OPEN | I won't be made useless

[keenly]

WHO: Colin and OPEN
WHAT: Administering magebane, dealing with phylactery bullshit
WHEN: Present/course of maybe a week
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: I will mark individual threads for any warnings.

I: Apothecary

The room across from the infirmary doesn't actually have a name, but at the moment, Colin has claimed it for mixing up drugs and one particular poison. He has never made poisons before, but the concept is really quite the same. There's also something soothingly demystifying about learning the ins and outs of a drug that causes mages to be powerless. Maybe he can start fashioning an antidote. But mainly, he is here to administer the poison to the sick. Since he has agency over this, he has made the stuff as palatable as possible by mixing it into spicy-sour bowls of gazpacho topped with fresh herbs and minced garlic. The soup is cold but flavorful, made from raw winter vegetables from the garden. The vinegar helps to mask the bitterness of the magebane, but there is still an unavoidable metallic taste. Patients are handed a hunk of bread and encouraged to wipe the bowl clean with it, eating every drop.

The apothecary himself, however, is dealing with occasional...problems. Not just being overworked to the point of moving some bedding into the room and sleeping there.

A few times, he finds he cannot put a cork in a bottle without missing. He reaches for something and his hand grabs air. His feet won't go in his shoes. It only lasts a few minutes each time, but it's maddening.

You might be in the room when there's a sudden burst of electric energy and Colin gives a cry of agony as it hits him. He hits the floor, hard.

II: Closed to Kostos

It's time for their spirit magic lesson, and Colin is waiting in his quarters when Kostos comes in. But he's sitting with his back to a wall, knees against his chest, trembling so hard his teeth chatter. His gaze is fixed on the opposite corner of the room. Nothing is there. Not to Kostos, at any rate.

You're not real.

Of course I'm real, Colly-boy. I'm just not here. And you're still afraid of me.

III: Hallway - one thread

Colin is coming back from running an errand to his store when he hears the air crackle. It's not the same sort of electric crackle as he heard before. It whistles, shrieks like ice, and before he can fling up any manner of defense, it closes around him. Ice encases him, freezes him, minute but sharp crystals digging into fingertips and toes. Most frightening is the chill in his chest, and the layer of ice between his face and air. He can't breathe.

Comments

[keenly]

The initial admonishment causes the low drone of melancholy to break suddenly, and Colin looks at Nikos in some surprise. There is no dismay to it, no hurt, only a slight disorientation as if just waking up. A second later, while Nikos scratches his arm, a smile touches Colin's face. There is something remarkable about finally seeing how silly you are being. At twisted revenge-monster, the smile even shows teeth. And at the end, there's a breathy, exhausted laugh.

"Yes," he says quietly. His brow furrows. "Which makes at least one of us really weird."

[exsecutus]

"Really."

Nikos is slow to cross over to where he'd dumped his cloak and things when he'd first arrived to help. The wine is largely to blame for his speed. As often as he drinks, and as skilled as he is at holding his alcohol, the world can still take on that boozy muzziness that makes everything look soft-focused.

"Must be you," he says, as he fumbles at the cloak. Not as clumsy in that as would maybe be expected. He has learned to keep his fine motor-skills honed, at least. Even after several glasses of wine. "I am exceedingly normal. In all respects."

There. A small flask, very plain and battered. Nikos slides it across the floor toward Colin, with a quiet scrape of pewter on stone, and the slosh of whatever liquid is contained within.

"I want it back." He picks up his cloak to put it on, making preparations to leave.

[keenly]

Colin sits up and tugs his hair free, it now being an absolute disaster all around his face. His fingers work gently at the tangles while Nikos ambles over to his cloak, mind drifting along some current vaguely aimed in the direction of whatever faceless enemy he now has.

"Want what back?" He blinks in exhausted bewilderment, broken from thought, and picks up the cold pewter flask. He hopes it's alcohol. "What's this?" Because he's not certain the two are the same query. Fortunately he has asked these questions before assuming it's alcohol and draining the entire thing in one go. He's still not even sure if Nikos is his friend, or friendly, or knows his name. He is even more inscrutable than Kostos is.

[exsecutus]

"Poison," Nikos says, flatly. He turns a dull look back on Colin, that somehow communicates a deeply unimpressed what the fuck do you think it is, without the need to articulate the thought.

"What the fuck do you think it is," he says. Always ready to take the opportunity to articulate that kind of thought. "It's alcohol. Rum, if you're too lazy to open it and smell for yourself. Drink it. Return the flask."

He fastens his cloak with sullen impatience, irritated that Colin has made him admit that he was giving something of a gift. What an asshole.

"Return it washed, if your conscience moves you to do housework. I don't give a shit."

[keenly]

A sigh.

"I spent too long in a Circle to just...drink from unidentified bottles," he says with a tinge of grump. Which he feels he is allowed at this point. But. Rum? Rum is good. He twists off the cap and takes a long drink. And remembers how very long it has been since he had pure rum, not watered down and cut with lemon juice like it is aboard a ship. The back of his tongue tries to protect his throat, refusing to let him swallow for several seconds. It burns going down.

"Thank you," he aspirates before tossing back another, more elegant swig. Mostly because the ghost of his mother is berating him for being half-Antivan and incapable of drinking rum like a normal person.

[exsecutus]

"Yeah, yeah," Nikos says, already at the door.

He could make some additional commentary. Start some banter about strong drink. Offer an observation about the food options at whatever Circle Colin came up in, but.

He would rather just leave. Which he does.

[keenly]

Colin squints an exhausted farewell at the departing rum-fairy, decides there's no point in taking anything personally (because there never is), and continues to drown his stress in a metabolic poison.