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After they take down that vile hook horror, Wyll drags over a stumbling Lae’zel.
Stumbling for Lae’zel, at least, is stalking over less gracefully than usual. This, coupled with Wyll’s incessant mother-hen hovering, signals to her that something is wrong. She’s gotten pretty used to her role here in the past few months, so she strides to meet them, already reaching inside her for the well of magic that’s nearly depleted with a sense of resignation. Just once, she’d love to end the day with enough juice left in her to soothe a headache before bed, or perhaps cramping during her menses. She can only dream.
“What’ve you done then,” she sighs, then immediately balks once they get in close, scanning injuries at a rapid pace. Firstly, Lae’zel is drenched in blood from head to toe. More pressingly, her eyes appear to have—well. Popped. Exploded. Whatever, semantics, they’re shredded and bleeding and it looks bad.
“Please tell me you can fix this,” Wyll implores, gesturing frantically to Lae’zel.
“Of course she will,” Lae’zel says through gritted teeth.
“Oh Gods— Lae’zel.” Shadowheart sprints the remaining few feet, her heart rate shooting up wildly at the sight of the gnarly injury, “What in Shar’s name happened?!”
As she gets closer she notices Lae’zel is also bleeding out of her ears and nose. Immediately Shadowheart’s mind races—a spell gone wrong surely. Looks like psychic backlash, like she’d been ruptured from the inside out, so she probably has internal injuries.
“That’s not important,” Lae’zel shrugs Wyll off with a hiss, wincing in pain as she does so.
“Of course it’s—never mind, Wyll, go find Karlach, I heard her scream,” she gestures distractedly into the dark, “quite a ways over there.”
Wyll gives her a sharp nod and he’s running off in the general direction she’d indicated. Gods, what a man. He’s really the best of them. And the worst of them has just been charged to her care.
Working fast, she rips open her pack, pulling out a random swath of fabric and her dagger, cutting a long jagged strip from it. She comes close to Lae’zel, but the volatile githyanki doesn’t react until the fabric actually touches her, which confirms to Shadowhear that she can’t see for shit at the moment.
“What are you doing?” she hisses. Shadowheart firmly wraps the fabric around her head with one hand and uses the other to wrestle with Lae’zel’s hands trying to push her off.
“Let me,” Shadowheart snaps, “I have to stifle the bleeding. Besides, you do not want any spores to waft into that wound.”
Lae’zel hisses and spits and mumbles a few choice words but at least her hands fall to her sides, and Shadowheart firmly ties the fabric around the back of her head. When she pulls away to adjust, the fabric is already wet with leaking blood.
Her head whips side to side, looking for even a little cover, and spotting a large outcrop of rocks, she drags Lae’zel over.
“Sit,” she demands, fully in healer mode, “what did this? It looks like your eyes just… burst?”
Lae’zel glowers but sits heavily. Since she’d been up close, she’d taken the brunt of the hits while Shadowheart had mostly stood back and dodged stray projectiles. While Shadowheart scans her for other injuries, she reluctantly speaks.
“I had… attempted to cast a spell from a scroll.”
“Oh Gods, I knew it. What kind of spell?!” she says, suddenly alarmed, and sits back on her heels.
“The incantation was, as I remember, deminuo te.”
“By Shar’s— Lae’zel. You’re not serious—that’s a powerful spell!”
“Precisely why I attempted to cast it,” she snaps back, wincing as she does. It must hurt. She must be in a great amount of pain, “however, clearly, it backfired. Now heal me, ghustil.”
“Hold on,” she says, wary, “you’re bleeding out of your ears and nose too. You probably have internal injuries. Did you feel anything strange?”
“I had felt this… pulse of psychic energy split my head open. And my eyes.”
“Shit. Alright. I’m going to examine you, just… hold still.”
“Is this really necessary?”
“Yes! You really messed with dangerous magic, Lae’zel, I must look you over, and you will let me.”
Lae’zel huffs and snaps her jaw shut with an audible click, wincing as she does so. By Shar, would it kill her to stop acting like a pissed-off cat for even a second? Shadowheart can’t help but roll her eyes, reaching for her face, slowly, because she’s aware Lae’zel can’t see her and she really doesn’t want to catch her off guard. She might lose a hand.
Her two fingers land on Lae’zel’s jaw, just under her ear, and she fully gets down on her knees in the dirt for better leverage to lean over and take a good look.
“I think you’ve also busted your eardrum. How’s sound right now?”
“...Muffled,” she supplies, and Shadowheart bites back the urge to grimace. Definitely ruptured. With her running on empty like this, can she even heal extensive internal injuries such as the ones Lae’zel is undoubtedly suffering…?
Oh also, her eyes fucking exploded. Shadowheart hates the underdark. Nevermind that Lae’zel most definitely would have done this anywhere, because she’s insane.
“This is so much blood, is all of it yours?”
“I believe so.”
Absent-mindedly, Shadowheart’s fingers mess with the still warm blood drenching Lae’zel’s skin. Her blood is so bright. Maybe too bright. Is it a githyanki thing, or has Shadowheart just not seen this much blood before? Or maybe it has something to do with the underdark. The light is all wrong here, what little there is anyway.
“Where did you even find a scroll like that?” she frowns, raising an eyebrow. Predictably, Lae’zel bristles at her tone, and Shadowheart draws her hand back.
“None of your business,” she snaps, “I had attempted–”
“Keyword: attempted,” Shadowheart shoots back, irritation bubbling within her again, “but it backfired on you, because you don’t know what–”
“I could have gotten it right if only–”
“By the Gods, would you just admit that you made a mistake?! You tried to cast it yourself because you still don’t trust us!” Shadowheart bursts out, almost feeling bad that she’s fighting with someone so injured but for fucks sake Lae’zel started it. So many conflicting feelings swirl inside her, and still she’s staring at the blood trickling down the side of Lae’zel’s face with a fascination bordering on perverse.
“This has nothing to do with–”
Shadowheart has never kissed anyone, and she’s almost certain she recalls Lae’zel saying that githyanki don’t kiss at all. But some long-buried instinct tips her forward, grabbing Lae’zel’s stupid leather collar and smushing their mouths together.
Shadowheart tastes the blood from her split lip, strong and metallic, and it draws a slow fluttering whimper out of her. Surely it smarts, but Lae’zel kind of snarls and grabs Shadowheart by her ponytail, yanking her closer. Neither of them know what they’re doing, really, but it’s so sudden and overwhelming that she throbs painfully in her core. Oh… that’s new.
Her other hand reaches, a little hesitantly, to Lae’zel’s neck where the blood runs down the side of her face and down to pool in her collarbone. Her thumb smears through the warm line of blood. Her hand climbs up to Lae’zel’s ear before she knows what it’s doing.
Oh, there’s just… there’s just so much blood. It’s definitely not good, but who knows. Maybe some brain damage would make Lae’zel tolerable. Smooth her out. Gods… Shadowheart is having nonsensical thoughts. Lae’zel growls slightly, tugging on her ponytail. The sharp pain makes her yelp, and the arousal tightens in her belly. Her mouth falls open and she can’t stop herself; she sucks at the cut on Lae’zel’s lip until she tastes the copper flood her tongue.
Lae’zel’s teeth catch on her lip as their mouths move together again and she’s dazed and flushed, lets herself get lost in the rhythm and push and pull of it all. But the blood, she’s so aware of. Slick under her palms grasping at Lae’zel’s face. In her mouth, in her stomach. Smeared on her lips and in her hair, from Lae’zel’s hand and leaking from Lae’zel’s ears and nose and eyes. Her eyes, which are nothing more than a mess of bloody, shredded orbital fat in her eye sockets. Useless. And Shadowheart can feel it, the magic emanating heat of the injury.
To know that Lae’zel is certainly in a lot of pain even as she kisses her and presses their bodies and mouths and teeth… it pleases her. Sick satisfaction curls through her veins, alight with this persistent buzzing feeling. It’s like someone’s shot her through with a witch bolt. And she wants to touch Lae’zel, Gods. Wants Lae’zel to touch her, somewhere, anywhere.
But oh, her racing thoughts stutter to a halt as an old truth rises inside her. She is forbidden. She’d forgotten. She’d never had to curb the impulse before. But now, she knows this is what it is, this feeling simmering inside her. Lust.
Fear rises inside of her as if from a lake. A wave of revulsion. She feels like a dumb, panting animal. This cannot continue. She wrenches herself out of Lae’zel’s grip as if burned, pulls herself back.
“I think I can heal you now,” she blurts as if nothing happened, cheeks burning, “I’m going to take off the blindfold.”
Lae’zel sits there swaying for a few seconds longer, apparently stunned, for once, then she bares her teeth slightly. Her gums are sluggishly bleeding, she notices—probably got clipped in the mouth. But apparently she doesn’t know what to say either, because she sits quietly as Shadowheart unties and removes the blood soaked blindfold.
Her eyes are just as bad, though the bleeding has slowed and the wound has clotted a bit.
“Hold still, don’t move, don’t blink,” Shadowheart orders, closing her eyes. She places her hands firmly on Lae’zel’s bare, blood-sticky shoulders and really tries not to think about it. “Fiat voluntas Dei…” she mutters, and pours every last scrap of energy she has into Lae’zel, willing the soft tissues of her eyes to knit themselves back into shape. She feels the weave shudder and obey her, slithering into Lae’zel from her palms.
When she opens her eyes again Lae’zel’s familiar golden eyes are blinking at her, as good as new. Despite being fairly certain it would work considering she’d healed an entire broken leg a few days ago, she lets out a sigh of relief and sags, running a hand through her sweaty bangs.
“Emmgrh…” says Lae’zel, eloquently.
“A thank you might be nice,” she snipes, but she’s too relieved for it to have much bite. Losing her eyesight might be something Lae’zel wouldn’t be able to come back from. And they really do need her if they have any hope of defeating the distant, yet marching ever-closer enemy.
And… maybe Lae’zel is growing on her. Kind of like a fungus. But still. She barrels right on over everything that just happened, says something half-nonsensical to Lae’zel about finding Wyll and Karlach, and resolutely begins to march off into the dark.
She will be bottling all that up and then burying it deep, deep, deep down.