When Erasmus found him on the shore of Vitreus Lake, there was a moment almost made awful by the way he was no longer a he at all but beneath, an it. For the Erasmus-That-Was, cradling his most recent memories, would have recognized the dappled gold and the tattooed scarab immediately. He would have recalled him from his many gamblings at the White Scarab, and his next thought would have been green eyes in the incensed dark, beautiful green eyes and sharp things he'd gladly bleed himself on, but then his third thought would have been action. He would have run to find help – maybe a medic, maybe an able-bodied pegasus that could rush him to the Hospital in Tarastella. There may have been more thoughts as well in between, thoughts of “what happened to you,” or thoughts of “I must move him from the water before it drags more of his bandages away” or thoughts of how August's bindings revealed just enough red, red, just enough to be tempting but not enough to peel away his sanity.

It was not The-Boy-That-Was-Erasmus that found August. It was something worse.

It found him, appetite panging as it always did against the hollow cathedral of his ribs. His core rounded like a viper, rattling and rolling heat and need when it saw red taint the waters and it thought of the toothy things in the darkest currents, toothy things that weren't sharks but weren't not sharks. They would have the golden man, if it didn't first. And there were no witnesses, no one that would see it carving the still hot-blood of a man who was well on his way out anyways. The last thing that could ever possibly serve it well however was if August was left to those waters while he devoured him, and then whatever waded there just as hungrily would surely yank the body into the depths. He didn't doubt that they hadn't smelled the blood already and were coming. The body was still warm, still malleable, and the blood was still rushing through his veins – though when it pressed its skull to the hollow behind his shoulder, it could hear that the blood was running very slowly, but very steadily.

It would have to kill him quickly if it meant not spoiling the meat.

So it moved, hooves clicking against the water that lapped hungrily at the bleeding wounds, and attempted to swing August's body from the water with a harsh shove. Aether bled from his pores – surging, aiding, their maddening hum just as loud as it was in his own ears with deplorable hunger and deprivation – it passed beneath his heaviest parts, and all at once thrusted the mass over the rocks and sand. When August shifted, it heard him cough, saw him stir, and its eyes grew wild and wide with a primal, lusting fury – and it reached his curved fangs for the crook of his neck but – but –

The scent of Solterran incense wafted to it gently through the halls of the memories of What-Was, as though Erasmus screamed from the deep, dark crypt of whatever scraps remained of him. It filtered its hunger through memories of the Scarab, of drinks and cards and smoky laughter in the night, of green eyes and golden filigree and then dappled gold and pale hair shining in the shadows. A name escapes him verily, as though it matters if he had one, as though it wouldn't devour named things just as well as nameless things. It doesn't need a name, thinks a strain of aether that yearns for culture, that remembers being the acid wind that roved over its hostile planet but wishes that it had been life instead, wishes that it had been the thrumming pulse of an ocean teeming with life as well as death. The thing that became Erasmus snorted harshly, and the strain of aether that yearns for blood and the necessity of death scornfully obliges, shirks the image of August's wounds from his mind. It drags his body farther from the waters, but it is not enough to save a man, only stave off death while it searches for help. And so it did.

**********
It had taken three of them: Erasmus, Bernard, and another Tartaros patron that the aether had not searched deep enough for the name of, but they had stolen August out of the haze of dusky evening and into the starless night that shielded them from curious eyes. They had moved August by what Bernard amusedly referred to as a 'stretcher' – by some arcane piece of old work he found in the vineyard, a wooden cart that just narrowly faced a year before dilapidation, and despite greasing its wheels it was certain they lessened its life with the weight. It did well regardless, except that they once had to beat the wheel loose when it was jammed with prairie grass, and it had jostled August a little the entire way, but it did so without much complaint otherwise. They had then carried him down, down, down between them, through a narrow passage hidden on the edge of the Night Court, and the no-name fellow had slipped at some point and artlessly cracked August's head against the wet sandstone and Bernard had hissed through grit teeth, “you're an impudent ass, you know that?”

They brought him to the Fighter's quarters, a grand room that could be mistaken for a medic's bunker. (Though that was only sidestepped from the truth.) It was a clean room, except for a massive bloodstain that sprawled the stone floor at the foot of one of the three slabs there. Along one wall, shelves were bolstered with apothecary jars filled with dried herbs and flowers as well as a multitude of volumes on the healing and hallucinogenic properties of each. Some jars were empty amber cases in the light cast by the tall lamps in the corners, upon which Bernard made quick work striking a flame in. The southern wall bordered the limestone slabs that served as operating tables, and were decked by shelves that armed rudimentary medical tools. Against the wall ahead of them were a spaced line of cots with maroon sheets – they found dyed sheets were better than the horror a pained, concussed fighter may feel sleeping on an already bloodstained white sheet – and between each, a stand that offered place for necessities and a lantern. They dropped August on one of these cots as delicately as they could (which wasn't very delicately at all) and the springs groaned beneath his weight but held, offering him back as they uncoiled with a creak.

Erasmus dismissed the no-name man then, and asked Bernard quietly for “belladonna and sea moss.”

**********
The aether did not come from a place like the world that was ward to Novus. It did not come from a place that was walked by creatures quite so developed as those who lived in Denocte, or Delumine, or Tarastella, or Solterra, or even The Wilds. The aether learned how to breathe the air they breathed, to speak the words they spoke, to walk on nimble legs and move as they moved. It was tedious work often, but it would never have been able to do so without the bountiful bank that was the mind of the Erasmus-That-Was. It would tap into those stores as a parasite leeching life from the core of a hidden world, tonguing feelers through each subject it felt lost to in this foreign space that offered little relief. It did it then, in that dark space beneath the Night Markets, working against its deplorable hunger that ached and ached.

Erasmus, before he had chosen to travel abroad on that fateful trip that brought him to the aether he was destined to, had done well to garner a plentiful understanding of herbs. Many were toxic, but he had served well to even investigate the extent of their poisonous properties – understanding how much was too much or how much was too little, and the truth of how he found these limits is a horror in itself for another day. Today, or tonight, whatever it was as it was unclear in these underground passages, the knowledge of those limits were useful not only to it, but to August. It had given him a decent dose of what he called belladonna between the man's feverish wakes. Belladonna is sweet, almost to the point of tartness, a dark mauve potion he poured from a black wine bottle each time August could muster the strength to raise his head before returning to his dreams. Dreams which, between the potion and the fever, may have blended with reality either euphoric or horrifically, or both. The lucid nature of these dreams were a paltry side effect induced by the already affected state of his mind. The wine ultimately would serve as a fever reducer and a muscle relaxer.

It's unclear how long they kept August there, in the bleak underworld. Erasmus rested in a cot beside him, his back to the cold limestone wall, stirring when the golden man would groan in his sleep. He had placed the damp sea moss in the places that Isra's bindings had peeled from, and all was seeming to do well. The bottle of Belladonna sat half empty on the bedside table, prettily plum in the amber light cast by the lantern. He waited now, patiently, counting the drip-drip-drip-drips that echoed from deeper in Tartaros between lapses of unconsciousness. Somewhere in the Grand Hall, a few patrons played a friendly game of poker, and now and then the quietly revolving sounds of laughter, failure, and victory would echo softly through the crypts.

Erasmus grinned as August stirred with softer movements now, as the feverish tremblings and shudders ceased over time, and raised his head so that his black mane cascaded in waves over his shoulder. He had snuffed the lamp in his own corner hours ago, the only light in the chamber cast by two oil lamps on the opposing wall and the soft glow of the lantern that burnished the wounded in honeyed hues. Shadows curled meekly about Erasmus, aether coiled about him like resting vipers, and the darkness that swallowed him made the sharp brightness of his crescent moon pupils appear supernaturally insidious, full still with unrelenting and bitter hunger. "so he wakes," his voice is a lull, almost a song spoken from the many-breathed depths of aether shadow, a softness that romances the inexorable ambiance of predatory peril. he did not move any other way, lounging like a feral cat on the only semi-comfortable cot.

The aether remembers what drowning had once felt like, through the eyes and the lungs of the Erasmus-That-Was. It was a striking sensation, as though all sensations were the entirety of his pulse – thundering, fleeting, pounding, all in his head, his veins, his eyes, his lungs – and the sea threatened to merge salt and air and the waves crashed overhead in no more sounds than of muffled denial. The surging of oceanic currents, the distant rumble of thunder, the cascade of rain over the shifting sheets of water. Death is an inglorious thing, which is most ironic for the glory that so many have tried to paint it in – no matter in what way you eventually go, there is no valor to be found in it, no beauty left for the moment you feel that everything must cease. There is only desperation and fear, and sometimes anger, and maybe, just maybe at the end of that, peace. But he does not remember peace.

He remembers what resurrection felt like. It felt like seawater being jetted from his lungs, his legs too weak to recall their purpose, his eyelids too heavy to permit anything more than brief glimpses of sand and sky and rocks. Drowning in the Terminus Sea could not have felt like being sliced and diced by some monster in the mountains and left for dead, but the sensation of near-death and recovery he could share a kinship for. Luck never crossed his mind as a factor.

So it is patiently that he waits for his companion to rise and gather his bearings, heavy-lidded and sore, perhaps still numb from the belladonna thrumming through him still, knowing the desperation that wars with fatigue. He does not warn August to lay still like a crooning mother, not bid him to stay silent, to gather his energy. He has seen enough fighters recover from debilitating wounds as similarly, and learned not to doubt the strength of perseverance in times of crisis. They had all come to in the same fashion: sometimes coughing, sometimes groaning, sometimes crying, but all exasperated and confused, feverish and at times even violent. Erasmus was thankful that August did not rise swinging.

In fact, after a moment of delirium he seemed to come to terms with his captivity, resting again on the creaking cot as his eyes struggled to focus on the faint outline cast on Erasmus in the dark. 

Erasmus nodded solemnly to August's first question, candlelight pulling restlessly across his sharp features, the angular lines of his grave face. Where am I? Came the second, a well anticipated question that returned the grin to his features. Despite having provided the Scarab at times with some stronger, questionably legal wines, he had always requested anonymity in the business as a source and was pleased by the confirmation. “Safe.” He answered pleasantly, casually, as if they were in the cozy bedroom suite at a high-end Inn. 

A look around the graven state of the room however, told something otherwise of homely comforts. The large blood stain at the foot of an operating slab was not the friendliest of decorations.

With a sardonic grin and a small chuckle, Erasmus readjusted himself on the cot, stretching his neck. His mane fell in waves across his shoulders, gold tendrils catching the light of the candle as they fell. Another echo of brief bickering carried down the hall from the poker players, followed by a hushing sound. “I've seen you before, in the Scarab... I found you washed up in Vitreus Lake, fish nibbling on your heels. It looks as though someone attempted to patch you up, then left you in the cold. Perhaps they were optimistic.” In thinking about it, it was not much unlike the cloaked woman who pulled Erasmus from the icy depths of the Terminus to let him dry out on the shore. Perhaps sometimes it was best left for chance and survivability, letting nature work its own ways. Then again, August could have been fish food.