Chapter 45: Roseate
Dion pulled back his head groggily to look at her, and his already ragged breathing stopped.
His vision was still somewhat hazy, but even through that, he could see what he had done.
The woman in his arms had her cheeks sunken against the bone of her face; her collar stood sharp through skin gone grey-pale and thin as paper, and the dress that had fit the fullness of her figure hung loose off the wasted frame beneath it. Her arms had thinned to their tendons. The hand that had held his head lay fallen against her own chest, its knuckles standing tall out of it.
She looked like the husk he had left of the Gnoll.
Dion’s eyes had widened, and his head snapped down, his ear hovering only barely an inch above her mouth.
For several moments, with his heart hammering, he had been frozen; he hadn’t been able to do anything but wait, and only after those terrible few seconds did he feel a slight, slow, dragging breath coming out of her.
And beneath it, her heartbeat, so faint against his hearing that the sound of his own nearly buried it.
"Anastasia. Anastasia!"
His head had sprung back up, and the adrenaline filling him from those signs of her life teetering on its edges brought his hands to hold over her shoulders delicately, even as much as his urgency demanded that he try to shake her or hold her tighter.
And she did not stir at all.
’What happened?! What the hell happened?! I was drinking and then—’
Then he remembered. Somewhere in the middle of it, the taste had changed.
It had run suddenly richer, so much richer that everything before it had thinned in the memory of it, and he had stopped being able to think at all.
’That wasn’t her blood alone. She put something more into it.’
Dion focused inward, searching through the sensations running through him. He was trying to focus on where the lingering buzz throughout his body had been concentrating and flowing.
Behind his sternum, deep beneath the bone, a burning had filled his chest.
It was far from being painful; the feeling was invigoration, a heat so dense it felt as though a second heart had been lit inside him, and her blood that had been laden with whatever she had attached to it was flowing towards and concentrating into that one place in his chest.
’Is that my sangour?’
The moment his awareness touched what he believed to be his sangour, the world tilted. Dion’s stomach lurched as the room spun around him.
His heart broke into a racing, uneven hammer, this time more painful than what he had been feeling. His hands had to rise to clutch against his chest as he winced.
He didn’t understand what his awareness of the thing had done to cause this, but his own problems were far from being his greatest urgency right now.
’Think, Dion! Thin—’
His thoughts, instead of focusing on himself, combed through the memories of what she had been teaching him. Dion grit his teeth hard despite everything, burrowing through.
’There... has to be—’
Then, he remembered what she had told him about how Dullahans devoured souls. More specifically speaking, soul essence. And with that memory came the association to vital essence. By the name alone, it told him that it had a lot to do with the body.
Maybe, he hoped, and cursed that it better damned be, that she had manipulated her own vital essence and given him that on top of her blood.
After all, how else would it make sense that he could reduce someone with Endurance as high as hers to this state?
And if she had drained her own vital essence, perhaps the very foundation of the body, then she would not be able to recover from this on her own.
Dion’s arms trembled, falling back down to her.
And having forced himself into his own memories, he remembered being in that alleyway beneath the moon, where he had hesitated to relieve his best friend. He had been weak, and ignorant, and all it had left him was a fire extinguisher and a curse.
’Not this time.’ He growled internally
’Restoration... restoration—’
The word snagged on a memory that he knew he should have been able to remember.
Dion tore his chronicle open and went towards the one description that he felt should be the most important to him right now. He had to be sure!
Inherent Ability: {Roseate}
Description: {Your blood possesses a strange liminality. It no longer belongs wholly to the realm of the living, nor does it wholly belong to the dead. Despite this, it preserves such a yearning for connection, an ecstasy in restoration, and hysteria in transformation. This life may be bestowed upon revellers, for their welcoming into your paradise.}
’An ecstasy in restoration!’
Dion banished his chronicle, one of his hands snapping up fangs that tore into his own wrist.
The sound of his flesh tearing cut through the air, and he spat out a chunk of his wrist’s flesh, blood pouring out as he pressed the wound to her parted lips, his other arm raising her head into the crook of his elbow.
The first of it spilled past her mouth, running down the sunken line of her cheek.
"Drink. Come on... drink. Drink, Vasilisa!"
That instant, her throat moved.
It was the smallest motion, barely a swallow, and then another came behind it, and another, stronger than the last one, and Dion released a breath that shook the whole way out of him.
He fed her, and at the same time, the burning behind his sternum had spread.
It was climbing through him now, out along his shoulders and down his spine, and his skin had begun to run hot enough that the sweat rising off him turned to steam in the frost-chilled air.
His vision swam and doubled, then splitting into so many multiples that he couldn’t see, and would suddenly drag itself back together. His heartbeat had stopped resembling a rhythm.
Still he kept the wrist at her mouth.
Anastasia drank, and beneath his failing senses he could hear it working. Her heartbeat had risen out of its faintness, and she gradually began breathing more healthily.
’Good... that’s good...’
Dion’s head hung over her, pressed to her forehead by now because he couldn’t hold himself up, his hair matted to his face as the steam rose off him in ropes now, his whole body pouring heat into the cold air.
Beneath his skin, through the whole of his frame, a pressure had begun to build, and suddenly, it had become so strong that he felt his bones gradually fracturing.
The pain was agonising; his mouth tightened so hard that blood seeped through the line of his lips as he forced down the screams.
If he made too much noise, he might after her. He couldn’t let the slightest sound out.
And drowning in worry and pain, Dion did not think to himself about anything; he simply couldn’t.
Thus, he didn’t notice how much time passed, and suddenly, from somewhere on their floor in the building, gunfire cracked.
✧✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧ φ ✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧✧