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((Zeke --> Iorek, Cruz (with regard to Anya, Xiu, and Cesc)
Anya --> Xiu, Cesc))

He couldn't see Alex. The darkness made shapes of every person farther than thirty yards out and those who were closer were in motion and blurred heavily before his watery eyes. But that was okay to Zeke. Alex was here, he was sure of it, just lost somewhere in the crowd and noise and pervasive dark. Even though he needed her help, he could not wait for her to appear out of thin air. There were more screams and shouts littering the air now but that didn't mean Anya's hadn't stopped ringing in his ears. He was tired, so tired, but his resolve was placed and he was going to get there, goddammit.

When Iorek's hand fell away from him, Zeke tried so hard to get away. He fell to his side and wiggled feebly in the dirt, telling himself over and over that he could get to his Frei.

It's not that far. If he just started moving, everything would kick in and he would be there in no time. Distance was nothing. It only seemed great because he was freaking out over everything going on with him, with her, and everything going on around them. I'm coming Anya. I'm coming. Alex would find him or he would find her along his way. His hair and skin were spattered with blood and mud but he still wasn't hard to miss.

But then he was grabbed by stony hands belonging to an Iorek revigored by a kiss Zeke hadn't seen take place. The word 'no' was repeated over and over by the veterinarian when he felt himself being pulled back and then rolled over, and Iorek was greeted by a face that was pained and hurt and angry with everything in the world...but also pleading with the Gargoyle.

"Let me go. Please let me go." Zeke was begging in earnest now. He lay in the mud unable to fight off the cleaning and bandaging, flinching at the sting and smell of disinfectant when it was applied to his raw wound. Even after Iorek finished, Zeke lay there. He stared at the canopy until it too became blurred by a new wave of tears. Why couldn't he do this? Why couldn't he get up when he was trying so hard? Why was his body betraying him? Why wasn't Iorek just letting him do this? Why wasn't the Gargoyle helping, especially when he had been so keen to at the start of this horrible trip?

He asked himself 'why' over and over, shaking his head back and forth as he uttered the word with each turn. He had to have sounded utterly mad but he didn't care. All he wanted in this world was one thing, ONE THING, and he couldn't do it and no one would help him either. A wave of nausea hit him and Zeke paused his rocking to make the world stop spinning. He looked left - to where those more capable of doing things than he were darting about trying to help the wounded - and saw who he had been so desperate to get to arriving in the arms of another.

"Please help!" He knew the white Sigel who begged for assistance from eons ago. "Anyone? We need to calm her down!"

He had Anya...And Anya had him too. Xiu called for Iorek but it was Cesc who threw himself into the fray before the Gargoyle had a chance to react. Zeke did not see what went on from there. The world spun and blurred and went completely dark.

Anastacia could taste metal. It was hot, acrid taste that she would have normally found unpleasant to the point of spitting several times over but here and now its presence wasn't even a blip on her radar. She bit down more as her skin ruptured and split all over, which increased in frequency as she struggled to get away. Her captor had her fast and had not done as he should have. He was on top of her, pinning her wings again but also ripping the skin from her back and coating himself in that burning liquid as he did so. She wanted so badly to stab him, to rend him, to just simply get him away from her, but he was stronger and in better shape than she. Anastacia could only thrash and bite him harder in hopes he would succumb as he lifted her and dragged her off.

Her mind screamed as loudly as her voice did during that short trip. Where her skin had already been flayed new buboes rose up on her muscles, then burst. She was being eaten away and she would be nothing but red strings of lingering skin attached to melting bone in no time. She was dying here and now and she would die against someone who continued to harm her with each brush of skin or fabric against her body. His hands were on her wrists, binding her and burning her and her hands were uselessly contorted in his hold. She pulled back, drawing flesh between her teeth but not tearing it away like when a man eats a steak.

"LET ME GO!!!!" She roared her words, drowning out those of another with them and a scream that followed when a new pair of hands brushed away the skin of her neck and face with the ease one sweeps dust away from a book cover. Those hands then became arms which were twined around her partial torso. She started to sob, but there were no tears - real or imagined. The pain was too much now. She wanted to die; to be free of it.

But she didn't want to die here, ensnared like an animal in a trap. Her wings pinned, her hands trapped with her wrists now nothing but aching bone, all she had was her crown - which was raked against whatever it could in a frenzy of spasms - and her teeth, that she once again sunk into the closest thing within reach, which was Cesc's shoulder when the stag pressed himself as flush to her as he could possibly be.

His aura hit her even as she bit him harder than she had Xiu, and it relaxed her contorted figure although the grip of the Essence still held her mind and refused to let go. Anastacia slumped in Cesc's arms and Xiu's hold, dangling limply and shaking all over with the raw pain she still perceived was there. To the Widow, this was one step closer to finality; to the end of her life. She welcomed it.

((Pasha >> Anita))

"I don't know Jeremy." Melisande said simply, keeping her eyes on Anita. Everything going on around them was overwhelming...she needed to stay focused to help Kyou. "Do you? Do you have more faith in him than the people you know?"

Her patience was ebbing, and the woman still hadn't moved. Pasha was beginning to feel trapped, and her breath was coming quicker. She pushed again, gently...reminding Anita that she wanted up with her motion but not with strength. "You're right though. People are hurting, and they aren't doing anything to help. You should take them and go, Anita."

Melisande flicked her eyes to the woman's wound, and her pale brows knit, concerned. The human was injured, and wasn't making a lot of sense. Not only that, she was trying to impose her will over the Muse in the way that the Sigel was frankly beginning to find distasteful. Was this the work of the Eye? "Why stay? It's only a matter of time before the younger ones get in over their heads. Take Cruz and go! Fire a red flare, put the wounded in the helicopter! I will help Kyou."

To be honest, Melisande was one of the few left that could offer help. It seemed everyone was shaking, screaming, sobbing, or already assisting someone else. The Muse needed to be freed, and her muscles tightened subtly as she tried to find leverage. If Anita didn't let her up soon...

(( Xiu -> Anya, Cesc, LuLu, Iorek, Cruz, Laz))

Xiu watched as a being that he barely recognized as Cesc approached him and Anya. “C-Cesc?” breathed Xiu incredulously. “Wha- no! Don’t do that! Don-“

Xiu watched as unheeded, Cesc embraced the screaming figure of Anya and felt Anya’s bite loosened its hold on his upper arm only to embed themselves into Cesc’s. Xiu drew in a sharp breath. His wound stung but it was nothing compared to what the dawn raevan had been through. And oddly...Anya was calming down. Did Cesc do something?

Blue eyes trailed over the wounds that covered Cesc’s weakened body; this time taking note of the more serious ones. I can help! thought Xiu suddenly. It’s blood. I can stop it from bleeding...

Gingerly loosening his hold on the now calmed Anya, Xiu reached out to Cesc and began to heal the stag. It would have been easier if he had fed but one had to make do with the current situation as best as one could. When Xiu felt that he had helped Cesc all he could, the white Sigel withdrew his hand. “Could you...keep Anya safe?” asked Xiu feeling tired all of a sudden. “I-I’ll go see if there are others that can be helped...,”

Leaving Anya in care of the dawn stag, Xiu scanned the crowd. His eyes momentarily settled on Lazarus and his heart ached but Xiu steeled himself away from the Firey Sigel. Lazarus was in shock but he did not seem to be in any immediate danger.

I am sorry Lazarus... thought Xiu as he picked up the sight of a lone figure on the field. With all the chaos going on, no one had noticed the bunny there. But...LuLu had grown? Xiu’s expression registered surprise for just the briefest of instances before relapsing to one of concern. Please let me be able to help her..., prayed Xiu as he approached the whimpering figure. Scooping the bunny up, Xiu tried using his blood manipulation skill once again to keep the poor raevan calm. If that did not work...the least he could do was to move LuLu to a safer location. One where people were not apt to trip over.

“Another victim of the eye,” said Xiu as he approached the medical ground. “Please see to her...Lazarus...I-I need to go to him,” said Xiu as he tried to keep his voice even. He did not know if Lazarus would try to make a sudden brave attempt at the eye but he knew that if Lazarus did, he would do all that he could to stop it from happening.

((Melisande >> Anita))

Did she know Kyou? Pasha stared up at the woman, disbelief creeping over her face. He wasn't only her maker, he was the one that was there for her when she was sad, when she was sick. When she fled from her guardian, when she got her first job... Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes, and her resolved solidified. Yes, she knew Kyou, and his kindness and his dedication warranted more help than this.

She didn't dignify the question with a response. Anita was trying to be hurtful, and the Sigel refused to rise to the bait. Instead, she angled her 'hips' and tried carefully to tug her ribbon free.

Why are you so ready to die?

Pasha stopped her delicate struggling, and tried to catch her breath. Her heart was hammering with the last vestiges of the venom, and she still felt paper thin, but the question stilled something within her. Rolling her head to the side, she looked past the bodies and the snaking roots of vile smoke, to Rivener as he convulsed and shouted hoarsely. "I envy you, that you don't know why."

The Muse's voice was tremulous. She glanced back up at Anita, pale face framed by tangled blond ringlets. "I wasn't there when someone needed me. I won't make that mistake again."

Pasha suddenly tensed and shoved in earnest, using every ounce of her fading strength to try to roll the woman off of her. Something snapped in her wing and pain blossomed viciously, and the Sigel cried out as her agony and desperation peaked. "Get OFF OF ME!"

((LuLu --> Xiu --> whoever he dumped her with, lol ))

Xiu's proximity never registered with the rabbit. Even as she was hoisted into his arms, LuLu's only reaction was to give a startled jolt of her body and a startled whine. Fortunately, Xiu's calming powers were not all that necessary. Where Anya had lashed out due to the eye's spell, LuLu grew more and more docile. Her body was practically one large trembling sack of nerves.

LuLu breathing remained rapid and strained as her mind struggled with the eye's illusions. No one could be certain about what the girl was actually seeing or what the magic had twisted Xiu's presence into.

She continue to curl against herself and into the older sigel's chest.Her fingers gripped tightly around his lapels as though trying to find purchase. When her hands were pried away they shook and immediately sought out a new object to coil around, something that would stop her decent.

(Eiry --> Rivener, Melisande, Ronan, Anita, Jeremy, anyone else)

Grief.

Finally.

Eiry felt perverse for feeling so relieved over such a feeling taking hold of his brother, but if that was what it took to keep him from flinging himself at the Eye, then Eiry would let that feeling overcome him. This was all still a nightmare, he liked to think, chose to believe. This was all a nightmare and despite how hard it might be to recognize that this series of horrific events would last within their hearts and minds far after they had escaped from the jungle, he chose to believe that maybe they would all wake up and realize that this was not real. Of course, while his mind strove and fought to convince himself of this, his gut and heart screamed their silent protests. It would not be so easy to wipe away such blows, to sew up such dreadful wounds. That much was clear. Still, Eiry had to celebrate at least for this brief however miniscule victory. As Rivener wailed his grief, contorting himself through the pain, Eiry had summoned up his reserves of strength and had started pulling him towards the healing station through the chaos swarming around him, the screaming and gasping raevans, the weeping few, the panicked and frightened, the silent. Dragging Rivener along the ground from his grip around his arms, Eiry pulled Rivener far away from the eye and to the healing station. There, he briefly made eye contact with Ronan and Duncan, who seemed to be in the clearer state of minds, and then looked down to Rivener who moaned and wept for a raevan who was not there.

”R-ronan,” he said miserably, not knowing the other man’s name, he hauled Rivener close to them, trying to talk as strongly as he could despite the warble and scratch in his voice, ”Please, watch o’er him. There is a role I can still play, must play. Allow me that.”

Then, to his brother, before he left, the minty raevan leaned down to wipe some of his tears from his brother’s face with the back of his hand. ”These tears are such a waste, aren’t they?” he said. His chest, tight and tense with bitterness and hurt, pulled all the more as he furrowed his brows at his brother underneath the blood of the stinging wound crowning his brow and cheek, ”Zul is fine. Zul is safe. You waste your energy when you could have been strong. Today, though, I will be the stronger.”

With that solemn promise, Eiry pulled himself up again with the splutter and cough of his fiery wings and unlike the others who dared approach the Eye, Eiry did differently. He turned his shoulders back to it, and gently floated back, unheeded by any of the other raevans or guardians who were otherwise occupied. He had seen Anita fighting with Melisande, the other raevans who struggled and wept and screamed around each other. He wasn’t going to let that happen anymore. Not if he could help it. Seeing Melisande scream and struggle with Anita, he glowered at her, his heart burning up with offense and anger to see her still so stubborn, the sweet flower having turned desperate and wilting.

”Melisande!” he shouted at her, his arms wide, his fists clenched in an uncharacteristic fighting stance for the raevan, ”If you so truly felt for the good Doctor, if you felt for my brother, who you compelled, whom you ASKED to face the Eye unprepared and so wounded, if you had any mind at all, you would realize that being downright thoughtless, tactless, and above all, belligerent, is absolutely unhelpful to your cause! You would rather play victim than play a role in the good doctor’s rescue! Frankly, I’m disgusted at your behavior! That you would put other’s lives in danger! You, nor any other panicked stricken raevan, NO one! Besides Jeremy, will pass me! Now, listen to Anita! Help Rivener, after you threw him to the sharks! Do something useful instead of useless!!”

Backing up as much as he dared, refusing to turn his back around and face the monster behind him, Eiry settled himself at his self made post and used whatever strength he had left to make his wings flare out as brightly as he could, hopefully a ghostly beacon to block out that of the Eye’s shadowy gaze. He also, turned to Jeremy in that time and screamed again ”Jeremy! Hurry! Please! If you need me too, I can pull the good Doctor’s body away from the cliff with my mind, my telekinesis! I am at your disposal. Let’s hurry this along, before every Raevan decides to descend that spiral of madness and succeed only in creating more stupidity and needless loss!”

Still keeping his arms out, his chest feeling cold now with an emotional numbness set in as a scab over the blistered wounds of hurt in his own heart, Eiry made himself into a one man barricade.

((Iorek --> Zeke, Cruz, (mention of Xiu, Cesc, Anya and others) ))


Staring back at Zeke’s face while the man pleaded and begged, shouted and screamed, Reks knew he’d be haunted by it for months to come. His friend was in absolute distress and he was the one making it worse. Never in a million years did Iorek think he’d be in the bad guy position. But through his friend’s eyes he was the villain that was holding him back from a loved one. If this nightmare ever ended, Reks wouldn’t be surprised if Zeke despised him. How could he not? Even so, Iorek worked along until the man was as good as he was gonna get. Would he need to go see a doctor when they went home? Absolutely. Though for now at least his wounds were clean and bandaged. That was better than before!

As Reks worked on healing Zeke, he heard a voice shout his name. He perked up like a prairie dog and scanned the area. That voice belonged to Xiu! Who has wresling with an enraged Anya…

Xiu needed his help! Iorek was all set to spring forth and face off with the spider queen but a war-torn Cesc took his place. Man, his friend was something else. Especially when the purple raevan collapsed in his arms. Cesc, the spider whisperer, what a title. Reks took that as a sign from his bloodied friend that he could handle the situation and got back to work on his human buddy.
“I’m really sorry again, Zeke. I hope you’ll understand why I need you to stay here. Ah…Zeke?” Iorek drew closer as the man didn’t respond. Oh no. “Zeke? Zeke!” Iorek reached out and shook the man’s shoulder. When he got no response he leaned in to check his pulse. Still had one and he was breathing. Poor guy must of just passed out. It was probably better this way for him. Pain couldn’t touch you in unconscious slumber.

At ease now that Zeke was taken care of, Iorek looked to his other patient. Very carefully and gently, Iorek picked up the exhausted Cruz. “Cesc has Anya handled. I’m going to see if anyone needs help, okay? I want you to lay here and rest, okay Cruz? Be good.” He gave the frei a hug, a very gentle and shy kiss on the forehead, and reset him to lie with Zeke. Before he left, Reks pulled out a comfort blanket that was folded neatly in the med kit and laid it across his two patients.

Giving them one last glance Iorek picked up another med kit and headed off onto the field. Sev could handle poor LuLu. Reks needed to see for himself if anyone else required help and just couldn’t make it back to the impromptu hospital by themselves. The eye would not win. Iorek was lucky enough to be given another shot at helping others thanks to Cruz's magical kiss. He wasn't going to waste it.

All they had to do was beat their biggest foe yet. They could do it. Even if some had succumbed to the Eye, there were still others sane enough to help and do their best to save friends. Just a few minutes ago Iorek thought it was a hopeless endeavor but now with this new energy, his faith had been rejuvenated. He was now on his way to help Anita with a struggling sigel. The task before him did seem daunting, especially because he'd never done it before, but now was not the time to let fear win. Too many friends and allies had been terribly hurt during this adventure. Now was the time to gather all you had and just push on towards victory. It may have been dark and bleak but this ragtag bunch would conquer. Dr. Kyou could be saved! Jeremy knew what he was doing. Light always shined through the darkness and good always triumphed over evil. They will win!

I hope.