Chương 19: Critical Condition

"I need your help, Quetiapine," Nolotl announced as soon as he barged into the infirmary. Of course, he checked beforehand in the Cognition that the ebony dryad was inside to not make a fool of himself.

"Did you pass out again?" The neuromancer asked without bothering to look at him, her focus on a plate overgrown with bacteria.

"No?" He professed his confusion before recovering his composure.

"There's a woman in critical condition and…"

"Where?" Quetiapine didn't even let him finish before she stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Follow me," the gnosiamancer left the infirmary and the dryad followed behind. As rough as she had been when she had treated him, Nolotl was well aware of the passion of healers in the academy. Death was already too common, and these people had made an oath to save as many as they could, even if they weren't taximancers bound by geass. They walked silently as he guided the dryad, but once they left the Life tower, Quetiapine finally talked.

"Where are we going to?"

"The Information Tower."

"Don't you have healers on stand-by there?" She mused.

"Not as many as I'd like, but either way, I need a neuromancer, not a lent photomancer or biomancer from other towers."

"Aren't any of the students, or even postgraduates, present a neuromancer?" Even though he couldn't look at her face as he guided her, Nolotl could feel her grimace.

"…Maybe," the terian admitted.

"This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but I don't know that many people. And even if I did know a neuromancer or two, I'd prefer if the one I chose was a professional one." Quetiapine sighed but didn't fuss about it.

"Just guide me where this woman is." As they reached the Information Tower, Nolotl froze before an elevator. I mean, Enala is in critical condition, but not that critical. We can take our time and take the stairs instead of…

"What are you waiting for?" The neuromancer asked him as she had boarded the elevator whilst he had been thinking.

"I… uhm…" The Empyrean stuttered for a second. Well, I will have a healer in hand so I guess I could… With a heavy heart and sigh, Nolotl stepped onto the platform. As he was the one who knew their destination, the gnosiamancer tapped twice with his foot on the platform, sending the desired floor to the elevator, and the platform started rising.

Most towers had distinct ways of using their elevators, some especially did that to limit their usage to the inhabitants of the tower like the Information Tower did as you had to connect to the elevator's Cognition to order it to move. He hadn't personally used the elevators, but it was a simple enough trick that he performed it without any issue.

"Ah…" Nolotl crossed his arms and sighed as they rapidly ascended. He also tapped his foot repeatedly against the platform.

"Afraid of heights?" Quetiapine asked next to him.

"No…" He revealed and took a deep breath.

"I just don't like to take risks, and these elevators are too much of a hazard." Though he failed to comment on how having two suppressed avian Animal Spirits pushed some vertigo into his being. Not being able to have his wings out and extended quite literally went against his being.

"Yes, they could definitely use a handrail," the dryad mused as she looked around. The Information Tower's elevators were but simple wooden enneagonal platforms with no extra features. Just a slab of wood. Floating tens, if not hundreds, of meters in the air. At least they were wide enough to allow a handful of people in the center and leaving meters of platform in radius to spare. The fact that they floated on the big central opening of the tower didn't help at all.

They would be far safer if they were encased in the walls.

"Railings don't do much," Nolotl responded.

"They are too big for that, and it would only make it difficult to load in heavy payloads. But that doesn't mean that adding them would make them safer. If these things fail, anyone inside is dead depending on the fall."

"Have they ever failed?" The neuromancer asked calmly, her turquoise eyes closely examined him.

"The elevators themselves? No," he scratched his tattoos as the elevator raised too slowly for his liking.

"But there have been many accidents involving mishaps and tampering. You can never know when such an occasion would occur."

"It's not healthy to have that mindset. Fear and paranoia rot the mind."

"And it's not healthy to pry unasked in people's mind," Nolotl retorted and he looked directly at her eyes. Cyan met turquoise.

"I'd prefer if you didn't pry in my Cognition, thank you very much."

"Ah, and here I thought I was being stealthy~" Quetiapine innocently ignored the accusation.

"I don't know in how much of a critical condition the patient you are guiding me to is, but you yourself would need a bit of help. Or rest. Even with a surface scrying I detect a lot of stress."

"Don't worry, that stress is keeping me alive," the Empyrean of Information stopped talking as the platform finally arrived at the desired floor and he jumped out of it, letting out a groan of pleasure as he felt the firm ground below his feet.

"Are you sure it's not fear of heights?" The dryad said as she calmly left the elevator, her steps slow and powerful yet graceful.

"Completely," he retorted.

"I feel more comfortable on the peak of Mount Empyrean than a handful of meters high on one of these murder traps."

"I'll take note of that."

"Do whatever you please," Nolotl groaned and started walking again. As he protested, the terian was internally disconcerted as it took only a handful of steps to reach his alcoves. An Empyrean's bedroom was position at an accessible position, but because he always chose to take the stairs, it took him many minutes just to reach the room from the bottom floor. He withheld from telling that to the dryad and he simply opened the door to his room.

Quetiapine entered as he welcomed her with a gesture, the many flaps of the dryad's clothing fluttering behind as she passed by, and he closed the door behind them.

"Nolotl?" The neuromancer questioned.

"Yes?"

"This is your room, right?"

"Yes."

"Why is there an unconscious woman tied to your bed?"

"So she didn't escape when I went to look for you," the gnosiamancer responded as a matter of fact. The dryad pinched her nose and massaged her temples.

"Just to confirm, this isn't a weird sex thing, is it?"

"If you were to wake her up, she maybe be inclined to say yes."

"Nolotl…"

"What?" The Empyrean shrugged, though he was a bit nervous and conscious.

"I had to get her someway. This woman was on a self-destructive rampage and I feared she would end up killing herself, so I just knocked her out cold." He already knew that Enala would have killed herself—even if it was out of negligence rather than a death wish—but he couldn't tell that to Quetiapine.

"Wake her up or straight scry her mind and you'll know I'm telling the truth." This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. The dryad weighted her options for a solid minute, and she didn't bother to hide her growing contempt. He couldn't blame her. They had just met the other day and now he was dragging her onto a situation of dubious morality.

"I'll ask her, then I'll think what to do with you," she didn't bother looking at him as she caressed the female gnosiamancer's face. Nolotl didn't recognize the magic the dryad was performing, so he already discarded any act of gnosiamancy. This was biomancy, and advanced enough that he couldn't recognize it, some kind of restoration spell. Whatever Quetiapine did, it worked. A few moments later, Enala started jerking around and her eyelids started wavering.

"I didn't fail to notice that you still haven't undone the bonds tying her," the terian commented as he approached the waking enchantress.

"If a patient is bound, there must be a reason for it, and I'm not foolish enough to free them without asking questions first. Even if the way the patient was restricted was… morally dubious at best." Quetiapine stopped talking as Enala let out a yawn. Unconsciously, the enchantress tried to cover her mouth in the usual manner some did when a yawn assaulted them, but the bindings prevented her from moving. That jolted her awake, erasing the drowsiness from her visage, and shooting her eyes wide open.

The moment her eyes landed on Nolotl, she panicked.

"W-what?" She tried moving around but failed. The moment she became aware of the bindings, she started screaming.

"I'm losing faith here, Nolotl," the nurse commented impassively.

"What?" He shouted, unable to hear her over Enala's screams. The dryad made a sighing gesture and grabbed the enchantress by the cheeks, her eyes shone turquoise. The caress calmed the celestial woman and she stopped screaming, fixing her eyes with the nurse.

"I'm neuromancer Quetiapine from the Life Tower," the nurse told her, "and I'm here because this… man told me you were in a critical condition." Never before had Nolotl heard someone uttering the substantive of 'man' with such derision, but he supposed he deserved it.

"Can you confirm me that this is true?"

"I… ugh…" Enala gesticulated but was unable to come up with words. It certainly didn't help that when she turned to face Nolotl, she whimpered.

"Nolotl…" Quetiapine repeated with increase exhaustion.

"I didn't do anything," he defended himself calmly and nonchalantly, confident in his innocence.

"You bound me to the bed!" The enchantress protested. Oh, so now you can speak! Nolotl—for obvious reasons—didn't say that aloud.

"Beyond that, did I do anything to you?" Enala scowled at his words, her face screaming 'Isn't that bad enough?'.

"Celestials know what else you have done to me whilst I was asleep!" The enchantress thrashed against her bindings, kicking her feet around as her cyan eyes became watery.

"Alright, that's a solid counterargument," he admitted in defeat, his façade of false confidence crumbling.

"But the lady here asked you a question."

"No, no, I also want to hear that," Quetiapine interjected.

"Did you do anything to this woman?"

"Besides lying to her, carrying her to my bed, knocking her unconscious, and then tying her with ropes? No, nothing at all," the Empyrean responded nonchalantly.

"I don't know what to say," the neuromancer sighed.

"For the time being, I'll take comfort in that you didn't sexually assault this poor woman, just assaulted her." She turned to face Enala.

"Now, could you answer my previous question? Were you in a critical condition?"

"Ehrm… what does critical condition entail?" The celestial only responded after looking away from the dryad's stern gaze, and even then, she let out a nervous giggle.

"For the Mother…" Quetiapine cursed.

"I only don't know who are worse, the eternally aroused biomancers or the keenly moronic gnosiamancers."

"The later." Both Nolotl and Enala responded at the same time, prompting the dryad to hit him.

"Why only me?" He protested, grabbing his arm in pain as the dryad was still a biomancer and possessed preternatural strength.

"Because you are not bound in bed," she stated as a matter of fact.

"And mind you both, I'm both a biomancer and a gnosiamancer, so you better shut your mouths before I sentence one to a whole week in bed and report the other to the authorities." Nolotl was very tempted to ask who was who in this hypothetical scenario, but he managed to hold himself. It wasn't that good of a jest to risk his social life, especially when he still didn't know for sure if the loop wasn't a one-off thing.

"I'll run a diagnosis on…" Quetiapine stopped for a moment.

"What's your name, girl?"

"Enala, ma'am," she answered coyly.

"I'll run a diagnosis on Enala here, so could you please get the fuck out of the room, Nolotl?"

"Only because you said please," he swiftly left his own alcoves before the dryad shouted any other obscenity at him. What now? He held his imperious need to spy on the women and simply dedicated the new free time to calculating prime numbers. Between the total celestial alignment before and the loop now, I haven't done it much as of late. I should do it more, it builds Alignment and gathers computational power, which translates to free experience.

Though in case there's a chance I don't get to do anything of that because I got jailed... It might not even be that bad, all that being said. Prisons are safe enough to deter assassins, right? For the time being, Nolotl maintained a positive mindset and focused back on the building of his own power.

The thing with calculating prime numbers was that it was a solid gnosiamancy exercise to practice, but when finding a new prime number—which was a monumental endeavor at these magnitudes—it granted a trickle of experience. Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I could combine that boost with the one from the total celestial alignment? Are they cumulative or additive? His thoughts came to an end when Quetiapine left the room.

It had been so fast that he didn't even have enough time to go through a whole digit, but to be fair, when the number was 68. 310. 242 digits long, it took a lot of time to go through them.

"You were right…" The dryad groaned and took out a pipe that she lit with a simple cantrip and took a big hit out of it. As much as Nolotl wanted to retort that him being in the wrong was never in question, more pressing matters needed to be asked. Like where she took her pipe out from, or more importantly…

"Can dryads even get high?"

"It's honestly a fifty-fifty," she puffed out the smoke.

"The constitution of most dryads does not allow for intoxication—a blessing from Mother—but depending in the origin of the dryad or their Alignment, we can totally get wasted. Though Resistance to Biological Harm can also affect such recreational activities."

"So in your case it's because you are half-gnosiamancer?""'Sactly," the vegetable woman nodded, her pupils dilatating more as time went by.

"Anyhow, how has the diagnosis gone?" Quetiapine looked at him with a scowl as she pointed at her pipe with her eyes.

"Yeah, I can infer it was bad, but I'm not going to read your mind when you can just put it into words."

"For starters, the woman's messed up," Nolotl gave a 'should you be saying this about your patient?' look, but the nurse just ignored him.

"I attribute most of the faults to the recent end of her studies and work. Fun fact, most people become overwhelmingly stressed after ending their studies and not during them. And in her case, it was a delayed effect due to her new responsibilities."

"Is it only stress?"

"That's just the spark. I've detected a few things with Enala. Stress, insomnia, depression, suicidal thoughts, early dementia, hallucinations, even dysmorphia. She just has the whole pack."

"Dysmorphia? She isn't bad looking at all."

"For an Empyrean of Information, you are quite dense, boy," the dryad smoked her pipe again.

"But I guess you are still a boy. Dysmorphia cares fucking shit about how you are in reality. You might be the most beautiful being in all of the Physicality and still be incapable of accepting that. In a way, the more beautiful you are, the more likely you are to suffer from such afflictions. Because that's what it is, and affliction."

"Alright I got it, I got it," Nolotl made an apologetic gesture.

"So what are you going to do with her?"

"She is a gnosiamancer. And level 8 at that already. Her Resistance to Cognitive Harm must be giving her a factor of resistance of 22 times even if we assume that she's just 50% Aligned with Information. If she were to rest, really rest body, mind, and soul, she should heal by herself. It's like asking me to heal a biomancer that has been poisoned. Give them sunlight and water and they will just heal."

Nolotl squinted his eyes at the dryad, thinking she was a bit biased by her vegetal constitution, but he didn't voice his thoughts out loud. The neuromancer should know by heart how different terians and celestials were from her sisters.

"So are you going to 'sentence her to bed?'" He repeated her previous words.

"Unfortunately, it's out of my jurisdiction. And she's not quite on the point of forced hospitalization yet. Perhaps I could do so if she had been worse." If the time loop's real, I will bring you to her on the date I met her for the first time then.

"What I have done is write her a doctor's notice to deliver to her workplace so she can take a medical leave. That's the only thing I can do."

"And you think she's going to follow on that?" The Empyrean recalled how he urged the enchantress to rest the first time she met her. Enala had, of course, ignored him and ultimately paid the price. Quetiapine has mentioned that she has suicidal thoughts… Had she died from her mental degradation, or because she killed herself? The terian pondered. The latter might be easier to counteract, if a little less moral.

"Not at all," the neuromancer responded without qualms.

"But honestly, I'm done with your nince-damned tower and your bullshit. You are the only ones who work themselves to death, and I cannot be arsed. Fuck you, and goodbye."

"Huh," Nolotl amusedly mused as the dryad went away, the trail of smoke from her pipe fluttering on the air like another of the white tassels of her dress.

"She has the mouth of sailor, but I can't help to find that endearing… I guess she cares?" But mostly, the diviner couldn't help feeling shit after that treatment. He had slowed or even stopped Enala's death, so he certainly deserved better treatment than that, right? I know I technically assaulted her but… don't good actions count? Nolotl avoided thinking about it, the more he pondered on Quetiapine's treatment, the worst he felt and he couldn't stop thinking if he could've handled this better.

I really hope the time loop is real because... I could use a second try. The Empyrean went back to his room only to be reminded that a woman was still on his bed. Still bound to it.

"A little help?" Enala pathetically yelped.