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The pain. The pain was now... definitely still there.
Almost certainly fuckin worse, but he decided it was a good one. A healing pain.
Dualscar was lying in a small sandy lagoon, half-submerged in the ebb and flow of the frosty salt water. The ground was softer than the black rocks he had crawled on to get here. Crawling was maybe not the best way to keep your guts in, but neither was walking. Lying was alright, although it felt bitter, like defeat.
What would his spade Mindfang think if she saw him like that? Maybe she finally would've flipped red, seeing this great, handsome seadweller down on his luck.
...Right, he had ratted her out to That Guy. Bad train of thought. Thinking was difficult anyhow. Lifting his head was difficult as well.
He was somewhere near his estate. If only he could reach out and... get there...
"Hooooly mothergrub on a pogo stick!" somebody exclaimed before stifling their voice.
Dualscar tried to gather his wits together. He had the hazy urge of ordering this person to improve his state of affairs now, at least until it was bearable. He wasn't sure what this would entail, but it was a very strong notion. He had never had a moirail- his demeanor didn't require a fussing, unambitious meddler- But this moment right now was the closest Dualscar got to admitting a lack in this regard.
Everything was very abstract right now, except for the overwhelming pain and the cold. Dualscar had forgotten about the person over it, which was helped by the fact that they had vanished.
Then they reappeared and did something very disagreeable.
Dualscar was lifted into the air.
The pain changed. It felt like he would tear apart for a moment- that gave him a too real thinkpan picture of the Grand Highblood bludgeoning him, before tearing into him with his claws, teeth- then he was hanging in the air.
His weight had somehow been taken from him. The freezing wind was washing over him, but this... was better.
Something was pressed to the painnumb part that was his head, specifically the part through which the hurting air got into his torn ventilation lumps. He coughed and hissed and spluttered, but what he got into his mouth numbed it. Dualscar decided this was an improvement, so he complied with this rudeness for now and swallowed as much as he could.
The pain fogginess lifted a bit from his thoughts and made place for the stuffy fogginess of soporifics.
"There you fucking go." The person hissed and clicked their tongue.
"Greedy bugger, drink up. I could have used that sopor when I will sleep off slime... This is bad, really bad."
Dualscar wheezed and it came out as a squelch. He tried to look at the voice with half an eye and without moving his head. He couldn't see through his other eye.
"Haha, I'm pretty sure those parts... are supposed to stay in. Nasty."
The only feature Dualscar could make out were two eyes, glowing red and blue. Then again everything had turned red and blue in his sight. Maybe those were fractions, facets of his own blood color. That thought was a bit comforting.
Dualscar was also starting to feel irritation, which was definitely preferable to only being miserable. Sure, he felt marginally better, but less pain also meant that he was able to process how bad the pain actually was, which made it worse on an intellectual level.
Was this guy in fact doing enough to secure Dualscar's life and well-being? Seeing as how much was at stake this amateurism was outrageous.
Something warm was hitting his face in a soft way.
"Shhshhhh, Dualscar... Sir. You're fucking screwed if I may say so. I know you sea dwellers are tough nutters, but that only means that you die slower in this case."
The papping came to a stop.
Dualscar was now moving, relatively compared to his surroundings, although he was still floating still
No, no, nononoNO, stop. This was bad, this was beyond heinous. Dualscar threw up. It felt like he had rattled all of his organs. It gave him no relief and only added to the awfulness of it all. The person cursed and let him down on the ground. His face was dabbed. Dualscar objected to the weight of gravity, but when he got lifted up again, he felt drowsy.
Could his condition really worsen now, when he finally got help?
Why were they not hurrying up to his mansion?
"Remember the Architec? The blue blooded fucker you, sir, culled after you took over his slaves? Eh, probably not. Well, I used to work as his stone lifter-"
What? What was the guy talking about? Did it matter? What a fucking insolence in this situation!
However he felt some slow papping again, which, appropriate or most certainly not, was at least somewhat pleasant. But he instinctively felt that his helper was beneath him. That didn't need a thoughtful guess, because all troll were beneath him, except for her Highness.
The person droned on with some asinine tale which couldn't possibly be relevant to Dualscar's situation.
"...and there was this troll. The Briklaya. Yeah, her spelling was fucking defective, she was special that way. And her blood was almost a shade of green, like a sandnut. Or like your shit after you hafta eat grass." He teeheed appallingly.
"Anyway I was so pale for that girl. It was akin to... WOAH. Back then. Too bad a block of stone slid and fell on her. We smuggled her into the den, but we had to get back to fucking work. They ground our chagrin tunnels through the night and half of the next day.
By the end of our shift she was dead. Nobody was there."
The papping stopped for a moment. Dualscar felt weak without it. He felt very weak in general and the pain was still overwhelmingly strong. Stronger even than Orphaner Dualscar himself.
"Do you have somebody who's like, I love you? ...Well, it doesn't matter. Nobody will see the difference."
Dualscar wanted to tell him that he should go on. His voice was required now. Although he hadn't understood the meaning of his words at all.
"You probably like the ocean, so this is nice."
And after another pause, "I'm going to cull you now."