Bang!
Rhoda burst into the room, causing the door to rebound with and get in unprepared Marlin's way.
She ignored Marlin and everything else and approached Azarel fearfully. Her gaze fell over his tinted pink skin.
"…da…"
And that moment she felt a flood of regret wash over as she carefully picked him up, ignoring his strange skin colour.
He breathed softly and his eyebrows were tightly scrunched together, she used one hand to smoothen his brows and frowned at his temperature.
"Rhoda…?"
He was burning up, his temperature was astonishingly high but he seemed extremely comfortable.
'This… and his skin colour is probably a side effect of the mana, which only means they were telling the truth…!'
She quickly unbuttoned his clothes and felt all over his body. He was burning up, and that heat stung and only caused her expression to fall even more.
She only touched him yet she could not handle it, and what about the him?
Is he…
'No no no no… I- I…'
She hesitated, and remained frozen as she held him deeper in her embrace.
"Rhoda!"
"What!?", she instinctively screamed out thoroughly shaken and turned to Marlin who stepped back instinctively.
"You can't…"
She failed to hear his following words, no she heard him but his words didn't register in her mind as she stared at the open door.
"Water… he, his… will be-… I need water"
She muttered indiscriminately and suddenly bolted out.
"Rhoda!"
She ran off to the bathroom and ignored Marlin's calls, her shawl falling off as she moved quickly.
Marlin remained in his position, his back facing the door.
"Behline… find, a way. Find a way to invite a mage and an herbalist or physician or whatever! From the capital, and please escort the gentlemen downstairs out, surely, we can do without them."
He ordered as he turned away.
His voice a mere whisper incapable of disrupting the symphony of the wind as it got heard by no one including himself, hence he failed to notice the words he said and the absence of people around him.
...
'I… should have said something… but I couldn't.'
His thought as he raised his heavy and unwilling foot to the near stair.
'Nothing would happen right? They're still down there so nothing would happen…'
His gloved hands curled up into a ball, as he held the rails and forced his body to move up.
He had been going just fine until the thought hit him.
'But if I'd said something then… I'd have to explain how I know… no, he wouldn't trust me anymor- he might reinvestigate and-'
"Excuse me please."
Talos' emotionless voice called out to Behline who was lost in his thoughts and in his way.
"What…?", Behline uttered in disarray as he turned around a bit, his shaky pupils landed on Talos and it was then he realized.
"Oh the doctor, ah yes, please go ahead"
He shuffled aside, and placed his trembling hands on his side, as he looked past the stairs, his gaze fixed on the wall.
Talos walked past him, paused and raised his hand but calmly put it down as he walked on.
Behline sensing his departure turned to him and stared at his back view with complex thoughts going through his mind and calmly let out a deep breath.
'They're here, and truly I'm just a butler.'
He reassured himself calmly, but with that thought in mind he returned to being the resilient and capable butler he always was.
...…
In the bathroom, Rhoda had submerged half of her baby's body in water.
And counted seconds before she brought him right out feeling for his temperature and checking his body for any discomfort.
She noticed, at first his breathing was light and soft. But as the submerging continued he woke up and began to cry, now he only whimpered softly as he shivered in his mother's embrace.
But just as she was about to submerge him in water again, Marlin came to stop her.
"Calm down Rhoda, he'll be even more sickened that way."
"But he's already dying!" She said as tears brimmed in her eyes.
"No he's not, I've already sent Behline off to the capital no the nearest city he-!"
"No. That won't do, it won't do at all! Let's just beg the herbalist Fernand, just- ask, let's talk to him first! Maybe he'll -!"
Rhoda turned to him with pure unfamiliarity in her eyes.
"Why?", she questioned solemnly, her voice eerily cold and strained.
His shaky pupils met Rhoda's tense gaze, and he responded with a soft sigh, casually ignoring her question.
"Listen to me Rhoda, let's just get someone from the capital, or my territory to come over. We'll use a portal for instant transmission, and at most we'll just hire a mage from the mage tower to create the circle for both sides. Rhoda, trust me it's safer that way."
He said it all in one breath and in a soft and soothing voice.
However, the unfamiliarity in Rhoda's eyes slowly morphed into disbelief, and her distraught expression actually turned into one of mild amusement.
Then with a chuckle she said;
"You know, I still don't like you Marlin, so do not under any circumstance act like we are close, and absolutely, do not tell me what to do. I do not answer to you for are not my mas-"
"Rhoda!", He called his voice carrying a great deal of reprimand.
'How could she say that?', He marvelled in disbelief, 'She is my-'
"Marlin!" She called back in return and stared at him with widened eyes complemented with anxiety.
Her noble manners, dignity and whatnot had long found it's way into the waste bin as she stared at him with a deep-rooted stubbornness ingrained into her very bones.
And as she steadied her trembling and clogged breath, she raised her hand towards the door.
"Leave my house. Right now."
She said as calmly as she could, and headed towards the bathroom door but as she widened the door, there Talos was, about to knock.