Sex, Drugs, and Oblivian

12/21

Mazikeen followed the annoying little male into the nest. She grimaced. The smell down here was different. Spawn smell. Sprog scent underneath it. She shuddered. Never had she willingly entered a nest before. It was beneath her dignity. She had a fondness for whelps, with their attitude and shameless guile; the way they would clamor for attention and seek affection if you had won their respect. She shook her head. No one was supposed to know that she had a soft spot for the little monsters. But spawn, and especially sprogs, were different!

Squee led her through a labyrinth of passageways at a jog. Past rooms full of screeching and mewling tiny Lilim. Past store rooms; she could smell many of Lucifer's favorite foods as she passed them. Down into the sprog rooms at the deepest level of the nest caverns. It was very dark down here. Only the faintest glow from the rocks lit the halls and chambers. Lucifer would be utterly blind.

Finally Squee stopped in front of a room with a leather door flap tied over it. She nodded, approving their decision to not lock him in. She untied the straps and stepped inside, leaving the flap loose. Squee could tie it back if he wanted.

Dromos was a massive Lilim. Her head barely reached his lower ribs and his breadth was easily three of hers. He was her much younger brother, and she remembered when he was a spawn. So large and fearsome looking...and so utterly useless as a hunter. He could be fierce when roused, and his sheer size gave most pause, but he was far too placid to make it as a warrior. He'd ever been drawn to caring for the tiniest sprogs and spawn. Patient with them in a way that made Mazikeen nauseous. Someone had to ensure the growth of Lilim-kind, she supposed.

He turned his great shaggy head toward her, half his face covered in a beard, the other half warped and deformed like hers. Lucifer lay naked on Dromos' lap; face down, arms and head draped over one of Dromos' massive arms, his wings hung limp, gray and caked with ash.

"Mazikeen! I've gotten some of the ash out of him, but he's weak. He can only handle a little coughing at a time. It's going to take a while for him to recover—if he makes it that long." Dromos punctuated his words by clapping Lucifer on the upper back several times between the wing joints.

She wanted to do something, needed to help, but what? Standing here helpless wasn't going to solve anything. "What happened? Has he been awake?"

"No. Looks like he spent the wind without shelter and used his wings as cover. It's a wonder he's breathing at all." Dromos rolled Lucifer over and tipped him until his head was angled down, then smacked the front of his chest. Mazikeen watched, hands curled in helpless fists as Dromos continued shifting Lucifer and smacking his chest until finally, a weak cough escaped. It built until Lucifer was coughing up black phlegm. Lucifer gasped and shook, unable to draw in effective breaths.

Dromos took a cup of gully wasp nectar and fed sips of it to Lucifer until the coughing stopped. He held him propped upright until Lucifer's color improved, before placing him on a padded mat at his side. Lucifer lay shivering and wheezing, wings flexed tightly against his back as he curled in on himself.

"I'll tend to him from here."

Dromos looked down at her, and then leaned over and sniffed at Lucifer's breath, and then pointedly back at her. "I may be a lowly nest minder but I know the smell of lethe when I encounter it. What were you thinking Mazikeen? Did you need to cripple his will to control him? He's barely more than a spawn."

Mazikeen leaned forward, and made a sour face as she smelled the same thing Dromos had. "He wouldn't."

Dromos narrowed his eyes at her and grumbled deep in his chest. "It wasn't you giving it to him?"

She growled and reached for Lucifer's arm. "Of course it wasn't me. I've been keeping him alive, restoring him. Not… this."

Dromos roughly dragged Lucifer out of her reach, and pushed the angel behind him. "Not doing so good a job at handling your charge, are you? You'll be lucky if he's not beyond mending."

"You dare—"

"When have you ever taken care of anything other than yourself?"

"I helped raise you, didn't I?"

Dromos kept his massive body between them. "That was a long time ago, Mazikeen, and from what I recall you left me to Varun so you could go hunt. You don't let spawn out of the nest! You keep an eye on the youngling whelps!"

"He's not a spawn!" Mazikeen protested.

Dromos snorted in response. "Squee told me this angel whelp didn't know how to tie sandals when he found him wandering in the marketplace a sprog cycle ago. You know how the lethe dealers are. What they do to whelps on it!"

From behind Dromos, Lucifer groaned and blindly reached out.

Mazikeen swallowed heavily. She hadn't recognized the symptoms. The scent had been masked under the reek of sex and hair-moss. And...she hadn't been paying attention. She'd been too wrapped up in her own misery.

"You really didn't know?" Dromos' voice dropped to a softer tone.

"Why would I suspect lethe? You know how rare it is."

Dromos sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. "It's not rare anymore. We've lost a hand of whelps to it in the last few sprog cycles. The potential of many fine warriors lost. They might make it as gatherers now."

Lucifer shifted and cried out, drawing their attention back to him. Mazikeen shoved Dromos to the side with an angry huff, and this time, he didn't resist. "Bring candles."

"Best to keep them in the dark. When it gets this bad, they get light sensitive."

"No. He's dark-blind. His eyes don't work like ours."

Dromos put his giant hand on her shoulder. "They go blind exposed to light, Mazikeen. He's your angel. If you want to take the risk, I'll send for candles."

Mazikeen looked at Lucifer shivering on the floor. "Just one. He needs light."

"You don't need to stay," Dromos reminded her again. "We've handled this many times. We will care for him as well as we would a Lilim whelp."

"I want you out. I will care for him."

The wheezing coming from Lucifer grew more labored. "Have you ever cared for someone with ash-lung?"

Mazikeen knew Dromos had won this, but she wasn't ready to admit yet. "What of it."

He scooped Lucifer up in his oversized paws, holding him upright, and the breath sounds evened out.

"He needs me," Mazikeen insisted.

"Stay with him then." Dromos fixed her with a glare. "The withdrawal is torture. Every sensation is magnified. Their minds are too muddled to cope. You understand, even if he survives, he'll likely never be as he once was?"

Mazikeen shook her head. "Not Lucifer. He'll survive and he'll recover."

"Then settle in. It'll be hands of ashfalls before we know for sure." Dromos shook his head. "Squee! Fetch a candle."

"Going, going, going."

Lucifer reached out as Mazikeen crouched beside him. "You've had a chance to inspect him. Is he injured?"

"Other than the ash-lung, nothing visibly life-threatening."

"After Squee returns I want you out. I will care for him."

"Mazikeen—"

She stood up and faced him, and though Dromos was larger, she knew he feared her. She waited for Squee to return with a candle. He lit it and placed it on the wall bracket on the other side of the room.

Lucifer stirred, eyes opening in a squint and then roaming the room until he locked on Maze.

"Leave us," Mazikeen ordered Dromos again.

The larger Lilim grumbled, but complied. He and Squee left.

Mazikeen moved Lucifer back onto the bedroll and then sat cross-legged beside him. She'd done the right thing, hadn't she? Now that she was faced with Lucifer on her own, the reality of his condition struck her anew. Dromos was right, she didn't know what she was doing. She wasn't the one who regrew Lucifer's wing feathers, he'd done that on his own. All she'd done was provide food and shelter.

She'd thought she was doing the right thing by letting him fend for himself while she worked guarding the wall. He hadn't wanted her around. Wasn't teaching whelps to survive independently the main purpose of sending them out of the nest? She brushed her fingers through Lucifer's hair. Ash coated his scalp and tinted his hair grey. She curled her finger around one of the curls and sighed. She kept forgetting he wasn't Lilim. He was strange to this world, and though he acted like a whelp sometimes, he wasn't one. He would never be Lilim.

Lucifer moaned again, seeking her hand. Maze let him, hoping it was a sign he was regaining consciousness, but instead, he pulled her finger up to his mouth. She tore her hand away, and he moaned again, scrabbling, reaching. He licked his lips and keened.

He babbled. Half-formed sounds that almost sounded like a word at times. She didn't have to understand to recognise it for what it was.

Begging for more lethe.

She pushed him back down, not gently. Disgust filled her. They had used him. She was going to hunt down whoever gave lethe to him and rip their limbs off… slowly... and then leave them outside the wall to be feasted upon alive by carrion. The last time he'd been badly used she'd left the Lilim at fault with a strong warning beaten and carved into their hides. This time she wouldn't be so kind.

Lucifer's wheezing breath picked up speed. His eyes snapped open. They fixed on an empty corner. Wide. Afraid. He began babbling in his angel calls. Again, she didn't need to understand words to understand his tone. He was terrified of whatever visions he saw there. But there was nothing.

"Lucifer." She squeezed his shoulder when he didn't respond.

His face scrunched up and he hissed in a pained breath. His focus was back on her, but his hands reached for hers and he licked his dry lips.

She examined him, looking for clues, she could use to find the people she needed to kill. Though Dromos had said he had no life threatening injuries, something bad had happened to him. The dark circles around Lucifer's eyes she'd seen last time were more pronounced. She brushed her finger over his throat. Bruises in the shape of fingerprints and narrow lines overlapped and criss-crossed over and around his neck. Moving down his body, she found welts and bruises, lashmarks, deep scratches, bites, even small burns. His wrists and ankles were bruised and rubbed raw from restraints.

It was easy to surmise whoever did this had been the one to give him the lethe—far too much lethe. With this much drug in his system she doubted he'd have been able to understand anything beyond pain.

Dromos returned and brought cleaning and bandaging supplies. Holding Lucifer down while he writhed in agony, too breathless to scream, as Dromos cleaned the ash from the open sores imprinted itself deeply in her mind. It haunted her. They had to keep treating him for the ash no matter how he cried out in pain at even the lightest touches, and every time added to her desire to kill those responsible.

To treat the ash-lung, Dromos thumped Lucifer's chest and back several times an ashfall, causing him to cough until his eyes watered; until he choked up black phlegm.

The third ashfall, Dromos' growled as he fed Lucifer sips of the nectar to stop his coughing.

"What?"

"It should be clear by now."

"Can't you hit him more often?"

"I'll try. Too often and he won't cough strong enough. For now his breathing is steady enough to allow him to take medicine to help him rest."

She took the vial and fed it to Lucifer. He took it with more enthusiasm than he had anything else, and he lay quiet for several heartbeats. Then his face screwed up in abject misery and he began babbling—begging—again. The broken sounds came near enough to words at times that she understood them, and they made her hatred of whoever had done this grow until it filled her chest with a nearly uncontainable mass.

She understood enough to know he wasn't begging her to not hurt him. And not just for more lethe either.
It was raw and needy and disgusting, but the expressions he wore and sounds he made toward the things that only he could see were worse. He warded himself from imaginary blows. Reached for things that weren't there with such yearning that it hurt her to watch it.

Dromos ignored it, said most of the whelps were like that. It would pass with the withdrawal. She hated the ones who'd caused this.

She hated herself for letting it happen.

It was easy to look back and realise he'd already been suffering lethe addiction when she'd found him in the ash covered dome. She berated herself for missing it. The confusion, lethargy, even the brash anger, but mostly the smell should have told her. Lethe users smelled like wet sandals, but it was exceptionally rare, she'd never considered it as a possibility.

How could she have been so blind?

She looked at his still ash coated wings. He'd been used and left to die in the wind.

It would take several ash cycles to get through this. She held him when he let her, gave him space when he grew restless and overcome with visions. He flipped between begging for Lethe in jumbled Lilim sounds and begging the corners and walls, even the ceiling in his angel noises.