Freedom from consciousness, embraced into limbo by Julla's guiding hand.
Warriors, soldiers, men, women, children filled the medic tents with their groans, weeps, and howls of agony. What awaited Kaja Santorski would result in nothing less, surely; the two healers that carried her mangled, shrapnel-decorated body parted through the drapes of the tent and into the realm of pain and misery. The young girl was limp in their arms, dead-weight even when placed upon a crudely made cot.
Deep within her, colors swirled and flooded over. She saw figures occasionally form from these colors, some mixing together to show beings of fire; fine ladies with draping, fading sleeves and hair that spiraled behind their dancing forms. They all smiled to Kaja, beckoned her to go with them to the darkness behind them - to the realm she could not see.
A voice beyond her called, and on it rang like a soft servant's bell being rattled; even so, the very sound was enough to keep Kaja aware and alert in her subconscious. Her name was chanted like a mantra, beckoned and begged for. Every whimsical creature of color, their voices and intricate dances, enticed the ginger to follow them down a dark path that held but one light in the distance: far off, yet noticeable.
Whispers from the outer world were seemingly beginning to fade from existence entirely - everything felt alien, abandoned, so onward she floated after the presumed-spiritual beings. A woman painted in blues, greens and yellows went to take Kaja's hand into her own, whispering words of stories about her great-grandfather, and his father; her father...
Kaja spilled tears as she felt the woman's hand burn her own, the right limb incinerating into glowing, vibrant dust. Like a fish stabbed by a spear she was pulled from the spiritual tunnels, into the reality that she was truly deserted in; held down as an unbearable rush shot up and down her right arm. The girl screamed and cried, throwing her chest upward and her head back as her body convulsed from the pain. The healer behind her in the cot continued to hold her shoulder in place. Her eyes, not yet able to differ dream from the present, presented him to be a malevolent being, edged with fuzzy outlining and dancing colors before her vision.
"Father!" Kaja screamed, stammering as now the entire right side of her body began to burn like the flames of an unforgiving afterlife. She wailed, tears pouring from her sockets as her convulsing, recoiling movements both constricted and tormented her body. Her right ear rang a high-pitched sound; the right portion of her head soaked with the evident smell of blood; she could feel each bit of shrapnel lodged into her, from head to toe.
"Have mercy! Have m-mercy!"
The healers exclaimed to each other in Alt-Regalisch, barking at one another as Kaja sobbed aloud in the tent of the injured. She wanted her mother, she wanted her brother. She wanted Boris, her dog, at her side; Missus, her cat, to hold onto. Yet her body felt as if it were set aflame: she in that moment accepted her fate.
This is where I die.
Something durable and tough was placed between her teeth, which earned an equally enduring chomp. Another nurse, a woman, entered their area. The woman seemed both affectionate and understanding, yet distant; perhaps it was her eyes, as they appeared as black as writing ink. The nurse gave no moment away - preparing some basic tweezers, pliers of any sort and remove bit by bit of shrapnel from Kaja's body.
The Santorski's face was stained with both blood, gunpowder, tears and snot as she bit onto the leather. She wept in the face of many around her, openly, without restraint. Though she was muffled, she called for her mother, for Rodderick, for Renly: for those who had always been there to protect her in some form. Oh, how she had fooled herself into thinking she could handle battle. How foolish to allow a coward's wishes to imitate genuine strength.
Her eyes, one spared and the other bloodshot, squinted up to the tent's covering. The room smelled of death. More droplets of tears dribbled over the course of her cheeks - one soft as it had been, the opposing scarred and mangled - and Kaja knew nothing else at that point. Her death was now, yet she never felt so abandoned and left behind by her Gods.
"Do not go to sleep!" the healer remarked, the very one holding her in place. "Lie still, lie still," he insisted. His gaze, however, was fleeting and uncaring, for he took many moments to look upon the other patients and nurses at work around him. Kaja took a bold, slow pan to address her injuries; what she thought she could predict was far from the truth.
Her right arm was burnt, punctured and cut from the explosion, from the shoulder to the wrist. And that's where it ended: solely her wrist. What remained was a bloodied, unevenly cut stump, disgustingly burnt around the edges. Beyond that was a shrapnel-infested right leg; it, too, was mangled and heavily injured. Her skin, always a naturally peachy tone with rosy undertones, was now stained red with the marks of burns and blood. Kaja's gut twisted and rolled over itself, and she could do nothing to stop herself from vomiting over the side of the cot.
"Get a pale!" the nurse exclaimed, edging away from Kaja's vomit. The ginger fell back onto her medical bed, her eyes dulling as she went into even more shock. Her eyes continued the process of watering, releasing tears, and repeating, but despite this she couldn't focus on anything else. They had numbed her, the battle had tainted her; Kaja Santorski lie there, broken and unreachable as she could not even muster the strength to cry out any longer.
With a mess of a form, she began to fade back into the realm she visited. A few relishing drops of Ogrebait dripped into her mouth and down her gullet. The world was no longer so important, her body no longer mattered. Death was welcomed to take her away, but an owl with clipped wings flies no longer. The embrace she yearned for would never come, and only the sweet, temporary release into sleep would drift her away from the reality once again.
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@BillyTheScroofy @MonMarty @Walrusaur_ @D3RPOSAURUS @SirVicViper @Ryria @Muffins_ @Tiber @Eledana
