voidtreckerexpress | (no subject)

Who: Conan and Anyone
What: Concussion recovery time. Which means quiet and rest. And so much boredom.
Where: Cabin 1B, Possibly other places
When:Domino 13-15

Domino 13 and 14:
Conan had studied first aid and emergency medical care. He fully understood why he needed to rest his body and mind. Why he really shouldn't even read for the first two days after a concussion.

Unfortunately resting his brain meant that practically everything he liked to do was out of the question. No reading, no solving puzzles or playing strategy games or doing anything to occupy his mind. And the lingering headache and dizziness wasn't helping matters.

Leaning back against the pillow on his bunk, Conan stares up at the ceiling in mind-numbing boredom and wonders if he should try to make another attempt at sleeping.

Domino 15:
Two days in, and he was finally starting to feel more like himself. Picking his moment, Conan slides out of the bunk and slips out into the hallway. If he was quick about it maybe he could have a change of scenery for a short time before someone realized he was still supposed to be resting.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah. That wasn't physical harm, though, not really. Disease is different." He didn't think Conan would appreciate a lesson about aether, so skip that.

Conan was just annoyed that he'd only just recovered from the flu when he'd gotten concussed and sent straight back to bedrest. He wasn't a good patient at the best of times (mostly because being sick had never stopped him from finding cases to solve), and he was getting more than frustrated at his own health this month.

He makes a noncommittal noise. He'd ask more about how this healing magic actually worked, but he was keeping in mind that he needed to avoid critical thought for now.

"Either way, I guess I just have to wait this out."

"Shouldn't be too much longer now." Though he totally understood. Honestly, he understood maybe a little too well. "Though it isn't as if the train has become any more exciting in the meantime."

"Anything is more interesting than this."

Conan hated boredom. There was no worse punishment for him than having to spend time without challenging his mind.

"Well, that's what I'm here for. How about I tell you about an adventure?" Something simple from his earlier battles, that didn't take a lot of explaining.

"What kind of adventure?"

At least Conan was interested enough to ask.

"Hmm. How about taking down the primal Ifrit?" That one was straightforward and didn't involve too much thinking. No mysteries there.

"It sounds interesting enough." Conan reaches for a pillow and props himself up along the back of the bunk.

"It started off when we were trying to find some people abducted by the Amal'jaa, a lizardlike people who mostly have no love at all for the spoken," Dread said, settling back to get comfortable. The story wasn't necessarily long, but Conan, being Conan, would doubtless have questions.

Conan settles in to listen.

"We tracked the Amal'jaa down to some old ruins only to be betrayed by a false priest who thought he could get a better deal from them than us." Dread's smirk said that 'justice', such as it was, had come for the man already. "So we all ended up taken by them and thrown into a cavern to await our fate. That fate turned out to be tempering by the primal Ifrit, as it happened."

"I'm not sure what that means."

He'd understood about half of that."

Dread acknowledged that with a nod. "I barely knew either at the time. Primals are beings created by the faith of worshippers and the power of crystals. The beast tribes each have their own primal, like Ifrit. And a primal has the ability to reshape a person's soul into utter devotion to them..."

"That is the tempering you mentioned?"

He was guessing here. All of this was completely different from everything Conan knew about the world.

Dread nodded. "There's no treatment, no cure. If it happens to someone, the only recourse is a merciful death. Otherwise their faith and devotion just empowers the primal further. It's a vicious cycle."