After the End: Serenity

There weren’t many people still attending Serenity’s Death-affinity class. He had decided to focus the rest of the Tutorial time on theory, laying undead to rest, and death-based healing. For death-based Paths, he’d already given enough to get people started - and he had a practice area set up.

Properly laying undead to rest was probably the most important thing he could teach for early on, while death-based healing was the hardest.

Theory was mostly giving people time to ask questions. Serenity could talk about Death Magic - Concept, Affinity, Aspect, or Path - for hours, so it was just a matter of knowing what people were interested in.

The day after the entry to the Tutorial Great Dungeon, Margrethe arrived at Serenity’s Death Affinity class near the end. She waited impatiently while he finished up with the students.

“Something wrong?”

“I need your help.” Margrethe started walking towards the infirmary. “One of the crafting students apparently got his hands on a bunch of cores, and - well, we’re not sure what he thought he was trying to do, but what he did was give himself a worse case of essence corruption than Moira had. All sorts of cores, not just skeleton ones. He’s … well, you’ll see.”

“You trust me to help? And not get corrupted myself?” Serenity found that a major change from the woman who’d been willing to kill him. For all that he understood why and had forgiven her, he hadn’t forgotten, and he didn’t quite trust her. What he trusted was the Voice’s enforcement of her Oath to her Guild. He hoped he understood it correctly.

“I trust my Guild.” She slowed down for a moment, then picked her pace up to even faster than they had been walking. “And yes … I trust you. As long as you have a choice. I just didn’t think you would get one.”

That was probably a better apology than he’d gotten originally. Almost anything was better than “I’m sorry I didn’t kill you”, after all.

When they entered the infirmary, Serenity was surprised to be led away from the patient rooms. He’d thought everything to the left was administrative. They passed the break area and a small group of sleeping quarters before Meredith stops in front of a heavily reinforced door.

“Before we go in. If you can’t help, it’s not your fault. If you weren’t here, I’d have already put him out of his misery.” Margrethe pushed open the door.

Serenity followed Margrethe into a room that was easily three times the size of the other patient rooms. He didn’t take the time to look at it, because what was on the one - oversized - bed caught his attention. At first, he wasn’t sure what it was. After a moment, he found a man’s face on what had to be (or perhaps had once been?) his head. His face looked familiar, but distorted enough that Serenity couldn’t place who he was.

There were … extra bits all over the man’s body that weren’t human and didn’t belong where they were, even if they had been human. Lots of extra bits. The man was at least twice the size he should have been, and most of what was there was simply wrong. Serenity could see things changing as he watched.

It should have been horrifying, yet there was a comforting, pleasant energy to the room. He didn’t even have to look at himself to know that his skin showed the black fractal pattern. With the way the room felt, it had to show. It wasn’t as strong as Margrethe’s aura had been after she pulled the “corruption” from Moira - but then, she’d been trying to get rid of the energy, and this man clearly couldn’t.

After a moment, Serenity noticed the healer Blaze sitting on the bed next to the man, touching him. He hadn’t looked up. “Good, you’re back, I’m having a hard time keeping the pain suppressed. Are you sure it isn’t time?”

“Is his mind still there?” Margrethe asked.

“Yes.” Blaze finally turned towards the door and noticed Serenity. “What happened to you?” He took his hand off the man on the bed, and the man almost immediately started screaming. Blaze put his hand back on the man, concentrated for a moment, and the man went back to looking comatose. “I have to - can you wait?”

“I’m fine.” Serenity wondered if there was a safe way to set up a space with this sort of energy. It would be a good place for him to relax. There probably wasn't, because he'd have to keep people out. Serenity could see that where Blaze’s hand touched the man, the skin seemed to have turned into scales, and at a closer look he saw a patch of scales on Blaze’s face as well.

“You don’t look fine.” Fortunately, Blaze needed to pay attention to the man on the bed, not Serenity.

“Serenity? We’ll do this the same way as when you helped with Moira.” Margrethe directed. “There’s no chair, but you can sit on the bed.”