a tree and a half | posted by ekim96
29 November 2021, 10:09 AM
Lady de Dwalo took me to the big ol' house in the middle of the whole village where she lives and said that maybe I could try and do something about one of their elders, so I thought I was right on the mark.
Um. Nah man.
This elder was THE elder. Like. The mansion is built around this huge tree, right, their World Tree thing. They respect and worship the **** out of it. Except, at the bottom of the tree, where the tree comes out of the ground, there's also like an open coffin next to it.
Maybe it's just a bed but like. Totally looked like a coffin.
And this TINY freaking boy lay inside the coffin right. And Lady de Dwalo was all like "this is Elder de Dwalo, my great-granduncle whose life force has been linked to the World Tree since he was born" and I was like !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and then she goes on to tell me that he's been unconscious for the better part of a decade now and they've tried to bring all sorts of healers and he hasn't been able to wake up at all.
Apparently, the reason he got injured was because a decade ago, some demons dropped by to start something with them and he got hurt trying to protect the baby Lady de Dwalo from being eaten, so the demon just took a bite out of his abdomen instead before Clav de Dwalo blasted them into pieces.
But by then Elder de Dwalo was already suffering from blood loss so all they could do was put him in a stasis charm or something and then just put him near the coffin. They couldn't let him die because. Well. He was linked to the World Tree and they all needed the World Tree to live because they were all magically linked to the tree. Basically, Elder de Dwalo represents the World Tree of the elves and if he dies, then the tree dies, and they all also die indirectly.
I mean obviously they were also attached to him and everything but like. Yeah. Survival of the elves is dependent on this very tiny looking young boy who's probably like a hundred times older than me.
I mean, it happens to be right up my path of expertise even if I don't have any equipment. I said the usual stuff, that I couldn't guarantee anything but that I'd take a look.
The wound was on the left side of his abdomen. The demon really did take a whole ass chunk out about 10cm x 10cm. Didn't look like he was missing any organs or anything, just a bunch of meat, but definitely would have killed him. The demon had dropped the flesh it bit off, so it's still there and also under the stasis charm.
No signs of necrosis, no signs of infection, but then he's in a stasis charm after all. Healers have come to try and heal this guy but apparently, there's something in the demon magic that prevents it from accelerating healing and coming together. There's like this dark-looking ring of stuff emitting from the edges of the wound so I imagine that's what they're talking about.
I asked if they could lift the stasis charm over only one part of the body and they said they could, so I tested this guy's healing factor or whatever by nicking the skin of his leg. Everything responded as per normal without healing: the clotting, scarring, everything. It's just that it's regular human speed and the elves said it's a lot slower than the speed at which elves usually heal as well.
I had them lift the stasis charm over a very tiny section of the wound. The dark stuff looks like it's not making anything worse, just preventing it from using magic. That section bleeds, clots like usual. Sorry Elder de Dwalo.
So the good news is that we can still roughly depend on this guy's physiology, if not magic. Since the stasis charm can be released locally, I would only need a simple anaesthetic as well and wouldn't need a paralysis. He looks peaceful while he's sleeping so hopefully he's not conscious in there either...
Anyway, I'm going to spend the rest of the day figuring out what equipment I might need to try and patch him back together manually. Should be a simple enough matter of just stitching the guy back together since everything is still there. We can keep him under until the wound is fully-healed, probably.
Guess I'm staying around for a while, then :3