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A Good Going-Over

Started by Cobalt, May 07, 2015, 01:53:51 AM

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Cobalt

( @SilmeriaElemred )

When harvesting potentially-lethal herbal stimulants, it really was best to seek the assistance of a professional. Zea Misra had been invited out near a remote roadside altar to collect the fresh green oval-shaped leaves without too many big wasteful handfuls of the precious seeds. Mixed with a little sugar and quinoa ash and there was an easy way to numb someone's gums before ripping out any bad teeth. It was a nice arrangement, provided nobody went in and stripped down the entire neighborhood.

A light touch, and little self-control. That's what she'd been asked for. That was the situation as it had been explained to her. She had not been told to expect a great smashed bloody--literally bloody--swath of sturdy growth. With a great sigh at having her plans for a quiet day of drug harvesting disrupted by somebody's grievous bodily harm, she tied back her gathering basket and trudged forward to investigate.

"Hello..." she called as she walked. "Priestess of Inima. Any wounded out here? I'm armed, but I'll help if you've got wounded. Real mess you made here. Anyone still alive?"

SilmeriaElemred

The only reply was a snarl and a good few minutes later not far from her, a dragon appeared as the cloaking magic it used slowly vanished. His green and golden scales covering in blood and wounds were all over his body. ''If you are a priestess, can you heal..'' he growled softly from where he lay. He had flown. Disorientated and exhausted he found a place to rest. But resting did not remove his wounds. His magic was blocked and other then fighting with his claws he could do nothing. He was broken and beaten.

Cobalt

With a gasp Zea jumped a good handspan and took a step backward. There was an enormous dragon, just right there. Poor thing was a mess, too. Dragons were... they were like living works of art, even moreso than most living things were. Either they should be alive and well or they should be dead and ready to be dissected. This in-between seemed wrong.

"Wow. Oh wow." She shook her head to snap her thoughts out of gobsmacked uselessness. "Yes. Let me see what I can do. Your anatomy is, uh. Super unusual, but if you'll tell me where the major problems are, I can try to figure things out as I go along and I'll repair anything I can see how to repair. Plan?"

She hoped that Plan A would be good enough, because Plan B was to put this poor thing out of its misery and think of some way to take it back to her lab. Plan B seemed a little dodgy, mostly that second part. Dragons were big. Zea was small. She had a basket. She needed a Plan C.

SilmeriaElemred

''Those who did this to me the past several years placed something something somewhere in my body that actively blocks my magic to a degree I can barely use it making it very hard for me to escape.  If it is gone I could probably heal myself but I do not know where it is. Your assistence would be highly appreciated. I do not think though here would be the proper place.'' with low painfull grunting he managed to get on his feet although had trouble remaining standing.

Cobalt

Years?

Years.

Someone had been sticking things in this dragon for years? That was the shadiest fucking thing Zea had been told in at least two weeks.

"Here's a terrible place but here might be all we've got." Zea was abruptly deeply grateful that her tunic didn't have sleeves. She might be getting shoulder-deep in dragon-flesh. Neat! "I don't want you to rip anything open any worse trying to get someplace that's... not exactly going to have fewer bugs or more people. Can you point me to, uh. The stuff in you? Or do I need to go digging?"

SilmeriaElemred

''I am afraid I do not know where it is.'' The dragon replied. ''I remember them mainly tapping things out of me. Whatever is blocking my magic, and ability to even morph, I do not know. I'm afraid tearing me open is the only way to find out unless you posess magic that allows you to feel what is wrong in my body'' he took a few steps closer nearly falling over due the loss of blood but he did seem determined.

Cobalt

It seemed that Zea was going to be required to go exploring. Fine. Whatever. She could do that. Just seal up the imminently life threatening injuries and then go in for a more careful excavation once she didn't have this ridiculous patient waving around like a drunken jackass.

She had been trying to be polite about this but apparently she was not going to be allowed to get her way with the nice approach.

"Okay, first thing, you sit the hell down. Now. I do not have a plan for what happens if you die, so don't make me explain a dead dragon please." There! She'd said please. She was so good. "If you will stop staggering around like we're going anywhere, I will close up what open wounds I can and then we'll see if they left any particular nuisances behind. But you need to be down and still before I start because it will hurt like a bitch."

Zea just pointed at the ground at the dragon's feet. Obnoxious patients didn't get debates.

SilmeriaElemred

Another smile came from Oblirins mouth but it was no unfriendly one. He lowered himself again and laid down. ''There is a cord with a sharp fang around my neck. If your usual tools do not make it through my scales then you can take it.'' he said softly. He did not feel like dying just yet but this sure was a lot better then being hooked onto all those tools that seemed to take away just enough so he would not die.

Cobalt

There. There! Sometimes people who needed help were so uncomfortable with the notion that they were giant whiny disobedient babies about it, but no matter how much it felt sometimes like trying to command a dragon Zea had never actually done that thing.

"Okay. Noted," Zea said as she began picking her way over bent and broken undergrowth toward her patient. "Probably just going in with my hands, unless you're going to explode if you come into contact with magic. In which case I'll take that tooth. Any big warnings about dragon anatomy I need before I go digging inside you?"

SilmeriaElemred

Oblirin pondered. ''My blood should, contain magic. Consume any part of me and it will grant you the magic I am supposed to have for a few minutes. I will not explode with a magic touch but if your blood comes in contact with mine though a small cut in your hands you could perhaps feel power slipping into you.'' he said

Cobalt

That sounded really way more intimate than Zea had expected, and considering she was definitely planning to be inside this person... yeah. No to that. She looked at both hands, checking for little scratches or insect bites. She found a couple that she rubbed away with her thumb, grateful for the opportunity to avoid bizarre arcane cross-contamination.

"Good to know," she offered, continuing again now that she'd checked herself for broken skin. "And wow seriously don't tell anyone else that. Someone's gonna eat you."

Who said that? Who told people things like that? Who responded to a mostly unrelated question by offering a strong immediate incentive to let them die and chew on their corpse? Who did that? Where did people like this come from?

She knelt down to carefully remove the fang on the cord to claim it just for a while in case she ran up against something she couldn't pull apart by hand. And then she'd give it the hell back. Because she was not here to eat the dragon. Inima's tits. Some people's kids.

SilmeriaElemred

''People do weirder things then consuming a dragon's blood, organs, spinal fluid, name it. I am just glad I still have mine. Those who captured me wanted to make money on long term so they needed me as intact as possible. In the past people bathed in dragons blood or consumed their hearts. Do it enough and legend says you become one.'' He closed his eyes. If he attempted to relax then things would be a lot easier for this woman. He would not like the feeling but it would be over one way or another. He just hoped for the living result.

Cobalt

So they were basically farming for dragon blood. Or organs. Or whatever. Zea could absolutely see the sense in it and if she were personally in a more desperate situation she could imagine herself doing the same. Luckily for whoever this was, Zea was doing just fine so far. Good to get verification, though. If a dragon said that it was so, she had no reason to expect that she was being lied to as encouragement to... what? Eat some people?

She looped the cord with the dragon tooth around her own neck so she didn't lose it in the leaf litter and then started gently running her fingers over those pretty scales. Zea kept up a stream of mostly pointless chatter, because otherwise this dragon was going to figure out more fascinating reasons why Zea ought to just bend over and dig in with her teeth and she was too busy to keep explaining why that was both awkward and frankly pretty unhygienic.

"Okay checked your shoulders, going to your ventral section so if you're ticklish try to suck it up for a moment. You... oh. Huh. Lucky us. There are holes already in here. This'll hurt."

Zea tightened her fingers against one another and tucked in her thumb to make her hand into as slim a shape as possible before she began carefully pushing it inside the first injury on the creature's underside. Time to find out where a dragon kept their lungs!

"Sides of the cut are pretty smooth. I shouldn't have trouble closing it up once I check the... yep. There's the bottom." She glanced down at her arm. "You're deeper than you look. Anyway. I got a thing. I'm going to pull so this is actually going to be even worse."

SilmeriaElemred

''I'm... good'' Oblirin growled softly. He wasn't obviously, but kept himself relaxed and still. If he would move it would only make things harder and more painful. The pain was not unbearable yet and he growled softly with every breath. Every of Zea's movements though did make the growls a little deeper. He was glad though she said what she was doing.

''You can take it out. I'm ready for it'' he assured. ''Be glad that my kin mainly has a vegetarian diet and only eat meat if there is basicly no other choice. Some others could and would have devoured you by now..'' he jestered

Cobalt

"Hey! Just like Thanatos. Except eating us won't turn you human. Super boring, I know."

Zea pinched what felt like a sliver of smooth metal and pulled backward. Her arm up to the elbow was slick with dragon blood, but she had definitely found one of those Somethings.

"Aha. Got it. Yeah you got some stuff in there all right. Hang on because you won't like this either."

She laid the metal on the bark of a tree that the dragon had felled and went back in with both hands. She led with the same hand, since it knew the textures inside that incision the best, and then Zea began to twist and pinch the tissue until smooth organ flesh was meeting back up with the other organ flesh that felt just like it, leaving the slightly differently-smooth organ flesh to meet up with the rest of itself later.

To look at the dragon, she'd have thought oh one of the skinny ones. No. They only seemed skinny from the outside relative to their length. There was still quite a lot of internal volume.

SilmeriaElemred

Pulling the thing out made him release a painful roar and painful grunts when she got in again. He was not sure how many times this had to be done but instead of taking out the anger out on her he controlled it and thought of things. His mate from before he got captured. The egg surely must have had hatched a while ago. Females raised the young ones alone unless the female wanted the male to stay. If female it would stay with the group. If male it would ascend to the sky after being able to mate. If the group of females became to large, they would split. But a female could only lay a couple of eggs once every few thousand years.

Cobalt

Zea got herself only about one finger-joint deep before she started actually narrowing her working space. Closing off the skin was the major goal. Cosmetic stuff like scales could wait until she had actually rummaged around enough. What was enough, anyway? Until its magic worked? What if it didn't? Maybe enough was the point beyond which the magic should work, after which they would know whether the loss was permanent.

Good to have a finish line.

"There ya go," she said, patting the smooth closed skin she'd sealed off. "One less hole. You're definitely right that they didn't want you dead. They went fairly easy on your organs. Looks like the real messy stuff's along your spine."

Zea gently walked her fingertips along the dragon's scales, going from gold to greener as she reached the dorsal side. The blood on her skin was still shining wet in the humid air.

"Don't worry, though. Spines I know what to do with. You and I both have one so it's slightly less foreign territory. Deep breath now. I'm going in again."

SilmeriaElemred

''Well glad that my magic healing does not have to repair so much organ wise.'' he growled again when she got in. ''I do still feel every inch of my body and spine otherwise I could not have flown here. At the least they had not paralyzed me.'' The air cooled the blood off she had on her arms making her entering the wound a little unpleasant but he fought through it. He was still grateful for her help this far. ''Anything I could repay your kindness and help with?'' he asked.

He had plenty to offer; knowledge, an old book or two. He stached some of the research results as well and some coin. His kin were no hoarders for riches but he would make sure they would never harm any of his kin again. The crows were most likely picking their guts out as he lay here.

Cobalt

Paralysis would've made it far harder for this dragon to get here from wherever it had been kept. Zea supposed that perhaps she could make it around with no sense of touch, but even if she could manage it... balancing was a little more delicate when the ground had been replaced by shifting wind.

"Well, normally I would want to ask you all kinds of seriously rude and intrusive questions about your physiology. But." She paused wrist-deep in the muscle next to the dragon's vertebrae. "Here we are. So."

A little redundant at this point.

Zea kept making gentle little swishes with her fingers, trying to stay aware of how much tissue there was between her and the spine itself. Backbones were nothing to fuck around with.

"Oh hey. Two for two. You got something in here as well. Less pointy, though, so I mean. That's good."

SilmeriaElemred

''Ask ahead'' Oblirin replied. ''Lets start with names. Oblirin is mine. What is yours?'' there was another growl when she mentioned he had 'something in there' as well. ''What the hell did they put in me anyway.''

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