg and found it lifted and turned toward him, faintly surprised that Anchors off all people was able to think ahead even with the type of prompting he had just received. "Last one," he announced to the room at large as the sound of someone above him recovering enough to pull the straps on the other side of Ashton registered faintly as he placed the blade of the knife against the bottom of his patient's calf.
Claude winced and looked to Ashton as the pharmacist pushed the blade deeply into the muscle of the other brunet's leg, not wanting to see the blood welling and pulsing up through the deep cut Bowman had created as he moved the knife downward and released it. How Ashton managed only a whimper as the knife traveled was something the blond couldn't imagine, even if he had locked his jaw and tensed when the pharmacist gave his warning. Turning his attention to Precis, he handed her the rope connected to Ashton's leg restraints and scrambled to a standing position as she took them from him.
Bowman straightened once he was done with the final incision and clawed at Ashton's tightly fisted right hand for a second before his intentions registered and the younger brunet opened his hand. Holding the knife by the blunt edge of the blade, the pharmacist handed it off to him and closed his hands around the other man's fist tightly for a second on the off chance that he wasn't gripping it firmly enough as he felt Celine approaching quickly from behind him. Looking up at Claude, Bowman stepped onto the clay block, grabbed the blond's outstretched hand, braced his left foot against the side of the leg rest before him and pushed up with his right foot as the younger man pulled him onto the platform. He stumbled a few steps forward from the momentum as Claude released his hand and jumped down off the platform behind him, taking a second to gather his bearings and check on Rena from the corner of his eye. Turning once he realized she was in control of herself again, the pharmacist near jogged from his position to stand behind Ashton and check his carotid pulse as Celine started reciting the spell, which sounded like nothing but gibberish to him. If the baby Nineh was carrying so much as glanced at a heraldry book or crest while he was still living he would kill them.
Ashton and Celine better finish this up in a couple seconds, the grooves in the chair, wall of the platform, and floor were deep but Ashton's blood was traveling so quickly that they didn't have but a few more seconds. At least it seemed to be. Claude wasn't sure; the crests were growing brighter and brighter every millisecond now that Ashton was reciting the ritual with Celine and he could barely see it or the straps he was working on. Claude found himself hoping wildly that the ritual had some sort of grace period or that the crests would shut off if he was too late, the blood that flowed down to grooves in the floor was way too close to the clay for his comfort now unless that was some sort of optical illusion the light of the crests was causing.
Celine slammed the ritual book shut as Ashton finished the last of the incantation and tossed it to the side as the ceremonial chamber came to life around them, the crests on the walls faintly glowing a dull shade of red and throbbing as they activated. She heard Rena gasp loudly over the thump of the book's landing but didn't bother to look at her, the mage was far too busy working on the straps to pay they younger woman much attention at the moment.
Bowman didn't like this, the spell had been activated but the dragons were still just as physically there as before and acting just as removed. Ashton could be suffering from slight tachycardia already from what he could tell, but that was assuming it wasn't just stress and excitement. "Ashton, I–" Bowman stopped mid-sentence as a low thrumming noise started emanating from the room itself, the lit crests on the walls darkening, the rate of their throbbing increasing as the white crests on the ceremonial chair and floor dimmed their intensity. Looking beyond Anchors, Claude, and Celine the pharmacist leaned forward slightly and checked to see what might have caused that. The blood was clearly visible beneath the dimmed light now, though it looked as though it acquired a glow of its own as it mingled with the clay mixture. His curiosity satisfied, Bowman leaned back and looked down at the back of his patient's head. "Ashton, I need you to lift your head, look at one of us, and tell us what you're feeling." They couldn't tell if he was suffering from any mental symptoms of shock or unconscious in he wasn't responding to begin with.
He really didn't want be looking at or speaking to anyone while this was happening, he wished Bowman hadn't specified that. Ashton opened his eyes, realizing that he was still holding the knife as he did so and released it as quickly as he could, his eyes meeting Celine's briefly as she looked up at the movement, the knife clattering against the side of the platform and the armrest. He blinked rapidly a few times before looking away from her and stared at the glowing red crests on the back on the door, trying to forget the horrified, anxious expression on her face and the way her eyes were swimming. What was he feeling? Pretty much what it looked like Celine was experiencing mixed with the sensation of his blood pumping from his body, the tingling the crests on his skin caused as they flared, soreness in his back from leaning forward so oddly to keep Gyoro and Ururun comfortable, tingling numbness in the side of his left calf and foot, and burning pain from his left arm and right leg. "One of my feet feels like it's asleep on one side. My other leg and the last arm you did feels like it's on fire."
It sounded like he had almost completely or completely severed one nerve and seriously damaged the other two. "It'll be okay. They'll be fixed in no time, I just hit your nerves." Bowman wasn't going to say Rena's name, the healer would start casting if he did since that was the signal they had agreed to. He needed to get on Ashton's side so he could see at least part of his face and watch his eyes, but Precis was still holding the leg strap in place for Claude and Dias was exactly where he needed to be. The pharmacist glanced over at the tall swordsman as Celine lifted the knife up to him and accepted it before passing it over Ashton's head to him. Removing his hand from the juncture of Ashton's jaw and throat, Bowman accepted the knife and sat it beside him before retuning his pointer and middle finger to the other man's carotid artery. He was definitely starting to experience tachycardia now, it was too far from his resting rate to be solely pain and stress. Leaning himself forward again he frowned down at the clay-filled depressions, trying to gauge how much of his blood volume Ashton had lost so far and unable to come up with a decent estimate. The glowing of the blood in the depressions was spreading, he could tell that plainly enough by how it was sparkling in the grooves.
"Precis, you ca–What the hell?" Claude blinked down at the blood filled groove that emerged from beneath Ashton's foot, his hands finishing the last buckle on autopilot as he stared at the blood that was traveling down the stone groove and the glimmer that was making its way up it at an astounding pace. "Celine?"
"It's just the spell. It's working." The mage finished tightening her own restraints and nodded distractedly to Dias as he released his hold on the rope that had been keeping it in place. Stepping forward slightly, she reached for Ashton's hand and tried to meet his eyes and ignore the tears that streaked down his face every time he blinked. She started when her fingers touched his and found them far too cool for her liking. "His hands are cold."
"What? Claude stopped staring at the glowing blood at that and felt the toes of the foot before him. "She's right, your feet are too. Can you feel it?"
Ashton shook his head and kept staring at the door, his tears not registering past everything else. "My right hand feels a little cool, I can't feel the rest of it." He was pretty sure it was due to Bowman hitting those nerves when he cut him. His skin was starting to itch all over. It was probably the crests being pulled from his body but he wasn't going to look down to check. Gyoro and Ururun were moving again and he could feel their weight shifting on his spine and their muscles pulling on his. He hoped this wasn't hurting them. Rena sobbed from somewhere behind him and he shook his head at her, not moving his gaze from the door. "Don't cry, Rena. Please d–" Ashton tightened his jaw to cut himself off, his voice had nearly cracked and none of them needed to hear that.
Dias turned his head the second the Nedian's name left the Elurian's mouth, trying to detect whether he needed to rush her and interrupt any spell she might be casting. Perhaps they should have informed Ashton about the healer's signal or just told him not to speak to her. It was too late for that now.
Rena had almost jumped up and started casting at the sound of her name being called, but Ashton's voice registered too quickly for her to act on her impulses. She sniffed and dragged her hand over her eyes, shaking her head at him as she stared at the pulsing crests on the walls before her.
Bowman was too caught up in assessing Ashton's condition to care about the dragons or the healer at the moment. "Are the tips of his fingers and toes turning blue? One of you press down on one of his nails and tell me how long it takes to go back to normal." The pharmacist shooed Precis out of the way and grabbed the ceremonial knife by the handle distractedly before crawling on all fours over to his patient's side. Ashton looked like shit, even without the crying. His lips weren't cyanotic and he hadn't broken out into a cold sweat yet, though.
"A bit pale, but…" Celine trailed off, wiping the fingers of one hand over her face to get rid of the tears that were forming as she pressed down on Ashton's middle finger roughly for a second before pulling it away and counting mentally as Claude moved to stand between Ashton's legs. "Four seconds, it looks like." She hoped her estimates were correct, the crests on Ashton's skin were starting to shift and move before their eyes and it along with the way he suddenly began panting slightly as she counted had distracted her while she counted before she tuned it out.
Ashton's capillaries where restricting and he was mildly hypotensive already. Bowman checked his carotid artery again, having to press on the artery with more force to feel it as he had before and not bothering to wait a few a full minute to get an actuate pulse count as he mentally tabulated the speed of his pulse and estimated it to be around one hundred and twenty now. "Ashton, we need you keep talking. Are his eyes still focused? Is he just staring blankly?" It was probably too soon for that but he still craned around the other brunet as best he could but found himself unable to get a good look at the opposite side of his face to make his own observations. He wished the chair didn't jut out of the platform the way it did.
He didn't have anything to talk about. Well, that wasn't true, it felt like a headache was starting to form in the middle of his skull but it wasn't bad enough for him to mention it yet. Ashton lifted his head and stared at the ceiling above the door, the edges of his vision going dark as Claude leaned in towards him, trying to meet his eyes and he winced as Gyoro and Ururun whined above him and a strange pulling sensation started to tug at his back underneath the dragons. Blinking more tears away, the room, Celine, and Claude shifted suddenly and morphed into odd shapes before him as the room warped around him, that vague pulsing in the middle of his brain suddenly intensifying to a stabbing pain along with it. Ashton forced his eyes shut at that, trying to block his vision and force it back to its proper alignment.
The panting combined with the way Ashton avoided his eyes was starting to freak him out, it was just too off from his normal behavior, even when he was being evasive. His eyes were still focused from what he could tell, but the way he had screwed his eyes shut and winced in pain was what demanded Claude's attention. "Hey, what's wrong? C'mon, Ashton, we need you tell us what's going on." He almost wanted to ask the others if it looked like the dragons were starting to glimmer to them too, but they weren't important at the moment.
"The room moved," Ashton panted, his face contorting into a grimace as he blinked and looked over Claude and Celine's heads. There really wasn't any other way to describe it. "It feels like someone's stabbing me in the head." He was starting to floaty too, but it wasn't the same as when he was around the mage, there was something almost jerky about it, like someone was tugging on his mind while they were stabbing it but he figured that was from the room shifting on him and throwing his equilibrium off.
Okay, now Ashton's brain wasn't getting enough blood thanks to low blood volume and pressure. "Open your eyes back up. Claude, are they focused?" Bowman needed an answer to this, along with speaking incoherently and making no movements without prompting it was the next big sign that his brain was being starved of oxygen past the point it could adapt.
Claude studied the brunet's eyes as he blinked up at the ceiling again. "Yeah, he just won't look at us." Hint, hint. That was a clue there, Ashton. You might want to take it before I make you.
"Ashton, stop staring at the wall and look at us." Celine waited a few short seconds for him to comply before pushing past Claude and stepping up on the clay block to hover before the sitting man. "Ashton. Look at me right now." Really, acting like a toddler was the last thing he needed to be doing at the moment, she was almost expecting him to throw a tantrum and start thrashing and screaming next.
Ashton winced as the mage's movements caused the room and her form to start warping again, his headache increasing with it and suddenly enraged that she had done that to him. He clenched his fists and jaw and glared up at her, his tears stopping in the wake of this sudden, violent anger and he snarled and wrested his right arm against the straps weakly as the impulse to hit her took over. "Get the fuck away from me."
"Whoa." Precis turned from Rena to stare at Ashton as best she could despite not being able to see even the top of his head. "Is he doing that personality change thing?" Or did he just go nuts on them again? Seriously, she'd never heard Ashton use that word or tone of voice before, it almost sounded like he would have hit Celine or something if he could.
Bowman didn't bother turning his head to look at the inventor, he was too busy trying mentally calculate which stage of shock Anchors was in now given the apparent mental confusion and agitation he was experiencing. "Yeah. Celine, get away from him and let Claude get up there." She didn't need to deal with this, Ashton wasn't the type to use such harsh language or threaten people even on his worse days but he wasn't himself anymore.
Celine pulled her hand from Claude's grasp as he tried to coax her into moving, still engaged in a staring match with the heraldic swordsman below her. She was almost thankful that Ashton had gotten into this state of his, his actions had managed to shock and annoy her out of her own tears. "No. I'm not moving and there's not a thing he can do to make me." Really, as if she didn't know she wasn't speaking to their Ashton anymore or that he could do or say anything to hurt her when she had such knowledge.
He struggled as best he could against the straps and Dias and Bowman's hands as they fell upon him at that, utterly incoherent in his rage as he sputtered profanities and insults at her for nearly half a minute before he collapsed backwards onto the reclining back of the stone chair, his exertions leaving him shivering from cold, his body heavy, stiff, and panting even worse than before.
Well, at least he could look his patient in the eyes now. Bowman moved one his hands from the other brunet's shoulder and checked his pulse again, taking note of its weakness and rapidity and his clammy skin as Ashton blinked slowly up at the ceiling, shuddering as he broke into a cold sweat. "Feeling better?" Anchors really shouldn't have done that, his system was already filling up with acids generated from his body as it tried to deal with his blood loss and his exertions would only speed up their accumulation and the damage they were doing to his organs.
It took a while for him to respond to that as he lay panting and staring up at the pharmacist, his vision slowly tunneling as his thoughts seemed to pull away from him and become hazy. "Thirsty." He was distantly aware of itching all over and the tugging on the dragons increasing as well, but he couldn't feel their spines pressing against his anymore and it almost felt like he was being slowly laid down on the stone of the chair's back.
That might have something to do with the way they seemed to be slowly growing transparent before their eyes and the crests on his body were to slithering quickly towards the incisions in his forearms and calves. Bowman sighed deeply as he looked over Ashton's body, noting his rapid, increasingly shallow breathing, the slightly unfocused look in his eyes as he blinked slowly up at him, the pallor of his skin, the full body shiver and cold sweat he had broken out into, and the faint signs of cyanosis developing on his lips and the base of the nails on his hands. "Yeah, it's–"
"Tuggin' itch an' back too small." Some part of him was aware that hadn't come out right, but it was too far away for him to feel or hear now, just like Gyoro and Ururun.
And now he was incoherent. "We're going to need to move on this soon. He's lost at least thirty-five, maybe forty or more percent of his blood now," Bowman stage whispered to Dias, Claude, and Celine, keeping his voice low to avoid exciting Rena but still be heard over Ashton's panting and the insistent thrumming coming from the walls of the chamber. If it was more than forty already he would be going unconsciousness or worse at any second. It was also the point of no return in most cases, but hopefully Rena's magics would turn that around for them. "Precis, do you have my bag?" She needed to get over here for a second so she knew what was coming.
The inventor turned her head to look over her shoulder again at that, her arms still wrapped around Rena as she tried to comfort her. "Yep. You need somethin' from it?"
"Right." Claude did his best to examine Ashton with Celine blocking his view, mimicking Bowman as he spoke. "Should we start cutting his straps off, or do think he might start struggling again?"
"Yeah, just bring it over here real quick," the pharmacist ordered distractedly before turning his attention back to the trio gathered around him. "He might move on us if we have to pinch him or something to get him to respond, but at this point the three of us can hold him down easily enough that I don't think it matters."
Celine would rather not move at the moment, she was far too worried and being relegated to bystander status did not sit well with her now that they were in this situation. She held herself and stared down at the prone brunet before her, watching as the crests and demons were slowly pulled from his body and frowned when he closed his eyes sleepily and didn't blink them open again as the pharmacist finished his explanations. Leaning down slightly, Celine pinched Ashton roughly on the back of his right forearm and felt quite relieved when he jumped as much as he could, his eyes flashing open as he looked up and babbled incoherently at her. His eyes were still unfocused, but so long as he could bring himself to look in her direction she would take it as a good sign.
Claude looked up at Celine at that, not bothering to raise his head, his eyebrows drawn down in disapproval. "You could have tried saying his name first." She needed to get out of his spot too, she could get between Ashton's legs whenever she wanted to after this was over.
Dias shook his head and retrieved the knife he still had hidden behind his back, watching Rena to be sure that she hadn't turned around or realized what the others were talking about. That annoying thrumming that emanated from the walls seemed to be drowning their voices out, though he couldn't say that the pulsing red light of the crests had any redeeming qualities. The white light of the crests on the chair and floor were still bright enough to keep the room from being bathed in their dim light and he found himself grateful for that. Turning back to Ashton, Dias bent down and started cutting through the straps on the arm below him, trying to ignore the distant gaze of the heraldic swordsman as it fell upon him.
The mage ignored the look the blond was sending her way, choosing instead to focus on Ashton as he looked between Claude, Bowman, and Dias before turning his attention back to her. It seemed he had straightened his priorities out again and she smiled down at him tightly. "He didn't say that."
Bowman looked up from Ashton and nodded. "It got him awake, that's all that matters. If he gets too bad we'll have to do more than pinch him to get him to respond. Could you step down and tell us what the clay's doing while we work? Unless he gets too bad first I want to him move as soon as these two are gone and something's going on with it." He checked the other brunet's pulse at that as Precis made her way over, calculating his rate and finding it much more rapid and difficult to feel than it had been seconds before. Shifting his attention to the teenager as she stood beside him, he motioned for her to bend down before speaking, hoping she would respond in a similarly hushed tone. "I need all the cases labeled 'dopamine,' 'epinephrine,' and 'norepinephrine,' dug out of that bag. You might as well stick close by too, we're probably going to be moving him soon." Rena's powers shouldn't force those chemicals from him, they were naturally occurring neurotransmitters that the body wouldn't recognize as foreign or harmful substances and only counter any adverse effects there were to them being introduced so quickly. That was what he was hoping, anyway. Anchors would probably be screwed if her magics did neutralize their presence somehow.
It seemed to be taking a moment for Precis to respond to that as she gawked at Ashton, so Celine took the opportunity to respond to the pharmacist before she stepped down. "It's too late for that. If we move or have Rena heal him before the dragons' souls have been fully transferred they'll all die."
Precis looked up at that, tearing her eyes off Ashton and the disappearing dragons to stare at the mage. "Seriously? How do we know? Do we just leave him here until Urie and Gyoro are up and moving or something?"
"The crests are transferred at the same rate their souls are, so once they've fully disappeared, the crests are gone, and his blood stops glowing he'll be safe to heal." She could have sworn she had explained all of this to them the other night, perhaps the ritual had caused them to suffer from some odd form of selective amnesia.
"That's…." Claude searched Ashton's body quickly as he stepped up on the clay block, noting his now bare chest and abdomen and trying to calculate how much longer it would take as the mage stepped down and to the side. "He might not have another minute."
"Precis, I need those syringes!" Bowman shook his head at the inventor as she continued to look between the mage and the heraldic swordsman and picked up the ritual knife from the stone floor and leaned down to start working on the straps below him. Maybe he should have put Dias in charge of the medical bag, if Precis kept this up he didn't know what he would do.
Celine frowned as she turned to consider the clay. "Stop talking like that, it doesn't do one bit of good." She knew Claude was just as worried as the rest of them but she had been hoping for some optimism from him, the rest of them were certainly having enough difficulty managing it.
Precis started at that and started to dig through the medical bag. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry, geez." Sorting through the bag quickly, she keeled down beside the pharmacist and started to remove the hard plastic cases as she came across them, looking over at him. "Am I supposed to be holding these or what?"
Bowman nodded distractedly at that, trying not cut into Ashton's arm as he freed it from its restraints. "I need one of the dopamine syringes now, put the rest of the cases in your pocket or something." He was going to go ahead and dose Anchors with that, if he got a full dosage of it quickly enough it would cause his veins and arteries to constrict further and artificially increase his blood pressure. With luck he wouldn't give him a stroke.
Claude looked up from the leg strap he was cutting at that, craning his head past Dias as he worked on the abdomen restraints to look at the pharmacist. "You're not going to inject him with something already, are you? You think that's safe?"
"I don't know, but he needs more blood flowing to his brain and that's the only way he's going to get it right now." It would probably send more blood to the arteries he had hit as well, but the brain couldn't stay starved the way Ashton's was for more than a few minutes without incurring damage and the pharmacist didn't want to chance it. He looked up as Precis opened the dopamine case and removed one of the syringes, taking it from her quickly when she held it out to him and holding it out towards the blond. "I can't reach the port on his hand at this angle, so you or Celine need to inject him with all of it." Ashton had closed his eyes while they were distracted, so he sat the ritual knife down and pinched him roughly on the neck, growing relieved when the other brunet managed to flinch and move his head away as he mumbled and blinked sleepily up at him, his gaze distant and unfocused. The dragons' souls were off his back now by looks of it, but the crests were still slithering down his forearms and lower legs so the transfer hadn't been completed yet and they were still hanging out in his body somewhere. Bowman guessed that was what was going on, he didn't have a clue and trying to rationalize magic tended to give him a headache.
Celine turned her attention from the blood and clay as it glowed, quivered, and rolled upon itself in strange ways and looked over to the quartet of men at those words, taking in the way the blond was hesitantly reaching for the syringe and coming forward to stand beside him. She would rather not be the one to do it, but Claude should be focusing himself on removing the straps and she wasn't certain if he knew how to make the injection. Not that she did herself, but she had witnessed Bowman insert and flush the catheters so she presumed that she had more knowledge than the youngest man. "I'll do it. Do I need to take the cap off the end and put the needle in or should I take that off first?"
Bowman nodded and got back to work on the straps as Claude took the syringe from him and handed it off to Celine looking very relieved. "You got it. The needle stays on. It's not long enough to go past the tubing, so go slow and put it all the way in." He was done freeing Ashton's arms and shoulder and it looked like Dias had gotten his other arm and the restraints holding the trunk of Ashton's body down, so it looked like they were waiting on Claude to finish. Celine needed to be quick about this, Anchors' was closing his eyes again and his breathing was starting to become unstable. The pharmacist wasn't going to check his pulse; his cold sweat was fading and his fingertips and lips were turning fully cyanotic, so he was certain his heartbeat was too weak and rapid at this point for his tastes. "Claude, the second we lay him down and get his feet elevated I want you to start compressing his chest." Even if he wasn't in full cardiac arrest by then the manual pumping of his heart would get his blood moving more effectively through the rest of his circulatory system. He should have brought an oxygen tank and breathing mask or a nasal cannula, maybe even a manual air pump at the very least.
"No problem." It was a good thing CPR was a part of the Federation's mandatory training, it meant that he'd be able to do something other than sit back and watch like Celine had to. Claude shifted to Ashton's right side to give the mage room to inject the brunet in his left hand and started working on the straps on his right leg.
Dias watched Claude and Celine work as he put the knife he had been using back in its sheath and attaching it to the back of his pants again and checked on Rena from the corner of his eye. The Nedian knew they were up to something, that much was obvious; she was doing her best to glance over her shoulder without being conspicuous about it and had uncurled herself from around her knees as she readied herself to move. He was very proud of her at the moment, but then he had always been proud of her and that strength she had despite the way he worried about her occasionally.
It had been easy enough to tell that something was going on, the room had grown far too quiet after Ashton had stopped threatening and cursing at Celine like a drunken sailor for something not to have happened. Rena was doing her best to forget that even if it had startled her enough that her powers were no longer sparking beyond her control, she knew that hadn't been him saying those things and she was praying he wouldn't remember any of it. He was going to wake up and be himself tomorrow and they were all going to pretend that hadn't happened, she had already decided that.
Precis stood up to put the syringe cases in her pockets as she looked to the ceiling and tried to avoid looking at Ashton again or checking out the clay, she had a feeling that she didn't want to see what was going on there. She looked over to check on Rena and nodded at her and tried to smile when she saw her glance over quickly, wishing it didn't feel so fake. Ashton better be okay after all this was over, otherwise she was gonna kick his butt.
Celine stepped back once she withdrew the syringe and recapped the port, examining the crests as the last traces of them curled down the sides of his lower forearms and a few inches above his ankles as Claude stood back and dropped the knife he was using. Fiddling with the syringe, she recapped it and watched the blood as flowed slowly down the grooves, waiting for the glow and sparkle of it to fade. "It's almost done."
Bowman didn't need to be told that and doubted Dias or Claude did, but he appreciated the mage's status update all the same. He started to unwind the IV line wound around his waist at that, straightening it out as best he could and looked up to Dias and found him following his lead. "I want you to go ahead and connect to the catheter, but don't take the clamp off until I tell you to." The swordsman didn't need to be told that and he knew it, but if he didn't one of the others might think they were already starting the infusions if he didn't say anything.
Dias nodded as Precis stepped back to get out of the way and Claude removed his jacket and folded it under his arm before laying his hands over the prone brunet's knees, waiting for the signal. Following the pharmacist's movements, Dias straightened the IV line before taking the end of it in his hands, leaning down, removing the protective caps from the catheter port and catheter extension line, ignoring the saline solution as a bead of the liquid dripped from the uncapped line. Watching Bowman's hands, Dias threaded the extension line to the port carefully before he positioned one of his hands in the pit of Ashton's arm and readied himself to lift him as the pharmacist positioned himself.
Well aware of the men's preparations, Celine kept her eyes glued to the grooves that traveled from below Ashton's extremities as she waited for the blood to stop its shimmering. She blinked as the languid flow of the bright liquid increased suddenly, almost looking up and calling out in alarm before noticing that the blood escaping Ashton's body had returned its normal state and the glimmer of the room's magics was retreating away from the chair as the blood flowed downward. "Now!"
"Rena, go!" Bowman nearly shouted as he and Dias lifted and started pulling the other brunet up and out of the chair, Claude lifting Ashton's feet and following them up as the healer's magics began sparking around the man they held in their arms. Walking backward swiftly, the pharmacist looked behind him as they advanced, waiting until they were nearly to the wall before he turned back and nodded at Claude and Dias and they laid him on the stone floor. Bending over Ashton, the pharmacist released the clamp on the IV line distractedly before he lifted the arm with the line in it and checked his patient's pulse again. "Shit," he cursed abruptly as he found himself unable to locate it and placed the palm of his hand over Ashton's nose and mouth, trying to detect whether the brunet was exhaling or not as Claude and Precis moved in from the side, the blond compressing Ashton's chest as the inventor started to remove the cases she had placed in her earlier. "Precis, I need you to inject the epinephrine and norepinephrine."
"Uh-huh." She had already figured that out. Kneeling down, she opened the cases and and selected a syringe of epinephrine and leaned over to inject it into the cannula on Ashton's left hand as Dias shifted to the side and Rena sat before Ashton's head and placed her hands to the side of it.
Claude didn't like that curse that Bowman had just let loose. "Is he breathing?" He'd do that for him to if he had to, at this point he would feel better about it if he was.
"Barely. Keep going." He wasn't going to try pinching or even hitting Ashton to get him to open his eyes or respond in some other manner, if the blond compressing his chest couldn't get a reaction out of him nothing would. His blood was finally starting to enter Ashton's system, but he was going to wait a minute or two before telling Dias to release the clamp on his line. "Celine, what's the clay doing?" The way he figured it if the magic kicked out or the clay stopped doing whatever it was doing it meant Ashton had given up on them.
She hadn't been paying attention to that, she had been frozen in place staring after them the second the men had lifted Ashton from the chair and started to moved him away from her. Turning at the pharmacist's prompting, she looked to the clay and found it glowing a hue of dark reddish-brown poked with white as it seemed to melt down somehow, quiver violently, and jerked about the depressions as if it was try to escape. "It's moving." Celine didn't have any words that would describe it succinctly, all she knew was that it was starting to turn her stomach. Really, at this point she almost wanted to rush over to the blankets and throw them over it to hide it from her sight. She probably would be if it wouldn't taint it and possibly kill the three of them.
As long as it was doing something. "Tell us if it starts doing anything el–" Bowman stopped short as Ashton made a small keening noise, his body tensing as his head rolled to the side. Shit. "Everyone but Rena get away from him. Precis, take the syringe out. Claude, Dias, turn him on his side, it doesn't matter which one. Rena, put your hands under his head and keep going." He hoped everyone understood that, he was speaking as quickly as Precis did when she got going on something.
Claude looked up at the pharmacist in disbelief while Precis removed the empty epinephrine syringe and tossed it away as she scooted back and Rena shifted her hands, Dias already leaning down and eyeing him in frustration when he didn't take his hands away from Ashton's chest. "What?"
"Do it, he's seizing!" Fuck, it better just be his synapses firing the wrong way, if not he might be having a stroke of some kind and that set it off.
Now Celine definitely wasn't paying attention to the clay and blood mixture as it continued its odd performance, she was too busy climbing the clay block and chair to reach the others, frantically wiping at her eyes as she stumbled up the chair's back.
The blond started at the pharmacist's words, quickly removing his hands and rolling Ashton over with Dias as he shook his head at himself, the look the taller swordsman had given him before he started moving, Ashton and the dragons, and just everything about this situation.
Bowman stepped back as the two swordsmen rolled the other onto his side, being sure to keep his arm up to keep the transfusion going and sighing as Ashton moved from the clonic phase and into the tonic, his breaths coming in erratic, staccato bursts as his head jolted backwards, the air forced through his vocal cords creating strangled sobbing noises every time he inhaled and exhaled. The arm Ashton wasn't laying on flashed out to hit Claude across his midsection before jerking back to strike at his own jaw with a clenched fist and stayed there as it shook minutely, his other arm impeded by the weight of his own body staining to move and jerking fitfully. Ashton's body tried to roll back towards Dias and Precis suddenly, but found itself held in place by the other men, his legs tensed tightly but oddly still compared to the rest of him. Bowman shook his head as Rena reached down to pull Ashton's fist away from him face and looked over at her, trying to ignore the terrified expression on her face. "Rena, don't. Just keep healing him, holding him like that won't do anything but make him hurt himself some more. If we're lucky your powers'll end this quicker than it normally would."
She stared up at the pharmacist as he shook his head at her until she released Ashton's hand and shifted it back under his head. Rena looked over the others as she poured her magics into him, not wanting to see him like this and wishing this would end soon as she took in the reactions of the others. Bowman was the most together of them next to Dias, the worried gleam in the pharmacist's eyes only thing separating their stony faces. Claude was wiping at his face with the back of his forearm and looking down at the ground between him and Ashton. Precis was leaning back on her hands, her eyes huge and her face pale as her mouth worked silently. Celine...she couldn't look at Celine, the mage was stuck in place barely a foot away from the ceremonial chair, her face a mix of concern, shock, panic, and fear, forgotten trails of tears drying on her cheeks.
All of those favors he owed Ashton were officially paid back at this point; this was way, way too much to just count for one or two of them. Claude pulled his arm away from his face as the brunet's arm bumped against his stomach, blinking as he realized the movements of it were slowing. He stared down at it until it stilled and fell limply to the floor and he looked up at Bowman, the pharmacist checking Ashton's breathing and nodding after a moment. "He's still alive?"
Still just barely and that was probably thanks to the transfusions, dopamine, and epinephrine in his system. "Yeah, roll him back over and start compressing his chest again. Dias, take your clamp off. You might need to stand up and hold your arm over your head like I am, I'm not sure." Bowman examined Ashton's face as he was rolled onto his back, trying to see if there was any obvious muscle weakness in his face and not finding any. "Precis, shoot him up with the norepinephrine. Celine–" He looked up finally to the mage standing before them and nodded at her, trying to be reassuring even as he blinked at the sudden vertigo he experienced and tried not sway or stumble forward. "He'll be okay. If he made it through that still breathing then he'll hang in there until we've got him stable."
He best not be lying to her. Celine's eyebrows drew downwards as she took in the pharmacist's blinking and slight swaying. He best not be hurting himself either. "Bowman, you need to sit down."
"Nah, I'm okay." Dammit, Celine. He needed to stay hooked up for at least one more minute, otherwise they would drain Dias so much that he would go into shock too and they didn't have anyone that could donate blood to him. Bowman looked back down at Ashton, ignoring the way the others were studying him and nodding as he saw Dias' blood traveling through his line to Ashton's other arm. "How's the clay doing?"
She was going to get him later, and not in the pleasant way she was reserving for his patient. Celine turned slightly to look back down to the clay and blood filed depressions and found their contents in the process of molding themselves to human forms in a rather disturbing manner; the near liquid-like blood and clay mixture rolling over itself as thought it were in a mixer of some sort, skeletons laced with flesh and forming organs peeking out from under the darkly glowing mixture as it moved. Those dragons really were more trouble than they were worth. Celine turned her head back to consider the pharmacist, trying to quiet her stomach as it turned upon itself and wondering how in the world she could ever describe such a thing to someone. "Still...going."
"Great." Bowman had a hunch that he didn't want to look over and check for himself, Celine didn't get disturbed or disgusted easily but she definitely sounded it right now. The pharmacist decided that sitting would be a good course of action to take given the way everyone but Precis was staring at him now that the inventor was dosing Ashton with the norepinephrine, so he lowered himself to the ground slowly and sat before raising his arm above his head and resting his forearm on his skull. He might as well, Dias' transfusion seemed to be going smoothly and he was sitting.
Claude was going to keep compressing Ashton's chest and staring at the pharmacist until he disconnected himself or something, he was the one that knew what was going on with Ashton and they needed him clearheaded so he could tell them what to do and give them reports on his condition. He could do it too, he might be blond but he wasn't stupid; he could do two or more things at once. Besides, Rena was definitely with him on this one, she was all out glowering at Bowman and cutting her eyes back and forth between his face and the IV line as she took a handful of blackberries from her pocket and put them in her mouth.
Rena chewed the blackberries slowly as she returned her hand to the side of Ashton's cool face and stared the pharmacist down as he checked the heraldic swordsman's pulse and breathing. She was going to wait until he was done checking on him and then start giving him the look. That worked ninety-nine percent of the time with him, so if this was one of those rare instances that it didn't she'd jump on him along with Claude, he looked as though he was getting ready to say something as well. "Is he doing better?" the healer asked once the pharmacist took his hand away.
"A little. His pulse is palpable without too much difficulty again but still weak." Yeah, he knew he was in trouble. Bowman wasn't sure if it was him imagination or not, but it looked to him like Ashton's lips were slowly losing the blue hue they had taken on. He was still cool to the touch despite the activity of the seizure, though. "I'll stop in a minute, so stop giving me those looks. I'll even time it, see?" The pharmacist raised his other hand and made a show of checking Claude's watch.
Dias narrowed his eyes at Bowman, supposing that the pharmacist had gotten himself worried enough that he would overextend himself for the care of his patient. He wouldn't say anything; Celine, Claude, and Rena looked as though they were about to handle it themselves.
Precis had that feeling too, but she wasn't going to get in on it because if she said anything Bowman would single her out and try to start an argument with her to change the conversation and distract the others. She turned away from them and rolled the spent syringe across the stone floor to the corner Rena had spent the ritual in before facing the others again. Her curiosity was demanding that she try to get a peek at whatever the clay was doing, but Celine's tone the last time she checked on it told her that she didn't want to look.
The inventor was a very intelligent young woman, the mage certainly hadn't learned her lesson considering she was glancing back to the clay again. Bowman wouldn't be providing them with distractions for much longer and the mage would like to see the demons up and moving, she could argue with Gyoro or something similar then and it would reassure her far better than Bowman's attempt had. It didn't look as though it would take but a minute or two more, there wasn't much clay left from what she could tell and the bodies were fully muscled and gaining skin here and there now. Celine didn't bother to say anything at that, she simply made her to the steps on the side of the platform and descended them before starting towards the blankets.
Claude frowned at the pharmacist as he pumped Ashton's chest, Celine's movements drawing his attention before she descended from the platform and walked out of his view and he looked back to Bowman. "You have to have given at least a pint if not two by now, so knock it off and take it out."
Bowman was pretty sure it was more like two and a half if not three at this point. "I've got fifteen seconds left." Technically that was approaching shock territory as it was a quarter of his blood volume, but it would be low grade hypovolemic shock and he'd be over it in a day or two. That and by his estimates Ashton had given as much as a little over half of his to the dragons and considering his physical condition he might normally have a pint or two more than average when he wasn't busy bleeding out. "Precis, start setting him up for the saline solution but don't use the one that's half full."
This had gone on long enough. Rena was starting to worry about the pharmacist, the arm with watch on it was swaying slightly and he didn't seem to be noticing it. "Bowman, unhook yourself right now before I make you." She could keep healing Ashton and tackle the pharmacist at once so long as no one surprised her too badly.
It wasn't swaying. Still, between him and her talking his fifteen seconds were up, so he lowered his arm and peeled the protective tape off the catheter before pulling it out and holding it up so that it would finish draining into Anchors and ignored the drops of blood that beaded out of the hole and ran down his arm to his rolled up sleeve until Rena's powers enveloped him and healed the small wound. "There. Fifteen seconds." Just so everyone was aware that Rena hadn't intimidated him into it this time.
Bowman was such a pain, Precis hoped he didn't ask her for a lift to Linga or something once they got to the Lacour continent. "How long's it going to be before he goes back to normal? I mean, he's not all blue anymore, but he still feels cold." It was kinda weird for her to be touching Ashton so much, the worse she'd ever done is hug him once and she'd never done that again after he tensed up and started stuttering and blushing so much it looked like his head was going to pop off. That and she felt like a molester or something touching him when he didn't have a shirt on considering how much he hated girls seeing him without one, which still didn't make sense to her. It wasn't like he was a bad looking guy or anything, though Claude was still way cuter than he was.
Dias craned his head to check on Celine and the clay now that Bowman had returned to his senses and found her standing with her back to them, a pair of blankets spilling over her arms. It seemed that they would have company soon. He shifted his attention back to the prone man laying between the five of them, unable to see either of his hands but confirming for himself that his lips were indeed no longer blue, just frightfully pale. Dias supposed he wouldn't be destroying the letters until Ashton woke up again and Bowman pronounced him healthy and himself.
The mage was doing her best to ignore the dragons' actual golem bodies while still keeping an eye on them as the process finally wound down, the last of the clay folding itself over them in a thin layer and sinking into the newly created forms, completely disappearing. Celine studied their backs and sides for a few seconds, trying to determine if some new process would begin before the crests on the floor and walls began dimming. Taking that as her cue, she threw the blankets over them before kneeling down beside the depression on her right and peeling blanket back slightly over the head of whichever demon this was. She was going to have to cut their hair or do something to differentiate them from their host, she decided as she forced one of the demon's eyelids and examined the irises, different eye color wasn't nearly enough. It seemed that she had lucked into the demonic brother she was looking for going by the faintly glowing yellow of the eye as it shifted to look at her, the eyelid she was holding straining to close again. "They're done," she called up to the others behind her before letting go of the demon's eyelid and letting him close it. "Can you move?"
Outside of the fact that Celine was talking to whichever dragon it was proving that he was conscious and that Anchors was still alive–which they already knew–Bowman didn't really care about them at the moment. He grunted in acknowledgement of the mage's words and pulled the catheter out of Ashton's arm as gently as he could considering he didn't have the ritual knife anymore and the bandages and tape were keeping it secured, not worried about causing damage to the vein as he wasn't being rough with it and Rena was still healing him.
Rena looked up at that, relieved to have the dragons transferred and the room winding down. "Are they okay? Can they tell us how Ashton is?"
"Let him wake up a bit, darling." Gyoro seemed rather groggy and disoriented to her, hopefully it wasn't an indication of his host's current state. "Gyoro, I want to you move or say something right this instant, blinking doesn't count."
Gyoro did not like the stone of the depression he was curled in, it was far too cold for his comfort. He shivered and drew the blanket tighter about himself, frowning at the mage above him. "I am cold."
Oh, well of course you are. Celine nearly rolled her eyes at that and frowned at the demon below her. "If you get up and start moving you'll warm up."
Gyoro grunted at that and started shifting to stand, not paying any mind to the female standing beside him as he did so. Tightening the blanket around his shoulders as he stood, he tilted his head and considered Celine and the way she was looking away from him and towards the door. "Why are you looking away from me?"
This again. Really, Gyoro was starting to give her a headache and he'd only been conscious for less than a minute. "We. Have had. This. Discussion. Before." She spoke slowly and quietly to avoid the others hearing her, enunciating her words as clearly as she could while stared at the door. "Now hold the blanket from around your waist."
Gyoro tried to ignore the pang of irritation he felt at this odd behavior as he frowned at her and looked down at himself, finding his former host's lower abdomen, reproductive organs, and legs partially hidden behind the blanket, the edges of the fabric pulled away from each other slightly by his elbows due to the way he was holding it before his collar bone. He supposed that in a way they were his now, but given that this body was molded after Ashton's he should still hide it in a manner that he would approve of to avoid being punished. He shifted his grip on the blanket to the position the mage demanded, noticing as he did so that his other was not yet stirring and deciding that he would rectify that.
Celine looked back to the demon as he began to walk away from her and blinked in shock as his foot flashed out from the blanket and he kicked at his still resting brother, connecting with what she would assume was his stomach and a pained gasp issued from underneath the blanket Ururun was hidden under. Tria, she couldn't stand these dragons. "Gyoro, leave him alone!"
"Hey!" Precis had seen enough of that to know what had just happened. Gyoro better not do that to Urie again or she was going kick his butt, clothes or no clothes.
Dias shook his head at the demon's behavior from beside the inventor, blinking at the room as it spun before him in the wake of his movement.
Bowman was still ignoring the dragons even if he couldn't see either of them from his position. "You okay? Claude, I think you can stop now, his heartbeat's getting strong enough that he should be fine on his own." He was going to check a few seconds after the blond stopped compressing his chest to be sure.
"Dizzy, that's all." The pharmacist had gone past that point, there wasn't any need for concern so far as Dias could tell.
Rena couldn't believe the former red dragon, he was in his new body for only a minute or two and he was already picking on his brother. "Gyoro, stop being mean to poor Ururun and come over here." The healer wasn't ever going to use that name for the blue dragon, she was going to boycott it for the rest of her life. Bowman hadn't told her to stop healing Ashton yet, so she wiped the sweat that forming on her brow away kept going.
"Yeah, get over here and see Ashton." Claude figured that might tug on the demon's heartstrings enough to get him to listen to one of them. Hopefully he didn't flash Rena or Precis when he got up here, the inventor would probably tattle on the dragon the second she saw Ashton up and about if he did. The blond sat back now that he was done compressing the brunet's chest and felt the arm in front of him, nodding to himself when he judged it to have warmed up a bit. Ashton was still too pale, though.
He was going to be that way until his body adjusted, the effects of the dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine wore off and his capillaries started opening back up. Bowman figured that would take another five or ten minutes and even then he would only improve to the point that he didn't look and feel like a corpse. "Tell me if it starts getting worse." Dias still had another minute to go before he would consider unhooking him.
Gyoro stepped over Ururun's still prone form, kicking his foot out behind him and connecting with his other's back as he went and ignored the hard stare the mage was giving him as he retreated from her and towards the other humans. He was not worried or intimidated by the threatening glare Precis was sending him, unlike his other he did not care much for the perky inventor and had no qualms about upsetting her. The expression on Rena's face as he approached was another matter, however. Gyoro supposed that he might need to apologize to his other once he joined them to keep the humans from telling Ashton what he had done. The demon made a mental note to attack his other in private later if the healer forced him to do such a thing. Coming to stand beside the blue-haired woman, Gyoro looked down to study his former host and frowned after a few long moments passed. "When will he awaken?"
Great, not only was the dragon a psychopath, he was useless too. "We were hoping you could tell us something about that." Bowman wasn't going to bother looking up at the demon, he had better things to do. Such as check his former host's heart rate and if it was still stable without Claude guiding it.
"Our magics have been sealed and our mental link along with it," Gyoro explained, glancing up from Ashton to see Celine helping his other to his feet before looking back to his former host and examining him again. "However, I believe I can still determine when he will awaken rather easily." Not bothering to finish speaking before he acted, the demon bent down and slapped Ashton across the face sharply, the smacking sound echoing through the room as the humans gathered around him cried out and rebuked him harshly.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, someone get him away from here!" That was it, Bowman was tired of the dragons. Both of them, it didn't matter that Ururun hadn't done anything yet, Gyoro was enough. He turned his attention back to Ashton as Claude started dragging the demon away, almost jumping back in surprise when he noticed the other brunet blinking and staring off into space, his head tilted to the side thanks to the force of Gyoro's slap. "Ashton? Ashton, hey, look at me."
Celine had been about to rush up the steps and throttle the demon for that before Bowman began calling Ashton's name, her attention shifting in an instant as the implications of it registered. Dragging a still disoriented and pained Ururun behind her, she made her way up the steps to join the others and let go of his arm as they passed his brother and continued on to join Claude by Bowman's side.
Bowman frowned, his eyebrows turning down as Ashton turned his head to face him and blinked up at him slowly, looking not only sleepy but uncomprehending as well. Well, shit. It looked like he'd had a stroke, it was that or postictal paralysis along with postictal drowsiness and confusion but that only happened in about six percent of all cases so the chances of that were slim. Everyone but Dias and the dragons were crowding him and blocking the light from the lanterns, Bowman knew that much. "Back off, I need what light I can get." He needed to test this theory out and see if he could work out what was going on with Anchors at the moment. Taking Ashton's left hand, he lifted it up so his patient could see it and pinched the side of the man's hand within his view and tried gauge his reaction. "Can you feel this?"
He didn't know why the man beside him was holding and pinching someone else's hand above him like that and asking if he could feel it, it obviously wasn't his since he couldn't and it was so pale. His arm felt heavy as he as he reached across his body to take the proffered appendage from him, gripping it at the wrist, and he dimly realized that his own was just as pallid as the one he was now holding. This didn't make sense, it looked like his hands and arms but something told him that there had been something on them a few minutes ago and the one that he was holding felt so cold while rest of him felt feverish. Stretching the arm as far as he could across his body, he studied at as best he was able and tried to think, but found his mind blank, scattered and too, too full but somehow empty. He should be frightened, some distant part of him knew that, but he couldn't manage to feel anything even as he pulled the arm he held so far that his vision was dominated by the arm's bicep and he found himself overtaken by a strange knowing feeling, dimly coming to the conclusion that it was his arm and dropping it abruptly, the appendage falling to rest on his chest as the cold palm loosely cupped his right shoulder. Looking back to the familiar, brown-haired man–some part of him knew him, his name started with a 'B'–he tried to say something, anything, and found himself unable to move his mouth. At least it felt like he couldn't move his mouth, or his vocal cords either for that matter and he found himself staring up at him as he shook his head and tried to find his voice.
This wasn't good. Ashton didn't need to shake his head and work his mouth at him, the pharmacist had realized that the second Ashton took his own arm and studied it like it was a foreign object. The other brunet understood his words, so he might or might not be suffering from some form of aphasia. If they were lucky his apparent mute condition was due to the paralysis that had taken over his left side and it was hopefully temporary. The pharmacist leaned over and pinched Ashton's left foot and confirmed his suspicions as the prone man failed to react before reaching for his right foot and doing the same, exhaling loudly when he jerked his foot away and flinched.
Rena wasn't going to stop healing Ashton until he stopped doing this and she didn't care what anyone said or did, she was going to make him better. "Bowman, what's wrong with him?"
"I don't know yet." He leaned back up to meet Ashton's eyes again and decided to see if he could determine how confused he was by asking him yes and no questions. "Ashton, do you know who I am?"
Ashton nodded after a brief pause, the man's face sparking his memory as it reappeared in his line of sight. It was Bowman, he was a friend. It wasn't much but it was enough at the moment. He tried working his mouth again, his side feeling tingly as though it was half asleep and waking slowly.
The pharmacist looked around him at others gathered around Ashton and motioned for Dias to lean forward into the prone man's line of vision. "Do you know who he is?" Bowman was going to have to come up with some other yes or no answers eventually, but he'd rather see if Anchors had any gaps in this part of his memory yet.
Nodding again, Ashton tried to force the blue-haired man's name from his mouth, his right hand fisting in frustration as the index finger on his left curled slightly. "D...d-d-di…Di–"
"S'okay, calm down. You're doing good." Oh, thank Tria, Anchors was starting to come around. Looking up at Claude and Celine, Bowman noted that the dragons seemed to have come forward slightly from where they had been but didn't bother to motion them forward, he would rather not deal with either of them at the moment. "I don't think it's a stroke. Rena's magic probably wouldn't be able to do this if the damage was already done, so I think his brain's just worn itself out." He motioned for the mage to lean over him and into the other brunet's view and pointed at her over his shoulder. "What about her? Do you remember her?" He better remember her, Celine had done an amazing job of keeping herself together during this and if he didn't it might be the last straw for her.
"C–Ce...Cell–in…." He wanted to get their names out but he couldn't make his mouth and vocal cords work together correctly. His mind was starting to clear finally, and with it the awareness of a very intense headache. Ashton tired not to wince as the throbbing pain of it started to register.
Close enough. "Yep, that's Celine. What about this one?" Bowman pointed over his other shoulder as Claude followed his cue and came forward.
Right, now he was starting to become insulted by the pharmacist's questions. "Claw–aud." As if he didn't know who Claude was, Bowman must be out of his mind to think he had forgotten any of them. Ashton did his best to covey his annoyance to the other brunet, making a face at him before tilting his head back and finding Rena. She needed to stop looking so worried, he was okay. "D–don' Ren–don…I-I oka." That was good enough it seemed, the Nedian was smiling down at him as she reached out with a glowing hand and ruffled his hair. She really needed to stop doing that to him for a while, she seemed to have done it a dozen times already today. He was laying on his back, he suddenly realized. Blinking at the revelation, he looked back to the trio standing to his left and focused on Celine. "Gyor–an' Urun?" They had to be somewhere. Unless the ritual had killed all of them and the dragons had gone somewhere else.
Celine nodded down at him at that and turned to motion the demons forward so that their former host could get look at them, hoping that Gyoro would behave himself now.
"They're okay." Or as okay as they could be. It looked like Anchors was getting over the confusion and paralysis quickly enough even if he couldn't form his words completely yet, so the pharmacist decided to test his theory and pinched the younger brunet on his left forearm as he looked to Dias."Start undoing your catheter, I think he's done."
Ashton grunted and frowned at the pharmacist, jerking his arm away from him as best he could. Letting his left arm slide from his chest and fall to the side, he looked back up to examine the two dragons as they approached and cringed. It could have been worse, he supposed, they could have kept his eyes color as well. Maybe if he was lucky they sounded different from him, but he doubted it. Glancing between them before he settled his gaze on Gyoro and set his jaw weakly, wondering to himself just what he was going to do to punish him once he was feeling better. Either way the demon might as well know he remembered what he had done to the pharmacist earlier, so he stared at him until the former dragon began to squirm, his brother acquiring a small smile and looking away. Ignoring the sudden feeling exhaustion that settled over him, he took a deep breath and glared up at the demon, speaking slowly and as precisely as he could at the moment. "Gyor–o...you'n tro'ble."
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Author's Note: Ashton and the dragons are very lucky to have lived through this, there are four other versions of the ritual that came before this one and they died in all of them. They were also much more dramatic and graphic than this is as I had to tone myself down tremendously to keep them alive since I didn't want this story to be a tragedy and it's dark enough already. Some of the symptoms of hypovolemic shock that he experienced are only seen in cases where blood loss is much slower than his was, but he got to experience them anyway. It's a good thing I'm not the type to have favorite characters, I'd hate to see what might have happened to him if I did and he was one of them. This is going to take a back seat to finals for a week or two, I need to start studying for them and after that I'll probably take a few days afterwards to decompress.
Author's Confession/Soapbox/PSA: Ashton's behavior during the tonic-clonic seizure (grand mal or gran mal if you're old school like that) and his postictal (a fancy way of saying 'after seizure') state are based off my own and as such are autobiographical to a degree, especially his confusion and temporary paralysis, including the difficulty speaking and the speed that it started to fade. Todd's paralysis, referred to here as postictal paralysis, is a rare postictal state that as Bowman notes only about 6% of people who have such seizures will ever experience and not normally to such a frightening degree. Lucky me, I happen to one of that 6% and experienced it exactly the same way Ashton did before I before I grew out of my seizure disorder (yes, some childhood, adolescent, and very rarely adult eplieptics can grow out of it).
Anyway, here's the important bit: If you ever see someone having seizure try to stay calm, remove any nearby objects the best you can, gently put them in the recovery position (laying on their side), place either your hands or something soft between their head and the ground if they're on a hard surface, don't put anything in their mouth and please don't think of them differently or treat them like a leper afterwards–they're not possessed or contagious or anything like that and they might need your support–or expect them to know what just happened; most people will have no memory of the event and be extremely confused, tired, and/or agitated once they enter their postictal state and might need to sleep the effects off for at least a few minutes. Try to figure out if they've been diagnosed with some form of seizure disorder either by talking to them or looking through their personal affects as there are bracelets, necklaces and cards that some people carry for identification in case of such emergencies. If they have been diagnosed and have one seizure, don't call an ambulance unless they're pregnant, injured or they want you to. If they have no identification or prior knowledge of such a condition, have another one without recovering, or the seizure lasts for more than five minutes then call an ambulance because some seriously bad shit is probably going down.
