Within The Dark

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

There was really no point in arguing. He could make it to the village, he was almost entirely sure of that, but at this point he couldn't do it alone anymore. By the time he stepped into the place he would likely keel over dead. So he decided that it was easiest not to argue with her, though he still needed to get his point across.

"There is no resting." Val said, really trying to drill home his point. "I will die."

One could argue that he would expend more energy by heading towards the village, but in his head he would be able to grab something to eat on the way. A rabbit, a doe, anything like that would be enough to get him to where he wanted to go. If he laid low like she was suggesting however...well it was different. If she took too long gathering supplies, or worse she came back in time only to bring some rations he couldn't actually eat...well then he would be as dead as if a knife had gotten him. "If we hide."

It was hiding. "You need to find me food before we address anything else."

The way he pushed this point home was telling.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

Did he really...

"Right, let me start taking orders." if she came off as being curt, it was because to the Clawdite, he was acting ridiculous and crazy. The blood loss alone could account for his skewed way of thinking. Either that or he was more of a meathead than I thought.

"I'll see if I can find a Nuna or two while I'm at it." sassy turned to sarcasm in light of their situation. Once again, her arm looped around his and she began to led him towards the direction of the hot springs.

"I'll get you something to eat." she said stiffly. "But we need to get out of the open fast."

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

He remained stationary. "You don't understand."

It probably wasn't a good idea to stop here for too long, but Val really needed to get his point across. Death didn't really seem all that appealing, and while it may have seemed like he was going insane, it was important that she understood he wasn't quite normal. This all would have been much simpler if he could have just hunted on his own, but that was neither an option, nor really something he could pitch at the moment. So instead he simply took a breath and tried to lay it out in terms that didn't make him seem so insane.

"I'm not entirely human...I think." He had no idea what he was actually. "I can't eat certain foods, gluten, certain plants."

He waved his arm. "They make me sick, or sometimes even almost kill me depending on what they are."

Val knew that this all sounded crazy, mostly because he'd had this same conversation before without the blood loss. It wasn't something that most people would believe, after all besides being rather big Val didn't actually look any different than any other human that was running around the galaxy. In fact he looked much more normal than many other Humanoid species that ran around the galaxy and did things.

"Along with that." He said as she tugged on his arm, probably trying to ignore him. "I heal a lot faster than normal. That healing takes a lot out of me, and If I don't eat under normal circumstances it can take a lot out of me, now with this? Well lets just say it's going to get a lot worse."

Was he making sense now? Val wasn't entirely sure.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

Now he was at least making a modicum of sense. Figures that if men actually took the time to explain things instead of trying to shove things into having their way, then there wouldn't be an issue. Ryssa could understand dietary requirements: but dietary requirements didn't mean that they had to be the main concern when one had pieces of metal jabbing out of their back.

"Let me guess." she began, moving along towards the far end of the treeline where the woods would give them more cover. "You're not the type of guy to ask for nav coordinates are you?"

It was a quip to emphasized that he didn't focus on the significant bits rather than going on and on about how things had to go his way.

"Fine. I'll see what I can get for you when I head to the village." maybe some roasted mudfish or something. It was highly doubtful there would be any fresh kills.

"Something basic but that would sate you. I can't be running around looking for something specific."

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

It was a compromise, but he wasn't sure that he had quite gotten his point across. At the rate which his body was going Val wouldn't last much longer. He needed food, or else he would very quickly be passing out where he stood. Ryssa at least got that he needed food, but...well at this point he wasn't quite sure if she knew just how severe it was. Either way however he decided that for now it would be best if he began to walk instead of just standing there.

Cooperation would get him what he wanted. "It needs to be more than just enough to sate me."

Val started in on the topic as soon as they started walking. He didn't want to be a bother, he really didn't, but this was simply the fact of his physiology. The way that his body worked was an odd sort of cruelty, one of self consumption that at the best of times left him constantly starving. It was not a pleasant experience, and that was why he so often preferred to simply stay here in the outer rim where staying in nature, his best source of food, wasn't looked down upon.

"My body is already eating itself." He continued to explain as he allowed her to guide him forward.

"It's trying to heal the wounds in my back, you can look for yourself." She would find thick scabs, as though he'd been healing for days already rather than mere hours. "If it keeps going like this I'll just pass out and starve."

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

There wasn't really any time to sit down and go over the finer details of just how his back was doing. Once they were in a safe spot that was a different story. For now, Ryssa was one hundred percent merely humoring the guy. Her focus was on what steps they had to take. On what path they had to go. How far away the hot springs were and hoping beyond all hope the small chance that perhaps they might hold the same attributes as that underground spring had.

If anything, they'd at least be able to wash off the blood and try to get to work on the shrapnel.

"Then give me examples instead of simply being vague." Ryssa told him with a frustrated sigh. Okay, calm down a bit there Rys. The guy has bled who knows how much already. He's already acting as if he'd smoked far too much Lunaweed.

The treeline wasn't far now. Once they were in, they would have more cover.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

He considered for a moment.

"Deer, Rabbit, Nerf..." Val began to list a laundry list of animals, birds, and pretty much anything else that would provide him with sufficient sustenance to make it to the next day. The list was quite long, and in truth he simply seemed to blabber on and on until they passed through the tree-line.

"Pretty much anything with actual meat on it." He said simply. "Fish? Not so much. They work sometimes, but really only as something to hold me over."

If Ryssa paid special attention she would notice that most of the animals that Val had listed mostly consisted of creatures that held a lot of red meat, high in protein, fats, and other things that were mostly craved by carnivores rather than the rounded diet of an omnivore. Perhaps an odd sort of coincidence, but Val had never really thought about it. Over his lifetime he had simply come to accept his odd dietary needs, and embrace them as a simple part of himself.

Aerith had helped him with that, never judging.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"Does this include specific cooking techniques, or are you happy to simply chomp down and take it fresh?" maybe a bit more sass there than it was required to, but Ryssa was also running on her own physical issues. Every step was still quite a bit of agony from shifting so quickly in such a short amount of time. She'd have to take some painkillers to help with the sensation of her nerves being on fire. Val wasn't the only one having to focus simply to continue on and speak.

"So no grilled mudfish. Pity." a small joke amidst their dire situation. They came under the treeline, the sun barely beginning to rise behind them. The forest would still be rather dark and the deeper they went, the more trouble it would be to cut a path through it towards the hot springs that Ryssa intended to go.

"Protein bars work?" that would be a lot easier to carry and grab.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

"Fresh is best." He said simply. Cooking the food did something to it that Val didn't really quite understand. It didn't make it bad for him, he could steal eat it and even get nutrition from it, but...well it simply wasn't as good as it should have been, like something had been taken out of it. That would sound mad to anyone that was normal of course, but...well Val certainly wasn't normal. He had proven that in the first few minutes of their encounter.

"No." Val answered in regards to the protein bars. "Most of them have ingredients I can't stomach."

Which had been a problem during his time in the Planetary Defense Forces. Military Rations often didn't include actual meat, mostly because it was expensive. Usually they had meat replacements, synthetics that weren't quite the same thing. Unfortunately for Val those synthetics usually had the tendency to make him sick. The first time he'd found that out had not been a pleasant experience, for him and the others within his platoon.

"Natural meat is best." They stumbled into the forest path, Val's eyes looking straight ahead.

It occurred to him that he had no idea where they were going.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"You are really making this easy, big guy." Ryssa sighed out, shaking her head. Figures that it would make things inevitably much worse. The chances of being able to find something fresh like that this early was pretty much nil to none. Unless she went out hunting for game -- which let's be one hundred percent honest here, hunter of the wilds I am not.

"You might have to settle for something cooked then." he was basically saying that it had to be some form of red meat and raw. That was too silly to go out looking for right now. Unless they magically somehow managed to stumble across some small critter between here and the hot springs or when Ryssa would leave to gather what they would need for his back.

A hundred more meters and they'd both reach the cragged rock face of what appeared to be a ravine. The scent of mineral water and sulfur would be picked up by Val as a small tell tale of where they just might be at.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

He frowned slightly, but kept moving, taking in the scents of what was around them.

"Steal from a kitchen." Val told her. It was a tactic that he had often resorted to in the past. There wasn't any pride in the fact of course, but...well it was there as an option and a fairly easy one at that. The village had plenty of restaurants and tons of bars, all of which would invariably have fresh produce that had been purchased recently. Freshly hunted food would be best, but...well a couple of raw steaks would do in a pinch as well, something that made him feel rather silly. "They'll have fresh meat."

He sounded rather confident.

A low grunt escaped him.

"I need to sit." There was only so much energy he could expend before it all became too much, and he was fast approaching that point. Shifting his weight slightly he began to see pools up ahead, steaming baths filled with water. He frowned for a moment, wondering if the water within these pools was the same as what they had found in those underground caverns.

If it was Val wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to dive in. The shrapnel was still embedded deep in his back, and if he entered the pools there was a good chance his skin would simply heal over the bits of metal that had dug its way underneath his skin. As it stood, that was already happening, albeit at a much slower pace.

That would make moving the shrapnel more difficult.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"Right, let me slap on another theft on my lists of what could go wrong today." another sigh and a shake of her head.

"I'll see what I can do." it was the most she could agree to. Ryssa had no knowledge of just what she'd have to face once she returned to the village. And if the Corporation was working alongside with the cultists? Well, that made things even harder for keeping a low profile.

"Need food, first aid... If I can nab a speeder then I can come pick you up and take you back to one of the med-droids." surgeon she was not. The Clawdite could tend to basic aid, but anything beyond that was above her paygrade and skill level.

"Almost there," she told him, encouraging Val to continue. Her voice even softened a bit.

"There are a few hot springs scattered along the caves here. Small hidey holes. We could use the water to wash you up a bit before I go back to the village and get what we need."

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

"So you're willing to steal a speeder but not a steak?" Val said as she lead him towards one of the smaller caverns on the ridge. It's opening looked as though he'd barely fit, but since he was already half bent from the pain his back it didn't really matter all that much. Slowly he wandered over towards where Ryssa was guiding him, eventually finding a place within the cave that was near one of the small hot spring pools poured steam off into the cavern.

"Weird priorities." Val said with a grunt as he lowered himself onto the ground.

Half of him sort of wanted to go to sleep.

"Test it first." Val said in regards to the water. "See if it's like what was in the basin."

If so, then they would need to find something else to clean his wounds with. Closing the cuts on his back entirely would be a huge mistake, mostly because a surgeon would then have to slice into his skin and quite literally dig his way to the shrapnel that was still in place. Val didn't particularly care for a procedure like that to happen any time soon.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"No one said I was going to steal a speeder, man bun." talk about a fast quip right there and a sharp glare in turn.

"You want to talk about priorities, let's discuss your sudden desire to hunt for game instead of finding a place to rest." yeah, she went there.

Both gave mild grunts and groans as the Clawdite helped the man lower himself into a small sitting position. Swinging her gaze over towards the bubbling, sulfuric water, Ryssa swallowed in consideration.

"Yeah well, kinda stuck with what we got regardless of what it may be." With a grimace, the woman carefully took the few steps near the edge of the spring.

She had a few cuts on her hands that could test the bloody thing. However, she wanted to make sure that it wasn't boiling hot. Setting down her visor, she took a few cautious scans first.

"Well at least I won't be boiling off my skin." it was passable. Warmer than she'd like but it would do. Stretching out her fingers she dipped them in. Right away she felt that odd tingling sensation. The same one that she'd felt when they had been swept up in the river. She didn't have to pull out her fingers to realize that it had the same healing qualities.

"Damn."

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

Val watched her, and he didn't have to ask to guess what was wrong.

The water was the same healing property as the waters that had treat him back in the basin. It was unfortunate, and also meant that he wouldn't be getting any reprieve from the pain he was currently in. A frown pulled at his lips as he leaned forward, taking careful note not to allow his back to touch the cave wall behind him. His head shook from side to side as he let out a long breath, knowing that he was likely in for a couple of hours of pain.

"Well." He said quietly. "That's okay."

Optimism was important. "Tell you what, you strip down, take a quick bath, I'll watch for one last moment of enjoyment and then you can head out and see if you come back to a very dead farmboy."

Fair compromise he felt.

Now that he was resting Val felt slightly more lucid, capable of actually telling his thoughts wihtout too much stumbling over his words. He looked at Ryssa with a smile, though his stomach growled loud enough to echo slightly within the cavern.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"Well, we'll just have to think of --" a sudden halt of her words came when Ryssa caught Val's quip about her stripping. A glower shot over at his direction.

"No.," she told him flatly, pushing herself up to cross the distance between them. "No time for that." a frown drew across her brows as she came to a stop just off to his right. The small cavern was dark despite the growing light of the approaching dawn. Yet even then from what Ryssa could see of his back -- it didn't look good at all.

A grumble of his stomach brought the main issue back to the forefront; food and care for his wounds.

"I'll leave you here and head back to the village." if she moved quickly, she wouldn't take long.

"Try not to do anything crazy."

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

"Right right." Val said as he shifted again slightly, trying to make himself more comfortable. "When you get back then."

He took in a sharp breath.

The pain was pretty clearly painted on his face, but at the moment there was simply nothing he could do but endure it. Half of him considered jumping into the pool just to heal the damn wounds, but there was no telling what that would do to him in the long term. It might push the pieces deeper, it might make some impossible to get to, it might even kill him right away. A frown pulled at his lips as his eyes slowly moved away from the pool, sheer willpower pushing himself away from that option.

"Off you go." Val said as he began to take deep breaths.

It was all he could do to control himself. Agony began to pour through him, a deep throbbing pain that he could neither ignore, nor do anything about. Perhaps he should start bringing painkillers everywhere he went, that would certainly help since he seemed to get injured whenever someone else started tagging along with him.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

Ryssa took a moment to really look at Val then. At the pain that went flickering over his bearded face, at the attempt at a light-hearted attitude when clearly he wasn't feeling his best.

A pause came, and then Ryssa switched over to the small cuff on her wrist. With a few quick taps, she gave it a specific programming. Taking it off, she extended it out to him, watching him with those odd yellow eyes.

"Basic wrist comm. It should hook up to my HUD. If you need anything, call me." it was just enough range to crackle through her visor.

"I'll try to be quick." she promised him, aware that she was getting in far too deep for a simple contract.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

"Sure sure." Val said in between deep breaths.

Most of his concentration now was simply on remaining upright.

Laying down wasn't really an option, unless he decided to fall asleep on his face, though that would likely be somewhat uncomfortable with how the cave floor looked. He frowned for a moment as he took the comm-link, setting it down on a rock beside him just in case he might need it later. Goosebumps ran across his skin, his frown remaining as he took in another deep breath, keeping it in his lungs this time as he tried to control some of the pain.

"Go. I'll be alright." He said finally letting go.

Val wasn't entirely sure if that was the truth or not, he felt himself slowly starting to fade. His stomach was hurting now, panging in an odd rhythm with his back. The sensation was a wholly unpleasant one, and briefly he thought about the gauntlet and the murals that had been painted upon the wall.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

He didn't look good. Now he wasn't talking as much as he had before. Yeah, I need to get back to the village quick.

With a tight nod, Ryssa took the few steps back towards the entrance of the cavern. At the third step, she spun on her heel, moving forward.

She had little time to waste. The scent of sulfur and pin filled her nose as she went darting out of the small maw. Every now and then she gave a grimace, her body protesting.

If she could do it all and be back within the hour, then Ryssa considered that to be a good day. However, the woman couldn't help but recall the haggard face of the man she left behind.

He was right; he didn't look good at all. Here's hoping he could stay conscious until she came back.