Excalibur {Complete}

30

I rubbed at my arm a bit as I rolled down the sleeve. Kilia rolled away from me, a vial of my blood in her hands. It was three days after being allowed to walk around the manor again. I was still under strict orders not to use Excalibur, and I was sure to heed that. As I sat there on the chair, I watched Kilia for a long time as she worked the vial into some kind of machine and hit a few buttons. It whirred to life, vibrating insanely loudly to the point that I thought the white box would just fall off the desk.

Kilia worked on the computer rapidly, her fingers making it sound like miniature gunshots going off in the room with how quickly she hit the keyboard. When she stopped typing in commands or whatever it was she was doing, she eyed the screen, rolling the wheel on the mouse to scroll through the information. Her lips pulled into a frown and her eyes narrowed before she sighed and pulled away from the computer.

"And?" I asked softly, not sure if I was ready to hear her report.

"I don't know."

I groaned inwardly and tried not to sigh. I wasn't sure if her saying she didn't know was worse than hearing any sort of solid information. Kilia heaved a heavier sigh as she pushed away from the desk and rolled over to me. Taking my hands in her cool ones, she rubbed her thumbs along the backs of my hands lightly.

"I'm sorry Valkyrie. I'm trying everything I can. It's just going to take some time. I'm working as quickly as I can. For the moment, your body seems to be all right, the deterioration doesn't look like it's going too quickly, in fact, I think it's slowed down so that's good. The problem is that it's still happening. What are your symptoms so far?"

I shrugged a bit, "Headache sometimes. It only gets really bad when I use Excalibur. I got a terrible migraine from it and then I had a nose bleed and felt like I was going to be sick. Then when I fought Alik," I swallowed hard, trying not to say anything about Ahmeil, "I actually threw up as I had the nose bleed and then passed out."

Kilia nodded slowly as she took in this information, "All right, so for now it's just a headache mostly. If you get a nosebleed at any time, you come and tell me. That will let me know how far the deterioration is. I don't have anything solid yet, but I'm working on something that will at least slow down the process considerably for you. Once I get that done, I will move from that to hopefully creating something that will reverse the process."

I smiled at her and tightened my hands around hers, "You're amazing Kilia."

For the first time, I saw a light blush dust her cheeks and she quickly looked away, huffing as she closed her eyes, puffing out her cheeks a bit, "Whatever. I'm just doing what I'm good at, which is science. It's nothing special."

"Yes it is. You're going to save my life, Kilia. That is definitely special. Thank you."

Her blush darkened and she rolled away from me to bury herself in her computer again, "Don't thank me just yet. You're free to go, Valkyrie."

I stood up and quietly left the medical room. It was perfect timing anyway, I had to go meet with Tristan, Zak and Jace. For the past few days we'd been discussing what we were going to do about Excalibur and Alik. I tried my best to follow the conversations, but every time I found myself eyeing Ahmeil like a rabid dog that wanted to chew her face off. I wasn't sure if anyone had noticed, but this meeting was just the four of us. It was nice, but a little strange too because none of the other right hands were going to be present.

Shrugging, I just headed up the stairs that were on the left of the hall that led down to Kilia's medical room. I took the steps two at a time, but slowly. I knew that Excalibur was the problem, breaking down my body, but I also felt that if I did too much I would be aiding in its progression. It was a scary feeling to say the least. Once at the second floor, I turned right and headed down the hall to the study room that Tristan used almost always. I knocked once before I opened the door and entered.