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Telamon coughed. How odd, he thought to himself, that he did so. He could not become sick, nor even so much as need to clear his throat. Knowing this, he paid no mind and continued fighting in SFOTH.
Blood sprayed across the ground, countless bodies piling up from the fighters who would not cease their attempts. This was the most difficult arena of the experience- Telamon allowed only the top fighters into its arena.
Previously, exploiters and hackers had altered their death tolls to enter, but he had long since fixed that. He had no business slaughtering those too weak to entertain him.
He parried a blade, a replica of the Illumina, with his own linked sword. It was far too easy, centuries of combat making it impossible to measure up to him, but he was known to occasionally take those who got close under his wing, so to speak.
“Telamon!” A fighter, one that had recently caught his eye, shouted. “Take your blade up and fight me!”
Telamon was not one to obey mortal command. Still, he found it an attractive offer, from such a strong fighter. So he flew to the air and dove down at such speeds that the Robloxian eye couldn't track.
The fool was a splatter of blood on the ground in an instant.
And Telamon leaned over, coughing from exertion. The combat stopped entirely as the spectacle shifted from the bloodbath to the Admin, leaning on his sword and wheezing. His wings shook. When he finally stopped and withdrew his hand, golden blood was splattered across it.
His pupils shrunk to pinpricks, though it could not be observed; he spread his wings to make himself larger. It wasn't what he would normally do, for normally he would be unafraid of mortals. They could do him no harm.
Now he felt as if he was lowered to their pathetic status, and that was dangerous.
He held out a hand, summoned his admin panel, and teleported to the first place he thought of. It was stupid, that he would first think of a mortal's residence for comfort.
He was tired.
Was this what it felt like to be mortal? Weak?
He hated it.
He knocked on the door, and iTrapped came to it with an imperceptible expression hidden behind the screen in front of his face.
“What is it this time, Telamon?”
His voice was neutral, perhaps a little annoyed, but neutral for the most part.
“He finds himself…”
He paused at how his voice sounded, like he had been fighting for hours on end, which he had. But normally, his voice did not reflect his activities.
“Mysteriously ill, with one of those Robloxian sicknesses.”
He felt the way iTrapped studied him.
“You've never been sick before?”
He shook his head, and his tips of his largest wings dragged across the floor. Holding them up took far too much energy to bother with.
“Fine. I don't have anything to help you.”
Why not?”
iTrapped turned his head downward. His hair fell around his shoulders like a veil, a beautiful thing to behold. Even Telamon felt graced by it.
“I haven't gotten sick since the day they were banned.”
Telamon was about to ask, again, why that was.
“I used the admin controls to make myself permanently immune.”
iTrapped explained.
Telamon nodded.
“Sit down.”
The couch was dirty, Telamon noted. Wrappers from food were scattered across it, and it looked to be a few hours away from infestation's claw marks.
“Will iTrapped not clean iTrapped's couch?”
“iTrapped doesn't have enough time for that.”
Telamon got the sense iTrapped was mocking him. But the idea of confronting him for it nearly sent him into another coughing fit, so he decided against it. He lay down on the couch, wings spread out behind him as if he was sunbathing, though the room was constantly cast in shadow. iTrapped seemed to hate the light.
Telamon could not understand why that would be, but mortals were odd.
iTrapped sat down next to him.
“What do mortals normally do when sick?”
“Rest.”
iTrapped said, an obvious notion.
“Not move around. If it's bad, people go to a doctor.”
“iTrapped does not consider iTrapped to be a person?”
iTrapped turned his head away. Telamon would love to preen that hair, that tangled and beautiful luscious hair. He could settle for gazing upon it, however less exciting that was.
“I…”
iTrapped sighed.
“You're a nosy bird.”
Telamon hummed under his breath.
“It is in his nature to attempt understanding.”
“Most admins don't have to try.”
Telamon nodded.
“What makes you different?”
Perhaps it was rhetorical. Telamon answered anyway.
“The fourth dimension is quite a different world. Though his memories of it are faint at best. He was invited out, he thinks, but cannot recall any details beyond the first day he appeared in Robloxia.”
He wasn't expecting iTrapped to understand when he didn't himself.
He wasn't expecting a gentle hand on the back of his wings and a voice that murmured of how soft his feathers were. He wasn't expecting that, without a request, the mortal would begin attempting to rearrange the feathers as he would normally do himself.
iTrapped pinched some keratin off of a pin feather.
“Is there normally a rash at the base of the feathers?”
“No.”
iTrapped stopped preening him, and he refrained from begging for his return. It was uncouth to do so. He searched something on one of those ‘phones’, a device Telamon had never bothered with.
“Aspergillosis.”
“What?”
“Fungal infection in the lungs.”
Telamon folded his wings in.
“He will ask a professional about it.”
“I'll take you.”
“He is perfectly capable of flying himself-”
“And you want to risk it?
I didn't think you were stupid, Telamon, but it seems I was wrong. Your loss.”
Telamon shut up after that and followed iTrapped into his car.