#he literally had to be pulled off. dude was in a medically induced coma for a good minute.

[micahsawyer]

if micah catches someone staring at his s/o too hard, he’s easily the type to wrap a hand around their neck and kiss them in full view of said someone. he’s petty and he’ll mark his territory like a fucking dog, and if you don’t get it after that, sorry but that broken jaw is on you buddy. don’t be stupid.

[no-white-knights-blog]

Halo - An Etrian Odyssey Novel (Chapter 29/50)

"Emery, I don't mean to sound rude," Vien stated from where he was sitting across from the medic, "but you look like a washed-out puppy who got trampled on."

Emery pulled his hand away from his face and glared at the troubadour with heavily lidded, narrowed eyes. His hair was even messier than it had been the day before, likely because he was continuously running his fingers through it and tangling it up, and his glasses kept slipping down his nose, which prompted him into shoving them onto his head. He likely couldn't see anything very well like that, and the obvious lack of sleep wasn't doing him any favors either.

"Have you slept at all?" Arcan asked, and Emery dropped his face against the table with a loud thud.

"Fuck off, all of you, I'm busy with important things," he pushed himself back up, rubbing his hands over his eyes, "I'm taking important walks through the neighborhoods of Lagaard," he held his hands out, eyes a little wild and a manic grin on his face, "I'm looking for a little piece of shit with blue fucking hair and one eye so I can kick his fucking ass before putting him into a medically induced coma and chaining him to the bed so he can't fucking run away again."

Iliad squinted, "Dude, calm down, you're freaking me out."

"Never seen you this sleep deprived before," Vien agreed, "Kinda scary. Please lay down."

"I am not sleeping until I find this fucker!" Emery punched the table, "He just left with a high fever, what was he thinking?! I swear to the fucking gods I will burn this city to the ground!"

"I'm not licensed to deal with this," Iliad said, scooting away from the crazed medic, "I'd ask Dyria to deal with him, but my stupid brother has been forbidden from getting out of bed."

"Who's stopping him?" Arcan asked, and Vien held a finger up.

"Emery, Dr Stiles, and most importantly Sage."

"Oh yea," Arcan held his chin, "I was wondering where he was."

Emery pushed himself to his feet, "I'm going on a walk."

"Please don't attack anyone," Iliad called, and Emery muttered something under his breath that was probably a curse, "I've literally never seen him like this."

"Me neither," Vien agreed with a concerned frown, "Maybe we really should talk to Dyria about this. I mean, does anyone know where Zed might have gone?"

"I know nothing about him," Iliad replied, and Arcan hummed.

"He seems like a really cool guy though, he really put himself on the line in the Labyrinth, which he didn't have any responsibility to do. He's not part of Halo, he didn't have to come with us and help."

"Yea, he got hit pretty bad, didn't he?" Iliad recalled, playing with the bandages supporting his sprained wrist, "What, the Raptor swiped at him once, and the tail hit him and threw him through the air twice? Something like that."

"He jumped up pretty fast though," Vien noted, "Wherever he's from, he obviously trained for a long time. It's gotta be pretty hard fighting with a flimsy thing like a whip, I mean how do you make it work? You just throw it at someone and it automatically wraps around them? Is it magic?"

"No," Iliad said, squinting, "Don't be a dumbass."

"It's because of Emery," Nirim said, looking down at the tea cup he was holding, one elbow propped against the table, his cheek in his hand and a bored expression on his face, "That's why he stayed with us and entered the Labyrinth."

Vien brightened, "Oh, is that so?" he held his cheek, "Looks like this just got interesting."

Arcan leaned towards Iliad, "I don't understand, are they referencing something or is it an inside joke?"

Iliad held a hand up, "I don't know, I just want to eat my eggs and bacon in peace for once."

When Emery left the room he just kept walking, shoes scuffing the floor and eyes focused directly ahead. The bad thing about it wasn't that he was so sleep deprived and stressed he couldn't remember what color his hair was, it was the fact he couldn't see anything more than colors and blurs with his glasses pushed onto his head, so he ended up walking face first into the wall across from the door to the dining hall, stumbling back and snarling before yanking his glasses back onto his face and punching the wall.

"Go fuck yourself! Why can't there be a door here?!" he sighed in frustration and rubbed his hands over his face, "God damn it I need to calm down, take a nap, eat something. What the hell is wrong with me, why am I freaking out over this?" he paused, dropping his hands chest level and curling them into fists, "Cuz the little bitch left with a fucking fever, that's why! Mother fucker not resting when he's sick, what's the matter with him?! Fucking accept healing when it's offered you ungrateful punk!"

"Emery?" the medic turned just enough to see Lynus had wandered over to him, looking fully concerned, though he was standing a few steps away, looking wary, "Are you okay?"

Emery just rubbed at his eyes to somehow clear them, grumbling, "My guild leader is a dumbass and I can't find my roommate, so no," he said, throwing his hands out in front of him, "Are all dark hunters this fucking flighty and difficult to deal with?! What the hell?!"

Lynus blinked a few times, looking surprised, before a half-smile took to his lips, "Well, I'm sure not all of them are, but the one in my guild is a little difficult. That's only because he's young, though."

"I told him to stay in bed," Emery complained, tangling his fingers into his hair, "The idiot had a seriously high fever so I ordered him to stay in bed, but when I got out of the shower he was gone, the window was open, and I walked around all night looking for him but couldn't find him," he lunged forward and grabbed Lynus by his shoulders, "It's been three days! What if he's dead?!"

Lynus had his hands raised between them, eyes wide in shock, "Who are we talking about again? I don't remember a dark hunter being in your guild. Have you slept at all? You look awful."

Emery just dropped his arms to his sides and swayed forward a little, his face dropping against Lynus' shoulder, "No sleep, can't sleep, that idiot has been gone for three days and he had a fever. He's dead, he's definitely dead, I fucked up again, everyone's dying cuz of me."

Lynus squeezed the delirious medic's shoulders, "Don't say that, you're just panicking and overreacting because of stress. You need to sleep, at least for a few hours."

"No way, I can't," Emery argued, his voice muffled, "I need to find Zed and force him to sleep."

"You can't very well look after someone else when you're this exhausted," Lynus chided, pulling one of Emery's arms around his shoulders, slipping his arm behind the other medic's back and leading him towards the hall, "Come on, I'll take you to your room."

Emery made a distressed noise and turned towards the door like he wanted to leave, "I need to find Zed."

"After," Lynus tugged Emery along, "I'll look around while you sleep, how's that?"

Emery pouted a little, staring dizzily at the ground. He couldn't think clear enough to comprehend the question that had been asked, he couldn't really recognize who was helping him towards the room, but it sounded like Sage, so he mumbled.

"Fine, but I need to wake up soon," he rubbed at his eyes as Lynus pushed the bedroom door open and lead him inside, letting him flop onto his bed face first and taking the glasses off his face as he continued to mumble incoherently into his pillow, eyes closed, "M'sorry, fucked up again, always fuck up."

Lynus lowered himself to kneel beside the bed, setting Emery's glasses onto the mattress and frowning, "That's not true, you're an amazing medic, you care about your guild and do everything in your power to keep them healthy."

"I'm a bad medic," Emery disagreed, "I couldn't heal Dyria. He almost died. It's my fault," Lynus' eyes widened at the tears that slipped from Emery's closed eyes, "M'sorry."

Lynus chewed on his bottom lip as Emery stopped talking, he seemed to be asleep finally, so the other medic stood up and backed away quietly with the intention of leaving the exhausted medic to sleep. Several hours passed before Emery finally started to wake up, blinking and wincing at the way his eyes were stinging, groaning and sitting up as he rubbed his eyes with his fingers, looking around the room and squinting in confusing.

"How the fuck did I get here?" he asked aloud, picking his glasses up and slipping them on, "I was eating breakfast a minute ago," he looked over at the window and deadpanned at the dark sky, "What the fuck?"

His head snapped towards the door when it opened suddenly, and felt even more stunned when Zedimir shuffled into the room. His hair was dirty and ratted on the right side of his head, his face was pale, and his golden eye was hazy, but what made Emery freak out was the rust colored stain on the bandages covering his right eye.

"Zed!" he scrambled to his feet and lunged forward to grab the dark hunter, shaking him by his shoulders, "Where the fuck have you been?! Do you know how worried I was?! It's been three days, you left with a fever, what's wrong with you?!"

He gasped a little when the explorer tilted forward, slumping against him so suddenly Emery had to wrap his arms around him, "I'm okay," he mumbled, "I'm used to it. I get sick like this sometimes. I just gotta sleep it off."

Emery grit his teeth and practically dragged Zed over to his bed, lying him onto his back and cursing as he spread his hand over his forehead, "Your fever is worse, damn it. What's wrong with your eye?"

"I'm okay," Zed said again, "It just is kinda hurt."

"That's not convincing," Emery snapped, backing away from the bed and closing the door before grabbing his bag and sitting down on the edge of Zedimir's bed, pulling out a roll of bandages and scissors, "Listen, I know you don't like people near your eye, but I need to change the bandages at least."

Zed furrowed his brow, his fingers curling into the sheets beside him, he looked almost scared, but he didn't argue, and Emery leaned over him, shearing away the soiled bandages and unwrapping them, his breath catching in his throat when he finally revealed the dark hunter's right eye. It was closed, and there were horrific dark marks webbing out from around his eye, which seemed to be leaking the rust colored liquid that was staining the bandages.

"What is this?" Emery asked breathlessly, looking at the bandages, "B-blood? Zedimir...," he looked back at the dark hunter for an explanation, but he had passed out, his left eye closed.

Emery pressed his lips together and stood up, throwing the bandages out before grabbing a bowl and filling it with water, dragging the table and a chair over to Zedimir's bed and setting the bowl onto the chair before soaking a cloth in the water so he could start to wash away the strange black blood.

Somewhere during the cleanup, Zedimir started to tremble, his chest heaving with pants, and Emery cursed, putting the backs of his fingers against his head, "You're even worse now. This never would have happened if you'd just listened to me."

He grit his teeth and cursed, soaking the rag once more before ringing it out and lying it over Zedimir's right eye, then moved to pull off the idiot's shoes, then his shirt, checking over the dark bruises along his ribs he'd received during the fight with the Raptor. Luckily there were no breaks, nothing badly damaged, but a few of his ribs had been bruised, which couldn't feel good.

Add on the fever and whatever was happening with his eye, Zed was probably in agony. Emery let his hand hover over the bruises, furrowing his brow. A simple refresh spell would at least lift some of the discomfort, it would probably help with his fever as well. He remembered how to cast that spell, it was the easiest thing a medic could do, but... what if he screwed up?

Emery tensed up when Zed whined in his sleep, head rolling to the side as he cringed, and closed his eyes, shaking his head, "It's just a simple spell, calm down," he reopened his eyes and took a breath, turning his eyes to Zedimir's side and breathing out, letting the familiar words tumble from his lips as a soothing low glow encompassed his hand.

When he pulled his hand back, he was overjoyed to find the bruising had gone down remarkably, "I did it?" he whispered, looking at his hand, stunned, "I did it. I actually...," he reached out and let his fingers brush against Zedimir's feverish forehead, closing his eyes and whispering the same spell, physically feeling his forehead cool a few degrees.

The fever hadn't gone down entirely, but it wasn't as high, and Emery found himself grinning like an idiot, laughing a little before wiping the smile off his face and taking the cloth back into his hands, dunking it back into the cool water in the bowl and wiping off Zedimir's forehead.

"Don't get too confident, you still can't do shit," he scolded himself, "Just keep his fever from getting too high for tonight, then when he wakes up I can ask what's wrong with him."

Unplanned though it was, Emery ended up staying awake all night, refilling the bowl whenever the water became lukewarm, continuously wiping down Zedimir's forehead, and occasionally casting short refresh spells just to make sure the fever didn't get too high. Between the times he would flip the cool cloth on his forehead, he would sift through his bag, setting out all his bottles of medica and other elixirs and trying to decipher if he had anything strong enough to knock out Zed's fever completely.

It was daybreak by the time Zedimir started to wake up, prompting Emery to lean forward and dunk the cloth into the cold water once more, wringing it out before setting it back across the dark hunter's right eye, just as his left peeled open.

"Hey," Emery set a hand on his shoulder and offered him a warm smile, even though part of him wanted to strangle this idiot, "How are you feeling?"

Zed drew his brow in and lifted a hand to his face, flinching when he felt the rag covering his eye and rolling onto his side, throwing the cloth aside and grabbing handfuls of the sheets, yanking them up and using them to hide the right half of his face.

"Whoa, calm down," Emery forced the dark hunter onto his back, taking his wrist and pulling the sheets away from his eye, "It's okay, I already saw. Your fever isn't as high as it was, how do you feel? Be honest."

Zedimir gaped at Emery in panic, he seemed too distraught to even form words, so Emery just hummed a little and picked the cloth back up, "I want to assure you of a few things before you start to really freak out. First of all, I'm not letting you disappear like that again. If I have to I'll chain you to me, I don't care, if you get this sick a lot, you're not leaving my sight. Second, and I'll have to confirm this with Dyria later since he's the leader, but whether you want to join or not, you're now a member of guild Halo, which means I'm your personal medic and you have to listen to me when I tell you to fucking sleep, got that? Third," he wrung the cloth out and turned to Zed, leaning over him and wiping the rag over the right side of his face, "I don't know what these marks mean, if that red stuff was blood, or if it's making you sick. I have no idea what this is, but it's hurting you. I'm going to fix it. I'm going to heal you."

He turned to his bag for a bottle of medica and gauze, pausing when Zed finally spoke, "You can't," he whispered, "This isn't a normal injury."

Emery set his bag down and turned back to the dark hunter, "What do you mean?"

Zed sighed heavily and rolled onto his left side, curling up, "I grew up in Etria," he started, "My village didn't have a Labyrinth nearby, we thrived from hunting, farming, and trade. Travelers called us old fashioned, but it was a really peaceful life. There was one abnormality to our life, and that was the forest. Deep towards the middle, near a line of mountains, there were ruins of an old civilization. Not impressively big, but the structures had been made of stone, and that in itself made people a little confused. We weren't allowed near those ruins, because we were told it was cursed, that there was a grotto that housed something evil.

"Naturally kids tried going there, but someone always managed to find them before they could enter the ruins or get hurt. At the time, I wasn't interested in the ruins, I was busy training, helping my parents, I didn't care about adventure because I was happy with my life... but I was really young... vulnerable. When I was six, I think, someone stopped me on the road to the fields. He asked me if I would show him to the grotto, but when I tried to say no, he grabbed me.

"I passed out, and when I woke up we were at this... incredibly green, beautiful, but foreboding place. There was a pool of water and the man pushed my head under. The water... burned," he lifted a hand, holding his eye, "I don't know why, if the water was poisoned or cursed, but it burned my skin, I drank some and it burned my stomach, made it hard to breathe. There was a mosaic in the water at the very bottom of the basin, words were written there, but I couldn't read them, and when I told the man I didn't know what it said, he got mad at me. He was a hexer. He cursed me.

"That's why my eye is like this, because he cursed me. When I got home, they knew what had happened, I not only entered the cursed grotto, I drank its water. They wouldn't look at me, wouldn't touch me, called me unclean. My parents would lock me in closets or our basement for days on end, they wouldn't feed me, until I turned ten and managed to get out of the house so I could run away.

"I met my mentor on the road, he was an explorer, a dark hunter like me, and he never asked about the bandages on my face. He was so kind, he took me in, let me travel with him, fed me, trained me, until I turned thirteen and he saw the marks on my face. That night while I was asleep, he took all his things and left me. I've been alone ever since," he slipped his fingers over the marks, "I learned the hard way not to let anyone see them. They would get mad at me, they'd be afraid of me, beat me, lock me away, starve me.

"I don't know what these marks are either, I just know they hurt sometimes, and if I overexert myself or do things that are too strenuous, I'll get sick, I'll cry this strange substance like blood. Normally it goes away after I sleep for a few days, but when it happened this time I was scared of you seeing the marks, so I ran away. I passed out on the ground, was unconscious until last night, my fever just got worse and worse...," he clung to his pillow, hiding his face, "I'm scared. I don't want to be abandoned again. I don't want to be kicked out. I like it here, with you, but I'm scared. I'm not getting better like I usually do."

"Zedimir," Emery reached out and pulled his hand away from his face, stroking his jaw with a thumb and smiling at him, "I'm not going to abandon you. I promise. You'll always have a home here, and if not here, at least with me. I know how you feel after all," he laughed weakly, "When I accidentally killed that boy, my village chased me out and exiled me. I live in constant fear I might mess up and hurt someone else, only to be exiled again. I never let myself relax or get used to places, because I figure they could just kick me out again," he helped Zed roll onto his back, wiping the cloth over his forehead, "I'll take care of you, so you don't have to be scared, okay?"

He frowned when Zed started to cry, clear tears slipping from his left eye, black tears slipping from his right, but he forced a smile so the dark hunter wouldn't notice how panicked and unsettled he was by it, holding the cloth on his right cheek to catch the strange substance.

"The hexer who cursed me told me to live with this curse and die painfully, slowly," Zed mumbled, "I don't want to die."

"You're not going to die, I won't let you," Emery said tersely, "I need you to tell me as much as you can, alright?" he dug in his bag and pulled out a notebook he never used, with a leather cover and something written on the first page that made him tense up.

Use this book to write all your discoveries in, and strive to become a better medic. – Maesa

He tore the page out and crumpled it before throwing it to the side, then turned back to Zed, "Answer every question I ask, no matter how vague or uncomfortable. Do you remember anything else from the grotto or from the legends? Why that water could have burned you?"

Zed shook his head, "I remember a word... a phrase. The hexer kept talking about a gem called Lapis, and on the mosaic, I saw the words Lapis Galəksē. I don't know why the water hurt me though, or what Lapis is."

"Lapis Lazuli is a gem," Emery murmured to himself, scribbling down notes, "Maybe Galəksē is similar? I'll ask Sage about it, he knows more about rocks than I do," he looked up suddenly, "Have you eaten?" when Zed shook his head Emery huffed and shut his book, "I'm getting you something to eat, don't you dare leave this bed, got it? If I come back and see you snuck out again I really will burn this city to the ground, and when I find you I'll chain you down, don't think I'm kidding."

Zedimir nodded, and Emery set the cloth back over his eye, whispering a refresh spell and smiling when Zed's left eye widened in surprise, "I can do that now," Emery said, "I guess I just needed some incentive. I'll be right back."

He stood up and left the room, and Zed settled back against the mattress, lifting his hand to his forehead as his cheeks heated up a little. The ache in his head was nearly gone after whatever the medic had done, and a tiny smile pulled at his lips before he shut his eye. It seems he made the right call to come back after all. He was right to trust Emery.