From the Wreckage

Dazzle found the ring quickly. The half-elf was wearing only a single ring: a simple bronze affair, an apparent trinket for someone of his likely wealth and influence. His papers were easy to find too, in a leather wallet in his inside pocket, along with a small pocketbook. The bard looked to the heavens. They were almost clear. A pair of riderless dinosaurs were still in sight, travelling aimlessly and without guidance. The other winged beasts had either fallen in the battle or made away already. Beyond that... the area appeared to be clear.

Iliana spotted a small clump of healers. They had been hurt badly by the powder. Of the three only one of them still was sighted; the other two bore terrible burns to the face that had stolen their looks and their eyes. One poor woman had lost the best part of the flesh covering her lower jaw though she still lived, for now. Around them were those that had succumbed already, a full four healers lying dead.

Well then, Dazzle muttered now that the unpleasant business of looting the dead was done with.

He trotted over to Iliana with due haste. Tell me what to do, he said, breathless.

Heart lurching painfully at the sight of the devastated healers, Iliana fell to her knees before them. Whispered benedictions spilled from her mouth, her hands reaching prayerfully for the least injured among them. Again and again, she pleaded for grace and mercy, to be allowed to act as a conduit through which divine healing might pour.

Vaguely, she registered a Jody at her side.

"Help me," she said, her voice strange and distant, before lapsing against into murmured supplication. It was not immediately clear whether she had spoken those two words to her friend, or her Sovereign.

Callach does what little he can, and little it helps. For all his newfound power, his was not the ability to heal.
Accepting his own shortcomings, he cancels his feeble attempts at healing the wounded and rather turn to those who cannot be saved, which sadly counted quite a few. Illiana and the others in their eager work to save as many as possible could not afford to waste a single moment on those beyond salvaging.
Callach, on the other hand, was better suited for this kind of work.

With uncharacteristic empathy he moves around to ease the suffering of the dying.
Being rather unfamiliar with the divine words of the Host, he simply offers a kind "Be at peace".
Methodically, he visits those about to leave this world and magically lulls them into a painless slumber.

Casting sleep and deep slumber to put those in pain to rest.

Iliana was in the process of healing the healer when she felt a sudden wave of exhaustion hit her. A feeling that was so far beyond her pre-existing feeling of tiredness it was as if she had suddenly discovered that not only had she not slept for weeks but she had actually walked to Karrnath from Aundaire. She collapsed to her knees and then to the floor, lost to exhaustion.

Dazzle had just enough time to be shocked and put out a supportive hand before he too collapsed. Callach was tending to the pain of a brutally injured half-elven woman when his body failed him. Each of them had just about energy to keep living and their senses were just alert enough to hear the sound of many others hitting the ground around them.

They lay still for a time, as that was the only option allowed to them. Then, with halting and excruciating reluctance, they were filled with a numbing pain and tiredness; an oppressive feeling but one that freed them to move once more, albeit slowly and carefully.

Iliana found that, in an instant, her bones had gone hollow and could no longer support her. Exhaustion emptied her of strength, stole from her the last of her awareness, and for a moment she dreamed deeply. The grass beneath her back was of the fields of home, and she was weary from all her running, from the chasing game she played with Tarin, though she had never tired of that game before. Face toward the sky, eyes shut, she wondered if he would kiss her and held her breath.

But.

Consciousness came to her slowly, dripping into her body and mind, filling the hollow spaces with dullness, pain. There was a taste of blood in her mouth, warm as copper.

She could not remember where she was, she was nothing but weariness and blood on the tongue and the breath of wind.

Still.

There were little voices, muffled cries, dry sobs.

A prayer, unfinished, upon her lips.

Pressing off the ground. A staggering, near fall. Pressing off the ground.

"I'm not finished," she said, but there was no sound.

For Callach the sudden exhaustion had knocked him out before he had time to react.
Now that he was awake, the absence of vitality in his whole being made him even more tired.
As he slowly came to, the worst was not the lingering pain in all his muscles and joints, but what he had lost.

Granted, the vast power he had been in possession of had come without an effort, but that didn't make the parting easier.
He felt like a God reduced to a worm. He felt... ashamed by not being MORE. Anymore.

Callach's instinct was to hide and so he did. Finding shelter behind pieces of the wreckage, he sat down quietly.
His feelings overtook him and he couldn't fight the urge. Amidst his tragedy, Callach sobbed.

Callach was not alone. Across the battlefield came the sounds of tears and of anguish. It was perhaps worse somehow that there did not seem to be anywhere near so many cries of pain as there had been until a short while ago.

ooc

Pain, like lead, dragged her limbs down. Propelled by conviction alone, Iliana brought her face near the healer's, waiting fearfully for the brush of breath against her cheek even as she fingered the place upon their wrist where living blood would beat its promise.

Whispered prayer, a single word rolling through her heart and off her tongue. "Live."

And again, "Live."

Iliana willed the healer to show signs of life but to no avail. The man had passed. The story was the same with the next healer. It was only when she came to the third of the group that she detected the faintest of breath and the tiniest movement of blood. Exhausted she threw everything she had into the man. Without warning he gasped and sat up. He smiled down at Iliana, "Thank you, my saviour. Now, let me repay the favour."

He reached down and power flooded all at once into Iliana, seeping through her whole being. There was pain, but it was short and not unpleasant; the pain of being made whole. As the feeling surged and waned she found herself not only mended but feeling more energetic than she had in some time.

The priest smiled down, "Now. We have work to do. If you have nothing left use my wand, here." He pressed into her hand a cold stick of black wood. "Use as much as you need."