Record Low

[Zilrud]

11th of Frost, 4622

Numbness. Cold. Pain.

One foot after the other, the large, ungainly mass moved with clumsier stomps of hared feet. The sound of snow crunching under the mass’s feet was audible for most around. Luckily for the individual in question, there was nobody else around. Crimson stained each print left behind in the snow, some of its light and barely tinged. Others had melted pools where the blood had spilled with every other step and congealed quickly within the snow. The lumbering oaf could barely focus on staying upright, not caring enough about leaving a trail behind him. It was amazing he had survived as long as he had in the wilds of Lorien with nothing other than what was in the tattered sack half hanging off of one of his shoulders. Luckily for him, a tree large enough to hold his substantial weight supported him as he nearly lost his footing and landed against it with a dull thud.

Labored breathing could be heard as black hair partially fell over what others may have considered a grotesque face. He was sweating in the frozen temperatures of Lorien. His body was unable to keep his body going. Red eyes had begun to fade, just enough that he felt weaker, woozier. The price he had paid for attempting to get his last meal was grave. A boar of substantial size had wandered across the wrong creature. The beast had been killed and torn apart, its flesh eaten, and the tusks and whatever else he could use had been cleaned and stashed into his sack. In the process, though, the bore had gored his left thigh, tearing right through his quad muscles, narrowly missing shattering a bone, nicking and bruising it just a bit.

There was a linen bandage around his wound and what seemed to be dirt or sediment. The wound had been attempted to be filled with nutrient-rich soil and solidified to help stop the bleeding, but it had not worked. So with every labored step, he’d been losing blood since his attempt at his meal. Lifting his head with a grunt, he saw… Was it a borderline of an estate? Thick brows rose as his red eyes slid one way, then the other.

Jaxkael had provided for him in his moment of weakness.

A large, thick-skinned hand pressed off from his respite against the tree and restarted his effort towards finding shelter. Approaching the estate, he had been careful enough to scope out at least what he could until he had found what he needed. A small structure at the outset of the property. As he began narrowing in on the tiny shack, his heart began to pump harder at his anxiousness to be out of the snow finally. Cold he could handle, but the constant dampness combined with the frigid temperature and chilling wind had pushed him to his limit.

The closer he got, the closer he felt weaker, dizzier, and heavier. He could not tell if it was merely in his mind or if it was his body readying to give out the closer he was getting to a place of safety. Once he’d come upon it, it looked like it hadn’t been used for the season. Attempting to open it, the brute found it was locked. Grunting, he weakly gave it a shoved push of his shoulder and attempted to knock it open. He’d grown weak enough. Exerting himself any further would do well for him. But at that moment, anger quickly bled across his face, his lips pulled into a snarl, baring his teeth, his eyes glowed red, and a fist big enough to fall a bull slammed into the edge of the door with a rasped, faint, but still impressive roar of feral nature. The sound of the door splintering from the jamb could be heard. Ducking into the now-opened doorway, he stumbled into the shed. It smelt of animal hide… Perhaps meats.

Whatever it had been, it didn’t register long enough as his consciousness was slowly bleeding out of awareness. Being out of the immediate weather, he found his body relaxing and unable to keep upright. His left hand reached up to grip what he felt was more stable, but his hand had caught a mobile rack, but instead of catching himself, the rack moved out from his grasp and sent it crashing into a nearby wall. In the process, the lumbering giant fell and crashed into a set of tools spiraling out from him.

Slamming into the ground, his shoulder had hit first before he rolled onto his back. The tattered shirt he had worn tore slightly, revealing more of the warpaint-stained flesh and the smallest hint of a blue pattern mostly hidden behind the shirt's cloth. The pants he had worn had torn, and the leggings of the pants had since torn and had become nothing more than a glorified loincloth. His feet had cuts with small bleeding wounds, and his left thigh had a wound, bleeding through the bandage and pants, unseen by anyone else, infected from the wound he had received and could not keep up with the maintenance of.

In that final moment, his red eyes dimmed before his green eyes shut completely. The massive Orkhai that had been roaming Lorien had finally been forced to slow down and come to a stop. His fate and vitality, one of the last things he had had to maintain as his own, had been finally taken from him as well.

[Thomas]

Thomas had not warmed up to the realities of being a Celebrant in the months since he had wed into wealth and power. A real Celebrant, Wendall had said wryly, making a demarcation between those that were born to it like himself, those that had earned it like Taelian and therefore had no need to prove themselves in the fundamentals of the position, and those, like Thomas, that had lucked into it. Thomas had shot back that he hadn't lucked into anything: he had his skill set just like Wendall and just like Taelian. Then he and Wendall had the kind of angry sex where they traded barbs with one another before Wendall returned to teaching Thomas accounting principles.

Accounting, ledgers, tax records, and receipts made up a good deal of Thomas' education. Wendall was thorough in that way, Thomas got an understanding of every piece of paperwork, and the purpose of each document as it traveled through the system, and brought it all back around to how this made them money. He also indulged Thomas in his desire to go see what it is all of this actually looked like, to go out into the fields and meet the brave farmers who oversaw the Hollows on the fields of snow, to go to their mineral holdings and see Hollows actually digging up the very mineral that was used in their creation. He'd tried to impress upon them that they were mining the ability to create more life, but if they comprehended him, they gave no indication.

He'd also attempted to bond with human servants, though that had been of mixed success. He thought that his own origins would help in this regards -- he'd spent years on the other side of things after all -- but the help continued to treat him with the utmost decorum and respect of someone who they secretly despised, and he could not blame him all that much. If he hadn't lucked his way into the high status position, he had slept his way to it, and that was not the sort of thing people tolerated. It was a reminder that life was not fair and that effort was not rewarded. Or, Thomas thought to himself slyly, not the sort of effort that people normally counted. He put his back into what he did, same as any hardworking man, but this was quite distinct from how many Rienese people would view things.

One thing the help had taken to heart, though, was that Thomas didn't mind being interrupted when he was attempting to administrate the estate. He actually welcomed it. Even if it was just a tea tray or a question about what to do with correspondence for Taelian. Anything to take him away from the tedium. So when his housekeeper told him that a vagrant had been discovered on the estate, Thomas could scarcely believe his luck.

He put on an overcoat -- even the short distance from the manor house to the outbuilding they used as a small warehouse and curing shack during the warmer seasons could be dangerous in Frost -- and went out to take a look.

He was no tracker, but he didn't need to be much of one to see it. The lightly falling snow had started to obscure the trail, but someone very big had come through the snow. They hadn't bothered to stick to the path, either, instead completing the shortest possible route from the edge of the estate to the building. Thomas knelt on the threshold and noted the blood that the snow had not yet erased. Someone wounded, then.

Then his eyes took in the state of what had been the door to the curing shack and amended his description to someone wounded and quite strong. It had been locked, but that apparently did not matter in this case. He wasn't quite sure what to expect given this information. Maybe a wounded Argent Knight, who had come here seeking Taelian? Surely they'd know that his husband had been away for the last few seasons, first at the front, and then to Radenor on behalf of the Covenant, but if they were losing this much blood, they might be desperate and not thinking straight.

It was only when he rounded the corner, out of the vestibule that they used as a mud room during the wet summer months, did he come face to face with how wrong he was. The intruder was big, and evidently quite strong, but this was no Argent. For one thing, he was far too green to be such.

"An Orkhai...?" He said aloud. Orks were actually more common in his native Grisic than they were in Lorien, so he was more familiar with them than he would have been otherwise. Some had worked with Ned at the docks, for instance -- good fellows -- and there had been his entanglement with a high-ranking Noble who had, it turned out, been hiding a secret about his lineage with a powerful medication brewed just for him.

He gave himself a mental shake. The reason for why this man had come here could wait. He needed help, and that had to take priority.

He knelt down to one side of the man's head. "Ah -- hello? Sir? Can you hear me?"

If the big Ork did, he gave no indication. Thomas looked at him in a bit more detail: he was wearing what had clearly been a too-small shirt and too-small pants. The former had shredded due to repeated encounters with the native flora of the West End, which Thomas knew from personal painful experience to be quite spiky, and the latter looked to have just not fit adequately enough, and gone from trouser to loincloth accordingly. He had an improvised pack over his shoulder, presumably with the belongings that had allowed him to get to this point. He also did not seem well. The heat radiating off of him was palpable when Thomas waved a hand near his forehead, and even providing for any difference between human and orkhai internal temperatures, Thomas was positive the man had a fever, and not a mild one. He also saw where all the blood was coming from: a wicked looking wound, puffy and bleeding. An infection, then.

Hesitant to touch the stranger without permission, Thomas nevertheless felt obligated to do something, so he gave the Orkhai's shoulder a small shake. "Please wake up, Sir."

[Zilrud]

As unconsciousness took him, the world had blanked out, and for the briefest of moments, he had felt bliss. No suffering, no dreams, no nightmares. There was nothing to stop his rest. That was until something on the most primal of levels had alerted his body and mind. Somebody was near. Not responding to the nearby kneeling position, it was when the Orkhai had felt something touch his body, and the heat of someone else’s body had come close enough to potentially be a danger, that his body fired on every last nerve it had that was still functional.

Quickly, green lids pulled back, showing fiery red orbs, and they quickly scanned over to the feeling of heat upon his cold, leathery skin. What could only be considered the most basic instinct of survival kicked in, and the thick brows tried to furrow, and a large hand graced with scars from countless fights had raised and aimed perfectly for the man’s jugular. The large, green fingers and thumb easily wrapped around the male’s throat and squeezed. It was almost too tight of a squeeze for anyone to be able to receive any form of usable air, but the action hadn’t been meant to grab and hold only. Instead, his muscles tightened with what strength the Orkhai’s adrenaline allowed him. He pulled the man, turning over onto his side, rolling onto his right knee to prop him up, and would pin the man against the floor of the shed, his left hand moving to support himself in a loom over the other. Another primal scream, a roar of sorts, was given out mere inches away from the stranger’s face. Spittle flung from the man’s mouth in small strands.

At the quick movements and expenditure of what energy he had left, the Orkhai realized he was about to lose consciousness again. With his large, muscular chest rising and falling, his hand had to release the man’s throat and instead slid to place itself beside the other’s head where he had laid the man out. The raging and defensive posture had begun to slack and the ferocity mostly intended to scare off anyone dumb enough to toy with an Orkhai bled into a softer, almost confused look.

Where am I?

The thought ran rampant in his head. His red eyes lost the enraged glare and instead dulled to a dark ruby reflection. If anything, the confusion also showed exhaustion as he could barely hold himself up. It would become very apparent, especially to the Orkhai, that he did not even have the capability to fight off a human. And for a reason only known to the Ork, it wounded him almost as deeply as the bleeding wound to his leg. As pressure was placed on his left knee, the wound trickled blood down his thigh, towards his knee, and the floor.

The man was not going to kill him. If the man had intended to kill him, he’d had him perfectly ready to slaughter in an unconscious state, and he didn’t have to try and wake him up for that. The last words he had heard while stirring from his unconscious rest was the word please. It had the red-eyed beast staring at the man. And although he was no longer enraged or ready to kill the man, he was still weary of his existence and his proximity.

With his vision blurring slightly, the Orkhai’s clammy, leathery skin on his brow rose as the damp black hair had stuck partially to his temple. ”What?” The Orkhai had no idea where he was or even whether he was on someone’s property. The voice was deep, inhumanly deep, and reflected a gruff, almost rasped voice of an Orkhai that was not quite young at all.

He needed to get up. He needed to go. He could not stay. If there was one human, there would be others. They always banded together. They always worked in numbers. They were vermin, a plague to be rid of. In that same vein, he also felt like vermin that needed to be rid of. He was an Orkhai with no weapons, honor, or pride. Everything had been taken and stripped for him, showing his defeated demeanor. Could not kill a human, survive in the wild, or be wounded. And he would never feel the fields of Rokhan under his bare toes ever again. Perhaps he deserved to be among the humans, and unless this human spoke to him or did something to keep him from straying any further from thought, he would pass out and end up back to square one all over again.

[Thomas]

Thomas hadn't brought his gun to meet the purported vagrant, because his assumption had been that he wouldn't need one. When the ork's eyes snapped open, he had a brief instant to reflect on how that may have been a mistake before he was being choked. One hand met the ork's strong grip on his neck, trying fruitlessly to get him to stop as his eyes went wide and his feet kicked uselessly underneath the big man's bulk.

"Please," he said again, or would have said if he could say anything. In reality, it came out as more of a pained croak.

He was released with the same suddenness he'd been grabbed, with the ork levered heavily on top of him. The roar would have scared him if he wasn't already scared. As it was, he was thankful that his reaction to terror wasn't anything embarrassing; he just tended to freeze and then to try to talk his way out of his predicament.

Which is exactly what he did.

"Sir -- I assure you, I don't want to hurt you," Thomas said, feeling a bit ridiculous saying this while looking up at a man who had narrowly decided that killing him wasn't in his current best interest for reasons of his own, and who could at any moment finish what he started. "I think you need help, though. That wound looks quite bad, even though you tried to dress it, and I think you have a fever."

"Would you please let me help you, Sir?" He looked up entreatingly at the man who had, for the moment, decided to not kill him. "Once you're better, you can do as you like, but if you wander off into the wilds in this condition, I fear you could be in real danger."

[Zilrud]

The Orkhai would not understand what the man had meant with his pleading other than for his own life. Humans were weak, repugnant, and disgusting. They had disgraced him for too long, and he could not stand to look at another one for as long as he could foresee. When he continued to talk, even after being spared his life, the Orkhai’s brows furrowed, and he looked at him in earnest shock. The human had not run off, nor had they called for help to kill the lumbering oaf.

How could the human hurt him? He was unarmed, not calling for help. If the Ork had seriously wanted to, he could have ended his life with a final swing of his muscular arm. Instead, what the large, hulking mass chose to do, was to lift his hand from resting beside the human’s head and press himself back into a seat on his muscular backside as he stared at the man. His red eyes glanced over him as he lay there after the choking, in what seemed to be fear of his life.

Good the Ork thought. He would leave him be. His right knee lifted as his bare foot pressed against the floor of the shed, and his left leg laid out, grimacing as he straightened it out. The twinge the pain had sent up his spine and out of his nerves, causing a pained grunt. The words of the other had not fallen on deaf ears, but he had finally realized the man was trying to help him, not kill him.
Perhaps it was a language barrier. He had spoken Common, but only a word or two. Frustrated, the Orkhai let out a sigh and looked at his leg. He needed a medicine man, a woman, or a Shaman, someone from his Clan from so long ago that could heal the wound in no time. But none of those were available to him, and he’d had to bandage his wounds while fighting in the arena. Grunting in the man’s direction, the Orkhai unceremoniously pulled at the bandage, ripping it with a slick, squelching sound coming from the wound as the cloth was pulled away first from the front-facing of his thigh, then from around the back of his thigh and dropped the bandage, exposing the wound for the other.

“No money for help.”

That was all the others would get as an invitation to help him. The Orkhai let him know he had no money to pay him in return, and baring the wound that had led to his physical state.

[Thomas]

Thomas looked at him a bit sadly, but he did not fault the strange orkhai the impulse. He'd also grown up poor, and medical care was not cheap in Grisic. He could certainly understand not wanting to owe a stranger something, even if his life depended upon it. Funny thing about owing people a life-debt and pledging it to them: they tended to turn around and ask you to do things with it that you would never otherwise accede to.

So instead of being offended or upset, he merely said, "I understand. I offer this help for free. I expect nothing in return. To help, though, I will need to call for a doctor, and get some medical supplies."

He looked at the orkhai for reassurance that this would not be met with resistance. His neck still hurt from getting choked and he was in no hurry to repeat that particular experience. At least, not like this, where there was a real danger of not living to tell the tale. When this wasn't met with a thick corded arm coming at his neck, he nodded at the man and smiled.

"Right then. I shall return presently."

He returned to the manor house and had a quick conversation with Wendall, who rolled his eyes at his husband and lambasted him acerbically for his continued softheartedness, lack of practicality, and general inability to think rationally, but also agreed to send for the doctor and gave Thomas a kiss on top of his head, so he wasn't too mad. Thomas, for his part, sent the servants scrambling for antiseptic, clean linen rags, and boiled water in a silver pot. He returned with all of it in a matter of minutes.

He had half-expected that the orkhai would try to run off while he was gone, and was relieved to find that he hadn't.

"Right. I'm back, Sir." He set the basic medical supplies down next to the ork so that the man could examine them if he wished. "I've called for a doctor, but that may be hours. In the meantime, I can at least clean your wound, if you'll permit? If you don't want me to, though, I won't. I can also just stay here with you and wait for the doctor. It's up to you."

[Zilrud]

This human behaved and acted strangely. He had met humans who had gone through Rokhan, usually trading goods, or looking for something Orkish to take home with them for a night, After all, half-breeds were created naturally. So, something seemed off when this… Boy, for all intents and purposes in comparison to the Orkhai, had offered help free of charge. He was going to ask for something, and the Orkhai’s eyes narrowed at the possibility of what he could ask of him, regardless of promising it for free. He had learned the hard way nobody did anything completely for free.

The Ork did not object to the man going to find a doctor. Even if he had wanted to, the green male had no strength to press himself up or to do anything with himself other than pathetically sit there. During the time that the man had ventured off to either find a killing party or, perhaps, truly find help for the Ork, his head had fallen back a bit, and his eyes had come to a close by the time the other had returned. Smelling the boy on his return, his head lifted, and the Ork’s red eyes had since grown dimmer and sluggish.

When the medical supplies were laid out for him to look through, he found that his gaze, although dulled and blurred, he would not communicate that to the man helping him, seemed to be scanning for something specific. He could not make out any writing that may have been on the bottles or whatever else equipment there had been, but he did not see anything with a glowing blue coloration, and for that, he was silently grateful.

The question if he would allow it had the Ork’s eyes sluggishly sliding up to the man’s eyes. His Clan had always spoken of the fear one could find in someone else’s eyes. The more fearful a man could be, the sweeter his meat would taste. The stronger his blood would fill his veins upon devouring him entirely. Deliriously, the Ork sized the man up, from what he could make out, debating if the fear he had sewn into the man had made him taste any sweeter.

With the internal narrative not quite matching the external, the Orkhai’s head nodded toward the direction of his wounded leg, and he even slid his leg out a bit more to offer the man a full exploration of the wound. With the bandage already removed, the full extent of the infected wound could be seen. It was most definitely a boar’s tusk that had done the damage to the Ork’s normally sturdier flesh.
Though he allowed the human to patch him up, the heavens help the man once the pain worsens with the antiseptic.

[Thomas]

Thomas was observant enough to pick up on the ork's deteriorating state. I'm losing him. Despite himself, despite knowing nothing about this stranger, that felt like a great injustice, and it spurred him to action.

"I'm going to start by cleaning the wound. You've packed it, it looks like, with mud. That was smart for walking around, but the doctor will need to see what is going on in there, so some of it may come out as I work."

He put the bowl of boiled water, still steaming slightly, next to the ork's muscled green thigh. He dipped a clean linen cloth in it and then began very gently moving it over the exterior of the wound. It was puffed up and angry looking, indicating some sort of infection but hopefully the warmth of the water and the feeling of the dirt, blood, and pus being washed away would compensate for any pain caused. He looked into the orkhai's eyes and while he worked, careful not to poke at or put pressure on the wound. The man was already in pain. He had no intention of making it worse.

"Now, I'm going to do what I just did, but with some soap. When it hits the wound, it will sting a bit, but you are strong, I can tell," he said with a grin at the other man, "so perhaps you will not fuss like I would."

He took a second clean cloth and rubbed a simple odorless glycerin soap over it. It was faintly sweet smelling and had some lavender oil in it, but was otherwise unremarkable. He repeated the process beginning to gently debride the wound as he did so. He didn't dig into it, both because he was no doctor and because exposing how deep the wound went served little purpose until the doctor arrived, but he did get rid of the mud and caked blood as he did so, gently rubbing the soap up rag over the wound.

"This will be a repeat of step one, big guy -- just water, nothing to worry about."

So saying, he repeated how he'd started with a third clean rag. It turned his stomach slightly that there was so much encrusted blood in the wound, but it also impressed him. Even for an ork, this guy had an impressive constitution. His attention turned to the antiseptic. He was worried about this one because it would definitely hurt, more than just the soap had if that had even registered.

So he held the little bottle with its eye dropper in front of the ork. "Your wound is infected, ah -- like a fire. You feel it burning, yes? This will put the fire out, but it will be painful. Is it okay that I do this, Sir?" If the orkhai didn't give him some kind of consent, this was as far as Thomas was going without a doctor and preferably several hollows to hold him down. He preferred to do things the nice way, but he had no intention of getting his neck broken because the man couldn't comport himself in his current condition.

[Zilrud]

Initially, the Ork had no idea what the man’s skills or if he had any. He could have been lying, and the Orkhai knew humans especially had a penchant for lying and stealing, so they could get what they wanted. Although the red eyes had dimmed, he was still lucid enough to understand what was happening. Although the finer details were a bit blurred with his vision, he could still make out the actions and items the man was using.

The pain was nothing new to the Ork; he had worse pain in his life than a wound. Perhaps not as grave of a situation as wounded, weak, and infected, but the intensity of the pain had been more than a mere puncture wound that had grown infected. The warmth of the water touching his frost-kissed skin felt heavenly. Even for his thicker skin, the feeling of the still steaming water and cloth against the wound was bliss. The pain it caused was not worth any effort to react to. If anything, this had the Ork closing his eyes because it was the first relief he had felt since receiving the wound. Even giving an exhausted, appreciative breath out, the dangerous rows of Orkish teeth and tusks were seen briefly before his eyes peeled open when the man began to speak about cleaning it, but with soap.

He knew what soap was, and he’d used it before. Many people thought Orkhai simply walked around filthy, but they were just as clean as some humans, cleaner than some, in fact. The sting, again, was appreciative because the warmth of that water came to the cold-grazed wound, and rather than watch the rag that was removing the debris from the wound, he watched the human’s face. He was not offended by the Orkhai, something even those who had paid to use the Orkhai as an attraction of sorts did not even look at him with the plainness this man was giving him. Watching his face for a longer moment than necessary, the Ork’s gaze finally fell to something else. When the repeat of the rinsing and washing of the wound happened, he watched the bottle with the eyedropper. Infected, he knew it was infected.

Giving a nod of his head, the dimmed gaze fell to the wound, or what he could make out of it, and would allow his focus to relax as he kept his gaze there. The Ork knew it was going to sting. He knew that medicine to fix an infection oftentimes caused a burning sensation and worse feeling than the infection imparted onto them.

Allowing his head to fall back, staring up at the ceiling, his sharper teeth grit against one another, the clicking sound audible as his green lips pressed together more firmly. The man was trying to help him. He still hadn’t decided whether to eat him afterward, but he would have been a foolish Orkhai to turn down the help of someone giving his health and mobility back. And so he prepared, not knowing how strongly the antiseptic would hit him, and had preemptively clenched his fists. This way, he wouldn’t snap the man’s arm or, worse, return his grasp to his neck.

[Thomas]

Thomas saw the ork reposition himself. "You are wise, my friend," he said, meaning it. Men who were otherwise strong could be laid low by injuries and their mending. The orkhai knew that despite the fortitude he had to come this far, he needed to brace himself.

There was an intelligence in those red eyes that Thomas found appealing. An orkhai -- half-orkhai, but quite an orkish one nonetheless -- had been his second love, and there was a lot to recommend orkhai in his opinion. While he'd been working, he had not failed to notice the dense, corded muscles packed onto the giant man's frame, nor the handsome if brutish planes of his face. Even the red eyes had a vivacity and depth to the them that Thomas rather liked. He didn't let his musings distract him, but the part of him that had not been pinned under someone this broad for quite some time found himself missing it. He shook his head a bit. He'd always been given to daydreaming as a kid growing up in the orphanage, and the habit had crept back into his life now that he no longer had to worry about where his next meal was coming from.

This, like his decision not to bring a gun to meet a wounded stranger, was a bit worrying, even if so far it was working out okay. It could not be argued that living as a Rienese Celebrant was making him soft. It was hard to escape such an obvious conclusion.

He carefully portioned out some antiseptic onto a clean boiled rag, distributing it evenly along its length. The wound was too deep for him to disinfect the whole thing, and it was still packed with mud, besides, so the bulk of the work would wait for a qualified medical professional. He was just going to try and patch the poor man up and give him a bit of relief. To do so, unfortunately, required hurting him in the short term.

"Okay, big guy," he said, giving the ork what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "On three." And on his count, he put the rag on the wound, careful to press only on the corners of the rag, not the edges of the wound itself. "I'm sorry," he said as he did it, hoping that those fists stayed right where they were.