Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Printable Version
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RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-14-2019
Ren nodded along, worrying at her lower lip. Her instincts said not to trust Grilka, but instincts were fiddly little things when it came to primal fears. Grilka was the expert at this sort of thing, and according to the King, had both every reason to know and every reason to want to protect the King and castle. She'd decided to trust em, dangerous as that felt, and that was more important. She couldn't trust her instincts; they'd gotten her into this bitch of a situation. Gotten them all into it. If she'd alerted someone sooner, things might never have come to a head like this. An investigation could have caught it earlier. "I'll send rats," she decided with a sigh. "It's easy for 'em t' keep outta th' way; they can travel in th' walls. You can do th' same, right?" Certainly seemed to be the case. "I can keep 'em from freaking out at th' sight of a snake if you can keep th' snakes from wantin' a snack. We can keep an eye on th' kids and be alerted as soon as somethin' happens." She didn't know Grilka's range, but was pretty sure hers could encompass almost the whole castle and grounds at this point. She'd be distracted, with that much dissonant feedback, but she could do it.
"Yer the guards," she said sharply, apparently not noticing the irony when she'd just been outlining a defense plan. "I'm not in the King's Guard." She sounded a lot more certain of this than Gareth had when he told her. She needed to be certain of it, to make this whole stupid plan work. And to keep herself from running back out of the castle. Just being here was stressing her out. "I'm jus' a good fuckin' Samaritan."
She didn't know how to take the news about Colin. She felt off-balance with the knowledge he was as good as already dead. Possibly already dead. He wouldn't survive the King seeing the state of Gareth. Possibly she wouldn't either, but there was no use thinking about that. It just didn't seem like it should be so easy for a man who'd been her hell for the last year to vanish off the face of the earth like that. She hadn't even seen it happen. She didn't know if she'd ever believe it, if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. Then again, she didn't know if she really wanted to see it, either.
She shook her head, willing herself to keep it together. "Good. That's... good. We proly only have to keep it together fer what, twenny, thirty minutes before he's back? Even I could manage that."
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-14-2019
Grilka could taste her fear with every dart of eir tongue, and it amused em. Had ey not saved her life at least twice? Yet she couldn't overcome her instincts, even now. It was a marvel that she could bear to be around the King at all, magnificent reptile that he was.Ey bent at the space beneath eir ribcage that wasn't a waist, leaning closer to her and pressing a finger to eir lips. Eir rings were more like bejeweled filigree armor, covering eir fingers and coming to points at the ends, giving the impression of claws ey did not have. "Most of them," ey said, "aren't actually big enough." Ey did not hide eir amusement at this fact.
Ey cocked eir head sideways. "Oh?" Either she still rejected identifying with her assignment, or else she knew something ey didn't. "You could have fooled me." She was acting like a King's Guard, whatever she said.
Grilka took a thoughtful drag. "The less he knows when he gets back," ey said, "the better. If there is trouble left to deal with, he will do so... indiscriminately."
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-14-2019
Ren stiffened as Grilka leaned close, having to plant her feet on the ground and dig her nails into her palms to fight the instinct to bolt away. "Even better," she said through clenched teeth. "Then I'll keep an eye on th' kids." The rats scattered in every direction, off on a scavenger hunt for small children. Probably not a game people would like her playing with rats and kids, but if the King could play hide and seek with them, so could she. It was no more alarming than that. "Yes," Ren replied firmly, although she didn't elaborate further. "We can get into th' legalities of th' situation later, when there aren't possibly idiot racists with swords runnin' around." She paused. "Actively runnin' around. Actively runnin' around th' castle. You get me."
Ren considered this. Grilka had a... very poignant point. "Alright, yeah, good poin'," she said, nodding. "An' frankly th' happier we can have him before I see him next, th' fuckin' better fer me. Can you round 'em up, if I keep an eye on all th' kids? Any rat can find a small human and watch it, but yer th' one who knows who all th' old King's people were. I never even fuckin' knew the names of th' guys guardin' me. They weren't exactly linin' up to shake my hand," she added dryly.
Ren stiffened, abruptly, with an absolutely appalling image from a rat's perspective. "Hey, Grilka. Is there a reason why someone might be holdin' a sword to a kitchen lady's neck?"
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-14-2019
"They will be found," ey said decisively, putting out eir cigarette against the gold-plated tip of one horn and tossing the butt aside. The tip of eir tail booped the snoot of a waiting ball python, which slithered away to boop the others. There were a few people that Grilka was certain were involved, and so appropriately venomous snakes could be allowed to disable them. Nothing too deadly—but they might lose a limb or two to necrosis. The more questionable conspirators could be held by the few large constrictors in the castle, until such a time as they could be interrogated. ... of course, this was only useful within the castle walls, where the rooms were kept warm. None of the snakes could go outside at this time of year, and neither could Grilka. They were all, as ever, trapped here until spring.
Surely none of them would be so stupid as to loiter about in the King's own garden.
Grilka's eyes widened. "Ssshit!" Ey reached out to grab her wrist, stopping emself at the last minute with a hiss of frustration. Instead ey turned to slither out of the room with surprising speed, not caring if she followed. "Cara must have stayed in the kitchen to protect her work." Ey could only imagine how she'd responded to a sudden incursion of rats. Ey assumed it involved a large broom and a lot of hissing like an angry dragon. "Idiots! She'll try to fight them herself if she sees the chance, and every one of us will have to answer for it if harm comes to the King's first daughter."
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-14-2019
It would probably take Ren's rats quite a while to find all of the kids, and knowing that there was in fact someone doing something stupid, somewhere in the castle, didn't make Ren feel any better about that fact. Still, better for them to be thorough. She couldn't miss any of them. This bullshit was exactly why the King should have looked over and begun implementing her fucking orphanage! It wasn't as dangerous when the King was here, except for that the King was there, but when he was gone...
Ren flinched when Grilka reached towards her, but mercifully, ey stopped, swore, and rushed out of the room. Despite her fear, Ren did in fact bolt out of the room after Grilka, because when someone yells "SHIT" and runs--er, slithers--out of the room as fast as possible, you follow.
"What?!" she exclaimed, sprinting after Grilka. "That's Cara?" The fucking King had said she worked in the kitchens now, hadn't he? Goddamnit! And the King's Guard would know exactly who she was. "Do they have a death wish?" In a room full of knives and cast iron pans, she didn't really trust any child of Avi's to stay unarmed for long. "Fuck. Okay, I can have the rat leap on one of their faces, but I don't want anyone with a sword to panic an' run Cara through. I think there's two people there, too. I'm useless, but yer a giant terrifyin' snake, once we get to th' kitchen door gimme th' word and I'll have rats clawnin' at the eyes o' th' one with th' sword an' you can rush in an'," she waved her hand vaguely, breathless with the running. "I dunno, whatever." She assumed a naga would have a lot of things at eir disposal that a five foot two homeless chick.
Ren, however, wasn't totally sure her own plan was a good idea. "Or is it too dangerous? D'you wanna try... I dunno, barterin'? Magic snake powers?" She wasn't experienced with hostage situations.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-15-2019
"If it is one of Ranulf's," Grilka said with disdain, "then they are likely to have peculiar ideas about human dimorphism. One of many things they ought to have unlearned by now."Perhaps they thought Cara some meek flower, relegated to the kitchens because it was her place. As opposed to it being her own little kingdom, of which she was self-appointed warrior queen. It wasn't as if she spent a great amount of time amongst the riff-raff of the King's Guard to correct their misconceptions.
Ey moved at angles down the stairs—not heading for the kitchen. Kitchen-adjacent. "If you can distract them with rats," ey said, "that will be useful, I think. Make them seem harmless—just distracting." It shouldn't be too hard. As long as they didn't start swarming, just ran around being ratty, it seemed like the sort of thing that should get someone's eyes off areas of interest.
The walls of the kitchen were open at the top, to help air out whatever smoke the chimneys couldn't contain. Grilka took advantage of this, rising up on eir tail and using muscle and scale to grip the heavy brickwork. Ey slithered up a wall with neither door nor windows, assuming it wouldn't be watched and scale to grip the heavy brickwork. Ey slithered up a wall with neither door nor windows, assuming the gaze of anyone inside would be too focused on obvious entrances. When ey reached the top, ey moved through the open area and onto one of the rafters, taking stock of the scene.
Cara, to no one's surprise, was absolutely trying to angle for a hot cast-iron pan.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-15-2019
Ren, frankly, had no idea what the hell Grilka meant about human dimorphism in this context, but now really wasn't the time to ask for clarification. If they were going to go around targeting people who didn't fall in line to a strict gender binary, though, Ren wasn't surprised that she herself had been a target. With her flat chest and short hair, she'd always been able to pass for a boy as easily as a girl. Grilka's disdain made her wonder why in the fuck she'd been forced to wear skirts every fucking day of her imprisonment, though. Although when she'd started wearing uniform shorts instead, no one had really kicked up that much of a fuss. Probably because at that point, everyone involved had realized that getting her into any kind of uniform at all was a huge victory and had been willing to compromise to some degree.
"I can do that," Ren agreed firmly. Rat-based distractions were something of a specialty of hers. There weren't a lot of rats in the area, because she had them spread out all over the place, so she momentarily filtered out the feedback from the others to focus on the one she had in play here. It was hiding behind a barrel, watching the scene play out with unratlike interest that would have caught their eyes if they had been playing any kind of attention at all.
Ren didn't like assuming direct control over anything or anyone. It made her feel too much like Gareth's assumptions about her being some kind of nightmareish hive queen of a vast rat army. It wasn't like that. She didn't want it to be like that. The last few day's events had been dire and stressful and had her doing a lot of things she wouldn't normally do, however, and this was definitely another dire situation. Later, she could take time off and take stock of herself and her morals. Now was simply not the time.
It was also not the time for her to be momentarily startled out of her focus by the stunningly horrifying sight of Grilka rising up, gripping into brickwork in such a way that Ren would have assumed to be physically impossible, and slithering directly and vertically up a fucking wall. That was a nightmare. She was going to have nightmares about it. She was going to always be looking up now, forever, terrified of the concept of a snake fucking dropping on her like an owl.
Ren shut her eyes to block out the horror and focus back in on the rat. With Grilka now in place, she sent it scurrying from the shelter of the barrel to under a table, giving it the control it needed to move in the most realistically ratty ways possible, although it would not have been able to tell her no even if it had wanted to, which it did not. When this failed to provide enough of a distraction to Ren's satisfaction, she sent it out again with an audible squeaking, to dart over the shoes of the man standing behind the one with the sword to Cara. Predictably, he yelled and windmilled his arms as he staggered backwards away from the squeaking, darting rodent. The man with the sword glanced back to see what the yelling was about, his eyes and focus leaving Cara to hunt for a threat that... well, it definitely existed, but it sure as hell wasn't the rat.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-16-2019
As soon as she had her opening, Cara lunged for a pan. This was mostly to hit the man, but also instinct when she heard a rat in her kitchen.Grilka used this opportunity to drop gracelessly from the ceiling like a counterweight attached to nothing. Eir tail wasn't long enough to hold onto the rafters, and anyway, a controlled descent would only slow em down. Ey moved just as soon as ey'd knocked the sword-wielder to the ground, Cara using her pan as a shield when his sword swung wide. Ey pounced on the one who'd recoiled from the distraction rat, sinking fangs directly into his face.
It was easier than aiming for his neck.
Grilka ignored the screaming as venom was injected under his skin, dropping him after only a moment to twitch on the ground. Eir tail was still draped on the collapsed swordsman, whose spine ey may very well have broken by landing on him like that. Rather than make assumptions, ey took the precaution of grabbing him by the hair, lifting him up enough to bite the back of his neck.
More venom. More screaming. The first one was already losing his ability to breathe, skin turning black around the puncture wounds.
Grilka dropped him, and delicately covered eir mouth as ey worked eir jaw to get eir fangs retracted back into place.
"Grilka!" Cara said with relief, dropping the pan to throw her arms around em. Ey stiffened, but recovered gracefully to give her a pat on the shoulder. "Sorry," she said, letting em go. "Are you okay?"
Eir tail hurt a bit where it had been used as a bludgeoning instrument, and where ey had hit the ground. Using eir fangs wasn't exactly comfortable, either. "Quite well," ey said, ignoring the rapidly-dying men by her feet. "You are fine, Countess?"
"Obviously," she scoffed, wiping absently at a thin line of blood along her skin where the sword had caught her. "What's going on? Is Dad okay?"
"The King is retrieving Gareth, who has been injured. They will be fine, I think."
"Is this related to the rats?"
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-16-2019
Ren had the unfortunate privilege of watching the whole shebang from the eyes of a rat, which sprinted for shelter the second she recoiled, horrified, back into the limited comforts of her own mind. She didn't have anything in her left to vomit, her stomach too sensitive to eat after all that poison, but she dropped to her knees to dry heave while more screaming suggested that Grilka was making short work of the other combatant. She should... go in. Make sure Cara was okay. Even though she was sure Grilka had everything well in hand. Her instinct was to run away, as fast as possible, but she was working against instincts, today. She gave herself a few deep breaths to steady herself, then found a door into the kitchen and entered. She pointedly did not look down, keeping her eyes affixed high enough that she wouldn't see the corpses.
"Yes an' no," she said, coming in just in time to catch Cara's question. The rat she'd been using made a beeline for her, scurrying up her pants leg to hide, trembling. She winced at the little claws digging into her leg, but she'd let the poor thing be for now. She hated doing that sort of thing to them, and she'd be spoiling this one for a while to make up for it. "The rats are taken care of, don' worry about it, yer..." She paused, squinting, trying to remember titles and clearly failing. "Highness?" she guessed at random.
"I think I've got eyes on most of th' kids," she told Grilka, opening her mind back up to the headache of dozens of conflicting images. She was standing pointedly pretty far away from both Grilka and the bodies, but didn't think anyone could possibly take offense at that. "I'm not seein' any more idiots with swords at th' moment. Hopefully this was th' only dumb idea any of them had." She let out a pained sigh at her own conclusion. "We should probably stick together, though," she said, looking very unhappy at this idea. "In case I see somethin' else."
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-18-2019
Cara snorted. "Lady," she corrected. She regarded the rat with suspicion. "I assume at least some of them are in the vaults," Grilka said, as those would be some of the safest places in the castle during an emergency. The King had given them a particularly dubious set of locks, which he insisted would let people in whenever he would have let them in. It was unclear how a lock was intended to determine this. Wizards who worked in magical theory could spend decades trying to untangle how they worked without success. Grilka secretly found it plausible that they either weren't actually locked at all, or else were some kind of simplistic magical mood ring.
"I'm not leaving my kitchen," Cara warned.
"That will be a terrible inconvenience for everyone," Grilka said bluntly, and she deflated.
"You don't have to stay," Cara said.
"But we will. We must keep things in order until the King returns, to minimize the amount we need to tell him. Yes?"
Cara pursed her lips as she considered what he might do to warn off future attempted-revolutionaries. "Yeah," she said.
"We will take a quick trip around the castle," Grilka said, "to regroup. And then you may return to the kitchen. No rats will endanger your work." Ey said this very firmly.
"Fine," Cara said irritably. She picked up the sword that had fallen to the floor. "This is fine, right? We're fine?"
"We will be fine," ey said. "They are straggling idiots." Grilka slithered for the door. Ey touched the nose of a passing garter snake. Someone was writhing on the floor in the throne room, bitten. Someone else was trapped by an anaconda in the King's Guard dorms. A swarm of smaller snakes had found someone in a hallway. Ey touched its nose again to let it know to find Xotll as ey headed for the castle's front hall.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-18-2019
"Proly," Ren agreed, still looking vaguely upwards and away from both Grilka and Cara. She didn't mean to be rude, but there were corpses on the ground and her stomach was delicate at the moment. "I can't get any eyes in there, but that jus' means they're proly the safest. If I can't get somewhere, some idiots with swords sure can't." Grilka was good at handling the princess, or head chef, or whatever it was, exactly, that Cara officially was. There were hundreds of kids in this castle, but the King had specifically mentioned Cara when Ren had spoke of her would-be father, and the King and Ren together had considered the Ren-shaped hole in the castle's cast of hatchlings.
She and Cara would have been sisters.
No point thinking about it now. Cara would probably just have hated her. Would hate her now. Already hated her now. Rats and chefs didn't get along.
Ren also wanted to reassure Cara re: the presence of rats in her kitchen, but didn't know how to do it without revealing that she'd been the one responsible for all the earlier havoc. It was bound to come out sooner or later, of course, but she'd just as rather it be later, when the woman wasn't holding a sword. All the rats in the castle were occupied with tasks Ren was giving them. Well, Ren and Timothy and Phoebe. It was a lot of rats to try and keep a handle on all at once, and her focus was split into a hundred glass shards and beady eyes. She almost walked into the door as she turned to leave the kitchen, her eyes somewhere else entirely.
She was going to have a migraine after this, she was sure of it.
"The King'll be back soon," Ren told Cara, trying to be reassuring. "Which reminds me. Grilka. When he gets here, will y'do me a favor." She realized it was a lot to ask, a favor, given the circumstances, but she was hopefully earning some good will having come back at all, let alone helping. "After he gets Gareth somewhere safe 'n' stable. Will y'tell him I'm here? When he's finished fussin' over Gareth, when they're... separate, an' Gareth is resting." Where Gareth can't hear, she did not say, but implied. "Tell him I'll be in th' room he took me to th' first time. I'm jus', so sure he'll wanna talk to me." She rubbed a weary hand over her forehead, headache already setting in. "I'll answer all yer questions, too. Later." Presuming there was a later, after her meeting with the King.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-19-2019
"She may need help steering," Grilka said to Cara, making no move to assist Ren. Ey doubted she'd respond well to the overture. Cara put a hand on Ren's shoulder to guide her away from door frames and corners, following Grilka through the halls. The point of her sword stayed toward the floor. She didn't actually know what to do with it, but it made her feel better to hold onto it."A favor," Grilka repeated slowly.
"Don't you start," Cara warned.
"I'm only thinking."
"If it involves your dicks then think about it later."
"Ungrateful girl."
"I'm not interested in being present for whatever negotiation you think a favor implies," Cara said with a wrinkle of her nose. "Dad's sluttery is bad enough, I don't need to be hearing it from you, too."
"I will do this favor," Grilka decided. "We may discuss what you can do for me later."
"Bleh."
Xotll practically ran into them as soon as they entered the front hall, the faun's hooves clicking on the floor as she alternated between them with impatient hops, a sort of unmoving trot. "What's going on?" she asked, wide-eyed. There was a snake draped over one of her delicate branching horns.
"Get your favorite boys together," Grilka instructed. "Check the throne room, the dorms, and the halls between. Anyone waylaid by a snake is to be detained. Anyone who tries to fight you should also be detained. Yes?"
Xotll bowed at the waist, holding down the ends of her skirt. "Yes, boss!" She bounded more than sprinted out through another door, heading back toward the offices of the King's Guard.
"Bye," Cara waved.
"Shall we escort you?" Grilka asked Ren. Ey didn't think she'd want to stay in such a public area of the castle as the main hall, if her goal was to avoid the King until she was ready. He could be back at any moment.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-19-2019
"Thanks," Ren said to Cara, hoping that the guidance was out of the kindness of her heart and not in any way a prelude to stabbing. She was a bit nervous around anyone with a sword at the moment; she kept imagining it going through her chest the same way one had gone through Gareth's. She didn't feel like continuing to test exactly what her weird body could survive. She was also immediately regretting her choice of phrasing. A favor. Why would she say a favor. Ugh. Now she was going to owe em. Well, she probably wouldn't live to have to deal with it. "Thanks," she said, much less gratefully than she'd said to Cara. "While we're at it, we'll all have a nice long talk about how the King's Guard managed not to notice me bein' tortured for almost a year."
It was probably just as well Cara was guaranteed not to like her because rats, because there was every likelihood she also wouldn't like her for fucking her dad so much despite them being roughly the same age. These things were always complicated where immortals were involved, but still. That had to be awkward as hell.
Ren recognized Xotll when she ran up, because she was arguably the nicest non-Gareth person in the King's Guard, and had helped Ren get messages to Grilka on more than one occassion, and also been the one to inform Ren that she could get Gareth super fired for sexual assault if she wanted, after the first time. But also that Ren would just be reassigned. There had been no way out of prison, and so Ren hadn't bothered trying to press any sort of charges. The sex had been enjoyable, and she'd been so worried that she'd get another Colin if she kicked up a fuss.
Another thing, thinking about it, that Gareth should probably never know about. How would she ever be able to untangle the complications in a way that wouldn't break his heart? If he thought for a second that the only reason she hadn't cried rape had been because she was scared of things getting worse for her... She rubbed her aching head, wishing that the whole situation could be over and done with. At this point, if the King ate her, he'd probably be doing everyone a favor.
"I know the way," Ren said, which was true only because she already had a rat there to help guide her. "Maybe you an' Cara should stay here and wait for th' King. Here." With an extensive apology, she pulled the rat out of her pants leg and set it, wide eyed and none too happy, on Grilka's shoulder. "If she starts screamin', it's because I saw somethin' with one of th' kids. Follow her, an' she'll take you to wherever th' problem is. She'll proly leave after the King gets here, so y'won't have t' put up with each other for long." The kitchen rat gave Ren a long, accusatory glare. Ren would be making up for this one for a while.
Ren's trip to the room wasn't as hurried as it probably should have been. She figured the King would be occupied for a while. She might be waiting for ages while they got Gareth settled, presuming everything had gone well and nothing horrible had happened in the hour or so she'd left Gareth alone. She kept missing turns and having to backtrack, her mind so full of input that it was hard to keep her own location straight. She did, eventually, find the right room.
It was vines and potted plants, balcony and giant bed and new sheets and old memories. It had been, what... three, four months since she'd been here? It simultaneously felt like years and yesterday. Ren sat down on the edge of the bed and ran her hand over the bed post she'd once been tied to. Gareth and Avi had been right about there. It had all been a lot of fun.
Twice that day, the King had wondered about how thin she was. She hadn't made a big deal out of it. She probably should have. If she had, would the King have gone and bit Colin's head off and eaten him like the other King's Guard? Would she be like Thran by now, adjusting well, healthy, working towards happy? She rested her aching head against the bed post, and waited for the King to arrive.
She'd thought it'd get harder, that every ticking second she could have been running would weigh on her. But no, she was just so tired that the only struggle was in staying awake on such a comfortable bed. For once, she was done with running away. She'd just face to this stupid situation head on, and trust that no matter what the King did, her machinations would either get her through, or, failing that, get Gareth through.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-20-2019
The King wasn't particularly worried about the overall state of the castle.He roared when he landed in the garden, announcing himself, and servants scrambled over each other to attend him. They managed, eventually, to get a stretcher brought out from the hospital wing so that they could carry Gareth inside. The King wanted very badly to stay in his natural form, but his need to be able to navigate the castle was greater. If the weather had been better, he might have insisted they tend to Gareth right there in the garden.
Instead, he had them bring him enough gold that he could change shape, storming into the hospital wing to supervise the proceedings.
Dr. Karek rubbed his jaw. "Well," he said finally. "That's fucked up." He'd cut the bandages from Gareth's chest, and what they were soaked with barely bore contemplating.
"Tell me about it," Gareth said. He felt cold, and hot, and cold again. Everything was painful and nauseating. The King was lurking near one of the walls, watching in unsettling silence.
"I don't think there's anything we can do for this that doesn't involve magic," Karek admitted.
Gareth's stomach turned. "Right."
"I'm going to recommend low-level healing spells," he said. "Low-level," he emphasized. "Nothing powerful, nothing instantaneous."
"Why not?" the King asked, as Gareth shut his eyes against waves of sickness.
"It isn't good for people," Karek explained, watching Gareth instead of looking at the King. "Psychically and psychologically, it can be… damaging. Particularly if it's done often." Gareth kept his breathing steady. "Which is why we wouldn't be doing that," Karek said. "It will just be a small spell to help him heal a little faster, reduce pain, and prevent infection. Nothing too intense. Okay?"
"Okay," Gareth said, his eyes still closed.
"We should be able to get started on that soon." Karek looked at the King. "I think it's best he rest, for now."
"Good," the King said, still standing there.
Karek looked between the two of them. "Would you like to be alone?" he asked Gareth, tactfully as he could.
"… maybe for a bit," Gareth admitted quietly.
The King's jaw tightened. He didn't move. "Keep me informed," he said finally, sweeping out of the room. He stopped not far out the door, and stood there, trying to decide what to do.
What he wanted was to change forms and go flying for a while. But it would be irritating to learn that something had happened while he was away.
Grilka emerged from a shadow to make up his mind for him.
"We are pleased by Your Majesty's return," ey said, with a bow of his head.
The King waved away the formality. "Are the rats taken care of?"
"Everything has been taken care of," ey said without further clarification.
"Good."
"Miss Boldheart has asked me to convey that, if you wish to speak with her, you may find her in the first room to which you took her. I assume this means something to you."
"… ah."
The King leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked her over. He said nothing, his face expressionless, and waited for whatever explanation she had to give.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-20-2019
Ren was halfway asleep when the King landed, her mind a dizzy, nausea-inducing mix of feedback. The only thing keeping her awake, really, was the headache. The roar, however, well. That snapped her right out of that, didn't it?
She released her focus on the rats with a desperate relief as soon as she saw that Gareth was moving, although she couldn't really judge his state. But he was alive; she hadn't fucked up her judgment of his condition that badly before leaving him, at least. Finally, something had gone right. Very, very briefly right.
It might have been minutes or it might have been hours between when the King arrived and when he pushed open the door to the room Ren was in; she couldn't say. She spent them in tense terror. Her rats had retreated to various hiding spots around the castle. Timothy and Phoebe had both wanted to be with her, but she insisted they stay away. Whatever happened next, she'd be facing it alone.
It was impossible to read anything from the King's expression when he saw her, pacing by the bed to hide her shaking. She froze when she realized the door had opened. The fact that she couldn't read his expression was telling enough; she had never seen him this stony-faced in this form, not even when he'd caught her running through the mountains. She was briefly tempted to just run and make it easy for both of them, but that was a stupid instinct, another one worth ignoring. Still, all her clever words flew straight out of her mind, and when she opened her mouth, instead what came out was,
"Is he okay?"
She winced as the words left her mouth; it would be the last thing the King wanted to hear from her if he blamed her for Gareth's condition, which he probably did. Judging by his expression, she doubted Gareth'd had the opportunity to tell him much. Or maybe Gareth had told him everything, and that was the only reason she hadn't been killed instantly. Maybe with all her explanations, this would be the best it would get. She dug her fingers into her arms and tried to remember how to breathe.
"I dunno--I dunno what he told you," she started, haltingly. "It was... It was Colin, uh, you proly knew that, but. It was. All Colin." She wasn't making as much sense as she wanted. "Well. Not the rats, obviously, that was me, but the reason... Did... he tell you?" she asked hopefully, although what answer she was hopeful for, she wasn't sure. "Did Gareth tell you what Colin did to me," she clarified, "or do I... gotta go over it again." She suspected she'd be going over it a lot, if she lived, and that it would, in fact, grow worse with each re-telling the way she thought it would.