Out of Character:
The green-blue light of the non-sun was bright and high in the sky by the time Cael Inkfinger had felt free enough to wander this strange place on his own, pack and naginata slung over his aching back.
It made next to no sense, the more he had thought about it. There was no reason that that…that should have happened. Portals traveled to portals, like a doorway to an otherwise door-less alley. When one traveled down an alley like that, the only way out was the other end. Portals did not – to the best of his admittedly sketchy knowledge, anyways – drop people in the middle of…well. People.
The realization of what had happened to make the trial area so gory had hit him about the same time as Aeraul’s fireball. It had, mercifully, blasted away any desire to try and puzzle it out on anything other than an academic level, at least until he felt a great deal closer to civilized.
...even with the chains still clanking from his wrist and his ankle.
He’d found a small pool in a secluded grove, one his grandmother would have called a fairy ring – tall thin trees, close together to the point of being almost intertwined, their foliage making as good a roof as any building, their pale trunks as good a set of walls. There was, he had to admit, remarkably advanced plumbing in the quarters he had been granted, but...
Somehow, he would have felt less secure between four walls than he did right now, surrounded by trees.
His matted hair still smelled of burning and blood, his eyebrows still stung, and the rest of him simply felt like a gigantic bruise. He stood waist-deep in the cool silver water now, stolen shirt and cuirass folded and discarded in a pile on the gravel shore. The water dripping off his bare shoulders and stomach left trails of deathly pale flesh in its wake, mottled here and there by purple-green-yellow bruises, angry red welts and the duller red of old cuts and scrapes. The crystalline water was clouding with the mixture of dirt, blood, sweat, ink and things best not mentioned.
Or, the ink mage thought dully, tracing his stained fingers over the edge of one finger-shaped bruise on his hip, even thought of. Best kept as far from thoughts as possible for as long as possible. He dunked his head under the stream, holding it there for a long moment, until his lungs protested and his bad ear rang.
You’re going to have to think about it sooner or later. You can’t always hide things away…
He ignored the thought when he surfaced in a jangle of iron, the water trickling from his hair gray-red with old dust and blood, gritty and tangled between his fingers. He grimaced. That would have to go.
But it was only once the water dripping from his body ran clear that he splashed back to shore to retrieve the filched pocket knife from his rucksack, flipping it open to really look at the knife for the first time. It had just been an impulse grab, made in the split seconds of elated terror in his escape: the handle was old and tarnished, but the blade bit into his fingernail easily enough, sheering off the filthy, jagged tip – and a sizable patch of his skin for good measure.
He stared at the welling blood for a second, then he shoved his hand into the water, rinsing it off to card it through his hair, wincing with distaste at the resistance his fingers met. He slid the blade through the dripping matted mess with a small pang of regret - he did like his hair, or had at some point. The hair parted before the keen steel with a sharp snick, and a handful of dirty blond strands fell to the gravel.
He lowered the knife for a moment, staring at the blade reflecting the leaves above his head, distorted and misshapen. When he turned the blade so he could see his face, the dead look in his eyes - behind the fading bruises of a broken nose – startled him, as did the low, insidious voice in the back of his mind.
You know, there is one way of making sure you don’t ever have to think of it… His fingers seemed to twirl the knife of their own accord, blade sparkling, cold and sharp. He’d barely felt when he’d cut his finger, there had been barely any resistance when he’d shorn off his hair… One very easy way. He had the briefest mental image of the metal pressed to the inside of his wrist, and a flash of a great deal more blood –
He let go of the knife, letting it splash into the water as he glared at his own reflection. That he thought back at the voice, angrily, is not an option. Ever. It took him a moment to gather the courage to pick the knife back up, tales of enchanted and cursed weapons dancing in his imagination. The voice didn’t return when his trembling fingers touched the hilt. He listened as he worked on the rest of his hair, listened hard, but he didn’t hear it again…
...through right now he was pretty sure he heard footsteps. He tilted his head to hear better, breathed out a silent, thankful prayer to anything listening, non-imaginary, holy and not Sway that he'd kept the shredded trousers on, and forced a nonchalant tone into his voice, eyes still on his reflection in the water.
"Sorry t'be a bother, but I don't s'ppose y'have any soap?"
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