After over thirty hours of intense and careful surgery, Hervath finally sewed Mr Fluffy back closed and administered post-operative dications. These were not the kinds that would have been administered in a standard hospital. They were rely the necessities.
At the sa ti, Northern used Braham's talent ability again on the beast. This ti it worked easily because he was only using the power's nature to patch what Hervath had already sewn. The Owl Doctor had done the most critical work and had done it to the very letter.
Hervath staggered back as his horrible limbs folded into his body and a coat of feathers fell over it, giving him the monstrous owl body he always had. He leaned against the wall, tired, every bone in his body aching. But he still watched as Northern stood with the wolf and healed it with his abilities.
Northern could feel the doctor's gaze on his back. It carried a weight that hadn't been there before.
Thirty hours. Northern had stood through the entire operation without making the simplest of sounds that could have distracted Hervath during the surgery. He had noticed, in the early hours, how Hervath's feathered head kept twitching in his direction, the beak parting slightly as though words were forming and then dying. The Owl Doctor had wanted to ask him to leave. Northern could tell. But Hervath was too fearful to say it and had only told him, with visible hesitation, to step back. And then braced himself for interruption.
It never ca. Northern simply watched, still as furniture, and let the doctor work. For stretches of ti, he saw Hervath's awareness of him dissolve entirely, the doctor's grueso limbs moving with fluid, almost beautiful precision across Mr Fluffy's opened body. It was only when Hervath turned to grab another instrunt that his posture would stiffen, suddenly rembering he wasn't alone.
And as Hervath had said it would be, the surgery was a very successful one.
However, there were a few details that couldn't help but bother Hervath. Northern could see them sitting behind the doctor's eyes like stones he hadn't yet decided to throw.
When he saw that Northern was done healing the wolf, Hervath leaned away from the wall.
Northern offered him a warm smile.
"Thank you, thank you a lot. Na anything you want, I'll try my best to get it for you."
Northern ant those words. Even if Hervath had said the heavens, Northern felt himself in a state where he could hurriedly start preparations to pull them down.
Hervath thought for a bit, opening his mouth slightly.
"This is a very generous offer. It would be stupid of to hastily make that decision. May I have a few days to think about it, maybe share this thought with my friend?"
Northern looked at him and smiled a little.
"Well, the offer won't be sitting for long."
Hervath allowed a short laugh, and then fixed Northern with a serious look.
"Is sothing wrong?"
Northern's expression turned grim.
"There's no complication or anything like that?"
Hervath shook his head.
"Absolutely not, nothing like that. I want to point out so of my observations while I was inside your friend there."
Northern followed Hervath's gaze, which went to Mr Fluffy for a mont and ca back.
"What about him?"
"He has a very unique arrangent of organs. It took this long because I had to figure all of that out first." Hervath paused, his owl head tilting slightly to one side, as though choosing his next words with surgical precision. "There's sothing about him so synonymous to the shadow of the gods."
Northern frowned.
"What do you an?"
Hervath lingered. Then he exhaled, slow and deliberate.
"I guess I'm saying... your friend, that wolf, may very well not belong to this world. And the organs you donated, they do work and all, but I fear they might have rewritten its existential trait." He shifted his weight against the wall, his taloned feet scraping the floor. "While I combed through the insides, I believe its very existence was ant to be incomplete. As to what that ans, I don't know. However, with the organs you gave it, operating on it, with each endeavor of mine... it was like pushing its limits and capacity towards completion."
Hervath's voice dropped.
"As a result of that, you will begin to see certain traits. Whether this strange thing will cause your friend to be weaker or stronger, I really don't know. In fact, I can't fully process it." His gaze drifted to Mr Fluffy, and sothing flickered there, sothing instinctive and old. "And to be honest with you, since it's slling like a dead god, I don't want to sniff my nose around it enough to know. There are consequences one such as myself cannot avoid. So I'd rather tell you all of this and forget I ever saw anything."
Northern inhaled it all... and then fixed Hervath with a knowing stare.
"But you can't truly forget now, can you? You've seen it already."
Hervath chuckled at Northern.
"I'm going to have selective amnesia. I know just what to do to forget I ever saw it. There are parts in our brain responsible for mories, I'll take..."
He belatedly caught himself and coughed.
"Ahem. I'm simply saying, yes I can."
Northern would be lying if he said he wasn't a little surprised. The Owl Doctor really went and fortified himself into the greatest weapon of dicine possible, not simply embodying all the variances of sickness and healing, but being able to perpetrate them on himself.
It made him monstrous and hideous to look upon, but Hervath Cline seed to consider himself beautiful.
'How fitting...'
Northern nodded.
"Alright. I'll watch out for these things. You may go and think about that offer."
As he said this, Hervath bowed and extended himself out of the room.
Northern was left alone with Mr Fluffy, turning over what Hervath had said.
Since he took a portion of Infinite Iteration and placed it inside Mr Fluffy, it was possible that his Origin ability kicked in and began to sprout endlessness, which in an incomplete being would first have to make it complete.
'An existence ant to be incomplete... now being forced towards completion.'
Northern glanced down at the beast. Mr Fluffy was still unconscious, but certainly breathing better now. It had survived thanks to Hervath.
Now Northern's eyes hardened.
The next ti he and Rughsbourgh t, Rughsbourgh wouldn't be as lucky to have soone like Hervath Cline nurse him back to health.
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