[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni


From the shards of tattered dreams I rose, unwilling, tossed upon tides of pain that flowed and ebbed, and left me – searingly – awake, and – more revoltingly – alive.

The world of her family's dining room disintegrated away, consigned to the perenial life-support of a distant memory. In its place came into focus the night sky, a sheet of diamonds across a black ocean with a single, lone moon standing vigil and gathering the light it would soon reflect down upon the mortals as their sole source of illumination. Her head hurt. It ached, actually. As if she had suffered a concentrated hang-over reserved only for the excessive levels of drinking that stopped just short of sending the imbiber to an early grave.

The taste of blood. An aching mind and a pained body. Taalia grunted and moaned in the dull blanket of aching pain that chewed upon her nerves as she slowly sat up within the grassy field of their aerial decline. But harrowing and nauseating as these things were, obstructing her thoughts and seizing her attention, their efforts vanished the moment the girl spotted the weak and pale figure of Maso Cestie, his feeble image arousing within the girl a second wind that beat back all tormenting sensations and drew her immediately to her knee's and feet as she scrambled to the older mans side.

"Cestie - Cestie!" Taalia harkened, green and blue eyes open, her hand grasping for his as she returned his almost resigned visage with one of opprobrium at his current state.

Flashing her look down his body and up at him again, drawing her ear to his chest to takin in his heart-beat and breathing, the girls mind scrambled for to connect the accident with possible injuries as a wide variety ricocheted off within her skull. Pale...no outward lesions that were capable of such blood loss...internal bleeding.

"Get one of our backpacks - put it under his feet, get them above his heart!" Taalia beckoned to Bella, gesturing towards the crash-site and the collected remnants of their belongings.

Turning back to Cestie, Taalia gave the best reassurance grin she could, given the circumstances, her grip on his hand perhaps a little too strong as if she sought to tether him to the world and halt any spiritual ascension.

"Breathe easy - focus on me, Cestie! You're breathing so your lungs aren't punctured and you're still with me - how long have we been out?" she called over to Bella. Receiving the answer, she spun her head back to look to Cestie.

"If it were terminal you'd have gone by now Cestie!" she grinned and laughed, desparately hiding the terror clawing at her heart, her words almost to convince herself as much as her 'patient'.

"You stay with us, rest, recuperate; I'll get you to the nearest town! You can't let me enter Nuln and take all the glory for this on my own, can you?" she laughed again.