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It was evening before Thancred could finally manage to see how the Warrior was doing, what with the chaos that Drybone had been tossed into after Ifrit's banishment, prisoners recovered and additional collaborators being chased down for arrest. The Flames were doing their best to keep things under control, but they were far too few.
It was a messy business whenever tempered were involved. It always was.
A guard had been posted outside the storage room where the Warrior was resting, which was cause for immediate chagrin; the man looked as unhappy at being there as Thancred was at the necessity of having someone there at all. He declined the scented handkerchief that the soldier offered, inwardly thanked the fact that he hadn't had time to eat supper yet, and steeled himself to enter.
Inside, the Warrior had sunk down into a sad, miserable pile, mouth closed and tentacles drooping like a squashed fern. Its head -- body? head? one and the same? -- was rather flat this way, which unfortunately caused it to resemble an oversized plush mattress, fringed with stuffed tendrils. Several of the larger vines which served as its legs were draped into a basin of water, where it was presumably soaking up some much-needed moisture after its ordeal.
The medic at its side looked up at him, her expression hidden behind the thick cloth tied around her nose and mouth. "It'll be a while," she stated blandly: a testament to her profession. "Our alchemy is meant for Spoken beings. For creatures such as this, we must use different medicines. With the supplies we have on hand, all we can do is treat the surface wounds."
The verdict wasn't entirely surprising. Thancred glanced at the tray of salves. "If it's merely ointments, I can take over," he offered gamely, and then stood aside as she rushed gratefully out of the room, footsteps pattering away.
"How are you feeling?" he asked once the door had shut.
The morbol stirred. "[Alive,]" it replied. The burble of its voice should not have rung so clearly -- but ring it did, thanks to the Echo it had been blessed with. "[Ifrit's claws were sharp, but the root of me was not struck. What has been lost will regrow with time.]"
Thancred nodded. It was starting to feel less and less strange to hear speech coming out of that fanged maw, even as his mind could make little sense of how it could: crisp consonants that an Ul'dahn aristocrat would have wept in bitter jealousy over, accompanied by a stream of undulating pops and squelches that he suspected was the seedkin's true voice. He didn't know if it was the Echo working its magicks to translate whatever regional dialects seedkin used -- if they even had any to begin with -- but any other explanation seemed equally bizarre. He'd never worked up the nerve to ask any of the other Scions if they were hearing the same thing; he didn't want to be the only person caught descending into madness.
Similarly, none of them had really known what to call their newest companion either. The city-states were just barely tolerating the morbol's presence as an ally to the Scions. Gridania was dealing with it the best; apparently, the Elder Seedseer hadn't even batted an eye. When Yda had asked after its name -- possibly expecting something like Green or Tomato, the answer they'd received had begun with the words, Eighth Sun of the Second Moon of the Three Hundred and Twentieth Year, and had progressed to a detailed description of a location in the East Shroud, inclusive of the weather at the time of its sprouting, or however such things were measured.
Somehow, the moniker of their Unexpected Warrior of Light had started floating around instead, which they had all clung to gratefully. The creature had expressed the preference of using it as a descriptor, which had solved that question neatly -- but which still didn't provide any ideas about what they were supposed to do when the newest member of the Scions also happened to be a twelve-fulm high carnivorous plant.
Thancred peered dubiously at several of the Warrior's smaller vines which had been laid out flat for treatment, stretched across linen sheets which were steadily gaining discolored halos around each appendage, soaking up mucus. A number of tentacles had been badly gouged; others were mere stumps. "What can we do to assist?"
The Warrior hefted itself with a groan, lifting one exhausted, limp tendril. It stretched the tentacle out with an effort, trying to reach past Thancred for the tray of ointments. "[You should tend to the others first. Their leaves are little. Their bark is broken. Their fragile flesh cannot renew itself as easily as mine. I... will heal.]"
"Not braised like a vegetable, you won't," Thancred retorted, which admittedly wasn't the most tactful thing he'd ever said, but he kept tripping headfirst across the safe lines of humor these days. It seemed as if he was constantly on the edge of hysteria, along with every other Scion he knew. Tataru had confided the other day that she'd thought about taking the doors to the Waking Sands off entirely after seeing their friend squeeze down the narrow stairwell one too many times; she'd shuddered after finishing her sentence, and then had buried her face convulsively in her hands as if trying to shake away a nightmare. "Here, keep resting. Let me help."
Flopping to the ground beside the nearest tentacle, he rolled up his sleeves and plunged his fingers into an open jar.
The gel was cloyingly icy, and reeked like an entire wagon's worth of herbs that Thancred could not identify; he would have to remember not to accidentally rub his eyes afterwards. The principles of its use were obvious enough. Most seedkin were sensitive to heat; morbols drenched themselves in copious amounts of mucus to protect themselves from dehydration and to shield delicate tissues, but Ifrit's flames were another story altogether. Char marks stained the Warrior's body in broad patches. The damaged flesh had wept ichor until it had gone dry, and now was slowly crumbling from drought.
The first stroke of Thancred's hand smeared the ointment in an opaque layer down the Warrior's tentacle -- and left behind a greenish patina on his own skin. Even through the medicinal haze, the morbol's odor hit his nose like a fresh wave of festering garbage on a summer day. It was too late to wish that he'd worn gloves; he'd have to scrub himself for hours to take even the slimmest edge off the stench.
Doggedly, he reached once more into the ointment, scooping up a fat wad that threatened to drip off his fingers. With his other hand, he lifted a second vine carefully and settled it across his knees so that he could coat it more easily. It was just like ropework on one of Limsa's ships, he told himself; the weight and size were the same. Just. Like. Ropework.
But when he turned the appendage over, there were far more wounds than he expected. The underside looked as if it had been scraped raw, shredded up in preparation for a salad and then only allowed to heal partway before being torn open again. Not all of the injuries were fresh, either. Thick, scab-lined grooves ran like riverbeds along the vine, deep enough that when he touched one experimentally, the tendril flinched hard enough that its tip smacked into a storage crate and punched halfway through the side.
"What in blazes -- " he exclaimed, unable to keep his voice from rising in horror. "These can't all have been from Ifrit, can they?"
"[The earth-ways of this land are harsh.]" The Warrior had no facial expressions -- at least, not that Thancred could interpret -- but the vines around its head remained flat, stoically unmoving. "[The sands wear me down much faster than the soil of the Shroud. Your kin make numerous complaints about the substances my body already produces. My vital fluids are merely another bother to them.]"
"Hang on, you've been dealing with this the entire time, then?" Racking his brain for how long they'd been traveling across Thanalan's reaches -- by land, for the Warrior was unable to ride on chocobo-back -- Thancred estimated a tally of weeks, and then promptly cringed away from it. Whatever process a morbol used to keep its body moist had clearly not been designed for desert life -- or at least, not the species that the Warrior had sprouted from. To make matters worse, now that the Warrior had flattened itself out like this, Thancred could also see the additional damage that the blistering sun had wrought, blanching the smaller, delicate tendrils which stubbled the top of the Warrior's head and stripping their color from green to sickly white.
Hoping that the change was merely cosmetic, he reached out to brush a fingertip against the nearest one -- and grimaced as the vine instinctively recoiled away, curling up into a tight, pained ball.
He dropped his hand to rest upon the Warrior's head; its body was rubbery, but not as tough as a cactus or other desert plant. It was softer than he expected, more tender to the touch. Being dragged across sand must have been agonizing with every slither of motion. "You don't have to do this, you know. We could station you in the Shroud, where it would be..."
More appropriate, he wanted to say. Among your kind. Where you belong.
"Safer," he finished at last, and recognized the ugliness implied in the statement: a repetition of every cruel comment tossed their way whenever the Warrior had been shown towards the stables instead of a room. "For you."
The Warrior shifted, adjusting its larger vines that were submerged in the bath. "[Am I not a fellow creature of Eorzea?]" Water sloshed against the sides of the tub. "[Do I not have an equal right to defend our star? But I have seen how the Rootless overlook such things. Your kind only gifts the title of hero to those whom you are also attracted to as carnal mates. I suppose I am... disqualified.]"
"Now, hold on," Thancred protested, through a sheen of embarrassment; he felt his own name writ large on the unspoken list of offenders. He switched to the nearest untreated tentacle instead, gathering up another palmful of gel so that he could slather it along the appendage's length. "You shouldn't put yourself down like that, you know. I may not be an expert when it comes to the conventions of seedkin, but I'm sure you're a highly desirable catch."
The response to that was a mixture of popping sounds deep in the Warrior's throat, which the Echo somehow managed to communicate as a huff of scorn; Thancred hadn't even known seedkin could experience skepticism. Another personal misconception for him to excise. "[As a trophy for someone's hunting log?]"
"I would mark you down as at least an S-Rank in my book."
The Warrior made another dubious burble. "[If that is the only honor I can look forward to, I suppose I should be grateful to accept.]"
Blast it. How did seedkin rate such things, anyway? Thancred hadn't paid as much attention in the Studium as he should have, but he did know about how pollination worked; the majority of plants were hermaphrodites, and didn't need to compete for partners. The reason they had developed displays in the form of brightly colored flowers and sweet scents was for the purpose of attracting other species, ones which could physically travel -- and morbols were mobile enough on their own.
Perhaps the tendrils? The one draped across Thancred's lap was as narrow as his thumb at the tip, but it thickened rather nicely several ilms down, widening gradually to the size of a hyur's endowments. He wrapped his fingers around it experimentally to gauge the firmness; it even felt like flesh, pleasingly heavy in his hand. It was cool, his brain suddenly informed him: cool but not teeth-hissingly cold, already taking on the warmth of his own skin from proximity.
He caught himself right before he was about to give it a strong, decisive pump of his hand, a single downstroke to see how that might feel as well.
Such uninvited curiosity would almost certainly cross into rudeness. Clearing his throat, Thancred attempted to steer his thoughts back towards a more professional course. "You are a wonderfully charming individual," he asserted, which wasn't a lie; the Warrior had not only demonstrated a rather witty sense of humor, but a remarkable willingness to adapt to its new companions and their own quirks. It and Papalymo had become fast friends, which -- in retrospect -- was rather terrifying. "And anyone who chooses to overlook this does so at their own loss. It must be dreadful working with tiny, squashy creatures like us, but you manage to find the patience anyroad. It's astounding, truly."
One of the Warrior's tendrils rippled, and then its body shivered in what Thancred realized was a laugh. "[Is that all it takes to impress one of your kind? It seems rather uninspiring.]"
"Well, Y'shtola says that you also play an absolutely vicious game of chess, and she's downright impossible to beat," Thancred chuckled back, his face warming, and by the Twelve, was he flirting with a morbol now?
But -- just as quickly -- his own sense of stubbornness rose fast enough that it felt like a broadside slap. Why not, he thought ferociously. Why not embrace the chance to show a bit of decency to someone who deserved it? When given a choice between acting like one of the thousand stuck-up arseholes around them, and being a perfectly welcoming, supportive companion to their newest Scion, then Thancred was going to -- he was going to...
His mind slammed to a halt as it teetered on the edge of whatever decision he was plunging towards, pushed on by a sense of outraged values even an overwhelming feeling of dread paralyzed him. He couldn't even try to grasp the basics of what he was intending to do next. The rest of his thoughts were blanking out completely as a form of self-preservation, one last instinctive barrier against whatever impulse he was about to plunge into without being ready in the slightest.
Thankfully, the Warrior chose that moment to make a sigh -- releasing a visible stream of green miasma into the air, which Thancred barely dodged inhaling by accident -- and settled down. The cushion of its body deflated further, reserves of tension seeping slowly away.
"[The pain subsides,]" it admitted. One of its tendrils curled gratefully around the tip of Thancred's boot, and he resisted the urge to reach down and give it a pat. "[Mayhap I will manage to sleep after all.]"
Relieved at the news -- for more reasons than he could properly express -- Thancred nodded. "I'll speak with the porters and arrange a proper wagon for your use. It's no trouble," he insisted before the Warrior could protest. "We make similar allowances for other Scions all the time. In the meantime, will it help if we find a means to shade you outdoors? Extra water? Tell us what we can do. You're our partner -- not our tool."
The Warrior tilted its head up towards him, regarding him in incomprehensible silence for a moment. Then another vine slid forward, rising up and pausing a few ilms away from actually touching him.
When Thancred made no protest, it brushed briefly against his cheek, as lightly as a length of ivy exploring a fence.
"[I would not mind your company for a few more bells, if you could spare the time,]" it suggested, a musing note in the bubble of its voice. "[Then I would not have to fear being stumbled upon in the middle of the night and attacked by accident.]"
At the simplicity of the request, Thancred found himself smiling again. The corner of his mouth crooked up. Hesitantly, he stretched out a hand; when he stroked his fingers carefully along one of the Warrior's vines, he was glad to see it turn towards the sensation instead of away.
"I'll keep watch until morning so you can rest," he promised, watching the Warrior's tendrils continue to relax, coiling themselves into small whorls beside his legs and tucking themselves close in lopsided piles like little kittens cuddling up for warmth. "The only soul to disturb your dreams will be mine."