"Asclepius." Virgil says quietly as the statue in front of him was no longer blinding him, but instead became a real living breathing being. There was an impressed smile growing on the other man's lips as Virgil continued on. "Yeah... I recognize your from my undergrad history books."
"Any idea where we are? Also why are you here too? I was kind of expecting to see ye ol' Jesus Christo, if I'm being honest, but the Greek god of medicine receiving a doctor into the afterlife... It's a bit predictable." His lips flatten down into an awkward smile as he continues to look at the god in front of him, "I do appreciate the creativity, though."
"The snakes were a nice touch, though it was a confusing calling card. I was sure I would have ended up face first inside of an anaconda's stomach." Virgil continues on with his rambling. The old man in front of him lifting a hand to silence him. Virgil would have easily done so if asked, but he allows his voice to be taken from himself.
"I am that who you say I am." He finally speaks, a low a bass filled voice sound from his mouth. "I am Asclepius, Greek god of medicine, legacy of Apollo and now, a guest within your mortal bones."
Virgil's eyebrows furrow as he listens to Asclepius' words.
"The world has called out to us at our most weakest. We had no choice but to bind ourselves to those who match our own celestial fortitude." Asclepius continues to say while Virgil's confused expression ceased to change. "You're a man of science correct?"
Virgil nods.
"Think of it this way, since the dawn of time, frequencies of every bandwidth have existed on this planet. Though it is only recently that we have harnessed and tuned into to them with the use of tuning forks."
"You, young man, are the tuning fork to my frequency. And your new friends are variations of the same principal. However, I sense something within those who've fainted around you. I suppose they can be trusted for now but be careful, boy. Don't get them mad, especially the one wearing a kilt."
"Now! Awaken! And seek thee out a place of Elsewhere, reunite with others of your kind and give chase to the vermin across Earth as I have given chase to ancient plagues!"
The bright light Virgil had stared at reappears behind the god, flooding his vision in white before Virgil sits himself up in shock.
He was back in the hospital, the large man and the pale man beside him as he came to. Virgil groans as he stands himself up from the linoleum floor under him. The doctor looks around the emergency room, his patients still in there beds and in need of care. As Virgil steps towards one of the patient's beds, he freezes as he notices Jason no longer with them.
"Jason?" He calls out to the rest of people in the emergency room, there was no response back. He's about to call Jason's name out again before the pale man and large man gasp and come to, breaking Virgil's concentration. The pale scoots out of his bed to hold onto the larger man's shoulder desperately.
"You made it back!" The pale man exclaims, tears welled up as he held in him into a hug, "That was so terrifying, but I'm glad you were with me, Enzo."
Enzo, the larger man, simply pats his hand across the pale man's back. His gruff yet soft voice adding, "Even in the dark abyss of... wherever that was, it was nice to share torments with you, Richard."
Richard, the pale man, gives Enzo another tight squeeze of a hug before turning his attention to Virgil. "Where you able to see where we're meant to go?"
Virgil looks to Richard in confusion.
"What are you talking about?" Virgil asks, the only thing he remembers from his lecture with the old snake guy was a metaphor involving tuning forks.
"The arbiter of Asclepius." Enzo's gruff voice began to say, "That's you, right? Our godly benefactors mentioned one of the path of medicine was close to us. Surely it has to be you."
"I think that might be, but I didn't like receive any coordinates to anywhere." Virgil huffs, his eyes still scanning the emergency room for Jason. However, hearing the other two seemed to have had more information than him discouraged Virgil from sharing information himself. Although, he did remember he was meant to avoid their temper. Virgil purses his lips in thought, hesitantly sharing. "He did mention a place called Elsewhere, is that anything?"
"Elsewhere." The two other men seemed to say in unison.
"We only got a name too." Enzo began to say, standing up to his feet.
"We were hoping you knew about it. Our patrons kept mentioning how the one bestowed Asclepius's gifts would be the one to look at."
*"More like look after,"* Virgil thought in his head, *"The guy put me on mute after a couple comments..."*
As the trio of men consulted with each other, the looks on the patients faces around them grew very concerned. Some beginning to move away from the windows, lunging out of their beds before retreating themselves further inside the hospital. Virgil and company were about to investigate before the source of panic decided to present itself face to face.
A winged and scaly creature crashes through the automatic doors of the emergency room. Large mandibles bite at the air around it as it roars loudly. The creature had needle looking legs with jointed segments like that of a insects. Two arms, one that held a large and hefty curved sickle, the other a large and armored pincer. The creature seems to only roar and to look around for now, curious since Virgil couldn't spot any definitive eyes on the creature.
"I'm guessing Asclepius didn't tell you anything about those either, huh?" Enzo asks in a low huff, his hands seeming to position themselves in front of him, balling themselves into fists. Richard stood behind him.
"He wasn't gearing up to actually fight this abominable thing. Was he?" Virgil thought to himself.
Something wispy and grey started to wrap itself around Enzo's fists. The smell of smoldering ash began to permeate the air around them as a steady fire now engulfed the large man's fists. There was a sudden feeling from Virgil to check if they were under a sprinkler system.
"Nope." Virgil replies back. He looks around at medical trays around himself, catching the eye of a an unattended scalpel. Virgil decides to slowly side step towards it, hoping not to get the other's attention.
As if it knew what Virgil had intended to do, the creature roars again in Virgil's direction; louder and with an unrestrained rage. It's wings flap furiously as it tries to make its way towards Virgil. The creature is met instead with a solid right hook from Enzo. The creature doesn't look look like it was even affected by the flames on Enzo's fists. Richard takes a step towards Enzo and the creature, his hand extended, perhaps preparing and attack on the creature as well until the pale man is interrupted by another wall crashing in with another one of those creatures joining the fray. It carried a shield in its hand and its pincer seemed to now be a sharp barb.
Virgil reaches for the scalpel, holding it firm in front of him before feeling the large bard of the creature pierce through him. Virgil gasps as he feels his insides draining of blood. There's a terror in Virgil's expression as his hands held onto the creature's lance. Being a doctor, it seemed even more terrifying to know that he'd bleed out in mere seconds once the bard ripped through him again. With a shaky grasp of the scalpel, Virgil attempts to stab at the creature only for the slim utensil to slip out of his grasp and fall to the floor amidst the rumble of the hospital.
The barb retracts itself, taking more chunks of the doctor with him as they were scooped out of with the barb's hooks. Virgil falls to the floor gasping for breath but failing to get a breath in. It would have been easier if his lungs weren't currently in front of him, along with the rest of his viscera. The edges of his vision blackened out and the heat seemed to seep out of him at a rapid rate. The sight of the creature roaring in victory seemingly being his last memory, until...
He starts to see the creature dissolve to ash. There was no smoke, nor flames. From Virgil's vantage point, that being the ground he was bleeding out on, Enzo and Richard seemed to have been cornered by their first visitor. A pincer held down by Enzo's fiery grasp. The sickle also seem to have been taken away from the creature as Virgil couldn't spot it. Virgil's eyelids were growing heavier, though.
Virgil manages to spot another figure beginning to enter his line of sight before the familiar dark void engulfs him again.
It was another man.
A man in a kilt.
The man in the kilt seemed to only press his hand to the chitin of the creature's back before the entirety of it body fell into a pile of ash. The doctor's eyes were finally glazing over, more and more of those creature began to fill his sight, and one by one they kept turning into ash by the man in a kilt. Flecks of gray floated by Virgil's eyes before they closed.
Virgil gasps for air, coughing up a fit as he unintendedly inhaled a bit of ash around them. The emergency room was decimated. Medical trays and the equipment usually found on them were now scattered across the emergency room floor. Patient beds looked crumpled up, like the lids of aluminum lunch trays, bent at awkward angles as they adorn the floor.
"He's awake!" Virgil hears called out before he feel the large arm of Enzo wrap him up pick him off the ground. Virgil places a hand across the larger man's shoulders, trying to steady himself on the pool of his own blood.
"What do you mean he's awake? Oh my god, he's awake!" He hears the toneless voice of Richard echo through before it changed to a shrill tone of surprise. The voice sounded louder as Richard walks over to Virgil and carries him from the other side.
"I.. I don't understand. What happened?" Virgil manages to get out in a confused rasp. He looks down at the bloody patch on the floor that he last saw his lungs, but now only found soggy piles of ash. Enzo and Richard place him gently onto the hospital bed. The man in the kilt walked towards him, putting a hand on Virgil's shoulder.
"It's the end of the world." He says, a matter of fact tone that borders on condescension. Virgil couldn't help but scowl at the other man. There was a manner to him that he didn't much like. He's witnessed people with cocky attitudes before, and in a medical setting, it almost never panned out the way they would expect. Virgil was curious how the man in the kilt would look like not being able to get his way. Of course, he wouldn't want to ignore Asclepius' advice from before and make the man in the kilt mad.
"Virgil." He extends his hand to the man in the kilt. "Thought we should introduce each other first before we begin talking about what just happened."
The man in the kilt smirks at him. He had dark brown hair. Short, yet wavy and styled to curl a bit at the front. His eyes also shared a matching shade of brown. They were a nice color, although, the gleam in his eye was enough to make Virgil's blood boil.
"Perry."
"Perry." Virgil repeats.
"Thank you again for saving our asses." Enzo pats the kilt wearing stranger on the back.
"Yeah, we'd be toast if it weren't for you." Richard chimes in.
"Please, please. It's all the will of the gods." Perry says, doing his best to hide how much he was enjoying the attention from the other people. "Now c'mon. Let's get going. We need to get to Elsewhere if we're able to find out any real way to help the people here."
Virgil manages to spot a hand beneath the rubble of the hospital walls behind Perry. Blood dripping from it fingertips stain the rubble under it.
"No." Is all Virgil says, walking passed Perry and sinking himself down besides the body.
"It's what we're meant to do, the gods have said--."
"Well I'm saying no." Virgil says more sternly. He turns to look at Perry, his eyes welling with tears and his teeth bared in rage. "I don't care what they've said. I don't care what they're saying now! This war of the worlds crap cost me my patients! People I could have been saving now and all I've been able to do is die!"
"At.. At least I think I died." Virgil breathes out with a slight solemn tone to his voice.
"What happened to you was probably something that the gods willed for you." Perry began to say, although Virgil wasn't sure if he could believe that himself. "Didn't Asclepius explain the tuning fork thing to you?"
Perry points to Virgil while giving the other two men a confused look. "What's with this guy?"
"C'mon, man. At least if we're together, we can at least survive those things." Perry tries to plead with Virgil.
"Survive?" He echos. "I'm a doctor. It's not my place to survive, it's my place to heal."
Virgil shakes his head slightly, still besides the fallen body. "We couldn't even handle those bug things ourselves even though we out numbered it. How do you think a group of people like us will fair against literal armies of those things?"
"And what if we this 'gods' will' is a one time thing? If I get hit like that again, who's to say Asclepius won't just find another tuning fork to, and pardon my French, fork over another doctor's life with these things crashing about their hospitals."
Enzo and Perry seem to be the only ones wearing a glaring expression at Virgil's words while Richard looks concerned for the him.
"Virgil, please, maybe at this Elsewhere you can lear--"
"So you're not coming with us?" Perry asks curtly.
"No."
Virgil stands himself up from body's side before turning to Perry, scowling. Perry gives a couple of unimpressed nods in Virgil's direction before exiting from the rundown emergency room. Enzo follows suit but lingers, looking at Richard's direction as he does so. Richard hesitates, before leaving with the larger man.
Virgil marches on back in to the hospital, pushing through doors that lead deeper inside. Enzo, Richard and Perry's eyes linger on him as the doctor walks away. When Virgil came to check if the three men were still there, he was surprised to feel a twinge of hurt as he finds the ruined part of the hospital without them.