Eros

The Sanguine Vow - 75

Alora sat in the green-lit cave, staring at the blind elf's doing over Kaido's mangled back. The speed of his hands and fingers was dizzying to follow as he removed the gut she worked so hard to install, reopening each of Kaido's wounds. She clenched her fists, but did nothing. Kaido was going to die. No matter how disturbing he was, this elf was her last hope.

He finished, and without interruption to his rapid rhythm, turned to play with his murky vials. Black steam and stinging smell she never met before drifted in her nostrils as he carried up the result of the mixing in his bowl. Black liquid sloshed within. With precise tilts, he poured it into the open cuts.

Clouds of dark vapor puffed out in touch with the raw flesh, each followed by a sizzling whisper. The liquid absorbed in wounds, colouring their coats of blood black. White steam began to trickle up.

Alora stood up to watch closer. The tissues rejuvenated before her widening eyes. Ripped flesh rejoined, and new skin stretched to cover it.

"Wow..." Alora mumbled. This 'old magic' healed Kaido like the top notch of light-bearers, and it was unknown to anybody but a blind old elf. What else could it do? What else lied hidden right under her nose?

The old elf leaned towards the last clawmark. Deepest of them all, the cuts ran up Kaido's upper back, severing the eye ebonized between his shoulder blades. Seeing the tattooed skin ripped showed the black ran deep in the flesh beneath it.

At his vial-stand, the old elf brewed in his bowl, creating a thicker, pitch-black mixture. A hissing cackle broke from him as he turned to Kaido, and dubbed his fingers in his bowl. With sinuous speed, he shoved his fingertips in the wound, smeared the substance inside. Kaido's whole body tensed, the muscles by the cuts starting to spasm. Alora winced, almost feeling his pain.

She glimpsed the elf's fingers flashing bursts of green within the cuts. The last of them sliced the eye almost in half. In one fluid swipe, the old elf crossed it, green blazing in the trail of his fingers. Then, he jabbed two of his fingers right by the eye's pupil. Kaido screamed.

He lurched around in the surgery-bed, swinging his fist into the old elf's jaw. The impact threw his frail figure, and Kaido was upon him again before Alora could begin to realize what's happening. He grabbed his throat with one hand, shoved him into the shelves and slammed his back against the wall.

"What the fuck did you do to me?" Kaido roared, his other fist raised, white-knuckled. The old elf choked with a grating cackle. Kaido dug his fingers in the elf's wrinkled neck and crushed the windpipe in his grip.

"What did you do?" He growled, his muscles shaking with anxious to violence. The elf's laughter turned hysterical, whistling with lack of air.

"I made you better." He croaked in a gasp.

Alora pulled Kaido away just as his fist flyed, knuckles brushing the tip of the elf's nose.

"Kaido stop! He's not lying!" Alora gestured at his body. The paths of the claws through his flesh were now silvery scars, enough in number for a warrior's lifetime. He was no longer unblemished, but he was healthy. The beating he just gave his surgeon proved it beyond doubt.

Kaido nailed his gaze to the old elf coughing on his knees, muscles still taut with the will to strike. "I felt he did something else. Something bad."

"I know everything about this place feels wrong. But he healed you. He saved your life."

Kaido gritted his teeth. She let go of him, and helped the surgeon up.

"Are you alright?"

"Just fine, just fine." The old elf rubbed his jaw and snickered to himself. "Been a long time since I've been knocked like that."