Ana uses her teeth to tear the remaining fabric of Blake's torn jacket hem, turning it into a series of long, thin strips that she lays across her lap. She folds a frayed piece of dull orange lining into a square and presses it against Blake's bloodied temple—he winces.
It doesn't take long for the fabric to start turning red. Ana purses her lips and reconfigures the fold. She presses the fabric back against the wound.
Time passes as she methodically repeats the process one scrap at a time. Fold the fabric. Press it against the head wound. Rearrange the fold when the blood soaks through. Grab a new scrap when the old one is completely used. Start again.
Her fingers tremble as she lifts the fabric away to check the wound. One... two... three... blood finally begins to bead along the opening—she refolds the fabric and presses it back into place. Good. It's finally starting to coagulate.
She sighs in relief. It's only a matter of time before it stops bleeding altogether. Thank God.
She takes Blake's good hand and pushes it against the bloodied scrap.
"Keep pressure for me, okay?"
"Alright," Blake grunts, holding the makeshift compress in place as Ana pulls her small shoulder bag onto her lap.
Ana ignores the twinge in her wrist as she rummages through her bag to find her travel hand sanitiser. She pulls it out into the light. It's half empty, but has more than enough sanitiser left to clean both her hands and the wound. She squirts a small dollop into her palms and starts rubbing them together.
"You're shaking."
Ana pauses, glancing down at her trembling palms. She snorts humourlessly and finishes rubbing the sanitiser into her skin.
"I know," she replies, giving her hands a moment to dry before she picks up the first of the leftover scraps laid across her lap.
She starts tying the long, thin scraps into a line, one knot at a time. She tests each knot with a quick snap of the fabric as she finishes them. They're far from perfect, but when making the world's worst makeshift bandage... they'll have to do.
Ana leans over her boyfriend and carefully lifts his hand off the wound. The orange scrap is almost entirely soaked through. She frowns, placing the daisy-chained scrap bandage back onto her lap and temporarily replacing the scrap.
She leans forward to tear another small piece of lining from Blake's undercoat.
"Annie, you're shaking," Blake emphasises, his brows furrowed, "Take a break. Please?"
"And risk you bleeding out? Not a chance," Ana replies, carefully squeezing a small dollop of hand sanitiser onto the freshly torn cloth. She begins to lather it through the fabric.
It's a mile away from an alcohol wipe, but as long as she doesn't let it touch the wound, it's as sanitary a solution as she's going to get.
"Annie..."
Ana gently removes the bloodied fabric from Blake's forehead and begins cleaning the skin around the wound. She's careful to keep her strokes as uniform and gentle as she can. She can't risk irritating the wound, no matter how much her wrist hurts or how shaky her palms become.
"Blake," she mimics, then softens her tone, "We can worry about me when you're okay, okay?"
Blake's lips thin into a long, unimpressed line. The corners of Ana's lips twitch up—she leans forward to wipe the dried blood from his left cheek.
She discards the dirtied cloth in her lap and gently taps the back of his neck; "Head up."
Blake lifts his head, his face muscles visibly straining with the movement. Ana's fingers hesitate against the sides of his throat. She shakes her head and presses the tail end of the makeshift bandage against his wound—he flinches.
Ana's lips twitch—she forces out a breath. She needs to ignore his discomfort. She needs to dress the wound. Ana takes a deep breath and begins firmly wrapping the makeshift bandage around his head.
"You know as well as I do—ah, ow," Blake hisses when she accidentally presses too hard against the wound.
"Ah—sorry."
"It's fine," he grunts—he continues, "I'm not getting any better without a hospital, Annie."
"I'm stopping you from getting worse."
"I know, and I—ow, fu...ar out—appreciate that," Blake says, his face twitching with every movement of Ana's hands, "I would—fucking—shit, sorry—I would also appreciate if you stopped ignoring your own fu—freaking arm in the process. My arm's not getting any less broken—ow!"
Ana accidentally ties off the makeshift bandage a little too tight.
"Seriously?" Blake growls, his eye twitching in irritation.
Her responding smile is as fake as the green polish decorating her fingertips.
"Last I checked, you weren't studying a nursing degree," she replies, her sharp tone a stark contrast to the smile on her face.
She gently lowers his head back to the ground, mindful of the double knot securing the 'bandage' in place.
"I need to splint your arm before we move," she continues, slipping her shoulder bag over her head—she winces at the sudden pain from her upper right arm. She ignores it and offers Blake the bag, "Take this. You'll want to have something to bite onto when we... you know."
Ana gets to her feet and moves over to the toppled log pile. She needs to find a suitable splint—something long enough to cover the length from his wrist to his elbow without being too bulky.
She crouches down and begins rummaging through the pile.
"Annie, come on," Blake says in an exasperated tone, "Wrap your arm at least."
Too thick, too long, too awkward—she begins to divide the sticks into two piles. The sticks that could potentially work, she places to the right of herself, and the sticks that won't… get tossed to the other side of the room.
Insofar, it's been nothing but duds. She resists the urge to smack the only half-decent stick to the other side of the room.
"Ana—"
"My arm's fine, Blake," she snaps—whips around to face the man lying in the rubble behind her with a... concerned look on his face. Her chest instantly feels tight—she sighs and looks away, "Sorry, I didn't mean to..."
He snorts humourlessly, "I know."
"Blake—"
"Annie, seriously, I get it—it's fine," he replies. He turns to face the hole in the ceiling with a sigh, "Say, Annie?"
"Hm?" She finds a longer, thinner log and compares the length of it to her forearm. It just covers the distance between her palm to her elbow—it's definitely a bit too short for Blake.
She bites her lip in thought. It's not unusably short, and she can still use it to splint his arm and lock his joint in place… Ana places it in the empty spot to her right. It's infinitely better than nothing.
"Do you think we're dead right now?"
Ana freezes.
"...What?"
"Think about it," Blake says in a raspy tone, "One minute we're about to die in a cave collapse and the next we're here? Where even is here? We're supposed to be up the mountains, not in some random forest. What if we really died and—ow, Christ—ended up in purgatory or something?"
Ana adds a second potential splint to the good pile and turns to see Blake currently staring up at the sky. She follows his gaze—the canopy they fell through is almost impossibly high up. How they managed to survive that fall... she shakes her head and returns her attention to the dwindling log pile.
"I thought you were agnostic," she says, comparing the two good sticks against another—she frowns. One's a bit thicker than the other, and the other's a bit shorter but... she holds them up against her arm. Hm... could be better, but definitely could be worse. They'll have to do.
"I am," Blake replies, turning back to Ana as she returns to his side with the two thin logs, "Dad's Catholic, though. Maybe he rubbed off on us?"
"Sure," Ana scoffs—she holds the longer of the two sticks up against his uninjured forearm, "If that man rubbed off on us, we wouldn't be in purgatory—we'd be in hell."
Blake snorts, "Yeah, probably."
The longer branch covers most of the distance between Blake's knuckles and his elbow, but the smaller one falls just over an inch short. She glances at Blake's twisted arm—she grimaces. The break is roughly in the middle, so the stick should still be long enough to support the wound and secure his wrist in place. Her shoulders slump in relief. Thank God.
Ana takes a random piece of scrap fabric from what used to be the hut roof and uses her teeth to tear it into strips. It tastes of a horrific mix between dirt, grime and something distinctly metallic that she… really doesn't want to think too hard about right now.
She tries not to gag. Disgusting.
"You think Jen and Allen are okay?"
Ana pauses—she lowers the scrap, "I don't..."
Her brows pinch. She glances at the half-torn scrap in her hands, at the firewood scattered around the room—at the large hole in the ceiling and the towering trees surrounding them. The corners of her lips twitch downwards.
"I hope so," she says after a long beat.
She resumes tearing at the fabric and laying the scraps across her lap.
"Maybe they're still alive," Blake hums. Ana flicks him on the nose, "Hey—"
"We're not dead," she says, before grabbing the strap of her shoulder bag and shoving it into his mouth, "Now bite the strap. This… isn't going to be pleasant."
───※ ·❆· ※───
Jenna crashes through the foliage, leaves flying everywhere as she yanks her best friend through the trees.
Furious trills and coos echo from behind as the horde of feathered lizard-things nip at their heels with every stride. She curses—grabs a nearby stick and attempts to swat the creatures away.
"What are you doing?" Allen balks—he skids to a halt, spins on his heel and yanks at her grip on his wrist, "Come on!"
One—no, several of the creatures leap forward to bite down onto the stick—God damn it, they won't get off.
"Jenna!"
"I'm coming!" She snaps, yanking at the stick to shake them off—there are too many of them. She growls and gives in, abandoning the stick.
She yanks at Allen's wrist and runs.
They burst through trees and vines and thickets as the fog around their ankles thickens from a light blur into a dense grey. Jenna glances behind her—feathered, fan-like tails are quickly becoming the only things she can see through the rising fog. Crap. She tightens her grip on Allen's wrist.
Not good.
"Ah—!"
Allen trips and Jenna is yanked backwards, their bodies in a sudden freefall towards the forest floor. Jenna blanches—she scrambles to grab onto something, anything, as the creatures' obnoxious coos rapidly approach.
They're not going down because Allen tripped on a twig—there! Her eyes snap onto a long, thin branch hanging from a nearby tree trunk. She latches onto it—it breaks. God damn it—gravity takes hold and they plummet, slamming hard into the forest floor. The wind is knocked from her lungs.
Allen grunts on impact—he gasps—he curls around his wounded ankle. Jenna scrambles to her feet.
A frill-necked creature launches itself out of the fog, aiming for Allen's leg. She snatches the broken branch from the forest floor and swings it at the purple lizard like a baseball bat. Its leaves audibly whip through the air as it makes contact with the creature and punts it right back into the fog with the rest of its lizard buddies.
"Yeah, that's right!" Jenna barks, whipping the air with the branch to drive them back, "Piss off!"
They retreat just far enough to avoid the swinging branch, continuing to hiss and screech at them from every angle. Jenna growls and goes to pull Allen back to his feet—
"Ow!" he yelps, almost falling right back into the dirt—Jenna locks in and yanks his skinny ass up regardless. She holds his arm in a death grip as she swats at the stupid lizards again to keep them back.
"What is it?"
"My ankle," Allen shouts, trying to put pressure on it for a second—he yelps again and hoists his ankle back into the air, "Bloody—I think it's, I don't know, twisted? I can't—it's a twist or a sprain, Jen. I'm not going to be able to—Christ."
"Ssibal," Jenna curses—she feels a hint of pressure near her own ankle and spin-kicks the offending lizard straight back into the fog. She growls under her breath, eyes darting between the feathered tails surrounding them like a shiver of sharks circling their prey.
Her fingers flex around the branch in her hands. What to do... what to do... A creature shrieks, followed by another and another as they leap out of the fog in groups of twos and threes. Jenna barely manages to smack them away in time.
"You... you might have to leave me behind," Allen says in a shaky voice—Jenna whips around to face him with an incredulous look on her face, "My ankle's—I'll only slow you down, Jen."
"Are you stupid?" Jenna snaps, smacking another opportunistic feathered rat out of the air, "You think I'm gonna ditch your ass over a twisted ankle?"
"We're surrounded!"
"I know!" She shouts—a lizard-thing bursts down from the tree above. She tries to smack it away with the branch—it grabs hold, sinking its claws into the leaves and refuses to let go. She curses, shaking the branch around like a madwoman to get it off but the stupid thing just refuses to let go—!
"Get off, you stupid—oh, screw this," Jenna growls—she throws the whole branch into the distance like a discus. She spins to face Allen, giving him a quick once-over before getting into position and ramming her shoulder into the man's gut.
"Wha—hey, what're you doing?!" He shrieks—she adjusts her grip around his waist, "Jenna!"
"Shut up and stop moving!" She snaps back, plants her feet in the ground and lifts that stupid twink over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes—"You weigh like nothing, what the hell? Eat a sandwich, Christ—"
"Jenna—"
A screech is all the warning Jenna gets before she's bolting out of the way of an absolute fountain of hungry feathered lizard-things—"Oh, hell no—hold on, buddy!" She readjusts her grip on Allen's lower back, lowers her stance and runs.
There's got to be an end to this stupid forest somewhere.
───※ ·❆· ※───
Jenna runs like a bat out of hell as Allen clings to her back for dear life because Jesus Christ the tiny feathered dinosaurs just won't leave them alone. He glances to the right—does a double take when he spots a strange, linear gap in the trees that looks just like a—Jenna skids to a halt and spins them around.
"Left or right?" Jenna asks, her tone urgent.
"Right—wait, no, left!" Allen replies, pointing towards the gap in the trees, "I think there's a path over there!"
She turns to look—her grip tightens on his legs, "I see it—hold on!"
"Wha—?"
A shift in Jenna's stance is all the warning he gets before she's pivoting to the right and bolting for the gap in the trees. Allen clings to her back for dear life and just hopes to all hell that he's right about the path.
Only the tips of the frill-necked creatures' tails are visible through the fog now. He tightens his grip on the back of Jenna's cropped leather jacket.
She bursts into the gap, her boots skidding against what sounds like gravel as she pivots hard to the left and continues to run. Though he can't see her feet, Allen is certain of it—she's not running along the natural forest floor anymore. They have to be on a path.
And a path means people.
Allen has never earnestly prayed a day in his life, but thank God.
They're not alone.
───※ ·❆· ※───
Fog pours from the edge of the Sondurak Cliffs as Aerys leads his team up the last steps of the Cikinti Stairway. He looks back towards the rising fog and frowns behind his mask. The fogtide's already obscured the entire stairway.
It's only a matter of time before they lose visibility up here as well.
"Alright team, line up," Damhan says, following it up with two distinct claps of his hands, "Gotta do a headcount."
"We haven't seen the canavari since Kasa, Dad," Riain interjects, arms folded over his chest.
"We do not perform headcounts for the canavari, Riain," Aerys states, removing his tether and handing it to Alexios, "The fog does not care if you have been in battle or not. Damhan?"
"Alright, team, you know the drill," the ex-knight replies with a hearty tone, "Son?"
Riain remains still for a long moment before he sighs behind his full-face mask and raises a hand, "Present."
"Serya?"
"Here!" She replies in a cheerful tone.
"Alexios?"
"Present."
"Captain?"
Aerys sighs—some nicknames aren't worth contesting, "Present."
Damhan claps his hands together with a smile in his tone, "Brilliant! That's five out of five. Alex?"
The doctor extends his arms towards the group, "Tethers, please."
The team begins removing their tethers and handing them to Alexios one at a time.
Aerys turns to the tree line marking the edge of the Uyku forest. He checks his pocket watch and frowns. The tide's come early. They'll need to proceed with caution.
"You think we'll make it back in time?" Damhan asks, his mask pointed towards Aerys' pocket watch.
He snaps it shut and slips it back into his coat.
"It will be close," Aerys replies—he turns to the rest of the group, "Guards up once we enter the forest. The fog's rising fast."
"Low tier fast, or mid tier fast?" Riain asks, a gruff concern to his tone.
"Mid tier fast."
Riain curses, "Blast. Alright."
Aerys turns back to the forest and goes to motion for the team to head out—he stops. He raises his hand—the Vault Team goes silent. He steps forward and concentrates on the sounds in the air. Of the leaves rustling in the wind and the distant calls of the canavari calling to one another in a mix of trills, songs and coos. Of distant shouting coming from the east—Aerys' body immediately snaps into a defensive position.
"Damhan, Serya—to the front," He orders, stepping back in line with the group, "We're not alone."