Thar Shaddin

The moment Joy stepped through the threshold of the fort, into the mustiness and gloom, he felt an odd tingling. He could not quite place where that tingling was coming from, nor exactly what part of him was tingling. If it was not for the way he was, the way he explained away all misfortune as an opportunity, he'd most likely recognize it as fear.

But instead, humming softly to himself, he went straight to the walls. It looked exceedingly childish, how his index and middle finger of his right hand was made to run along the wall in a zig-zag pattern. The feeling mustering inside of Joy was not of childish glee however, despite his bouncy body language. Instead, it was intense concentration.

He made a casual, complete circuit of the main room, diverting his eyes from the makeshift curtain Illilli put up in the doorway she lay behind as he passed her by. Other than that slight gesture of acknowledgment, he bid no notice did he take of his companions during this time, effortlessly ignoring them. His movements ceased, as did the deeply furrowed brow that formed to indicate his intense mental delvings, as he found himself by the main entrance once more.

Then, as if what he did was nothing out of the ordinary, he plopped down on a pile of leaves a few feet away from the injured cat lady, and drew his rapier. Shing shing, shing shing. From some secreted pocket in his bodysuit, he produced a stone, and made himself busy sharpening his blade.

Just about finished, polishing up his work, Joy lay his weapon across his thighs and nodded his head towards Illili. He noted the improvements she made with her makeshift attire. As the winged woman asked how she could help, a few words came unbidden from his lips.

"Mushrooms. If we can find the cellar, we might be able to find mushrooms." It may have seemed like an odd comment, but it was referring to helping the cat lady, as unclear as he made it out to be. He knew of medicinal fungi, and felt that underneath this place, there may be something that could help. But he did not care to explain this, as he nodded his head to himself, and said once more, "Mushrooms."

The adrenaline in his system which had been so helpfully numbing the burning pain in his leg slowly began to wear itself thin and Chris could feel the wetness on his pant leg getting cold as the blood continued to collect on his pant leg. He was still able to walk, but would soon be much less casual about things. The arrowhead and a good part of the shaft was still embedded deep in his muscle and every step made the cuts in his tissue worse.

Still, he was a man of style, and refused to let it be known to the others that he was ready to collapse. He had to find some privacy to do that, which was finally possible now that the others were together in one relatively safe place that he could keep an eye on.

He moved his large figure into the shelter of the tower and had a brief glance around. His left leg was half black with blood, and his face was dirty, yet somehow he still looked like he could wrestle a bull to the ground. When his eyes landed on Dorcas he paused and took in her bed of leaves and debris. He'd seen people die from shit like that, festering wounds that bring on a fever. Thinking about it brought on the possibility that it was her time to die. The tower was as good a place as any and whatever ghosts lived here would love the company.

The other guy had a seat and was sharpening his rapier. He struck chris as rather thoughtless when it came to the girl, but considering how Chris himself was behaving, he couldn't hold much against the man. He didn't want to help the girl or get too close to her, didn't want something like that to weigh him down, didn't need another dead friend on his conscience if she did happen to die. Unfortunately he also didn't want her to die, and with the change of scenery he was losing his faith that everything was going to turn out dandy. Maybe it was the atmosphere of the ruins rubbing off on him.

Illilli walked in wearing her heavily modified clothes and this time Chris barely gave her bare skin a glance. Sexy as she was to him, he had other things on his mind, not the least of which being the now searing pain in his leg.

"Mushrooms. Right. Ye do that. Find somethin' fer the girl. Make sure she keeps drinkin' an' stays warm. We'll go into town later an' figure out how to get her some real help."

He didn't sound as though he had much faith in the other man's medical skills, although that was just his attitude talking.

"Imma have a look around outside." He said, and before waiting for a reply stepped back outside the tower.

The man's face turned to a grimace of pain and he supported himself on the wall, walking along the perimiter of the tower. His eyes kept a good watch over the place, but he knew the scenery already. He'd already had one fight here, with the dragoness thing. There was nothing that interested him around now. Just old dusty stones, broken walls, and what remained of some kind of church that was surely the source of the death magic.

He slid down against the wall to have a seat with his legs out in front of him, and started pulling what was left of the arrow out with his fingers.

Illilli flopped down near the edge of Dorcas' leaf pile and wrapped her arms around her knees and coiled her tail around her toes. She tilted her head and gave the girl a good look.

She made a slight face when Joy mentioned mushrooms.

"I don't know, I'm more familiar with the edible kids than medicinal... I don't know, do we have a basement here?" she hadn't bothered to check much about the tower beyond finding the empty room she had changed in.

Standing and luxiriating in a full stretch that opened her wings completely she went to get the cloak she had been hiding beneath earlier. Once she had reclaimed the cloak she lightly tossed it over Dorcas.

"Anything I can do to make you feel better?" Illilli smiled showing her slightly enlarged canine teeth.

Dorcas blinked slowly at Illilli when she was addressed. She was bleary-eyed, and the result was to make her look very dull. The very setting and scenario made Dorcas seem dull, not the sharp-witted, precocious type she'd come to Thar as. Everything was so unknown to ther that she didn't have time to retort, and by this point, she hadn't the strength, either.

"Better?" she murmured at Illilli through narrow lips that were now perpetually parted to breathe a steady wheeze of air. The edges of her dry lips were just barely still stained with a line of what once was purple lip makeup.

It seemed the cat wasn't fond of Illilli. He growled at her a few moments after she sat. It was as if a warning not to try anything, for then he moved on to Joy. He sat expectantly at the man's feet. The man was saying things, but not doing anything, except playing with his sword. Boy didn't know where the proactive one had gone off to, so he sat by the trickster man and flicked his tail to the rhythmic scrape of the stone against the rapier.

Dorcas continued to stare at Illilli, her gaze in and out of focus. She finally managed the breath and constitution to get out a sentence. "When do I get to see a doctor?"

How careless and inconsiderate he must be, this Joy, to sit there practically idle while a woman sat close by injured, maybe dying. That was certainly as it appeared, for how could sharpening ones weapon aid in the healing of another? Certainly not in a straight-forward fashion. But as it was with this roguish man, most actions had some benefit, if only your eyes were open enough to see.

His eyes were not closed, as he finished tending to his rapier. With a simple grace, he stood with blade in hand. Closing an eye, he peered about, not at all focusing on either woman who inhabited the room. And without a word he picked a cobwebbed doorway and strode through.

It was soon after that there was a resounding crack, and a muffled sound of surprise. Then silence.

His footprints, clear on a dusty stone floor, would lead to a once boarded over stairwell. Once boarded over, and so recently broken through. Splintered bits of board lay about, and a few pieces of leather.

But before an investigation would be necessary, his head popped out of the darkness, a face covered with thick spiderwebs. And it was clear, by the none too few colorful eight legged friends he brought up with him, that they were not uninhabited. Still, he seemed unperturbed, and even triumphant, as he clambered back to the main room with a strange selection of fungi layered upon his weapon.

When Joy had spoken of mushrooms, he was not being exactly accurate. What he had instead were toadstools, three massive ones, pierced through by his blade. Each one seemed different, and unique.

First, he set each toadstool down in front of the cat woman. Then, with a muffled voice, as he didn't even bother removing the webs from his face, he enlightened his companions about his findings. "This one," he mumbled proudly, and sliced off a hunk of a green and purple dotted fungus as emphasis, "should ease the blood-flow. Careful though, small portions like the one I cut off, or you'll get sick instead. Every three hours, I'd say. Oh, and don't eat the portions with the purple dots. Trust me."

Without missing a beat, he flicked the point of his weapon to the second one, a bright orange in color. "This one, as a poultice, should help heal over the external injuries, and if you heat it up first, will prevent infection. Just make sure not to eat any of it." He made two swift cuts, and set aside a thin slice and pushed it towards Illilli with a spider-webby grin.

Then Joy sat, nodding to himself. Oh, and as if he just remembered, he flicked his head towards the last one. "And that one is just good eatings, tastes just like candy, and it's good for you too!"

And with that finally said, he began to brush off the spiders and their nests from his hair and face.

Illilli raised an eyebrow and started to get up when she heard Joy's descent to the basement. When the dust had settled and he had re-appeared so quickly, she sat back down and watched through his explaination of the fungi he had collected.

Illilli took the piece of Toadstool from joy and stared at it for a moment.

"Hmm I am more used to plants out in the forest. This is quite a bit intrigueing." She got up and walked to her pack near the little closet she had changed in and quickly snatched a small book out of a a side pocket.

The plain leather-bound book merely had the following words tooled in the front cover.

The Uses Medickal of Naturall Herbs and Trees

She thumbed through it to the few pages concerning the few entries of fungus.

"Oh wow, none of these are in my book... but then my book is more geared for the outdoors and not things found under ground."

She returned the book to her pack. "I'll have to find a way to get this written down someday."

Looking around the main room she found a small stash of kindling and wood that had been left by the last to stay in the old tower. Gathering an armload, she drug it to the charcoal lined pit that had been used previously. She squished a particularly fat spider that had escaped from Joy with a soft "plop" under her boot.

She was about to light the fire with her tinderbox when she giggled and exhaled forcefully over the wood.

The only fruit of that was to send her into a coughing fit.

"Oh well it was worth a shot..." she grinned as she started the fire and got it to catch.
She placed the toadstool cutting on a large flat rock near the hot coals to warm.

When she figured toadstool slice was heated enough she gingerly picked up the hot rock and brought it over to Dorcas.

"Ok, Now where does it need to go..." she asked.

( My apologies for taking so long. I saw illilli was the last to have posted, and I knew she posted right after me. Won't happen again )

The bolt-head came out of his thigh muscle easily. He was disciplined enough (or at least desensitized enough) to leave his muscle untensed so it wouldn't grip the metal tip and make it hard to pull out. Instead it nearly popped out of its own accord, followed by a quick gushing of blood that pulsed in tempo with his heartbeat. It was a sloppy job, he knew, and he would regret it later if he couldn't find some magical aid to help with the healing. Indeed, it looked like the kind of thing that would get infected, which was why he let the blood flow. With a grunt he tore the hole in his pants wider to get the fabric out of the way.

After a few seconds, when he'd decided enough of his blood had flowed out, he drew a semi-clean cloth from his jacket pocket and wrapped it once around his leg, tying it off at the side as tightly as he could. The blood stopped gushing but obviously the pain didn't. Soon the rag was as red as the ground around him, but he was confident that it would suffice.

He rested his head back against the stone wall and looked up at the reddish sky.

Silence. Still.

"Wow." He said aloud. "A place that will keep even fox spirits out. I should probably be worried."

The wind carried a few dry leaves across the ground before him, skittering them around and trapping them within little tornadoes of dust and debris. He could hear some talking from inside.

"Sorry about trespassing but we don't have much choice."

He waited, and again... Silence. Nothing answered him, which wasn't altogether odd. Although he could talk to all spirits, in the material plane there was no real way to make them talk back. It was an odd sort of communication, since the fox spirits followed him everywhere and they were the only ones he could normally see, there were ghosts all around whose presence could generally be felt. He just had to reach them, get their attention and convince them to talk. It was like focusing on a distant object until it revealed itself for what it was.

These ghosts were the quiet sort, threatening enough to keep his normal entourage away. That was, if there were any spirits there at all, and there was no real way to tell. The death magic, or whatever it was, could be keeping everything away.

He touched his chest, feeling the little jade amulet tucked under his shirt. Every once in a while he felt the need to do that to make sure it was still there. Then, with another grunt and with the help of the wall, he stood up to hobble back inside with the others.

Were Dorcas in a better state, she might marvel at the fantastical quality of this place she'd found herself. Where on earth did multiple varieties of healing toadstools present themselves in vivid color, and in such convenient proximity? Where, indeed, did young women casually accept their shift to the form of a nightmarish monster with a mere wardrobe change? Even the invisible flies that were the object of Boy's vigilance and imagination seemed to be somewhat real here.

But Dorcas was in a poor state to recognize this. She blinked at a thread of cobweb that drifted down onto her nose after Joy flung it off from his face. She watched Joy, and heard Illilli's voice, and in her daze could only attribute the feminine voice to him.

"My throat hurts--" She gestured to her bruised trachea-- "here . . .--" Her hand drifted down to her fractured rib. She moved her hand down to the filthy hem of her skirt and pulled it back to her thighs. One was caked with dried blood, the origin of which looked to be a slice wound near the top of her inner thigh, gummy with pungent green salve. The other thigh bore a giant , swollen bruise.

She gaze up at Joy, then her eyes drifted over to Illilli slowly. She looked surprised and frightened to see her offering the poultice.

Seeing the fear on Dorcas's, Illilli quickly handed the poultice to Joy and backed out of Dorca's sight.

"Do I really look that awful? I don't know what happened. I was so scared and then... this happened..." she said in a small flat voice.

She looked at the backs of her arms and at what she could see of her wings and tail.

"I can only guess it has something to do with my birthmarks. My parents never told me about this I don't know if I am stuck like this for ever, or if I can somehow go back to the way I was before. My parents aren't exactly handy at the moment." She sighed and purple, blue and red light reflected off of her holographic hair and markings. Light also highlighted her forehead, cheeks and nose as the tiny white scales caught what little was left.

She stopped to run her fingers over her face, searching for any changes she could detect my touch alone. Except for the minute grain of the texture of her scales, and the fact that her teeth were quite a bit sharper and pointed, she could not tell many differences.

"Well, reguardless of what I look like I'm here to help. I'm just so glad I am not near that jail anymore."

She paused for a moment and looked around.

"Does anyone know where the big fellow got to?"

((sorry for throwing soooo much in this post, but it actually works with what I have in mind - Joy's trying to do everything at once, help everyone, talk to everyone... and the normally unflusterable guy is trying to do his best while being stretched thinly))

The last of the spiders that had so recently been Joy's companions fled, finding this room none to their liking. Their absence brought the grinning man back to the situation at hand, as he hovered over Illilli as she heated up the orange toadstool. Burnt orange it soon was, to the satisfaction of the rogue currently holding the position of medicine man.

He received the hot fungus with an enthusiastic "Thank you Miss Illilli," tossing it from hand to hand until it was manageable to his calloused fingers. Joy looked from one woman to another, both in states of health or transmutation they would rather not be in, and started to chew on his lower lip. How would it be best to approach this conundrum... he mused.

After a full four seconds of thought, he knelt before the injured and somewhat frightened lady and laid his rapier down besides him. "Sure, I don't look much like a healer, or a competent chap at that, but I know how to take care of myself. Try and relax a bit, and let me put my self-preservation instincts to a new use, alright?" On a normal man, his strong fixed grin would seem insincere, but for Joy, it unveiled his confidence.

With his free hand, he tore a long strip of orange cloth from his coat, wincing slightly as he did so. Sure, he loved that colorful article of clothing, but this was surely more important than style. He chattered as he worked, setting up the still quite hot toadstool slice in cloth. "By the way, the name is Joy, I didn't catch your own, if you'd be so kind to offer it." He squeezed his eyes shut pleasantly for a second, letting his grin grow a bit broader.

"Nor did I catch your name, Mister Savior Sir," he said with half of a laugh, his head flicking to look over his shoulder as the big man re-entered the room. Joy's still partially spider-web coated form bobbed a greeting to the fellow.

The poultice was complete with a cloth tie now, and the make-shift healer drew one of his rare clean fingernails across the toadstool strip, pleased to note the moisture peeking threw the thin cuts he made. Still, the injured woman did not seem exactly sure of Joy, so he stalled a little while, blowing on the steaming poultice for a second.

He seemed about to move forward to attach the toadstool to the woman's bruised ribs when a thought struck him. Joy turned abruptly to the scaled lady with his tongue slightly sticking out between his lips, clamped there in concentrated thought. "Tea! That would certainly help. And the sweetcap, or so one kindly old maid told me they were called, would brew an excellent healing drought. I know you're having difficulties, but I'm sure together we can sort them out. But what we need most now is to make sure we're all in tip top shape. Think you can try and set something up?"

Joy was flustered at the moment, it was somewhat obvious - torn between talking to all three of his companions at once. At last he settled on a few words, while still kneeling with poultice on hand. These were directed at the large man, as he reached down to tear of a chunk of the green and purple dotted fungus. "Oh, and I saw the wound you got from that pesky lil' arrow," he began, rotating his shoulder as he remembered his own wound, "and if you want that to heal up properly, I recommend you try a bit of this, minus the purple spots of course." He popped the section in his mouth, chewing once distastefully as he pushed the medicinal fungus into one cheek so he could still speak coherently.

Finally, he took a deep breath and leaned slowly forward towards the injured woman. "Now, if you'll raise your arms, carefully of course, I can set this about you. I guarantee you'll feel better soon, if you would be so kind as to allow me to help." With that said, he made forward to try, delicately, to secure the poultice about her injured side.

Nor did I catch your name, Mister Savior Sir

"Savier?"

The word struck him unexpectedly and he wasn't sure what to make of it. He'd been considered something of a savior in his past by a few of the people he'd known... Ages ago in another lifetime. It bothered him to be called that again, but he didn't know why. Some deeply buried guilt in the back of his mind cursed him for having taken a different path and thrown away all the goodness he once possessed. He wasn't a savior anymore. He was a theif at best, selfish and careless at his worst. These were feelings he kept hidden from himself, buried under the belief that he had the right to be this way, and that he was serving a higher calling in his own way. His true feelings were revealed by the way the title rubbed him.

"Don' be daft, I ain't saved ya from nothin'. Ya'd be wise ta think twice 'bout who ya trust. Name's Chris, stick ta that."

The way he looked at Joy when he was speaking suggested he meant it, which was a pretty frightening look when it came from him and it illustrated even more how erratic his emotions were.

He held his leg, the hastily tied bandage soaking crimson and actually seeming to bother him a little now as he held a hand over it absently. The man suggested eating some sort of weird fungus looking stuff which didn't smell right to Chris. He made a face at the offering and then dismissed it silently. He then turned and had another good and proper look at Illilli.

She was an odd one. Not a dragon (he knew she wasn't a dragon, a dragon would have started his paranoia going) and yet she looked sort of like one. He'd managed to gather that it was her first time changing, and that she didn't know what to make of it any more than he did. There were a lot of differences between her situation and his first time shifting, but it still reminded him of it. At least she was handling it pretty good.

"Nice... Wonder what else ya kin do."

He said, running a hand through his hair and glancing over at the injured girl.

Dorcas's gaze was on Illilli for a few moments, taking in all that oddness on the woman's flesh as Illilli herself took it in. The sound of ripping cloth drew her attention back over to Joy.

"Hohh," she murmured as the scrap of bright cloth fluttered in her gaze. That image drew from her a moment of stronger lucidity. She had left clothes behind, at the site of the accident, clothes that were probably all charred up and torn now, flapping like surrender, or simply matted in the mud. Perhaps she wouldn't get those clothes back.

That train of thought was quite a lot for her hazy mind, at the moment. The effort of memory and abstraction jarred her to a more coherent state of mind.

"Please also, you gorta get my leg. 'T was bleedin' an' a man put this bluey shit orn it, it's in a state," she said to Joy. It was the most she'd said in quite some time. "An' I want some tea too."

Dorcas lifted her arms to a forty-five degree angle, about all she could manage without too intense of pain. As she allowed Joy access to her ribs, she turned a stern gaze on Chris, thrust out her strong chin in his direction.

"'F you don' want to trust us, we're not makin' you stick around. These ones are takin' care of me . . . Not sayin' I on'y have tea wif real friends, jus sayin' you shouldn' be makin' outright claims of distrust if you wan' tea . . ."

All this had dazed her a little, again, and she closed her eyes and sighed a deep breath, although even with her eyes shut, she had a self-important look on her face once more.

At Dorcas' request Illilli got out her small cook pot, scrubbed out the dirt and dried dragon's blood and set some clean water from a waterskin to boil.

"I can boil water now, but I haven't any tea in my pack..." A look of glee came into her face.

"I guess I could try to fly out and find some peppermint in the woods near by... I've not flown before..."

She walked outside and climbed to a raised spot near the tower. She caught her breath and spread her wings wide. The lines of markings down her wing bones and the stripes on her back shimmered in the light. She was lucky that there was a faint breeze blowing in the direction she wished to go. Leaves and grass were scattered as she brought her wings down in her first downdraft.

*whooomp*

and another...

*whoomp*

She didn't expect it to be so much work...

*whomp*

Luckily for Illilli it didn't take long to rise high enough for gliding. 5 minutes later she landed... Perhaps that would be better described as crashlanded... in an small opening in the woods. Another 5 minutes and she had located the mint she was looking for as well as a nice collection of a few tart persimmons and some wild rose hips.

It was getting colder now that night was fully on. Carefully she clawed her way back into the sky and coasted gratefully back to the tower. Her wings were trembling from the strain and this had only been a small flight.

She landed and fell to her knees near the entrance to the tower and hauled her finds back to the fire.

"I am going to be so sore in the morning..." she mumbled as she added the mint leaves to the water and removing it from the fire. She set the rest of the mint to start drying; hung up on the wall.

"Are you feeling any better?" she smiled hopefully as she offered some of the persimmons to Dorcas. She also looked over her shoulder and raised an inquiring eyebrow at the large man.