Antlers
Silly
NovellaAddict
Hexaflexagon
Whoami
Not a Sayan
JFK
Scout
canaryroseGalahad Caradoc & Miina Malina
It was rare that Galahad found time to not be busy these days, but what with the work on their armor taking a little bit, he somehow found himself with some time for once. He figured now was as good a time as any to take care of the of the elephant in the room.
Heading over to where Miina's quarters were, he knocked on the door. ”Miina, do you have a moment?”
When Miina opened the door, it probably wasn’t the sight Galahad had been expecting. For one, the girl was only half-dressed, almost topless aside from her non-red mage clothing, with the rest of her attire thrown haphazardly over the bed. That wasn’t too unexpected, if she was still in the room it was almost certain she hadn’t gone anywhere. But her right arm, now visible without all the layers in the way…
FIrst, it was even clearer that it wasn’t just the arm, the entire shoulder hung slack, the lopsided posture all too obvious without the heavy coat. But even more than that was the dense network of scarring; a vibrant, treelike network of scars tracing from slightly-curled fingers all the way up to her collar.
Golden eyes met blue, unblinking.
”Sorry.” Galahad immediately coughed, turning his head. ”I assumed you'd be… uh. Nevermind.”
Taking a second, Galahad glanced back at Miina, particularly at her arm. Not that he'd seen her bare arm often, but that didn't exactly look normal. He frowned, eyes grim as he looked at the network of scars.
”That seems… new.” Galahad murmured. It was basically a moot point to ask if she was okay- clearly she wasn't. ”Was this from our fight with the behemoth?”
Of course it was new, she’d been wearing less than this for the majority of their trip through Drana Asneau. What was the point in that comment? Wasting time being unnecessarily polite, honestly… well, she was still annoyed at Galahad, maybe it was better that he had.
“The m-m-magic, yeah,” she nodded, taking a few steps back and sitting on the bed. Couldn’t exactly keep dressing with a visitor; being seen like that was embarrassing. “What d-did you need?”
Galahad cleared his throat a bit awkwardly, ”Well… I’d noticed you seemed… less than enthusiastic lately, especially regarding me, so I thought I’d come and clear the air and see if I’d done anything to upset you.” Galahad admitted, not entirely sure where to put his eyes or his position. He settled for taking a seat on a nearby chair- not facing her directly, but not putting his back to her either. ”I assume that this is the cause- and from how you act, I assume that I have something to do with it. Though I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at or how it was caused.”
“It’s your f-f-fault. Th-That it can’t be healed.”
Well, that was characteristically blunt.
”I… well… I suppose that would explain your apparent disdain.” Galahad said quietly. ”I know it doesn’t help, and I don’t imagine words are enough, but I’m sorry.” He apologized, ”But… truth be told, I don’t exactly know how this happened.” he admitted, ”If you say it’s my fault, I believe you, but I still don’t know what I did.”
“Don’t know? D-D-Don’t know?” Miina hissed, ears flattened and eyes narrowed to slits, “You used a healing materia..”
Not seeing the look of immediate comprehension she was after, Miina hopped to her feet and started pacing, explaining-cum-ranting the entire time. Obviously, a materia was an impure source of aether, even if it wasn’t used properly it was by its very nature going to tint whatever was given through it. In so doing, Galahad had forced healing energy into the ongoing spell, another contradictory imbalancing element to manage and try to purify so it wouldn’t just regenerate the damn behemoth.
Of course, once that collapsed, she wasn’t able to control it. That was her fault, sure, but he hadn’t helped. And then her latest discovery: his little contribution had made sure to heal the worst of the damage caused by the backlash. Improperly. After all, healing nerves was difficult, especially ones that had been burnt to ash, and it didn’t do that. Nice, healthy, non-nervous tissue. Or scars, a lot of her skin seemed to have mostly scarred over.
But it left her with nothing to heal. She’d have to try and get rid of everything that shouldn’t be there… but she couldn’t say where the nerves would have to be. It all looked the same, see? It wouldn’t even be healing at that point, it would be trying to grow something new.
She wasn’t even sure if that was possible, let alone on that scale.
“M-Maybe the healing is why I still h-h-have an arm at all b-but…” Honestly, it didn’t make much difference except for awkwardness now.
Galahad sat there in mostly stunned silence as he listened to the little mage rant at him- the sheer severity of his fuck-up being explained in quite clear detail. His generally composed facade had broken into one of abject horror as he realized the implications of what his materia had done.
”I… I didn’t realize.” He said quietly, ”I’ve used materia, but I never really studied how magic worked… had I have known, I would’ve just used my lightning materia, not both.” He said quietly, ”We were facing certain death with the comet coming down on us… I’d assumed that more aether was better than less… But nonetheless, your anger is rightfully targeted. I ought to have known better.”
Galahad sighed as he stood to face Miina. ”You saved our lives, Miina, and for that I owe you several lives.” he said, ”If you’ll allow me, I’ll help you find a way to… fix what can be fixed. At the very least, until then, I hope you will allow me to assist you in what ways that I can- with your permission of course. Perhaps stronger materia, or a more dedicated delve into the arts of healing magic. I imagine we might pass through Drana again at some point, perhaps we might find the knowledge or assistance we need there.”
Right… the entire point of materia was to allow someone who didn't know the first thing about magic to do a very specific subset. The manipulation that Izayoi was capable of was entirely unusual and… well, Miina supposed she wouldn’t be surprised if being related to multiple mages was involved.
Most of the offer… well, she doubted that more powerful healing magic would help. Unless it got to the point of rewinding time…? That was something to look into, but probably impossible. Rejecting him out of hand would seem cruel, though, and…
“Sleeves,” the mage answered, pausing for a second before realising that probably wasn’t enough, “C-C-Can’t move or feel it. Dressing is a pain.”
”Right… that does seem like it’d be an issue.” Galahad nodded as he grabbed her jacket, and the rest of her clothes that hadn’t been properly donned yet. ”If you’ll pardon me then,” he said as he helped her into the rest of her garments.