Headaches
Ajak burst through the door mere minutes after Gilgamesh's call. Which felt like at least half an hour in the mind of Thena, who was really having a hard time keeping Druig down without immobilizing him so much that he'd might hurt himself.
Their bodies were designed to withstand strong forces that hit them, but that didn't make them invulnerable, and especially not to damage emanating from their own bodies themselves. Which wasn't something that should even exist.
"What happened?" Ajak demanded and while Gilgamesh hurriedly summarized what had happened in the last few minutes she made her way over to the platform in hurried steps.
There were quite a few things in Thena that resisted the thought of letting the Healer get close, whether it was her natural protective instinct, her own fear of losing her memories and the knot forming in her stomach at the thought her former leader might overriding everyone else and do just that to Druig, or the promise she had made to Makkari she couldn't tell, but she also knew with grim certainty that she needed Ajak's help badly. Without her, they wouldn't be able to handle whatever it was that was torturing their brother so much so she didn't really had another choice.
Which not meant that she liked it.
Druig was still trashing and screaming beneath her hands, wheezing painful sounding breaths of air like a drowning man and she knew that restraining him was less than ideal but she had no other idea what to do. She knew how to deal with Deviants or violet creatures of any kind but, quite frankly, this was something she had never seen before and it was scary as hell, even for her. His screams that echoed back from the walls where almost unbearable.
"Ajak, I warn you." she hissed as the smaller woman stepped onto the dais next to her.
"I know." she said in a absolute no-nonsense voice.
Ajak's hands were already glowing from the sparks of cosmic energy dancing back and forth between her fingers like small slow-motion lightning bolts.
Gilgamesh towered behind her and Thena caught his eye for a moment. He nodded in silent understanding and agreement. That was enough for her to be sure of his support in an emergency.
Ajak gently cupped Druig's pain-scarred face in her hands as soon as Thena backed away enough to let her do her work, yet not completely letting go of him to make sure he didn't throw himself to the ground after all.
His wide black eyes seemed to stare right through her, but Ajak didn't let that deter her.
With absolute focus and the calm expression of experience, she cast her powers. The golden light of cosmic energy glowed against Druig's temples as it flowed from her hands into his body, bathing the entire room in a comfortable, warm glow.
"Shhh, do you hear me, Druig? Everything will be fine. You're safe." Ajak murmured, followed by a whole other soothing promises and calming words, her voice as composed and caring as ever, even when dealing with potentially mortal wounds, this was her element and she knew exactly how to use her gift.
Slowly but surely, her actions seemed to be having an effect. Thena felt less and less effort to keep his twitching body still, his screams lessening and slowly falling silent until finally Druig sank back onto the pedestal and his eyes closed.
To Thena's great relief, Gilgamesh nodded to her, indicating that their fellow Eternal's eyes had returned to their natural blue, likely just a moment before he had sunken into unconsciousness again. Considering these last few minutes, it suddenly almost seemed like a blessing.
When Ajak finally withdrew her hands and the cosmic light faded away, for a moment the only sound that filled the room was his labored breathing.
Thena sighed in relief.
"What have you done?"
"What I could do for him." Ajak answered with a sigh that gave away something one could see as exhaustion. In the back of her mind Thena was quite relieved that Makkari hadn't been there to see any of it.
"What by Arishem was that?" Gilgamesh asked.
Ajak gently stroked Druig's dark brown hair from his sweat-damp forehead.
"Most likely something like a seizure." she said calmly but her face betrayed her worry. Her lips pressed together into a thin line for a moment and a frown lay on her face.
"I never knew we where able to have those" he remarked, exchanging another quick glace with the warrior goddess who was non the wiser than him.
"We shouldn't be." Ajak agreed. "Which means that this might be worse than I thought."
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When Sprite's vision returned seconds later, it was to a commotion of loud voices and people rushing around her but the first thing she noticed was Sersi who was holding her shoulders in an iron grip and was shaking her back and forth as if in a panic. It took another moment before she realized she was yelling. And another moment to register what it was that rolled of the Eternal's tongue like a mantra and who she was even screaming at. At her. Her name.
Sprite blinked a few times to get rid of the dark dots still dancing before her eyes. She was dizzy and Sersi wasn't making it any better with her shaking and yelling so she tried to shake her off. To no avail at first.
"Let go of me!" she finally hissed after ther tongue did not felt glued to her lips anymore.
Sersi blinked in surprise, almost as if she had expected anything but that "Oh, thanks Arishem!" she sighed.
"Yeah, or whoever."
When her eternal sister still wouldn't let go, Sprite gave her a shove to finally free herself and get back on her feet. Sersi stumbled slightly but Sprite had different things to worry about, like why she was even sitting on the empty fire station's floor. Her gaze fell on something golden in the corner of her eye and she froze for a moment.
"Sprite, are you alright?" Sersi asked but she got ignored.
A few yards away from her lay a familiar golden dagger smeared with red blood. That was her dagger. The dagger she still carried with her, hidden beneath her long sweatshirt or in the inner lining of her jacket.
Only that she had no idea how it had gotten there.
Hectically she stumbled to her feet, fended off Sersi's arms that reached out to stabilize her and looked down at herself.
Her jacket was smeared with red speckles but she had no memory of why or whose blood it was, it certainly didn't appear to be her own. As she felt down her jacket, she found that the dagger had indeed disappeared from its hiding place.
That did nothing to calm her at all.
"What the hell happened?!"
"You attacked us!" Kingo waved his arms around, gesturing from her to the dagger and back almost accusingly before returning to rubbing his head. He had been the one running around in circles behind Sersi when she had come by again, Sprite concluded but that was just beside the point. She was already opening her mouth to protest when Kingo started again. "There was that Deviant, whoever that can be. I pushed you out of the way, then there was a sudden... wave and then you tried to stab us. What the hell, Sprite?"
For someone who seemed to have just been knocked out, it could sometimes be a little difficult to follow Kingo's quick words of explanation. Especially when he told said person things that absolutely could not be and made no sense. "What?!" was the first thing that left Sprite's mouth after her brain had finally caught up in processing all that new information.
She looked back at Sersi, who still knelt on the floor, in disbelieve, hoping for some backup but not finding it.
"It wasn't Sprite" Phastos cut in from the left where he still stood in front of the tarpaulins with the dead Deviants underneath. Every single one of the tarpaulins suddenly showed to holes that could only come from projectiles of cosmic energy, so if this cursed Deviant, who had apparently caused all this chaos, actually got up again, then the other Eternals had obviously made sure that no other of those beasts would be able to repeat that little trick. At least one worry less.
Phastos was still tipping away on his holo tech stuff. His left arm was bleeding and Sprite felt the color drain from her face as the puzzle pieces fell into place.
"Was that me?"
"Nothing Ajak can't fix."
"No. Not really, at least. We believe that you weren't yourself." Sersi tried to calm her down.
A little further back stood Ikaris, who also rubbed his head with a slightly grimace, just like Kingo and Phastos did from time to time. In fact, the inventors head seemed to be causing him more pain than the laceration obviously caused by Sprite.
She didn't even have the mental capacity to wonder where Ikaris suddenly came from or to remember how angry she was with him. This was a huge mess.
Ajak would likely kill them for this.
She would likely get an headache too sooner or later.
Sprite blinked and looked around confused when she noticed something completely different that turned into a whole new problem on top of everything else. "Where is the Deviant?"
"Well, great question!" Kingo threw his arms up and gestured at a huge hole in the wall, that definitely hadn't been there before, with an extremely frustrated look on his face.
Sprite took the hint.
"You let it escape?" she asked stunned.
"No!" Kingo grit his teeth. "That beast took us by surprise! Suddenly there was this..." for a moment he visibly struggled for words, which was a new.
"It was like a wall, a pain in my head that almost knocked me out for a moment." Phastos offered. He had finished working with his tech now and therefore could join the conversation again.
"As if something wanted to gain entry by force." Sersi murmured in agreement.
"With a sledgehammer!" Kingo added, then frowned again. "I've never seen anything close to that power in a Deviant. Only at-" he stopped mid-sentence. The realization of something hit him like a punch in the stomach.
They exchanged looks with the rest of the room, all of whom apparently came to the same startling conclusion. Sersi's hands flew up to her face and covered her mouth, her eyes going comically wide. Ikaris groaned and rubbed his head harder and Phastos looked as if he considered dropping to the ground right then and there.
"Oh fuck!" Kingo cursed and turned away to swear some more in Old Babylonian.
"It wasn't the Deviant's power, was it?" Sersi sighed. Cold dread was spreading in her stomach but she did her best to hide it. Not now. It could go where all her other doubts and angers where stuffed deep within her right now.
Sprite shook her head. Her completely non-existent memory, the headaches and dizziness of the others, the bloody blade on the ground that she swore she would never use against another Eternal again... all of this spoke for something with which she had a lot of experience, but long ago and certainly not to this extent, as an observer not the target. She had never thought she could even become the target, that he would ever- could even - take over her mind.
"No it wasn't. It was Druig's."