[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Sagramore[/color][/h3][/center]

[@Ithradine]

It took a little coaxing. A moment's trepidation had passed between the two swordsman from far south of here, now whole worlds removed. Rudolf was keenly attuned to this much, reading the unsurety from the approaching Kirin all too easily. That moment of tension, of the two sizing up how one another would react, where exactly they stood from one another, was as eternity to him...

But it then passed.

Arton was still here. So was he.

Choice in the matter or otherwise.

Both enigmatic to the other, be it through that which had been revealed, or remained occluded. But still here, everyone looking after everyone. [color=c0392b]At least for now.[/color]

[color=c0392b]“Throat's rough, but I'll live. Yelled too much.“[/color] the younger man began at length, as he followed Arton's lead and spoken in a quiet, factual, even tone. This was a very well-learned and honed stoicism, one that drew upon the border of sterilized— and in keeping with that, he seemed to still instinctively want to shrink away beneath the field examination. The mask of soldiery was all that kept him from turning tail and running—

[right]—A tested flexion of the knee sent a rod of hot iron through the length of his leg—[/right]

—Metaphorically speaking. Literally, of course, there were far more immediate things locking him in with them, no matter what he wanted. He continued his boilerplate self-diagnosis.

[color=c0392b]"Knee's shot. Not taking weight. Not a fracture, but something in the joint snapped when I got between that thing and Izayoi. Ligament, tendon maybe." [/color]

Cid waved them inward. Rudolf's eyes narrowed, and from somewhere within the flowing cloth that had shielded him from the sun produced a knife, mundane and utilitarian as any.

[color=c0392b]"Brace. I can make do."[/color] he said, clipped as he retreated into the task of cutting free a length and tying it around the rebellious joint in a criss-crossing, tresslike pattern. Very far from perfect, nothing but tension to isolate movement to the saggital plane, but compression was compression nonetheless.

As you would expect, Arton, with his greater experience in the field and [i]actual use cases[/i] of first aid, politely waited out all this and the tentative rise up from a pistol squat, before offering his shoulder so they could get a move on at a pace quicker than a hobble or hop. As much as Rudi wanted to save some sort of face, find some sort of protest within himself, he knew more than anything when he recognized a battle he [i]wasn't[/i] winning.

...

...

He remained steadfastly quiet throughout the High Caretaker's lecture for a number of reasons, the most minor of which perhaps being his raw windpipe. Circumstance had already left him little room to doubt to old man, given the one-two punch of everyone's safe landing (even he had belatedly realized the fall oddly softer than he'd expect of the height) and now the temple itself, splendid and unmistakable in its iconography to Etro. Even if, he noted at the back of his mind, the style had to place it a real long time back.

But in thinking of ancient temples, in turn, his already-pale features now began to seem one shade closer to Eve than before, as the worldly mechanics that the disease upon the land they faced stemmed from were revealed... and struck the very same chord he'd dared not touch until today.

To turn one's back on the light of the Mothercrystal was sin enough. If dark rituals like that could cause a festering, twisted rot like the Blight to bloom through the land itself, then... what about one man?

What did that mean for a contract like his?

Was there a similar fate for him, brewing in the void left when his fortune had burned away?