Citizen 100 Victoris

The cabin of the Crimson Scorn was silent, save for the tension-laced breathing of the two beings within.

The air was heavy with salt and iron, signs of a battle not yet cleansed from the splintered wood and tattered sails. Yet within this aftermath, one rexal, cloaked under the guise of dawn's seeping light, was beginning the meticulous task of suturing not the ship, but the flesh.

Victoris’ hands moved with trained precision, even with the urgency firing in his veins. It was early - a time when mist still clung to the sea and the sails whispered hushed secrets to the ocean. Yet, haste threaded his every motion.

The previous night had echoed with the thunder of cannon fire and clashed cutlasses, dragging across pelts and scales. For the captain, it lasted longer still, and Victoris scowled to think of Sirius’ torment: the festering wound undressed, the marred skin, an angry gap in beloved life.

The heavy breathing, coarse and gurgling, followed him like a shadow, gnawing at his nerves. Victoris, focused on his preparation, pressed his worry deep under his skin. Luring the crimson thread through the needle’s eager eye, he noted how its hue rivaled the splattered blood on the floorboards.

He strode toward his captain, the steadfast heart of their fearsome reputation, now heaving with the strain of his injury on the makeshift cot. Each step was a deliberate exertion, his claws clicking against the worn, bloodied planks. Victoris’ nostrils flared, his ocean tinted eyes raking over the gruesome scene.

“My captain,” Victoris spoke, subdued respect twining his words into a chain of concern, “I fear the blade broke...” His glare leveled on the sliver of silver, menacing in its stillness beneath the torn canvas of Sirius’s flesh.

A coarse command, burdened with the pain it tore through, answered him. “Then remove the damned shard.”

Victoris was no stranger to bold challenges hurled at the uncaring fates, nor to the brutal paintings of wounds. With a measured breath, he crouched beside the dark monster the mothers of the islands told their children about. His gaze swept the assortment of instruments he’d earlier laid out: shiny in contempt of the grim deeds they were designed for.

Extracting the stubborn knife was a gamble with the abyss- the blade was wedged viciously within Sirius’s side. A clumsy move promised demise; blood's rush joined in macabre dance with death, organs vulnerable to the brutish prose of impalement.

Pausing, Victoris pondered the precarity of their existence, their life navigating the tides of faith. There was a hissed temptation, wondering if he should dare to step into the battle with fate’s whims. Yet, a glance at the soul before him forbade him to even consider. How could he deny himself like this?

With an inhale that clawed at the air between them, Victoris steeled himself. His fingertips grazed his tools as he readied for the bloody symphony under his conduct. He was the mender of marrow and blood.

And mend, he would.

With the weight of the moment bearing down on his shoulders, Victoris extended one clawed forepaw to select a scalpel from the medley of tools spread out before him. The slender blade glinted with a sinister promise as he poised it above the captain's marred fur; it was to be their unlikely ally against the intrusion of cold metal buried in warm flesh.

“I need to widen the entry,” Victoris announced, his voice a calm anchor amidst the pitching waves of their grim plight. Fine muscles tensed beneath his fur, paradoxically supple as they prepared to nimbly divide the skin further around the edge of the embedded blade. It was a dreadful necessity, unveiling layers hidden and protective, to pluck from their depths the reminder of violence. His eyes, gleaming with focus, mirrored the grim display before him.

The air seemed to hold still and thick, respectful of the delicate surgery required, as Victoris made the incision. Even as his hand remained steady, his inner turmoil surged like a storm. Every slice into Sirius’ flesh was a deliberate intrusion, each millimeter zeroing in on the brink where life slipped into shadow. There, in the subdued light of the break of day filtering through the stern windows, he knew there was no room for falter. Organs lay there- important ones.

The cut made was an invasion, edges parting with a reluctant whisper, a morbid bloom amidst the flesh. Victoris could hear the captain's pained gasps, yet focused on the high precision task.

Securing the scalpel back on the cloth sprawled on the deck, his dauntless regard flew once more to the other rex. He exchanged tools, opting now for a pair of meticulously formed tongs. Their grip, he entrusted with the repossession of the broken knife.

Focus narrowed to a razor line, he positioned the tongs. The puzzle of surgery demanded an unhallowed communion with pain and hope, each striving to ensconce the proceedings with its presence. With careful movements only occasionally betrayed by a tremble of anticipation, Victoris maneuvered to get a firm hold of the elusive silver that mocked their desperation. Each millimeter of extracted metal was an unraveling, a tale of what awaited beyond that crimson tide.

Then, a swift pull, Sirius groaned beneath the intensity of release, tension cascading away from the captain’s giant form. The knife slithered free in a clatter against the side of the catchment tray.

Panting from exertion mingled with muted triumph, Victoris inspects the open wound. But in his resolve - proudness placed wrongly - he missed the silent spectator to their trial; a fragment, a subterfuge nestled still inside, overlooked in the depths. He did not see the shard that clung to the shadows beneath gore-stained tissue, the nefarious twin that concealed another peril.

It was without cognizance of the treachery they were yet to unravel, that Victoris moved to close the captain's wound. Silk was threaded once more, needle poised as wings would to courting the skies. But the sky harbored storms, and their journey was not yet absolved of its kiss.

Steady currents would see it done- the edges pulled together and stitched close. Yet within lay a secret, malignant; a promise.

Sirius, forged from the relentless sea and the ferocity of countless skirmishes, stood unyielding despite the whistle of death near-missed. With Victoris' practiced stitching housing the deadly secret, the captain slipped from the realm of the infirmary, muscles taut over bone and heart fiercer for the deferred snare of grave’s call.

As Sirius strode onto the deck, sunlight played traitor. Victoris, bleary-eyed from toil and trepidation, watched from the shadows without truly seeing. He spied his captain's intimidating silhouette meld with rigging and wood as the looming rexal oversaw his domain.

Command bellowed from Sirius’s jaws, encapsulating the routine that marked their existence. Burly crewmembers heaved alongside the rhythms their captain intoned, charting the course.

✧✦✧

However, as night cloaked their world once more, wrapping the ship in her nocturnal shroud, an impending doom churned in the veins of the wounded. The deceptive closure betrayed them, and illness brewed a storm within the captain's flesh. Sirius, heated by the insidious base of sickness, laying in his darkened cabin, could not fight off his broiling fever.

Victoris, veiled in mounting fear, bore witness to the demanding derangement. No regimen nor tincture at his exposure availed the mastery desirable to combat the poison in Sirius’s blood. He must've missed something deep within the hidden halls of Sirius' gory coverts.

Seizing the knife of urgency, he delved once more into the wound. Sirius, aflame with the venom of the wound and delirium, fixed Victoris a demented, predatory gaze. Each strained twitch and bestial growl harbored foreboding.

Amid the intensity of operation and heartfelt desperation, the stifled gasp that heralded resolution escaped Victoris’ throat. The uninvited shrapnel loomed from the visceral cavern, a bloody deceit cloaking the violent home it made within the captain's tortured side.

“Forgive me,” Victoris murmured, his whisper strewn with guilt, as his shuddering digits liberated the insidious metal shard from its fleshy sheathe. Yet even with the blade yielded unto daylight and treachery exiled, Sirius held no truce within his tormented gaze.

Confrontation thundered in his fevered bounds.

Life’s elixir, red and glistening, seeped from jaws agape as Sirus descended upon Victoris, tackling him to the expanse of planks. Towering in insanity's might, Sirius encapsulated Victoris beneath his brutal power. The blood that marred Victoris' hand was not of ordinary origin.

“Eye for an eye, medic,” came the captain's grating rasp, filaments of sanity sundered and lust for retribution burgeoning.

Two shades of red joined on the dark wood that night, syncing like their future and draining just like so

~ Mitts