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Jakkoa was asleep.

Was asleep.

Groaning, he shifted atop his furs: rolling onto his side—his stomach—his side—his stomach—and pushing his hand through his hair to organize it after his tossing. He pulled his pillow over his head, breathing out into the furs. He had had it. Sleep had been there, if he could simply lie still, ignore the outside chatter, breathe in, breathe out…

His body relaxed, the soft bristles of the pelts beneath him grazing his skin. It was warm in his tent, and having bedding over his ears did help mute down the outside commotion. In no time, he was beginning to feel it near again, his breathing evening out, eyelids growing heavy and loose in their already shut position.

Morning was many hours away yet, and whatever it was out there, clearly someone had already found it. Someone else would deal with it.

Anyone else.

It would be fine.

He must have been on the cusp of slipping back to sleep, because initially, Jakkoa did not notice anyone enter his sleeping space. Though Hargitt was content to ‘weather the outdoors’ in true, rugged farmboy-of-the-mountains fashion, Jakkoa preferred to not. He did occasionally of course, but rarely ever out of choice, and in this case, he had set his tent up for himself: warm, closed off from the elements, and private.

Or, such was the intention.

The first nudge was almost ignorable. Enough to rouse him slightly from his dip towards unconsciousness, but not enough to force him upwards. Then he was ‘kicked’. It wasn’t, of course, but in the moment it might as well have been, for the start it incited, the immediate follow-up yelp-groan, and the very pitifully small flare of light that dusted over his fingers as he jerked upwards and spun to pin—

“Hargitt.”

—the previously unidentified intruder with a bedraggled glower. If he had been fully acclimated into his headspace at that moment, he might have taken a second or two to appreciate that the light from his own magic was dim and already fading to nothing thanks to being reassured of the safety of the situation, because he must have looked awful. Hair a complete muss of gold strands despite the braid he put it into before sleeping—a loose and ugly braid at that, designed entirely for function, not appearance—eyes groggy with sleep and expression twisted in a purse-lipped stare of deep impatience.

“What. Are you doing here. Because I was sleeping, and if the answer is not ‘I want to ********’ or ‘there is an avalanche coming’, then I don’t care and I would rather prefer to get back to sleeping…”

Not having paid it any mind until that moment in his distraction, Jak’s eyes did then take the time to skim upward over all of the man before him who, despite the complete lack of serious expectation in his offer, did look more or less appropriately dressed for slipping into bed. Aside from the bow and arrows. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“Why…?” A yawn cut off however else he might have ended that sentence, and Jak did not bother to complete it afterward. It seemed a sufficient enough inquiry regardless.

A beast.

Jakkoa folded a hand over his next yawn, though his eyes remained in a suspicious, unenthused squint at the words ‘possibly venomous.’ He didn’t want small, venomous night beasts lurking about. Hargitt, however, seemed to be ready to take it on, and despite the completely unnecessary choice to force Jakkoa into wakefulness with him, he supposed this was all that was needed of him. Hargitt would go out and kill the beast, and in the meantime, Jak was now suitably ‘on alert.’ He could go back to sleep.

“Thank you, then, I suppose,” he said. “For the warning. And luck be with you.”

As the tent flap shut, Jak shut his eyes, running his fingers back through his hair and breathing deep before dropping back to his furs. Still warm. Still night all around. Hargitt had said his piece, and with any luck, the creature — whatever it was — would be found and done away with in a timely manner, and their fellow camping ‘neighbors’ would quiet themselves. He tucked his face against his pillow, twisting atop his bedding and adjusting it to get comfortable, legs stretching back out beneath the coverings.

He couldn’t have said how long he lay there. Not long, surely, but given how close he had been to sleep, he did begin again to drift off towards unconsciousness. Then, something moved. Drowsy as he was then and in the process of slipping back towards sleep, he did not register it with immediacy, and initially only pulled his leg up, away from the odd shifting around his ankle. In his daze, he had a moment to purse his lips and become cross again without opening his eyes, because was Hargitt back?

“What do you want…? I…”

In retrospect, Jak was not sure which registered first: the soft, reptilian hhssssssssssss of sound that most certainly did not belong in his tent, or the—sliding, scaled contact on his leg. But Jakkoa’s eyes were fully open, sleep banished from his mind and body in single, split-second upheaval. And, just as Hargitt suggested, he yelled.

Or screamed, depending one’s point of view.

Regardless, a great deal of noise left his throat in a relatively short burst, and he was moving as fast as his body had ever been inspired to move, yanking only the nearest piece of cloth not near to whatever it was up and stumble-running out of his tent nude. “Hargitt—Hargitt get back here and kill it—” He ran his hands down over his legs, looking, looking away, and checking again as though the beast were a phantom that might appear coiled back around him out of nowhere if he did not check often enough.

Finally, he glanced to the cloth in his hand. A tunic. That, he supposed as prickled bumps of chill formed along his skin, would have to do, and he pulled it on over his head, granting him at least some base level of ‘modesty’ though, under the circumstances, he couldn’t bring himself to care much whose sensibilities he shocked in his haste to evacuate private spaces.

At least Hargitt was quick on the uptake.

The alacrity with which the larger man appeared at his side was both surprising and comforting, though Jakkoa’s focus was admittedly elsewhere—everywhere but his own state of affairs with regard to clothing. Other things seemed more pressing.

“It touched me,” he said, the words quick and stiff with his upset and directed at his tent as though it were the culprit—and in a way, it was. “I didn’t see it, but it touched my leg, I was sleeping.” Nearly. “It felt like a scaled…like a snake, and it ought to be dead.” The actual inquiry, ‘Are you alright?’ didn’t fully register until then, and Jakkoa puffed. “No, I’m not alright, it—”

But at the skim of Hargitt’s eyes, it occurred to him that the man probably meant physically. So, he conceded with a distracted eye roll.

“I mean in the sense that it didn’t bite me yes, yes, I’m fine, but I don’t want it in my tent—”

At least after he began to pull his way into clothing, Hargitt saw fit to investigate properly, and Jakkoa watched his back from a safe distance, pulling at the hem of the tunic to achieve as much limited modesty as it could be persuaded to provide and continuing to periodically glance down to his own bare toes as though any moment, the phantom serpent would reappear. He crouched, running his hands down his legs again with a pursed frown and checking more closely. He knew it hadn’t bit him, but he didn’t want any lingering toxic scales on his skin either, or—

Hargitt fired an arrow, and the string of following curses snapped Jak’s gaze up in an instant, just in time to see his traveling companion reeling back out of the tent—with a snake’s jaw embedded in his flesh. Jak darted: over the rocky earth, past Hargitt, and into his tent in a blink, snatching up the small sheath beneath his pillow which, in retrospect, he perhaps ought to have grabbed initially. But no matter.

He emerged but a handful of seconds later, knife in hand, and struck, gouging the blade through hissing ribbon of muscle and scales unwelcomely attached to his company’s leg.

Venomous.

Most of what had just occurred happened so fast, Jak’s mind still felt as though it were reeling to catch up: the snake in his bedding, Hargitt returning, shooting at it, it biting him, stabbing it, bashing it, and now—this. Hargitt on the ground bleeding by the corpse of the rock-beaten beast, out of breath, and — Jakkoa’s eyes flicked over him, taking in his flushed features and the pinpricks of building sweat on his face — he most certainly did look worse for the wear.

Jakkoa barely acknowledged the woman.

For what he lacked in natural talent for magic, he compensated for in attitude, his focus honing strictly on the circumstances at hand, what needed to be done, and making it happen. He crouched at Hargitt’s side. “Brace yourself on me if you need—help me get you into my tent. Everything I’ll need to tend to that is there, and we need you out of this chill where there might be more of them.”

Then, for the first time since the calamity, Jak’s attention flicked, if briefly, to the woman and the rest of the small gathering of onlookers.

“Do you, or do any of you know anything specific about keldari venom? If anyone knows anything useful, I would love to hear it, and in turn if you do not have anything useful to add get out of my way immediately—this man has been poisoned, it is not a circus act.”

Jakkoa pursed his lips, pulse quick in his throat with nerves, but mind, at least, steady and moving quickly over his available resources, mentally cataloging and reminding himself of where everything he would need was. It was an immediate relief to hear that someone present knew something of the creature — and presumably the associated venom — they were dealing with. A rare stroke of luck nearly akin to a miracle, if he were honest with himself, given how far away Yael was—and what was a creature of the prisoner’s island doing here to begin with?

But those were questions for another time.

If his gaze flicked to the boy’s befuddled state and kiss-sucked neck, it was only the most cursory of observations. Under other circumstances, perhaps, he might have paid it more mind. But in this instant it hardly seemed to matter.

He can't move around too much or the venom will spread faster.

Jakkoa’s purse-lipped expression tightened, and he almost quipped that he knew that much—he was hoping for something a little more specifically helpful. But then, he wasn’t in any position to complain and had much more useful things to be focusing his energy on. If nothing else, the second set of hands was helpful for managing Hargitt’s weight regardless. He felt better once they had the larger man settled. He immediately got to work, removing all cloth immediately around or near the wound in case of swelling, as well as Hargitt’s boots, and then beginning to clean the area.

“Have you dealt with keldari venom before?” he asked, working a freshly-dampened cleaning cloth around the bite before taking up his aunt’s—his—prayer beads, and a pouch of salves and various herbs. While there were certain things he had in mind to do, it seemed best to ask, since he did have someone with experience present. “And is there anything I ought to avoid or look out for? I’ve dealt with animal venom, but not from beasts that far away.”

His gaze, in spite of himself, flicked to Hargitt’s face, flushed and bright with a fresh sheen of sweat, and though he couldn’t define the exact category of emotion that twisted in his chest then—he promptly tucked it aside to be ignored and examined later only if pressingly necessary. For the moment, he had more immediate concerns to tend to.

I haven’t.

Jakkoa shook his head, retrieving a leaf from among his collected herbs and holding it out to Hargitt’s lip. “Chew this, and keep yourself propped up. It’ll taste bitter, but ease your racing heart so that the venom does not spread so quickly.”

While Jakkoa supposed he ought to appreciate that he had someone there of some experience — greater than his, undeniably, at least in regard to kedlari venom in particular — he still found himself miffed in part by the lack of specifics. In some sense of the word, Hargitt was right: the man technically had no practical experience, and so far hadn’t suggested anything that Jakkoa didn’t already know himself.

But.

Far be it from Jakkoa to turn away free aid so long as it wasn’t hampering him—not when it was Hargitt’s health on the line. As the other man searched for whatever he was searching for within his book, Jak settled to attempt some of his own magic. Small, focused spells which, if executed properly, ought to ride with and build upon the plant’s chemical effect as a relaxant while targeting the foreign and harmful substances in the body.

Hargitt’s fingers touched to his.

Jakkoa paused where he was, gaze immediately flitting to Hargitt’s and holding there. The man was feverish and delusional. Snake bitten. Tired, and chilled. Really, there was no reason to take the moment for any more than it was and offer only whatever comforts were necessary to appease his over stressed mind. Instead, Jak’s attention lingered longer than it needed to, his own pulse stuttered very briefly quicker than necessary in his throat, and after a moment he nodded.

“I won’t,” he said, and meant it. “I’m not leaving until you’re safe to rest, you have my word. Try to relax.”

Then, shutting his eyes, Jakkoa attempted to follow his own advice with only marginal success, breathing deep, and grappling with his limited reserves of magical energy in efforts to usher them out: from his beads, through his fingers, and into Hargitt’s body.