The Suture and the Sepsis

Skooh Otaga - The Alleys of Seda

Skooh’s subterranean workshop had protected him from the physical blast, but the psychic shockwave had nearly undone him. The leak—the viscous, star-hued essence of his being—was no longer a single, terrifying bead. It was a slow, steady hemorrhage.

He moved through the chaos of Seda’s streets not as a participant, but as a physician walking through a plague ward. He was a ghost of gold and silk, his feline mask a point of serene, liquid calm in a maelstrom of human misery.

The city was a symphony of discord, just as he'd always known, but the explosion had shattered its rhythm. The music of civilized decay had become a cacophony of raw, animalistic panic. He observed it all, his analytical mind cataloging the new symptoms:

A merchant, his face a mask of avarice, looting his own neighbor's shattered shop—the flute of greed playing a frantic, solo melody.

A mother, wailing over a body in the street, a raw, primal scream of loss—the cello of regret at its most dominant, un-tuned frequency.

A rioting mob, their faces anonymous with rage, tearing a city guard apart—the guttural drumbeat of mortality given a terrible, collective voice.

All of them were fractures. All of them were wounds. And he, the Chirurgeon, was bleeding out among them.

The tremor from the refinery—the "symptom" as he'd come to think of it—was a beacon of immense, toxic power. It was the source of his affliction. His every instinct, his very purpose, demanded he investigate the wound. But the closer he got, the weaker he felt. The hemorrhage of his essence quickened, the whispers of the Emptiness within him growing louder, hungrier.

He was a physician being poisoned by the very disease he was trying to diagnose.

He needed a guide. A tool.

Skooh found him in his usual place, a reeking alley behind a collapsed tavern, sitting cross-legged in a large, overturned wine barrel. Agapititus Sinope. A half-elf, homeless by choice, a drunkard by profession, and a philosopher by accident. He was Skooh’s favorite specimen, a man who had intentionally fractured his own mind to "let the truth in," a living mystery to the Skooh even after all his poking and prodding.

He was also, somehow, completely unharmed, cheerfully roasting a rat over a small fire.

Well, well," Agapititus slurred, squinting up at the golden mask. "If it isn't Tinkerman the Stinkerman. Come for another 'session'? Are you going to tell me my 'fractures' are unseemly?"

He tapped his temple with a soot-stained finger. "Sorry, doctor, the patient is... well, just look!" He gestured with his rat-skewer at the burning skyline. "The whole pot's cracked, Tinkerman. We're all just soup now."

"The metaphor is crude, but not inaccurate," Skooh synthesized. He swayed, bracing himself against the damp brick wall. Where his metal fingers touched, a faint, star-like residue smeared against the stone.

Agapititus’s eyes tracked the glowing smear. His grin faltered. "You look awful. Leaky and creaky. Usually you’re so... polished. Did you 'analyze' yourself too hard?"

"A complication," Skooh said. "I must reach the refinery. I must see the wound."

"The refinery? That’s the fire, you gilded lunatic. If you go closer, you melt. I plan to find a deep cellar, drink until the shaking stops, and wait for the end."

Skooh looked down at the man. His optical sensors whirred, focusing not on the dirt, but on the psychic threads of the man beneath.

"You will not," Skooh said, his voice distorted by static.

Agapititus bristled. "Oh? And why is that?"

"Because you are not broken, Agapititus. I see your structure. You fracture your own mind intentionally. You create cracks to let the pressure of the world vent out." Skooh leaned closer, the gold mask reflecting the firelight. "You are the only structural integrity this city has left. You bend. You do not break."

Agapititus stared at him, the rat skewer forgotten in his hand. The mockery drained from his face, replaced by a raw, uncomfortable vulnerability. No one had ever looked at his madness and called it strength.

"I..." Agapititus swallowed hard. "I want that big ruby on your ring."

"Get me to the wound," Skooh promised, "and you shall have it. And passage to Taba-Taba. A place where the pressure is low."

Agapititus looked at the ruby, then at the burning city, and finally at the strange, leaking entity that understood him better than he understood himself.

"Taba-Taba," Agapititus muttered. He tossed the rat into the fire and stood up, dusting off his rags. "Fine. But we're taking the old cisterns. The sewers will be full of panic. And you're paying extra if I get slime on my boots."

The cisterns were a labyrinth of damp, oppressive darkness, but Agapititus navigated them with the certainty of a rat in its own nest, humming a tuneless, bawdy drinking song. The roar of the city above was muted to a dull, vibrating thrum, like a giant's headache.

"This way, Tinkerman. Keep your shiny boots out of the slime," Agapititus muttered, splashing through a shallow, foul-smelling stream of runoff. "Wouldn't want to tarnish the gold. Or is that just a... y'know... a mask?"

Skooh ignored the jibe, his analytical mind focused on the increasing psychic pressure. The scent of blood was stronger down here, seeping through the stone, carried on the water.

Suddenly, a secondary explosion from the surface—a delayed chain reaction from the refinery—sent a violent shockwave through the ancient brickwork. A deafening groan echoed through the tunnel. Dust and mortar rained down.

"Ope!" Agapititus yelled, grabbing Skooh's arm and pulling him back as the ceiling directly in front of them collapsed, a cascade of stone and foul water that sent a chest-high wave surging toward them.

Skooh staggered, his weakened systems struggling to compensate for the sudden movement. His metallic foot slipped on the slick stone, and he would have fallen into the churning water if Agapititus hadn't braced him.

"The structural integrity is... compromised," Skooh synthesized, his voice laced with static.

"Compromised? It's buggered!" Agapititus snapped, his cynicism returning as the adrenaline faded. "You'd 'analyze' your own funeral, wouldn't you? Dead end. We go back."

"No. The port," Skooh insisted, his voice a low hiss of desperate, mechanical will. "The bargain..."

"The bargain's off if we're crushed flat, you magnificent idiot!" Agapititus spat. He stared into the darkness, then sighed. "Fine, fine. Don't get your robe in a twist. I know another way. It's... wetter. And it stinks. I am going to complain about it only half of the time."

He led Skooh to a narrow, half-flooded overflow pipe, barely wide enough for a man to crawl through. "After you, your majesty. Try not to... leak... on the upholstery."

They emerged into a small, collapsed square, a block from the refinery itself. The air was hot; it was vibrating, shimmering with a dark energy. The refinery structure was a twisted, skeletal ruin, and from its epicenter, the "incision" pulsed. It was a visible laceration in the fabric of reality, a swirling vortex of jaundiced light and shadow, vomiting the scent of blood magic into the world.

"Hells," Agapititus whispered, sobered. "What is that?"

Skooh had no answer. He was staring at the wound, and it was staring back. A whisper deep inside of Skooh's processors were screaming. The blood magic—the Sanguine Rite of the Warlord—was a direct, active poison to his 'Prime's directive of cosmic balance.

He took a step closer, raising his metallic hand to analyze...

And Skooh’s "leak" became a deluge..

Skooh collapsed.

It was not faint. The twilight-hued, starry liquid of his essence poured from the joints of his armor plated robes and the sockets of his mask. In all his time experiencing for Prime, he had never felt agony.

"Tinkerman!" Agapititus yelped, grabbing his silk robes. "No time to sleep it off! C’mon now, d’up-up-up! The ground's... it's moving!"

Skooh could not respond. His analytical mind registered the critical failure. Goal: Investigate. Result: Catastrophic contamination. New Goal: Survival. He tried to speak, to re-establish the bargain.

"Port..." he synthesized, the word a faint, static-laced hiss... and then his vocal synthesizer died with a pop of blue sparks. The transaction was void. Skooh was no longer a benefactor. He was cargo.

Agapititus stared at the silent, leaking, golden effigy. The deal was off. The ship to Taba-Taba was a ghost. This thing was dying, and it was going to take him with it. He should run. It was the only logical, self-preserving thing to do.

He looked at the vortex of dark energy. He looked at the collapsing buildings. He looked at the puddle of starlight fluid spreading at his feet.

"Bah, hells," he sighed, the sound one of profound, cosmic exasperation. "Of all the pee-soaked alleys in all the burning cities... Dammit."

With a surprising, wiry strength, Agapititus hooked his arms under Skooh's and began to drag the heavy, metallic-limbed being back toward the cisterns. "I'm not letting you die here, you gilded lunchbox. You're the only interesting thing left in this gods-forsaken world. And you will owe me."

Skooh's senses were failing. His visual feed dissolved into static; his auditory receptors picked up only the thudding vibration of the earth.

Analysis... failing, his internal log scrolled. Subject: Agapititus. Action: Rescue. Logic: None.

The transaction was void. Skooh was no longer a benefactor who could offer rubies or escape. He was dead weight. A radioactive bomb leaking stellar fluid.

Risk to self-preservation: 100%. Stated reward: Null. Conclusion: Error.

He felt the rough hands of the drunkard hook under his arms. He felt the scrape of his own metallic heels dragging against the cobblestones.

"I'm not letting you die here, you gilded lunchbox," Agapititus again grunted, the strain audible in his voice. "You're the only interesting thing left in this gods-forsaken world.."

It was a data point Skooh had never encountered in millennia of observation. A variable he could not calculate.

As his consciousness spooled down into the dark, focusing on the rhythm of his own dragging heels, Skooh realized the terrifying truth of his own earlier diagnosis.

The city was breaking. The world was burning.

But the Rat was holding the line.

System Hibernate.