A Familiar Story (Nivansrywyllian, Fade)

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Nivansrywyllian

Troublemaker
Original poster
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Posting Speed
  1. Multiple posts per day
  2. One post per day
  3. 1-3 posts per week
Writing Levels
  1. Adept
  2. Advanced
  3. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Female
  3. No Preferences
Genres
Steampunk, Romance, Scifi, Horror, Modern, and Fantasy, although I'm always jazzed to try something new.
Kipli strode purposefully down a cobbled street, his bare feet soaking up the warmth of the sun-baked stones. He looked like a normal boy. He had dark, curly brown hair that had grown longer than most mothers would stand for their boys to wear. It overshadowed his dazzlingly bright, blue eyes. His frame was slight, on the scrawny side of lean, and he was robed from shoulders to ankles in tattered rags. Nobody paid him any mind.

It was a harsh world, where old magics lay dormant, waiting to visit destruction on whichever poor fool dared to scrounge ancient ruins and battlefields for treasure and knowledge. He let his solemn eyes swing from door to door, as he felt the tug, as if a string was pulling his heart towards his bondman. Now and again, he'd lurch forward, leading with his chest. Past the village proper he meandered, the pace of his steps slowly increasing in speed. He could feel the pull. The need.

He felt a slight sense of surprise, when the tugging carried him out of the village, and on towards a nearby ruin. It jutted out of the ground, made of thick, white stone blocks. The architecture, though once fine, looked to have been blasted, torn, and even melted in places, like some horribly abused skeleton. His ears prickled, as he heard a high-pitched scream lift from somewhere within. By the pull, he could tell that it was not his bondman.

Even so, his pace picked up, and he let his legs stretch in an easy run, as he closed the distance to the one to whom he'd been bound. He rounded the first of the shattered walls, and saw a stairwell, leading into the depths of the earth. The screams echoed up the stairwell, and filled Kipli's ears as he descended, catching his breath. The hallway at the base of the stairwell was dark, not open to the light of day as was the stairwell that had led Kipli down. Not pitch black, but gloomy all the same.

On the floor, a little boy lay, cradling the stump of an arm that was gushing blood. The rest of the limb lay a foot or so farther down the hallway, limp. Beside the boy, knelt a girl.

Kipli knew her. He couldn't not know her. He approached, leaning in to whisper to the girl.

"Kipliveygarrine," He began. "You can heal him."
 
It had been such a simple thing, this trap--but then, the best ones always were. In one moment Rally Bishop had been collecting the red flowers Mama needed for her pultice from down in The Bad Place, and in the next she was covered in blood and thicker things, half of Parker's arm gone and the petals dropped and forgotten in her frenzied panic. Tears sprang immediately to the young girl's eyes; she'd never seen so much blood, not even when Kitty had gotten her baby sister with those sharp claws. It was bad enough she had snuck away when Mama had left to bring in the cattle, but now she'd really be in trouble.

But she had to do something--anything--other than cry right now, she told herself. Parker was hurt, and he needed her to be a Big Brave Girl. Still sniveling, Rally swiped at her face with the back of her filthy hand, smearing dirt across her forehead. She tried to think about what Mama or Sister would do, but all of the blood was making her feel sick.

"J-just hold still, okay?" she whimpers to Parker, still rolling on the flagstones a short distance away. "Hey, quit it! You're only gonna make it hurt more!"

Rally crawls on her hands and knees towards her fallen friend, blissfully ignorant of any other traps that may've been around. Thankfully, there were none, as she plops herself down next to the boy and rolls him onto his back. Parker's face is contorted in agony as he wails, fitfully writhing under her careful grasp. Her small hands grip the front of his torn and bloodied tunic tighter, momentarily gaining his attention.

"I'mma go get Mama, okay?"

"N-n-no! You can't leave me!"

The panic was welling back up in Rally's belly, as she bites her lip and quickly turns her head to look for some other, miraculous decision. Nothing comes immediately to mind, until she remembers the prayers that Mama would sometimes say in moments like these. Bowing her head and folding her hands she mouths the most grandiose prayer she can think of, promising anything and everything to whomever was listening that she would be a Good Girl the rest of her life if Parker lived.

Almost as soon as the words leave her lips, she hears a voice from beside her. She opens her wild eyes and turns her head to see the other boy that had mysteriously appeared by her side. She has little time nor care for the how or why, but she almost intuitively knows that this "child" has arrived to help.

"Fix him!" she cries helplessly.
 
Kipli glanced again to the boy on the ground. As soon as his bondman spoke he was on his knees beside the injured boy. Whipping off his own tattered shirt, he pressed it to the stump to staunch the blood flow as best he could. "I cannot." He insisted, oddly calm despite the tense situation. "I am not a magus. You are a magus."

Kipli grimaced down at the boy who was wriggling beside him. The blood had soaked through the shirt he'd pressed to the wound, and had begun to drip into the pool on the ground beneath the stump. "I do not wield the magic. You wield the magic. You can heal him." The boy's calm demeanor began to crumble, as sweat began to accumulate on his skin. "He is beyond my ability to save, but not beyond yours."

The Familiar turned his brilliant blue eyes up from the subject of his efforts, to his bondman. "Lay your hands on him, and imagine his arm, just as it was. Before it came off. Hurry, or he will die."

Kipli scooted to the side on his knees, making room for his bondman beside the wounded boy, who continued to writhe in agony.
 
Rally wrings her hands restlessly as she watching the mysterious blue-eyed boy work, chewing her bottom lip raw. Spirits, there was just so much blood. Hesitantly moving towards Parker's side she whimpers and squeals her frustration, the amount of blood still flowing from the wound not lost on her.

"Magus?" she asks, wiping at her face again to nudge her well-worn eyeglasses up her nose. She had, of course, heard that term before, countless times. Mama was a magus, Sister was a magus, nearly everyone who stopped by their stall or in for healing was a magus. But she certainly wasn't. "I-I-I'm--"

Another of Parker's pained screams draws her attention back to him as tears return, and she nods quickly at the other boy's suggestion. Glancing quickly back and forth from Parker to his severed arm she scurries over to grab a hold of it, her face painted obviously with disgust as the torn skin squishes beneath her fingers. Returning to her place, she drops the wounded appendage beside its intact brethren, and closes her eyes, the tip of her tongue poking through her lips as she tries to concentrate.

In her mind, Rally could see the broken halves like two pieces of yarn separated by a small gap. With effort, she tries to imagine herself knotting the pieces together again, seamless and whole. Slowly, gradually, she can picture them joining, stitching together and lacing inside of each other, each tendon, each sinew finding its rightful place again.

A fit of coughing interrupts her, as she doubles over. But Parker's screams have calmed to frightened sniveling, as he curiously and reluctantly looks back down to his arm.
 
Kipli pulled away the bandage as his bondman fetched the arm back, and laid it beside the stump. He pulled away his shirt, so as not to bar the way of healing, but hovered, ready to go back to applying pressure should the magic fail. A swelling, bubbling sensation rose in his chest, and he could feel his bondman pulling magic through him. Before his eyes, the flesh knitted back together, and bone touched to bone. In bare moments, the arm became whole again, but for pale, pink new skin that ringed what had once been a life-threatening amputation.

Rising to his feet, Kipli offered a hand down to the boy who'd been so recently dismembered. Kipli himself was a gruesome sight. Bare to the waist, he had blood nearly to the elbows, and all across his lap. Too, the pads of his feet, and the legs of his pants were dark with blood from where he'd knelt beside the wounded boy.

"You will not die, but you will be weak. You should both leave this place. It is dangerous."

Back to his bondman, he swung his eyes, expectant.
 
Parker accepted the hand up by his good arm with a final quiver of his lip, still staring in disbelief at what had once been the stump before running off as fast as he could away from The Bad Place, screaming for his mother all the while.

As his cries died off in the distance, Rally settled back onto her knees, her heaving chest and thundering heartbeat reluctant to calm. Eventually, she turned her head back to the strange, now bloodied boy, her head tilting curiously as she regards him. He seemed to be waiting for her, though what exactly she was supposed to say or do she couldn't tell. So, she began with remembering her manners.

"T-thanks," she softly says, a small blush on her cheeks as she nudges up her glasses again. "I was so scared...who are you?"
 
Kipli watched the healed boy dart off, around the corner and up the stairs. As the sound of the healed boy's slapping footsteps retreated, the familiar's eyes swept back to his bondman. Down he sank, to sit cross-legged against the wall nearest her.

"You are welcome." He said. "The danger has passed. Do not fear." He said. "I am Kipliveygarrine. Your familiar. You mustn't speak my name to anybody. Not even your parents."

Folding his bloody hands in his lap, the solemn boy tilted his head slightly to the left. "You were not expecting me. I am a surprise to you. Have you not been anticipating me?" His intonations, and indeed his very speech pattern was not quite normal. His delivery was almost stiffly formal, like some high-lady's serving man.
 
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