Board Thread:What Would You Do?/@comment-27069434-20170105195952

You are an average human (no magic or whatnot), male, around your pre-/early-twenties. You, your parents and your little sister (no magics, human, female, early teens) all live togather in the town N located in an Order-run state NN. The living conditions are...tolerable, what with taxes unreasonably high, anyone willing to take an apprentice all too eager to cheat you on the payment and give the plain ol' boot up your backside if you dare to ask for your hard-earned reward.

One day - or late evening, really - you and your sister were heading back home from the town M you two were sent to earn some coin. The old dusty road was still radiating heat absorbed during the day, the creeping darkness of the night to come coloured the sky deep, matte sapphire in the north-east, the setting sun bled crimson over the outh-west by the very edge of the pitch black silhouette of your hometown's clocktower barely visible over the jagged outline of the forest.

You slowly walked forward, enjoying still warm, but no more stuffy air, its softness and sweetness being that of buckwheat honey. your old dokney was pacing stoically beside you, your sister on his back, dozing off once in a while. You wouldn't mind dropping alseep yourself right here, under one of the bushes growing by the roadside - this has been a long, tiresome, but oh, so rewarding day, now you just got to drag yourselves back home, yourselves and a small pouche, heavy with coin earned earlier today.

However gratifying the illusion of having earned a small fortune was, your feet seemed leaden for you've had not single moment of respite since before the dawn, you've sweated a small lake and drank up a whole sea worth of water because of the scorch that was this day, and the excess of this water now asked for something to be done about it. You tapped your sister on the shoulder ever so lightly, telling her in a low voice you'd go "water the flowers".

You were standing in the tall grass swaying gently in the evening breeze, feeling relief overtaking you more and more with each heartbeat, your eyes wandered the deep malachite scales of the shrub, higher and higher, until you were gazing at the sky, no star to be seen yet. Then you heared a stifled cry.

A familiar, though this time frightened braying reached your ears the next moment, sleep was cast away that insstant, anxiety jolted through your spine as you ran out of the growth and dashed forward, towards where several larger figures were swarming an animal of burden and a small girl on its back - your sister atop donkey that was desperately trying to kick and bite the assailants. You covered the distance in the bat of an eye, plowing into one of the figures at ramming speed, knocked him prone and hit the other one, but not before he lashd at the girl, throwing her off the arse's back. The third attacker, however, was swift - only in hindsight did you grasp he'd moved in from behind and incapacitated you, as sharp pain ran through your back and a dull thud at the liwer rear of your skull knocked the dying light out of you.

Waking has never been so hard and painful, left side of your back as if coated in tar and set on fire, your head dizzy, heavy and aching, your guts feeling like they'd been hit with a battering ram. Fighting pain and nausea, you dragged yourself towards where a minute figure lay in a half-torn dress, it's front stained dark and dimly shiny. The highwaymen, you thought to yourself, they'd attacked you, robbed you. But, most importantly, they'd... You feared to approach the body that lay still in the now cold dust, wet and heavy with young blood spilled onto it, yet you threw yourself towards the delicate frame once you heared a soft whimper comeing from her. There she lay, deathly pallor cast over her visage by the argent crescent in the heavens, her eyes barely open, looking up into the void, exhaustion and indifference written in her bruised face; yet her chest moved - barely, but moved none the less. Fearful, though with faint hope, you called her name. Her gaze slowly drifted in your general direction and a semblance of a weak smile of relief formed on her pallid lips. She strained to call you, if even in a whisper, but she had to struggle for breath as you brought your arms around her battered frame with all tenderness you could muster. She said it hurt. Her gawn was stiffening with a slightly moist crust of blood. They'd taken all the money you had earned and hit our poor donkey, she said, horribly out of breath by the end of the sentence, each inhale making her shudder with pain. You told her to take it eassy, the coin differed little to you, so you said, but she needed the town herbalist's aid immediately. You were in no shape to walk yourself, let alone haul her anywhere, though the old arse poked your shoulder gently with his gray satin lips -he'd taken some beating' too, but, as mom says, old guard never dies, so the old beast of burden could take the girl to the town in time, if only you could roll her onto his back. It appeared ot be near impossible, as even the slightest movement caused the girl to gasp and barely audiably squeak in pain. You felt her fingers - cold and stiff - clasp around yours. She asked you not to worry, the pain had almost abated, she said, she'd only wanted you to stay by her side just a little longer. Just a little longer, she said, and it would be over, she just wanted you to hold her hand a little, so that she wasn't afraid to go. You stammered a protest, telling her desperately she'd be allright once you get her on the arse and into the town, but her only reply was a weak apologetic smile. She'd had the courage - or resignation - to face the truth you'd wanted to ignore so badly, the truth that...

"Her wound is mortal," a soft yet slightly disturbing feminine voice called when you, dead set on doing the right thing no matter what, decided to get your sister help, even though reason kept telling you she'd not last even half a mile down the road. From the corner of your eye you could see a slender female dressed in heavily worn cape appeared from the shadows of the roadside shrubbery. "I am sorry, but she won't make it, you yourself are barely hoding," the stranger told you, her sad gentle voice somehow setting your hair on end. "How frail our mortal form is," she spoke to noone in particular, her gaze somewhat vacant, but slightly raspy voice delirious, blush spilled over her cheeks.

As the moon emerged from behind a cloud, a thought, insane yet brilliant, stroke you with the silver arrow of the young moonlight. You'd heared tales told by the Order's knighthood chaplain, wondrous tales of divine creatures sent to aid righteous and smite the heretic. You'd even seen one with your own eyes, a woman, just like the one before you now, wearing simple garb, had been staying on her way through, healing sick and wounded by laying her hands on and speaking in a tongue that was incomprehensible to those gathered around, but that filled their hearts with joy and peace. Light would then shine brighter at her and those before her, and a vision of what appeared to be a pair of translucent wings would glimmer behind her.

You pleaded desperately, resisting vertigo, the stranger before you to help your sister. She was so young and pure of heart, so gentle and kind to all around her, she'd  been all you held dear in this world beside your parents - she'd never wronged anyone. Save her, you pleaded, offering what little you had, offering everything you had - your life. You'd seen, you told the stranger, that the divine being, when dealing with gravely injured, had to bring their suffering upon herself, and, though she'd never die from all that harm she'd taken upon herself, she'd suffered greatly. You offered yourself as the vessel of the suffering, willing to take your sister's injury upon yourself if that would save her.

"You are mistaken, boy," the woman spoke in a wet, rattling voice that sent chills down your spine. "Indeed, I am no human. But nothing of the divine sorts you think of." That very moment your heart fell, as you saw thick, moist ropes of flest emerge from beneath her skirt and out of her sleeves, coilng viciously, sliding themselves around and over what appeared to be feminine humanlike shape beneath the simple traveler's gawn. "Tell me, child, do you fear me now, that you've seen me truly, or are you still eager to save your kin at all costs?", the womanlike creature before you  appeared no older than a human maid in her thirties, she spoke in a  clear demanding voice, which made your blood curdle.

Only then did you realise that your sister's hand had nearly slipped from your grasp, her ragged breath growing more shallow with each inhale. "She is at the precipice of eternal night, now...", stranger's tone conveyed genuine sorrow. You cried out to the creature before you, calling to what humane remains in her, to do something, anything, just save your sister.

The abomination in front of you replied morbidly. "I could infuse her with my essence. That would heal her of this injury, then no ordinary weapon, bladed or blunt, could harm her really. But she'd become one of my kind. Ropers, you call us. She'd be human no longer. And you'd have to pay a price, too.". Not understanding, what exactly the stranger meant by that, you ask her what's the point in saving your little sister if she'd no longer be what she was before? “It's who, not what you seek to preserve, no? You want your sister to be alive, does her remaining entirely human matter that much to you? Her body will change somewhat, not that much superficially, but it will. She'll mature, like all humans do, you'll see her in her prime, perhaps even see her married to a good man, the more open in mind he'll be, the better, I'll tell you that much in advance. If you fear losing your little sister, then there is a way to save her, albeit in a different quality, if you fear losing the human you cradle in your arms now, it'll be gone one way or another in a moment.” The crature before you stood still, it's eyes locked with yours.

“Make up your mind.”  