27th of Dentis, 2718
Laboratory Beta | A Dark Hour
P rofessor Harper Moore was a single galdor who kept no pets and had few friends among his peers. He'd spent almost the entire past decade of his (still young by his race's standards) life devoted to researching monic theory and the boundaries of magical communication between galdorkind and the world as it was currently understood.
It was a thankless job.
In fact, he'd become comfortable with the stigma he'd slowly been labeled with in recent years for his willingness to not only associate with the magical offspring of his own people, but to also deign them worth valuing. Thank Alioe the Magisters had so unwittingly elected their first sympathizer Headmistress, let alone the first woman to hold sway over Brunnhold and the government with her kind of views. If only the rest of the Kingdom saw things her way, but, alas, they did not. Harper feared in his heart of hearts that in Anaxas, those in power never would. The Six Kingdoms, in general, were so horribly misled in various ways as far as the bespectacled scientist was concerned that he worried for most of Vita on a regular basis.
Then, as if he didn't need more to burden himself with, as if he didn't already feel the weight of sentient morality on his shoulders, well, then he found it.
And it was impossible to ignore.
Not the nexus. Not the answer to the so-called problem of passivity. No. All of those things, Professor Moore believed, were inevitable.
But this, this one thing was quite terrible and he had no idea how to present it all to those in power in a way that at all made sense to anyone but himself and perhaps a handful of other galdori in all of their current levels of education. He'd been working on actually quantifying his discovery in as calm a manner as possible, buried in books in the library-like lounge of Laboratory Beta for hours: several charts and a stack of papers and three diagrams and one spilled well of ink and two broken quills and one pair of socks and two empty cups of tea and a half eaten sandwich and four little chocolates later and all Harper had managed to accomplish was a few very urgent, disturbed sentences.
And a nap.
Sprawled over a good portion of his notes, quill still in his hand and his spectacles precariously perched at the edge of the table overburdened by to many borrowed tomes from all across campus (including the Crypts), Professor Moore snored softly, muttering equations in his exhausted sleep.
He didn't hear the slumping in the hall outside, nor did he hear key in the lock, but he heard the door open. Harper stirred, quite hopeful that it was Castor Devlin, but in his foggy state of half-consciousness remembered that the older galdor was (once again) in Vienda, much to Headmistress Servalis' displeasure. Whatever the other professor was up to that kept him from Brunnhold more and more often, it was wearing on everyone—
The thump of a body hitting his floor instead of an expected greeting had the monic theorist up. Sort of. He fumbled in sudden panic, hearing his name in a groan, and tossed papers, his spectacles, a teacup, and nearly himself onto the carpet around the lounge and the low table he'd been using to extrapolate data into intelligible words,
"Yes. Hello? Who is it?"
Ventured the galdor, grasping for glasses that were no longer within reach, the lights in the room barely sputtering without much oil left since he'd clearly been asleep for too long. It was hardly a matter of conscious thought anymore, the suddenly very awake professor waving a hand and muttering a few words of Monite without even a real gathering of his frazzled field, the warm glow of an illumination spell flooding the room with a comfortable level of light, the mona reacting just as much to the urgency in his words as well as the familiarity in his tone.
The door shut heavily, a slow old thing with a whine in the hinges if one didn't pull it shut themselves. Sprawled over tile and the edge of the rug in the foyer of Laboratory Beta was a bloody creature in a passive uniform,
"Tocks!" Harper was not one to forget a face, so long as that face was generally recognizable. Forgoing the search for his much-needed spectacles, he crossed the room, tripping over one more open, misplaced book in his haste before he could kneel near the battered young man on his floor, reaching gingerly to attempt to roll the passive over without causing more harm, squinting at the battered features, it admittedly took the professor a moment to recognize what he was looking at, but his hands were already moving to assess injuries with a gentle touch, "Oh. Mister Savatier—I mean, Lars—you're safe here, like I promised. I'd ask what happened, but that's a waste of time at this moment, isn't it? Need I remind you, sir, that I'm not a physician? I'm a theorist. Got it? Yes? Good. Noted, then. Listen to me ramble. Gods, alright, let's see ..."
The galdor smiled wanly, interjecting self-deprecating humor to hide the revulsion he was actually experiencing at the extent of the passive's bloodied state. He was, in fact, far more squeamish than he could in this moment let on, "... I'm not going to move you yet, so just be still. Did you walk all the way here alone? Good Lady."
Harper glanced up to the door with a scowl as if waiting to make sure the blond was alone instead of simply asking, but it was rather obvious Lars had no other companions. The Passive Ward had its own Infirmary, yet the younger man had felt compelled to crawl his way all the way to the Laboratory instead. This did not put the professor at ease at all,
"I'm going to use magic—is that alright? I will do my best to make sure you don't feel much pain, but I can't guarantee you won't feel anything. Just like with your friend—Fionn, was it?" Ignorant of the truth, Professor Moore had no idea that such words were probably just as injurious as anything else the younger man had experienced that evening at the boy's hands. Moving to sit on the floor next to Lars and ignoring the mess, he placed a hand on the man's shoulder with gentle concern, gathering his field and the Quantitative mona that seemed to favor the Laboratory with their presence,
"Here, now, it's alright. Just give me a moment to make sure I should be moving you at all." Harper added softly, beginning to speak his carefully measured cadence in Monite, reaching out with mona-extended senses to visualize the passive's injuries first, to assess the damage, hazel eyes closing for a moment in concentration. Somewhere in the middle of his rhythmic phrases, he hissed and his face scrunched into a scowl, the leybridge of his spellwork moving from Quantitative to Living conversation with the light shift between two phrases. There was a tangible shift in the air, unseen sentience moving in what could only be described as curious obedience to Harper's verbal requests.
The young man's injuries were common ones from a severe beating: mostly bruises and surface cuts. Signs of the level of excessiveness taken to bring the passive harm included broken ribs and bleeding inside of his body that Moore wasn't educated enough in the right fields of medicine and anatomy to properly understand, nor was he at all aware that Lars had any particular blood condition. Rare and hardly documented, such details filtered past Professor Moore's analysis and he could only treat what he knew with his magical phrasing: damaged tissue knit back together, veins repaired themselves, and bruised skin slowly faded. Harper couldn't mend broken bones, but he could set them on their way toward healing, the feeling of his own insides shifting, of pressure and minuscule changes, though surprisingly painless, was most likely not pleasant.
It was particularly difficult to convince the mona to do anything at all about the internal bleeding, more because the monic theorist didn't know the proper phrasing or the detailed spells for such things, but he was comfortable enough in his relationship with the mona that he simply shifted his request in Monite to accommodate, gathering all of the blood through the use of another leybridge into Physical conversation.
Harper had the presence of mind to stretch his body toward the low table and grasp rather clumsily for the small little wastebasket, mostly full of crumpled papers and a half-eaten sandwich, still speaking the final phrases of his spell. His face said it all, a mixture of exertion and fear, eyes widening behind his spectacles as he encouraged Lars to sit up carefully, shoving the makeshift bucket into his hands as if he would find himself suddenly needing its use.
He would.
The very overwhelming need to vomit accompanied the passive becoming upright again as if someone had suddenly poured way too much liquid into his stomach (Professor Moore had, in fact, done that very thing), and so long as the younger man didn't fight the sensation too much, he would indeed throw up far more blood than anyone ever naturally would have or should have. Harper blanched and turned a few shades of green, his voice wavering as he closed his eyes, a few beads of sweat on his forehead beneath the dark mess of hair he probably hadn't bothered to tame for days.
The last of his endurance for magic was spent making sure that while Lars was already sore and aching and his ribs were still quite broken, his bleeding had more or less been stopped, coagulation apparently something his body refused to do and the mona bristled about doing it for him, begrudgingly obeying the last phrases of Harper's spellwork only to leave a ringing in both their ears and a sharp pain in their sinuses for a few moments.
With that, the galdor leaned back on his hands and sighed, staring up at the ceiling, refusing to look at the bucket, feeling the ache settle into his joints as runoff from all the Living conversation he'd just had,
"Not a physician, not one bit, Lars. Your ribs are broken, and I can't for the clocking life of me remember if I'm supposed to bind those or leave them. Can you tell me what happened? I mean, you don't have to. No. I just—do I need to go to Mrs. Rogers?"