Most of the anti-fire systems had cleared out the larger parts of the hospital, but this room in particular was having trouble. Mainly because the source of the fire was still here, rampaging around, panicking, not sure what he was doing. There was not much the mortals could do, but Arkadin was there to stop further pain and suffering.
“Retvik, you need to calm down.”
Garbled roars were the wild Rethan’s response. Arkadin knew exactly why. This poor soul was suffering from a condition called “traumatic prostatic shock”. A terrible struggle to keep oneself alive at any cost, often causing the patient to revert to a feral state in a desperate attempt to save themselves.
In this case though, the patient was dealing with things beyond their understanding. Something had happened to Retvik over the last few days, something to do with his terrifying fall from space. Something had happened during that fall that had scared him. Physically and mentally.
Arkadin sighed as Retvik crashed into a wall, trying to make space for himself, burrowing into it as if it build shelter and hide away. Exhaustion was only barely beginning to tickle the surface of Retvik’s mind. The staff had tried to calm him down, they had tried to sedate him and tranquillize him like a wild animal, but the shock Retvik was in prevented any of that. The surge of adrenaline alone could have potentially kept Retvik from sleeping for days.
A sudden blast of heat emanated from the wall where Retvik was trying to dig. Parts of Retvik’s body, most notably his arms and tail, had burst into flames, setting fire to the wall around Retvik and causing the Rethan to panic further. The medics had noticed that Retvik’s body had undergone some… unusual changes but none of them knew why.
“Retvik, you need to calm down, for your own sake. You making yourself unsafe.”
Retvik didn’t seem to listen, but something did happen. Retvik had realised the flames were coming from his own body and was beginning to somewhat control them, using the heat to burn deeper into the wall. What Retvik didn’t realise was that he was beginning to dig into supporting beams and columns of the hospital, and doing so could potentially bring everything crashing down on top of him.
Arkadin considered approaching Retvik, grabbing him forcefully, pulling him out of this situation and knocking him out, but the Lord of Decay knew that would end in disaster. The life-preserving hormones in Retvik’s body had taken over, and to abruptly remove him from this situation could cause irreparable damage. Arkadin had to get Retvik to remove himself from this situation. It suddenly occurred to Arkadin how he could do this.
“Retvik, you need to stop acting like this. How do you think Gath would feel, seeing you like this?”
Slowly, Retvik turned around.
“You wouldn’t want to make Gath upset, would you?”
The mention of Retvik’s beloved partner’s name had done it. Retvik slowly became more docile as Arkadin slowly explained what was going on.
“You’re not well right now. But we’re trying to help you, so you can go back to see Gath.”
Finally, Retvik calmed down enough to be able to talk. He carefully approached Arkadin, crawling along the ground, the flames fading from his body as sentient though returned to his mind.
“I am so sorry…” Retvik mumbled, coughing up smoke.
“It’s fine…” Arkadin sighed as he helped Retvik up and led him away. “We’ll get you fixed…”