This is based off a prompt on LJ. I blame ChimeraDark entirely for this. ^.~
Listen younglings, and listen well, for this is your only warning. Your creators told you the Nightwalkers were the only things in the darkness that could hurt you. They assured you that the darklings of the ancient tales had faded with the power of The Beast of Kaon. They were wrong …
If anyone had ever told First Aid before he had embarked on his journeyman rotation that a town could radiate evil he would have laughed. Now, as he stepped through the dirty, thickly piled snow that littered the streets of Pax Crystalia he felt otherwise. Ratchet had called this the Old District in his tome-like journal, a place where outdated customs were clung to and new ways scorned – sometimes violently. Head held high, Aid moved briskly through the streets, here the snow left to gather while everywhere else it was scrapped clean.
First Aid shuddered; his pedes were not the only ones to break through the dingy snow here. Other pedes, strange in form and number, had already dented long paths through the blackened snow. He looked up from the street, optics shifting to the passing houses that only increased his rapidly mounting trepidation.
The houses were mansions on vast tracks of land, dotted here and there with tiny cottages. Despair hung heavy in the air, despair tainted with something otherworldly and unkind. Something, Aid mused, that felt like drug-hunger. He increased his pace, breath puffing faster in the frigid air. Other mechs were on the street with him, mechs dressed in peasant garb he had seen only in ancient texts from a thousand vorns ago. He passed neither shop nor inn, only bank after bank of massive tracts of private land whose masters were nowhere in sight. This road wound long and snake-like through the rural landscape that managed to hide the towering warehouse district far to the west.
Finally, hours after leaving Ratchet's berth-side he reached his eastern-most destination. The hospital, the oldest in Pax Crystalia, towered like a warning grey-black thunderhead that reached to blot out the sky. Spires and branching turrets reached like diseased branches towards the mid-day heavens, spiderlike fingers straining to grasp the winter sun.
"Unicron's Gate healing ward," First Aid read the large plaque on the massive stone wall topped with razor shape spikes designed to keep all its wards inside and unwanted visitors out. "Thanks Ratch, I love my job." He huffed, shifting his healer's pouch with its single red cross more comfortably across his shoulder and reached for the pull rope beside the sealed gate.
"We do not accept visitors." A reedy voice spoke from nowhere, First Aid's neck plating prickled with unease.
"I am Journeyman Healer First Aid, I was sent by Master Healer Ratchet to perform the annual inspection of all healing staff, patients and your facilities."
"And why has the Master Healer not graced us with his presence?" The same voice asked with a dangerous edge.
Aid balked only momentarily, he had been told what to say by Mistress Arachnia, but still he felt he was sealing his fate by doing so. "He is recovering in the Black Fang from performing his second miracle."
"Ah, so the rumors are true." The voice seemed to smile wickedly. Then, a mech stepped from a shadow behind the gate and looked down on Aid. The mech was taller than the gate, his massive helm leaning over the lethal spikes like a youngling leaning over a small table top. "You are the same age as our Master Healer?"
"Uh, no he's my senior by two vorns." First Aid replied, once again silently awe struck that everyone considered him to be highly skilled and very intelligent for becoming a journeyman so young and yet his master had ten vorns experience on him for so small a gap in their ages.
"Enter, journeyman, our grounds are open to you." The mech smiled with needle like fangs, optics seeming to glow black in the bright daylight. Nodding the mech stepped aside, his grotesquely bent legs ending in malformed 'toes' he walked on instead of pedes. All along his frame, gleaming through the thick armor he bore, a reddish glow as if the fires of the Unmaker glowed from within his very core. "Only, young healer," the mech crouched, now suddenly First Aid's height as his legs bent in obscene angles, "Do not venture where light is absent – dark things dwell in Unicron's Gate."
First Aid nodded as he began his short trek to the massive ward, he looked back, to thank the guard and found only empty grounds. Nervously his optics looked to where the mech had stood behind the gate – and found only his own prints denting the immaculate snow. "Thank you." He murmured to the empty space moving as fast as propriety allowed to the steel doors of the keep.
Every step brought him closer to the dark shadows enveloping the keep on the cloudless day. Every step closer dropped the temperature allowing ice crystals to spread across Aid's exposed plating on his hands and face.
"Greetings, Journeyman First Aid." The massive door opened soundlessly revealing a pale pink femme in a pristine white dress standing in the doorway. Aid smiled, feeling the warmth radiate from the open door, opening his mouth to greet his host – and balked at the femme's optics, icy blue tinted violet that glowed an ethereal hue.
"Greetings." He gulped nervously.
"Fear not, young one." She smiled, her face that of a youngling, her frame reaching only his waist, "As a dhampiel I hold no threat to you."
"Dhampiel?" Aid squeaked, he looked around the massive doorway wondering just what the heck he faced.
"My mother was a mortal, my father however – was not." She smiled kindly, lips edging on sardonic, "He might have threatened your plating," She stepped back into the darkened entrance of the keep gesturing widely for the healer to enter, "And your blood."
"He was a nightwalker?" Aid asked, surprised to find his voice rock steady despite his mounting fear.
"Yes, I am Flipsides. Please, follow me." She turned into the darkness, her form fading to just her pale pink helm and shoulders of her pristine white dress. "The Master Healer must trust you implicitly to send you in his place."
"He – I hope he does." Aid replied, noting the great age that hung upon this place, and the sterile cleanliness that filled the air. "Ratchet mentioned that he had never had any issues with your ward, Lady Flipsides."
"That is good to hear," She murmured, leading the young healer further into the bowls of her keep. They toured through the many branching wards, First Aid impressed with the competence shown in the care of the many patients, every consideration tinted with Ratchet's competent care. Despite Flipside's kind presence and the skill inherent in each healer he inspected, an air of threat and danger sent silent fear trembling down his spine.
The bright early morning outside the window brightened further, becoming brilliant day and edging towards noon, and still Aid moved through the castle. He saw the healers, checked their herbal and mineral stores for medicines, approved their methods and remedies and still the corridors kept winding ever onward.
"Lady Flipsides, may I beg a seat?" First Aid finally rasped in desperation as he edged towards exhaustion. "I know Master Ratchet can storm through this entire keep, test every healer and assistant and still heal several cases beyond anyone's abilities to care for, all before noon, I on the other hand am merely a very tired mortal." First Aid smiled at the petite femme who could only gesture benignly towards a chair that First Aid was positive had not been there a moment before.
"Then rest, young healer. I will return to complete our tour momentarily." Lady Flipsides inclined her head regally before stepping into shadows and vanishing, leaving First Aid alone in the silent corridor.
With a sigh First Aid gratefully leaned tiredly into the chair, "How does Ratchet do this every winter? I've been here one day, seen more patients than most city healers see in a vorn and this is one out of nearly twenty hospitals. He must be some sort of saint."
Optics shuttered, he rested, letting his weary legs recuperate while muscle cables twitched and rippled under his plating. Then slowly, like an approaching zephyr in a forest a sound grew from the silence, becoming louder and stronger with each pulse of First Aid's spark. Neither the murmur of voices in distant conversation nor the lilting of song rising from the holy chapels on prayer day, this was song and spoken word melded into a fluid discord that enticed the spark to come investigate even as it sent chills of self preserving fear through his back struts.
Finally, nerves jangling and spark racing from undirected terror First Aid unshuttered his optics, looking carefully about him to alight on a dark doorway he had not noticed before. The strange voices emanated from there. "Dark things dwell in Unicron's Gate." The gate guard's words resounded within Aid's processors halting him before he could even stand from his chair.
"Ratchet never allows a single patient to be overlooked." Aid murmured to himself, his mentor's actions serving as a shield to hide his fear with. His resolve buoyed by his master's examples of what a healer should be like he stood, grabbing a nearby candle sconce and strode into the pitch black hall.
Sunstreaker sighed, he hated playing the merchant. Haggling was repulsive as to his sensibilities, as it was for common mortals – the two things in this world he despised most after being dirty and his ancient former master. Yet, here he sat, manning the stall his brother had rented for 'their' energon trade. Sunstreaker huffed softly in disdain over his painting.
Sideswipe could play the merchant, he was the artist. A very unhappy artist, Sunstreaker hated designing inferior works for sale to the common mortal. Their imaginations limited them to rigid portraits and landscapes. Exactly like the one he was finishing now. Charcoal background and Dodecahex stain of the femme and her twelve sparked younglings. He twitched a shoulder in disdain, mortal younglings were revolting.
Beside him Sideswipe hummed as he rearranged the many cubes that lined his stall. High grades of different origins and ages, mid grades, low grades, maintenance grades, wines, element enriched ports, nutrient mixes and minor stims passed (legally for once) from black hands to those of Pax Crystalia. Customers came and went; Sideswipe haggled from the highest prices he could legitimately claim in this impoverished city down to the mere scraps of credits he could glean from his sales.
"You're scaring the customers." Sideswipe cajoled his twin, snickering at the yellow mech's dangerously narrowed optics.
"I am not. You're haggling is getting soft." Sunstreaker replied, flooding their twin bond with all his distaste of this place, these mortals and how petty this city was in general.
"Brother, this is the best city on Ratchet's route until Crystal Spire. This is just," He smiled, that devilish grin that femmes always fell for and Sunstreaker would finally cave and do whatever he wanted at, "A practice run."
Sunstreaker let it drop, there was little else he could say. They had already had this conversation, or to be precise, he was replaying this conversation as he sat pretending to be Sideswipe, a glamour giving him his twin's appearance and voice while a second glamour bent over works that had been completed the evening prior.
:: Is he done yet? :: Sunstreaker asked Sideswipe through their bond, desperately hoping the young healer would return to Ratchet's side soon.
:: Hush, this day is finally getting interesting. He's disobeying his host and in a place that smells incredible I think this is a darkling ward. ::
Sunstreaker smiled darkly, allowing the disturbing display to appear on his glamour that only made this stall all the more enticing to the sheltered citizens; maybe the spineless journeyman was worth his twin's time after all.
First Aid's resolve to face the darkened hall flickered as rapidly as his upheld sconce. The flame brightened and dimmed as if struggling to overcome the darkness in some fitful battle of wills. He felt much the same warring within himself between Ratchet's stern determination and his own fearful will to live beyond this day.
Despite the vacillation within his processors the sense of being followed, of venting warming the air behind him and optics watching his every move pushed him forward. He wished terribly for Ratchet to be here, leading their inspection with him there to learn and follow orders. This life of leading investigations and disobeying the rules of royalty was disturbing in a great many ways and once more he found himself longing for his brothers and his home.
Finally, just as his nerves were beginning to feel tattered beyond repair the hall opened into a large space, a grand ball room or viewing gallery perhaps, once long ago. Now it served as a ward in and of itself with rows of beds six columns deep running its length. Healers in their white robes moved from patient to patient. The setting and atmosphere was one Aid had become intimately familiar with during his studies, and one he normally felt most at home in.
Until he looked at the figures, patients and healers both, that disjointed this welcoming setting into some surreal depiction as if making the tableau into a chimera of familiar and fantastic. Beings he had no words to describe filled every bed, while others seemed as normal as his own face. Femmes with tentacles, mechs having serpentine legs and lacking pedes entirely were but a mere sampling of the least intimidating of those within the hall.
His observations were performed in a flash, optics scanning swiftly and just as he entered the hall all movement and conversation ceased. Optics, scores upon scores looked up at him. Some filled with hunger at his mere presence, some with fear yet all held an intense mistrust so deep as to bring an unbearable weight upon his chassis crushing him with their despair.
"I am – "
"We know who you are, mortal, and who you claim to serve. None save the master healer has ever dared defy the will of Lady Flipsides, and you will not be excluded." A tall femme snarled dark amethyst optics slitted dangerously. Her white healer's garb seemed distinctly out of place next to the lethal long daggers that suddenly appeared in her hand.
Sigdrifa, war spirit; emousae, malevolent shifter, wurm; the wisdom serpent; vuokho, massive angelic mech that served as guardian to the darkling races … Sideswipe gapped at the figures filling the massive hall. His invisible form completely overlooked by the darklings that speared the young healer he shadowed with their malevolent gazes. In the time before their imprisonment, Crimson and Gold had rarely seen even small villages of darklings, yet within this large mortal city they thrived. Awed by their numbers and impressed with their fierceness he knew that here, at least, they were free of his ancient master's hand.
"If this is refusal to submit to my inspection then I will fail this entire facility, this will not be followed up by Master Healer Ratchet and any monies received from the capitol for continued services and your licenses will be discontinued as of our return to the Imperial City in spring. Next winter Ratchet will oversee the condemning of your facility.
"It is entirely your choice. However, do keep in mind that the Master Healer performed a miracle yesterday, if you doubt these claims you can send a messenger to the Decepticon Temple on the docks. Brother Sun Storm will vouch for Ratchet's efforts, as will the merchants Sunstreaker and Sideswipe and the alchemist Wheeljack, brother to Master Ratchet, also at Black Fang. I doubt the master healer will appreciate his decade of hard work being ruined by your refusal to comply." First Aid drew himself up to his full height, optics challenging all others in the hall.
Sideswipe sighed in exasperated silence; of course the youngling would use words to hide behind Ratchet's standing. Knowing that a slow and brutal death awaited the younger healer Sideswipe gradually lifted his guise, allowing his frame to become visible yet transparent to the darklings alone. At the sight of his dark violet optics the menacing warrior sigdrifa slowed her advance, freezing as sigils appeared on the healer's hands and spiraled up the column of his throat, showing the ancient nightwalker protection glyphs of the Blood Twins.
The many mech-like creatures slowed their approach as First Aid spoke, his words taming them when his mere presence would never have. As confidence filled him from their reactions First Aid once more wondered at Ratchet's reputation, and how fearful the healer must truly be to quell so many powerful beings by the mention of his name alone.
"Very well, Journeyman First Aid." A mech with optics seemingly devoid of life approached. His small frame with crystalline pedes was dwarfed by the dangerous femme, yet she subsided further at his approach. "Healer Shadow Striker meant no harm, but our kinds have suffered greatly for imagined wrongs at the hands of yours."
Aid nodded slightly, "I have only experience with nightwalkers and only little. My first encounter was with a kind one who refuted killing, and then others who relished in it. I will not judge any being so long as their patients, mortal and otherwise are properly cared for. I have taken up my master's beliefs as he has shown me the good and ill in all we have treated thus far."
The small mech nodded curtly, "Then follow me youngling its time you learned of darklings, the leanai an cistiu, and our illnesses."
Sideswipe grinned to himself as he once more became unseen. Standing invisible behind the much shorter journeyman healer he watched the young mech work. Where Ratchet saved kindness for those who truly needed it, First Aid used it as much as any of his healing abilities. The mech was skilled, lacking only the confidence in his gifts to become a mortal equivalent to the fearsome Ratchet.
With an unseen smirk Sideswipe looked down at the glyph painted on First Aid's neck which marked him as protected by the Blood Twins. Their ancient name was infamous to all the immortal races and the darklings had long memories. These many beings malevolent and benign knew these glyphs and to fear them. Becoming visible only to them behind First Aid's shoulder only made the message clearer that the healer was not to be touched, besides, he smirked victoriously, the young healer could do with some self confidence at being Ratchet's apprentice.
In unusual silence Sideswipe watched over First Aid as the young healer spoke with the darkling healers, listening as they educated him in the healing arts of the leanai an cistiu. As they spoke, First Aid took confidence from their lead standing straighter as the day slowly ticked by. Smirking slightly Sideswipe slipped out Unicron's Gate in the younling's wake, splitting off in the early evening light to return to Ratchet's bedside.
First Aid listened entranced to the other healers, learning by word and observation the differences between mortal and darkling and from their stories, the differences between darkling and fae. They spoke of Ratchet, his first rampage into their darkling ward, and his seemingly miraculous ability to heal all kinds of darklings without ever knowing their designs.
"Here, youngling, if Ratchet vouches for you, and sends you in his stead then we'll endure you. But, you've also shown yourself to be a better mech than most. Take this, it is a grimore, our tome of healing knowledge. This will guide you if others of our kind need your care, and it will grant you our aid if you are in danger." Shadow Striker held out a massive tome to First Aid who braced himself to take the ancient book. Yet as it touched his mortal hands it shrunk into a simple amethyst crystal suspended on a platinum chain.
"My thanks, Healer Shadow Striker." Aid smiled at the intimidating femme, and reached for a silver cuff from around his wrist pulling it off gently and placing the ornately carved band into her hand. "This is a promise band from the Imperial City Guard Protectors. My brothers lead these forces. If you need the aid of mortals, bring this to any Guard Protector station and ask for Hot Shot. My eldest brother will do all he can."
The femme he now knew to be a sigdrifa smiled as she clutched the band. "How is it that so young and sheltered a healer can bring hope when all others have failed?"
Aid shrugged, "Thank Ratchet, if we had met three weeks ago I would have fainted on the spot. He showed me what it means to be strong." With a final farewell Aid finished his tour, finding Lady Flipsides suddenly more hospitable and the entire keep somewhat friendlier.
Once outside he saw that midday had come and gone leaving the early gloom of twilight. He vented, breath condensing heavily on the still air and strode closer to midtown to yet another healing ward. This promised to be a long night, however it would be rewarding to report back to Ratchet and hopefully see pride in his master's gaze.
A/N: Until next time ...
